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Democrat Kevin Dahl, who was first elected by city voters in 2021, and Republican Janet "JL" Wittenbraker, who previously made unsuccessful bids for Pima County and city of Tucson seats, will face off in a Nov. 4 general election to represent Tucson's Ward 3,��which encompasses midtown and the northwest boundaries of the city.

It's one of three City Council races on the ballot that all Tucson voters are eligible to vote on. Tucson City Council elections are ward-only when there are primaries, but in the general election, all registered city voters have their say.

Kevin Dahl

Dahl,��a longtime conservationist who led the environmentalist groups Tucson Audubon Society and Native Seeds/SEARCH,��is seeking a second term representing Ward 3��after first taking office in December 2021. Prior to his election, Dahl served as the Arizona senior program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association. His focus on the council has been in the environmental and conservation vein.

Coming off a narrow primary win in August in which he defeated Democrat Sadie Shaw by just 19 votes, Dahl says his experience in office should be at the top of voters' minds come Nov. 4.

"It's the experience, both (in-office) and the experience that I brought into this (role), years of working in nonprofits and managing people. I know how to manage a staff, I know how to raise money, I know how to read a budget."

"I've had four years working with my colleagues and figuring out how to work together collegially, and to agree to disagree, and how we work together to get things done," he said. "That's a huge advantage. I remember how many months it took me to learn the job. Took me six months to meet with all the departments the city oversees, and now I have relationships with both the directors and other people doing things in those departments."

Dahl ran on climate change and working to address that issue in his first campaign for City Council, something he says voters responded to then, and are responding to now.

Tucsonans this summer were captivated by Project Blue, a massive data-center project that ultimately the Tucson City Council voted not to have a city role in. Dahl pushed for the council vote, saying at the time, “This thing needs to die now so we can move on with appropriate conversations about what economic development looks like in the midst of extreme heat and depleting water supplies.”

Dahl says he has no regrets on that action in August, despite the project moving forward on unincorporated land in Pima County without the city having a hand in it.

"When I've been knocking on doors, another response I get are thank you's for being an early opponent to Project Blue. People were concerned about the water, and now they're concerned about the energy," he said. "I'm proud of (the council's decision), and I have no regrets with the information we had at the time."

One argument for Project Blue was its potential to spur economic development within Tucson. Dahl argues the city should instead focus on uplifting small businesses first, as opposed to waiting for business opportunities to come from the outside.

"I��think it's a good opportunity for city and county and the community at large to look at what sort of economic future do we want. ... This is an opportunity, I think, for us to define the next five and 20 years of where we'll invest in our resources," he said. "Investing resources in people who are building a small business that may someday be a big business is something that Tucson should continue to do."

From his constituents in Ward 3, Dahl said, concerns he hears have been centered around public drug use, the need for housing and for something to be done about rent prices. There's a "spectrum of responses" when discussing issues like public drug use or homelessness, but ultimately ideas are rooted in compassion, he said.

But people want the problem to be solved, especially when it's in their neighborhood, he said.

"These concerns are so reasonable, and I wish we could snap our fingers and solve it all," Dahl said. "In some cases, we've solved it in this alley and in that wash, and then the people move into the neighborhood elsewhere, but we have to get beyond the whack-a-mole with so many people on the street. It's not going to be an overnight process."

Concerns over safety along the Chuck Huckelberry Loop have heightened in recent weeks following the stabbing death of Tucson cyclist Enrique Mercado��along the mixed-use path within Ward 3, but Dahl said those concerns were present when he first took office. He touted Ward 3's efforts shortly after he took office to start a pilot program that sent bike patrols along The Loop in the midtown ward, which showed promising results the six months it operated, Dahl said. Now, the Tucson Police Department is continuing to use these bike patrols across the city, he said.

"It's a matter of resources. I firmly believe we need better funding for police, and have worked for that as best I can," Dahl said. "The Loop is also a county property, so we need to work with the county."

Tucson police conducted an arrest-focused deployment on Oct. 7 near where Mercado was killed, which resulted in 50 arrests out of the 55 people contacted, Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar has said.

Dahl, who voted against enacting a city ordinance prohibiting people from camping in city-owned washes, said the deployment to the Rillito wash was effective and needed, but future deployments need to be selective and not only arrest-focused.

"I like the deployments that are not just police, but also have the social workers. Not just from the city, but from other places where people can go for shelter or start the process towards housing," Dahl said. "And one thing police have gotten good at is concentrating their resources in particular areas ... but there is not one answer. (Kasmar) has said repeatedly, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. But arrest is one of the tools that we need to use, and we have."

Another hot topic regarding public safety has been Tucson's transit system, and residents' concerns over operators and rider safety, so much so that the City Council is asking staff to form a transit safety action plan that was discussed at length earlier this month.

Dahl, a staunch supporter of the city's transit system being fare-free, says a transit safety action plan can help to address measures in the long run, but there can be some "quick fixes" the city could be looking at as a stopgap.

"There are some quick fixes: better communication, some procedural differences about when things get reported. Maybe it's, rather than security guards who don't have the ability to arrest, maybe it's off-duty officers who have that ability that are the security," he said. "Bus stops aren't safe at night,��well, let's put a light there ... we need to immediately do some stop-gap measures."

While he wants free fares to continue because that's just "so Tucson," Dahl said the city's general fund should not keep paying for it. The need for a dedicated funding source is clear, he said.

His idea is to go back to the voters and ask if they want to see free fares continued.

Proposition 414, which Tucson voters resoundingly rejected in March, was a 10-year half-cent sales tax measure proposing $80 million in annual expected tax revenue be spent across the areas of affordable housing and homelessness, support for first responders, better roads, infrastructure and park improvements and community safety and resources.

"Now, we just lost this year a sales tax proposition by quite a bit. And so it's kind of contrary to say, 'hey, let's try it again,' but I think one of the problems was there was too many things in it and too many things to hate," Dahl said. "So I'd say, split those apart and do a quarter-cent sales tax that has housing and transit, and a quarter-cent sales tax for public safety, which includes the new fire station that we desperately need, and includes more law enforcement officers on the street.

"Maybe the community will vote for both, maybe they'll vote for one, maybe we'll vote for neither, but I think it's time for the voters to choose," he said.

And if voters oppose that, then it's time for the City Council to "entertain bringing back fares," Dahl said. But bringing back fares "is not a panacea for safety."

"I've talked to a lot of operators of the buses, and they have all sorts of legitimate concerns about safety for themselves and for the riders. But when I talk to bus drivers who were driving before COVID, they said there were fights all the time, and more often than not, the fights were about fares," he said. "Given the state of people and drug use, people who will do bad things on buses are not going to be deterred by a fare. It's my thinking that (fares are) not a solution. It's a solution for funding the buses, and when we need to look at it, we should."

Janet Wittenbraker

Wittenbraker moved to Tucson over two decades ago, partially due to her acceptance into the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, but ultimately she decided to attend Arizona State University, where she received her master's degree in legal studies from the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. Among other professional endeavors, Wittenbraker worked in the Tucson City Manager's Office while Jonathan Rothschild was mayor, she said.

Her political career started in 2023 when she ran for Tucson mayor. Though she was unsuccessful in that bid, receiving nearly 32% of the vote that year was a hopeful response by voters to her campaign, she said. Wittenbraker ran for the District 3 seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors last November, earning 43%��of the votes in a three-candidate race in which Democrat Jen Allen was elected.

"I ran for supervisor under the same motivation: I don't like what I'm seeing. I'm going to get active there," she said. "We need candidates to get involved locally, but also spread the word on the importance of local elections and getting people to vote."

On election night in 2023, not only were the mayoral election and three City Council seats on voters' ballots, but there was also Proposition 413, which boosted the mayor and council salaries by nearly 130% and 220%, respectively. The mayor’s salary rose to $95,750, and council members’ yearly pay went to $76,600 with the measure's approval by a margin of just 289 votes.

Wittenbraker wants to bring that question back to the voters if elected, with a ballot measure asking voters if they would rather have their mayor and council's salaries tied to Tucson's median income, acting as an incentive for the seven-member governing body to focus on economic development.

"I argued when I ran for mayor that we should not approve that proposition ... it's excessive," she said. "We ask our constituency, our citizens, to accept the lower incomes here in Arizona ... but (the council) is not willing to do it for themselves. I think they should."

In terms of priorities, public safety tops Wittenbraker's list.

"I believe the crime culture is what you are willing to accept, and right now, our crime is growing in our town, and so much so it's been acknowledged by (Mayor) Regina Romero, and it's time to really start holding people accountable."

The largest barrier to improving Tucson's public safety is inadequate staffing numbers in the police, fire and 9-1-1 departments, she said. Not only does the city need to increase wages and make itself more competitive in terms of keeping talent here, for example, after police cadets graduate, but the city also needs to look to hire from outside the department, Wittenbraker said.

"We should hire the best of the best in the nation. I fully acknowledge it will be very expensive if we were to hire the nation's best recruitment service," she said. "But once you build up that police department, you've restored morale, you've created a safer environment for us, but also for our police officers."

A limiting factor to the city's public safety response, Wittenbraker says, is what she calls the Pima County Attorney's Office practice of wrist-slapping.��While it’s currently a felony offense to use drugs publicly in Arizona and therefore falls under the jurisdiction of the Pima County Attorney’s Office, oftentimes cases referred to the county have gone unprosecuted, Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar has said, as he's been vocal about his frustrations with the county prosecutor's office.

If elected, Wittenbraker says she would lobby for the state Legislature to reclassify fentanyl as a Schedule 1 drug, so fentanyl possession can be charged as a federal offense.

"Do I need to throw my local neighborhood fentanyl addict into federal prison for the rest of his or her life to teach that individual a lesson? No. I prefer they get treatment ... but if you make it a Schedule 1, you also create a situation where the dealers can go to jail for a very, very long time, and that's who we need to stop," she said. "It would mostly take (Democratic Pima County Attorney Laura Conover) out of the picture.

"Our drug addicts, these people are our family members. They are neighbors who fell vulnerable to a horrendously addictive drug," Wittenbraker said. "It's incredibly disheartening to me that we can't just look at this and say, 'we are hurting.'"

Wittenbraker says people's feelings on homelessness are in "direct contrast" to what was heard on the campaign trail two years ago; now, people are fed up, and patience is running thin, she said.

In Wittenbraker's eyes, opposite to Dahl's views, Tucson’s crime “seems to be directly linked” to the city’s continued push for fare-free transit service.

“Our transit drivers, men and women, should be protected and should have the ability to be trained to respond to a hostile situation,” she said. “I know with our airplanes, you know, you don’t know when you are sitting next to an agent or not. Perhaps a similar situation, where you could be on a bus with an undercover agent. (But) those conversations need to be decided on together, which includes the bus rider and bus drivers and their union representation, but not in a silo, and far too many times, the mayor and council are making decisions in a silo.”

The opposition to STAR Village, a safe sleeping campsite that opened Oct. 15 in Ward 3's Sugar Hill neighborhood, has been far and wide, Wittenbraker said. She sees it as another example of the city's residents' increasing frustration that its leadership is "repeating the same stuff that doesn't work."

"Let's talk through the solutions and I know we'll find one that works. It could even be out of the box. I firmly believe that someone has a solution out there, but when you keep repeating the same stuff that doesn't work, (like the) safe sleeping site," she said. "Sanctioned camping didn't work in San Diego, but 'what the hell, we'll do it better here in Tucson.' No we won't."

The Loop deployment near the Rillito River was a step in the right direction, "at bare minimum," but it shouldn't stop with just this one,��she said.

“People are seeing that all of our efforts have not paid off, so maybe it’s time to take a different approach ... (Deployments) need to continue until the problem no longer exists, that’s what needs to happen,” she said. “I think it was a good start. Unfortunately, it was too late for one man.”