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Barbra Coffee, director of economic initiatives, told a group of city officials including City Manager Tim Thomure in an email Sept. 11 that her last day on the job would be Sept. 25.

Coffee resigned after serving in the post since February 2019, Andy Squire, a city spokesman, told the Star Wednesday. Coffee was paid $201,615 a year at the time of her resignation, Squire said. She'll receive about $29,000 in paid leave  that she had earned on top of her salary through November 1st, Squire said.

City staffers declined to discuss why Coffee left, saying that is a personnel matter. Coffee’s email didn’t discuss the circumstances of her departure and she didn’t return phone calls from the Star seeking comment.

Her announcement that she was leaving came a little more than a month after the City Council voted unanimously to kill Project Blue in Tucson and against annexing the land on which it would be built.

“I have had more than 6 and a half years building an economic development program for the City that I’m very proud of,” Coffee wrote in her email to other city officials. “... Thanks for all you do in local government — if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!”

Her office was involved with bringing Project Blue for city consideration at a 290-acre site on the Tucson area’s far southeast side. Thomure spoke regularly in favor of the data-center project, saying its water use would be “net positive” because the project’s developers, Beale Infrastructure, had agreed to find other ways to replace water the data centers used, either by lining up additional supplies or financing or otherwise supporting water conservation efforts.

Beale pledged to pay the city $100 million to build a pipeline to transport reclaimed water to the data center site — a pipeline that could also serve other water users in that area.

But the project, whose end user would be Amazon Web Services, according to Pima County memos, drew vociferous community protest. More than 1,800 people packed two city-run public meetings about it, with the vast majority opposing.

Opponents said they didn’t trust the city to enforce any commitments the company had made to use reclaimed water and to make the water use “net zero.” They also spoke out against the project’s projected energy use — local officials have said it would be the largest electricity user in Tucson Electric Power’s service area.

Supporters countered that the project would generate 150 permanent jobs paying an average of $64,000 a year along with 3,000 temporary construction jobs lasting several years.

Ultimately, the City Council voted 7-0 on Aug. 6 not to proceed further with Project Blue. Beale is still pursuing the project and planning to build it at the same site in unincorporated Pima County, near the Pima County Fairgrounds. It now plans to use a system that will consume far less water, by air-cooling the data centers’ servers rather than water cooling them as originally proposed.

Opponents also hammered at non-disclosure agreements that city and Pima County officials signed, which prevented them from publicly discussing key details about the project such as its energy and water use. City staff eventually did speak out about such issues, but less than a month before Project Blue came before the City Council.

Coffee signed an NDA for Project Blue, City Councilwoman Nikki Lee told AZ Luminaria in August. Lee didn’t return calls from the Star on Coffee’s resignation.

Besides Project Blue, “Ms. Coffee, as the Economic Development Director, was involved in all economic development activities, projects, and opportunities that occurred during the more than 6 and a half years that she served in the position,” Squire told the Star.

At the City Council’s Aug. 6 discussion leading to its vote to kill Project Blue, Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz sharply criticized city staff’s handling of the proposed data centers, although she didn’t mention Coffee or any other staffer by name.

“This proposal I believe should never have made it this far,” Santa Cruz said at the meeting. “Our economic initiatives team brought this to the council just we were heading into summer recess, limiting public input and transparency.’

“It feels like the city staff was taking cues from the Chamber of Commerce (which supports Project Blue) rather than from the city of Tucson and the people who represent them,” Santa Cruz said then. “That’s not how public service should work. The city staff needs to have a stronger pulse on what our city values. Time and time again, citizens said we care about protecting our limited water supply in the desert and about energy costs.”

But Councilman Paul Cunningham, a fierce critic of Project Blue from the start of the controversy, disagreed with Santa Cruz’s criticism of city staff’s handling of the issue.

“I don’t think anything that Barbra did — she should not take the blame for Project Blue,” he said. “She tried to do her job. That’s not the issue. The reason I rejected Project Blue is after meeting with their officials, I didn’t trust them. I still don’t.”

The Star spoke to four council members about Coffee’s resignation, and all said they didn’t know the circumstances of why she left.

“I can tell you it wouldn’t surprise me” if it was connected to the Project Blue controversy, Cunningham said.

“I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I think her leaving was coming anyway. She has kids who live in Vegas. I don’t think she wanted to be here anymore. I think her exit was planned a while ago.”

The Project Blue controversy “might have been a clincher — a contributing factor,” Cunningham said.

Santa Cruz didn’t return a text message from the Star seeking comment on Coffee’s resignation.

Counclwoman Karin Uhlich said she was sympathetic to Santa Cruz’s concerns about city staff but declined to criticize Coffee directly.

“I’d say Barbara contributed to our successes over the years, and no one person is responsible for getting us on track post-COVID and in this data-center-centric environment. We’ll figure it out moving forward,” Uhlich told the Star.