District 5 Pima County Supervisor candidate Val Romero has spent his whole life in Tucson and says this is the worst he’s ever seen the homelessness crisis. 

It’s also one of the biggest concerns he hears residents talk about, and it's something he hopes to change if he’s elected. 

“I feel leadership in our community has not been very representative of our community. We’ve not made a lot of good decisions and the effects are what we see in our current county and city,” Romero told Tucson Spotlight. “I could sit back and complain about it or I can get up and do something about it so I decided to do something about it and look for positive change in our community.”

Romero, an independent, is challenging first-term Democratic incumbent Adelita Grijalva for her seat. All five Pima County Supervisor seats are up for grabs this November. 

This isn’t Romero’s first leap into the world of politics. He’s serving his first term on the Tucson Unified School District governing board and ran and lost for a seat on the Tucson City Council in 2021.

Romero says more can be done to address homelessness, which ties into drug and fentanyl issues, and ultimately public safety.

“They can put up a sign in Pima County that says there's no loitering on these corners, but I drive by those same corners and they're loitering on those corners,” he said. “They're not enforcing these rules that they’re putting on out there. It's virtue signaling, but I think we need to actually enforce these things that we’re doing.”’

If elected, Romero would look for ways to recruit more police officers through financial compensation or benefits. Romero points to Marana as a model of this approach’s success.

“They don't have the homeless population that we have here. From what I understand, law enforcement does not allow them to even set up camps in their areas,” he said. “Because Tucson is such a safe haven for (unhoused people), there is no accountability for them and they can come and make their residence.”

Romero said he’s heard that Tucson should be prepared for an influx of unhoused people during the winter months, coming from parts of the country with more severe winter weather.

“How do we keep them from thinking this is okay?” he asked. “Until we have enforcement, it's gonna continue to happen.”

Another part of the solution, he said, is to create partnerships with organizations that already help the unhoused community instead of creating an in-house organization to address these issues. He said the government should “not be in the business of creating a new department that’s strictly to fix the homelessness issue.” 

Romero said that in his role on the TUSD governing board, he can see the effects of his predecessor’s “lack of leadership,” referring to Supervisor Chair Grijalva, whose seat he is challenging and who served as a TUSD board member for more than 20 years.

Romero told the Spotlight that Grijalva’s various decisions during her time on TUSD’s governing board are leading the district into a deficit, specifically the amount of money spent towards specialty programs that are “hard” for the district to sustain. 

“I just picked it up a year and a half ago but on our current trajectory if we don't change the way TUSD is running business we’ll be bankrupt by 2027,” he said.

He’s also taking shots at Grijalva’s role on the board of supervisors. On his campaign website, after listing the ways he plans on bettering Pima County, he notes, “My opponent cannot, has not and will not do this.”

He thinks part of the solution is for TUSD to be “financially responsible” and cut individual student centers for Black, Native American and Hispanic students, and instead create an umbrella student service department that deals with all ethnicities. 

He said he’s in a unique position to take on both the role of a TUSD board member and county supervisor, which Grijalva also did, before announcing during in 2021 that she would not seek a sixth term with TUSD.

He says that because he’s not married and has no kids at home, he has time to fully dedicate himself to the community.

Romero acknowledges that running as an independent in a majority Democrat-leaning district could prove to be a challenge, but says he isn’t deterred.

“I do have Christian, conservative values, I’m not going to deny those,” Romero said. "But I’ve been an Independent since 1992… because I’m not big on party politics. I know both political parties have their agenda, I don’t have an agenda. My agenda is representing the people in my district. I will maintain that whether you are a Democrat, Libertarian, Republican or Independent.” 

Susan Barnett is Deputy Editor of Tucson Spotlight and a graduate student at the University of Arizona. She previously worked for La Estrella de Tucson. Contact her at susan@tucsonspotlight.org.