Region Prospers from CEO Leadership
“A rising tide lifts all boats.”
This aphorism, which President John F. Kennedy was said to evoke often, characterizes the vision of a high powered select group of business leaders called the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.
“We were created to be a business group,” said Ron Shoopman, retired brigadier general, United States Air Force, and president of SALC. “We take care of business issues first. Then we reach out and tackle related issues that create a vibrant community for all our citizens.”
A successful community relies on and builds upon all of its resources – civic leaders, government officials, engaged citizens and business leaders, Shoopman said. SALC seeks a wide range of community partners for collaboration in an effort to enhance the economic climate and quality of life for Southern Arizonans.
These leaders roll up their sleeves and get involved in addressing tough issues like water, transportation, literacy, education, downtown development and job creation. They are catalysts for change.
SALC includes more than 100 successful CEOs and community leaders who are interested in creating a bright future for the entire community. Shoopman said, “When you are in your 20s and 30s, you are working hard to get ahead personally. As you move into the pinnacle of your career, you think a little more about the impact of your work and the future of the community you’ve helped shape and grow.”
“The most important thing that SALC does is take on the tough, long-term projects,” explained Bruce Beach, SALC board chair and chairman of his accounting firm, BeachFleischman. He was recently named 2010 Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year. “The good thing about SALC is that it is composed of CEOs who have an understanding of long-term planning and objectives.”
“I think the public needs to know that the business leaders are involved,” said Lisa Lovallo, vice president of Cox Southern Arizona, a SALC board member and the recently named 2010 Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Year. “They are running businesses, and they have an interest in making Southern Arizona a better place to live and work.
“There is a misperception that SALC has a political agenda. It does not. But it does have an agenda – and that is to create jobs and be successful,” Lovallo added. That helps our community prosper, helps all citizens prosper.
“SALC is a very perse group. Members have businesses in all sectors whose main thrust and focus is to keep Southern Arizona competitive. The objective is to create a more prosperous region in general.
“The interpretation that members are just rich white guys from the foothills is not accurate. It’s not a bunch of people sitting around worrying about their own personal interests. It is very interconnected. The success of companies is tied to the success of the community. I think that is something the public needs to understand,” Lovallo said.
“We all want the high-paying jobs, but our community will only have what it can afford. Without a growing and thriving community, (we) will not be able to afford a better quality education,” said Duff Hearon, a SALC board member and CEO of the Ashland Group. “The vision of employment opportunities is expanding, and that is good.” Yet he asks how many young men and women will get jobs in the growth industries. “They will have a better chance with the big, high-tech industries.”
Peter Likins, last year’s SALC board chair and former University of Arizona president, said, “It’s important to see that SALC is deeply committed to the community, not just business organizations. They are genuinely interestedin the commitment; they are genuinely public spirited.”
Tackling big challenges
SALC members are problem solvers collaborating to tackle big challenges.
Beach pointed to two SALC successes with water issues. One was wrestling control of water away from antigrowth groups by defeating two propositions, one in 1999 and another in 2007. The second success is launching a comprehensive discussion on water resources as a regional issue.
“We are convinced,” Beach said, “that we can have a regional solution to our water, and that would be good for the whole region, not just Tucson.” The plan includes Tucson, Oro Valley, Sahuarita, Marana, all the communities in the area, Beach said. “We all are really using the same water supply, and we need to conserve it and utilize it in the best way we can.”
Other keen interests of SALC members are to reduce or eradicate poverty, bolster K-12 education and literacy, improve governance, promote downtown revitalization, elevate healthcare, and foster more focus on science and the arts, Shoopman said. Those areas are positively impacted by more jobs, better working conditions and higher pay.
It’s a snowball effect. More and better jobs put people to work, and those people spend more money because they have money to spend. Larger pay checks mean more tax revenues, and therefore more services can be provided by local governments. More spending by governments and businesses increases the need for more workers, and more and better jobs are created.
Kathleen Perkins, CEO of Optics Report and SALC board member said, “Though Tucson is prospering in many ways for many people, a large segment is left behind. SALC is a business leadership group with specific task forces – education, health care, infrastructure, governance, science and innovation. All correlate to poverty, which affects everything. Very bottom line – kids don’t get to choose their family. It takes leadership to tackle the poverty cycle and give the kids a reasonable chance to succeed.”
Shoopman said, “What we are trying to do is help this region reach its full potential. That’s the mission of SALC – to improve the greater Tucson area and the State of Arizona by bringing together resources and leadership to enhance the economic climate and the quality of life, and attract and retain high-quality, high-wage jobs.”
Public Policy
Every year SALC selectively engages in key public policy issues at the state, local and even national level. If it’s an urgent issue for business, SALC will engage.
SALC’s Vice Chair Mike Hammond leads SALC’s strategic initiatives committee. “SALC chooses from hundreds of legislative policy proposals and selects a small number of the most important business issues. This focused effort has yielded strong results over the years,” he said.
Economic development legislation such as funding for Science Foundation Arizona and competitiveness issues like research and development tax credits rate high on SALC’s list.
Based on the knowledge and concern of SALC members like Hearon, two years ago SALC also took on a national policy called “Mark to Market,” a property-valuation policy that was hurting local business. With help from Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, SALC communicated directly with the Obama administration and helped revise the policy, providing relief at a critical time in the economic downturn.
Backing Proposition 401
Not all such efforts succeed. Last fall SALC supported Proposition 401 that would have changed Tucson’s antiquated city charter, adopted in 1929.
“Most of the time we take on issues when we believe we have a reasonable chance of success,” Shoopman said. “We knew going in that this would be difficult.
“The benefit of engaging on Prop. 401 was that SALC created an extraordinary community coalition. We now have a great team of partners. “Members of both Republican and Democratic parties, environmentalists, labor unions and the not-for-profit community joined with business on the Prop 401 effort. We were all around the same table working together.”
Shoopman thinks charter changes to improve city government will show up on the ballot again. At a February meeting, coalition members agreed almost unanimously. “We feel confident that the next charter-change effort will succeed,” Shoopman said.
Coalition building is critical to SALC, he added. “Our chance of success in building a vibrant future for our region depends on our ability to make connections and synchronize the leadership of the region.”
Perkins pointed out, “CEOs are accustomed to getting things done, making decisions and being listened to. Ron knows when to let a conversation continue, when to stop it and how to reach an agreement. It is a daily balancing act between being open to new ideas while staying on point. Maybe that’s why we continue to call him The General.”
Creating the RTA
Another ballot issue SALC supported was the creation of the Regional Transportation Authority. The $2.1 billion measure, now administered by the Pima Association of Government and funded by a half-cent sales tax, was approved by voters in May 2006. It calls for improvements to roadways, transit, safety and environmental concerns.
Si Schorr, a founding SALC board member and partner with the Lewis and Roca law firm, was involved from the beginning. He was appointed by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano to the state transportation board. “I was on the first RTA board and the chair of the RTA, and simultaneously, I was on the board of SALC, which took a very active role in the promotion and passage of the RTA. It needed to be implemented and it needed to have its funding sources regenerated, and that’s what I played a role in doing.”
“We all are very proud of the RTA,” said Rick Myers, a SALC board member, a member of the Arizona Board of Regents and chief operations officer with the Critical Path Institute. “Former SALC member Katie Dusenberry and I co-chaired the citizen’s committee, and we worked together getting the RTA passed.” The plan was revised many times, and the citizen’s committee received some direction from the Tucson Regional Town Hall, another SALC project. “Forging a broad-based group and offering lots of public dialogue were integral to the issue passing,” he said. “The RTA was a wonderful experience for SALC. It demonstrated how effective you can be if you work together.”
RTA was a long time coming, but its impact is beginning to show. “By the time it passed we had a lot of catching up to do,” said Steve Lynn, a two-term SALC board chair and vice president of Tucson Electric Power. “We are way behind the curve on the things that need to be done in the community, but we have been able to do things as a coalition that we might not have been able to do inpidually.
“For example, the streetcar, although controversial, will be instrumental in connecting the university area with the downtown and the west side, and making it easier for people to work, live and play in our central core,” Lynn said. “Most cities our size have a vital central core or are in the process of revitalizing their central core. And even though our downtown is small, by geographic standards, it still needs to provide the community with a cultural base. It says who we are as a community.
“You are seeing a lot of work taking place downtown. It was slow in coming, not well done by the powers that be (mostly the city council and others), but downtown is beginning to emerge on its own.”
Leading the Town Hall
“We are not there yet, but we’ve taken a lot of steps toward getting people to work together since the Tucson Regional Town Hall” held three years ago, Shoopman said.
The Town Hall was organized by SALC and chaired by Peter Likins. It was held to develop strategies for creating a community vision. It spawned leaders to help shepherd key issues along, allowing them to step from their familiar worlds to make connections with others who share goals and aspirations.
Although dozens of topics emerged in the town hall, six tangible projects were created. Those include strat¬egies on water, literacy, early childhood development, arts and culture, urban planning and K-12 education. In the years since, discussions initiated at that time have become tools for progress, generating a cooperative spirit to move Tucson to a brighter future.
Organizations focused on literacy and education have emerged, including the Literacy for Life Coalition and Tucson Values Teachers. In addition, the town hall has furthered essential community-wide discussions on topics ranging from water to arts to land use.
SALC was created on May 13, 1997 when a small group of executives came together and established the not-for-profit leadership council. They were optimistic that the Tucson region could prosper if engaged busi¬ness leaders committed their skills, time and resources in collaborative efforts to enhance the region’s quality of life and economic climate.
They shared the belief held by many that Tucson was a community without strong leadership. The lead¬ership then tended to be inadequate, fragmented and non-collaborative. The region suffered from a lack of coalition builders who were willing to commit their skills, time and resources to solving community-wide problems, Shoopman said.
In the ensuing years, the leadership council has be¬come a highly respected business voice on public policy in Southern Arizona. Its members represent the region’s largest employers and top professionals. Its ac¬complishments have gained statewide attention.
SALC has had six key drivers in the chairman’s seat – current chair Bruce Beach and before him Peter Likins, Rick Myers, Steve Lynn, Joe Coyle and Larry Aldrich. They all recognized that the Tucson region was still in the process of developing effective community and cor¬porate leadership.
“Whether locally or nationally or internationally, we are going to have to have a community that people want to live in – and that’s broader than just making sure my business runs well and my taxes are low and I am able to run my business the way I want,” Lynn said. “It’s much more than that.
“In other communities that have made significant progress in vitalizing or revitalizing their community – not just their downtown, but their entire community – the business leadership has played a significant role.
“Everyone benefits when leaders care about how the community moves forward and stays vital,” Lynn said.
Controlling Buffelgrass
One economic issue that often failed to get prime¬time status is the terribly invasive African sienna foliage called buffelgrass, said Sarah Brown Smallhouse, an SALC board member and president of the Thomas R. Brown Foundations. Yet the proliferation of buffelgrass could have a significant impact on prosperity in Tucson.
“Buffelgrass is not just a bush-and-berries kind of thing. This is not an environmental issue like the spotted owl. Buffelgrass is a plague that is developing very fast, and we will not be able to counter it if we don’t act now. I think it’s really important that SALC took a stance.
“If we do nothing, it will absolutely supplant the entire Sonoran Desert eco-system, something that our economy depends upon and something our quality of life depends upon,” she explained. “If action isn’t tak¬en, the Sonoran Desert will end up as extremely flam¬mable grassland, and all the cactus and vegetation that we treasure could be swept away by wildfire.
“The economic argument is to get buffelgrass under control,” she said. SALC got involved and now Small¬house chairs the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordi¬nation Center.
Mentoring Tucson’s Future Leaders
As reported in a 2009 edition of BizTucson, our re¬gion was named a “Hot Spot” for young professionals by Next Generation Consulting.
Tucson Young Professionals aims to keep this city high on the list of best places for their peers to live and work. The organization was founded in 2007 with a mission to “attract, retain and promote young
professionals in Tucson.” At that point a group of young professionals reached out to SALC to assist in its formation.
Since that time TYP has had involvement in vari¬ous SALC projects. “SALC members are currently serving as mentors to this emerging group of leaders, who are excited about shaping Tucson’s future,” said Ron Shoopman. The group has also become a dynamic force in creating events that are playing a big role in re¬vitalizing the urban core of the city, such as downtown’s First Fridays.
Overall, progress by SALC on issues has been real and meaningful, yet substantial challenges still lie ahead. Growth, water, land-use planning and fiscal sus¬tainability all pose significant issues that require enlight¬ened responses, locally and at the state level.
The global economy demands further improvement in our educational system and in workforce develop¬ment to keep our region and state competitive, Shoop¬man said. The state and the region also face expensive challenges in healthcare and transportation.
He sees SALC as more than enlightened self-interest, more than the belief that a healthy community invari¬ably will have a healthy economy. It is a willing and ea¬ger acceptance of shared responsibility for creating an economically vibrant region in which to live and work with every guarantee of excellence and recreation in a setting that preserves our unique environment and culture.
For more information on SALC visit www.salc.org