Oro: Spanish for “gold,” like the desert bloom that inspired the OVHS logo!
Learn how Oro Valley got its name, the battle to incorporate it into a town, establishing the Town’s 1974 financial plan, and the story behind the OVHS logo.
The Oro Valley History section of this website includes a dropdown menu that lets you explore even more: the histories of the George Pusch and Jack Procter families, Steam Pump Ranch, explore the Heritage Garden with its walk-in Hohokam pit house replica, petroglyphs and meteorites in the museum, research support, local legends, and videos featuring longtime residents.
The Town of Oro Valley was officially incorporated in 1974, starting with a modest population of approximately 1,200 residents. Interestingly, the town was nearly named Palo Verde, inspired by the native tree known for its striking golden blossoms. However, concerns about potential confusion with the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant near Phoenix led town leaders to reconsider.
Ultimately, the name Oro Valley was chosen—and it turned out to be a perfect fit.
• The word Oro means “gold” in Spanish, a nod to the golden hues of the Palo Verde blossoms that dot the Sonoran landscape.
• Town founders believed the name would resonate well with residents and especially appeal to the influential community surrounding the Oro Valley Country Club.
• The name evokes a sense of beauty, prosperity, and regional identity—capturing the essence of this vibrant desert community nestled between mountain ranges.
Palo Verde Blooms
Oro Valley lives up to its golden name with scenic views, a strong community, and a high quality of life. Learn more at the Town of Oro Valley’s website.
Read more about how the Oro Valley Historical Society: Who we are, a description of the Pusch House Museum, and how the dream to preserve Oro Valley history began with three people, Jim Kriegh, Dick Eggerding, and Pat Spoerl.
Photo credit: Palo Verdes Dotting the Mountainside – Photo by Sherri Graves Photography
The Oro Valley Historical Society logo draws inspiration from the rich symbolism associated with gold, reflecting the meaning of “Oro” in Spanish.
Since the Arizona Historical Society features the symbol for copper in its logo, it felt fitting for our logo to embrace gold as its central theme.
Alchemical Symbols for Gold:
Gold holds a special place in the history of alchemy, the precursor to modern chemistry, with several unique symbols representing it.
These designs offered an intriguing visual and philosophical foundation.
Modern Chemistry Representation:
The atomic model of gold, representing its scientific identity, adds a contemporary layer to the logo’s inspiration.
In 200
6, Joyce Rychener and her graphic designer sister, Judith James, collaborated to create our original logo. Subsequent iterations were contributed by Warren Lazar, past president of OVHS.
Written by Devon Sloan, June 2024
After the excitement of becoming a Town in April 1974, those who were then in charge of the Town of Oro Valley had time to sit down in May to figure out how that was going to work. They came up with a budget, and below is what our founding fathers decided on and passed in June 1974.
It’s hard to believe they thought they could run a town on $114,334 (about $429,444 in todays’ dollars) less money than the new shade ramada for the farmers’ market at Steam Pump Ranch will cost (for both amounts!), but that was 50 years ago. And yes, there were only about 1,200 residents in a 2.5 square mile area north of Hardy Road, east of La Canada, south of Lambert Lane, and a little bit east of Oracle Road. Not much ground to cover. But some residents thought the budget was too high, even back then.
Looking at the budget below, the biggest expense was for police. As we all know, Oro Valley has an A grade for safety rating, and we started out that way. Of course we are all grateful for the continuation of that service. However, did you know that the first police department was located out of a home on West Calle Concordia and our first police chief, Fred Roof, was actually a Rural Metro fireman (his first love)?
Town of Oro Valley 1974 First Budget
Due to an agreement with Rural Metro and Oro Valley, the department began with 2 1/2 full time equivalent employees covering the town 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The emphasis was on residential patrol and high visibility, and the police drove fire department green pickup trucks and a black and white pickup on loan to the Town from the fire department. As we all know, the current police department is very aware of speeding within our community, and that started out early, as well. Roof said that residents in the mid-1970s were demanding something be done to halt the sudden rash of traffic fatalities caused by drivers speeding through town and up and down Oracle Road. Driving 75 in a 45 mile an hour zone was not unusual, and people doing 55 and over in a 20 mile an hour zone was routine. There were also times that the police would be called to remove a stray cow from any of the neighborhood streets. That makes one wonder if that had anything to do with the $3,900 allotted for rabies control?
The other item that is interesting in this budget is over $25,000 for contingencies. It makes you think that the council just wasn’t sure what they were going to need, when they were going to need it, or how they were going to pay for it. At least they planned for those surprises, and aren’t we grateful that they did? Oro Valley is an incredible community, and we have these people to thank in our 50th year of celebration!
Read more about Oro Valley’s 50th Anniversary.
Written by Devon Sloan, July 2024
Imagine a 3,000+ square foot, four-bedroom, 3 bath home on one acre with mountain views, two indoor fireplaces, four car garage, with room for recreational vehicle parking, plus a pool and a spa in Oro Valley Country Club Estates. What a treasure! Well, you could have had that home in July 1974 for just $54,000! It had been built just 9 years before. Also, in July 1974 in the Oro Valley Townhouse development on Greenock Drive, a two bedroom, two bath, 2,757 square foot home was being sold for $34,750!
You must be asking ‘why would anyone leave those comfortable, magnificent homes in such a great location?’ Hopefully, it wasn’t because the owners were not in favor of the incorporation of Oro Valley and wanted to move out of the new town that was being formed, just 3 months after the incorporation was completed in April 1974. Looking back, that would have been a real mistake. Based on inflation over the past 50 years, the house would now be worth about $350,000, but with current real estate values, that home would sell for between $914,744 and $1,021,600! And the townhouse? Based on today’s dollars, the home is now worth $225,743 and based on real estate values $479,000. No matter where those homeowners moved to, it’s hard to believe they could have reaped such great rewards! Oro Valley truly is the Valley of Gold!
Happy Independence Day (and Incorporation Celebration) to All!
The turbulent path from April 1974 approval to the final 1975 decision that made the Town official. Written by Devon Sloan, August 2024
This year we are celebrating Oro Valley’s birth year month by month. Pima County approved the incorporation in April 1974, selected 5 people on the new Town Council (2 for incorporation, 2 against it, and one neutral), and ordered an election by the residents to be held in August 1974.
You would think that the new Town Council appointed in April would get to work and move forward to develop this new 2.5 square mile community with approximately 1,200 residents. Not so fast! Even after the approval, not all citizens of the new Town were convinced it was the right way to go.
For the August election, eleven people were on the ballot – 5 for incorporation, 5 against it, and one neutral. Voters were to select 5 to be on the Town Council until 1976, and those council members would select the Mayor. The Town Clerk at the time, said that about 632 people had registered to vote, and one of the candidates, then Mayor Kenneth Holford (the neutral candidate), said he expected a 70 – 80% turn out. He also stated that an election of an anti-incorporation slate would not automatically dissolve the Town, however he was less optimistic about the future of Oro Valley than he had been a month prior to this election.
At that time, the Town could be dis-incorporated if two thirds of registered voters signed a petition for dis-incorporation and presented it to the Board of Supervisors. The anti-incorporation candidates already had 387 signatures on their petition and needed only 35 more to accomplish their goal. At the end of the election period (going into October due to run-off elections), 4 of the 5 seats were then held by dis-incorporation candidates.
Throughout the time-period from August 1974 to August 1975, the Town citizens and Council had some contentious meetings about budget, sales taxes, services, recalls, zoning, and more. Even though Pima County had approved the municipality of Oro Valley in April 1974, it took until August 1975 for all the discussions to lead Pima County to turn down all petitions and finally make Oro Valley a town. The possibility of incorporation, which began as far back as 1968, was no longer an issue. Oro Valley was finally born.!
The town’s original seal was created in 1974 by Kevin Kriegh, son of Jim and Marjorie Kriegh. The current seal, adopted in 1990, was designed by local artist Matthew Moutafis. A handcrafted wooden version—made by former councilmember Steve Rennacker—can be seen in the Town Council Chambers.
From research by Henry Suozzi
Written by Devon Sloan, November 2024
“You owe us $12,000!” That’s what the Board of Supervisors of Pima County told the 7-
month- old Town of Oro Valley in November 1974. Articles in November issues of The Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star noted that Oro Valley was under contract each quarter to pay Pima County for police protection, rabies control, and sewer and sanitation services.
The Town offered to repay the debt in bi-weekly $2,000 installments until the end of the year. The County did not accept that offer and voted to cancel the contract for services. Councilman A. Lauren Rhude noted that “the county can cancel the contract, but it cannot withdraw its services,” and was critical of the supervisors for not formally advising the Oro Valley Council of its intentions regarding the delinquent bill.
A staff member of the County Attorney’s office noted that failure to meet the payment schedule could result in stopping services to the Town, refusing to pay the Town tax money owed it, or sue the Town and force it to assess a property tax.
Because of this situation, Vice Mayor, Virgil B. Brandon, who had voted against incorporation, resigned his position and worked on gathering signatures on disincorporation petitions. A newcomer to Oro Valley from Phoenix, also against incorporation, was appointed to fill the position. Some residents went to court to eliminate the contract between the County and the Town.
You can breathe a sigh of relief (since you know all that controversy was for naught because we live in this great Town today). A month later, the Town started collecting sales tax and permit fees and did pay off the debt. Services were never stopped. The Town received the tax money the County owed. No property tax was initiated. Again, the struggle to keep Oro Valley a Town was avoided. Happy ending for all of us!
Written by Devon Sloan, October 2024
The newly incorporated Town of Oro Valley has its first Town Council meeting of elected officials in October 1974. During the planning stages, beginning in 1968, those who wanted the Town to be incorporated held meetings in people’s homes in Oro Valley Country Club Estates and Shadow Mountain Estates. Larger meetings were held at Canyon del Oro High School when interested parties wanted to attend.
At this first meeting, the Council voted to rent a two-bedroom apartment on Oracle Road as office space. Obviously, there weren’t many departments making up this new Town government, so this worked for a while. It became obvious that as the Town grew, so did the governing entities, and more space was needed.
Two years later, the Town Hall was moved to a building on Calle Concordia, and Town residents were asked for donations of $10.00 per household to help pay for this purchase! The Town actually purchased the property in 1979. The second Town Hall on Calle Concordia, now houses the Town’s Storm Water Utility and Public Works Departments.
But as you know, the Town continued to grow and so did the staff and departments who serviced the community. More space was needed, and in 1988, Oro Valley purchased the land on which the current Town Hall is located. This new Town Hall was opened in 1991.
The following article is from the Oro Valley Historical Heritage Guide, April 2009 – by Marjorie Kriegh, wife of Jim Kriegh and first Town Historian for the Town of Oro Valley.
Jim Kriegh Planning for the Future in his Living Room
It is fact that the Town of Oro Valley has been happily incorporated since April 1974. But, perhaps, you have wondered how and why the Town of Oro Valley came to be.
Our story began long ago, way back in 1968. Tucson Mayor “Gentleman” Jim Corbett made a statement, which, to some area residents could be likened to the “shot heard round the world”. Well, ‘round Tucson, anyway. Mayor Corbett said that they (the areas around Tucson) will be taken in (to Tucson’s city limits) “kicking, stamping and screaming, if necessary”. The City of Tucson’s political climate, as it was at that time, was not to many people’s likings and many, many people living outside Tucson’s corporate limits wished to remain so. Some concerned citizens began to look at the feasibility of forming their own town in order to avoid being “absorbed” by the City of Tucson.
The State of Arizona, however, had done its part to discourage incorporation of areas on the “outskirts” of larger municipalities. A ruling came down from the legislature which stipulated that an area proposed for incorporation must have at least 500 inhabitants who all had to exhibit common goals and objectives. Additionally, to protect the larger cities, an area proposed for incorporation had to be farther than six miles from another incorporated city’s boundaries. If the proposed boundaries were not six miles apart, then permission by the incorporated city must be given. Larger cities and towns lobbied long and hard for these incorporation rulings because they did not wish to be hemmed in by a proliferation of “bedroom communities”; to avoid competition.
Some residents northwest of Tucson were undaunted by these rulings. With the competent legal advice of Mr. Ellsworth Triplett, for whom I served as legal secretary at the time, interested people began to organize. These people came from, not only the area later to become known as Oro Valley, but also, from the Catalina Foothills area.
There were obstacles to overcome. The “six-mile” rule made incorporation of the Catalina Foothills area impossible, but, as Mr. Triplett advised, the outlying area which included the Oro Valley Country Club Estates and the Highlands Mobile Home Park, could conceivably be incorporated since the area was six miles distant from the City of Tucson limits. (Later, the Highlands Mobile Home Park was dropped from the incorporation effort because less than 50% of the people favored the incorporation.) At this time, the proposed Town was to be named, The Town of Palo Verde.”
Because the Oro Valley Country Club Estates, under the direction of Mr. Robert Daly, President of the Homeowner’s Association, was undertaking street improvement, interest in the incorporation effort waned for a time, but was renewed when Mr. E. S. (Steve) Engle, the new Oro Valley Homeowner’s President became interested. Together with my husband, Jim Kriegh, they gathered citizen support from all areas proposed for incorporation, including Shadow Mountain Estates East and West, Campo Bello Estates, Linda Vista Citrus Tracts, and Oro Valley Country Club Estates.
Citizens from all these areas worked long and hard for many years, the culmination of their efforts being the filing of a petition for the incorporation of the Town of Oro Valley with the Pima County Board of Supervisors. As may have been suspected this petition was promptly rejected by the Board, leading to a four-year court battle which ended in the Arizona Supreme Court. The decision handed down by the Supreme Court directed the Pima County Board of Supervisors to incorporate our tiny 2.5 square mile Town of Oro Valley.
This decision signified the birth of the Town of Oro Valley on April 15, 1974, and the beginning of a Town which, it is hoped, all citizens may be proud of today.
Map of Original Incorporation Area of Oro Valley
The Arizona Daily Star article is from April 26, 1984.
Marjorie Kriegh: A Woman Who Helped Build Oro Valley
OV Fought to Become, Then to Stay, a Town, by Dave Perry (featuring an interview with Twink Monrad)
Twink Monrad, 2024
Also by Dave Perry: The Story of How the Loop Came to Be. Thank you, Dave, for all of your contributions to Oro Valley!
Dave Perry
Historian and former OVHS President Jim Williams leads this panel session that brings together Dave Perry, Kathi Cuvelier, and Spencer Elliott to reflect on how Oro Valley has evolved over the past several decades.
Launch the video on our YouTube channel. It can also be accessed on the Town of Oro Valley’s YouTube channel.
Devon Sloan: You’re here for the part two of Oro Valley: the first 50 years. Last month we had a great presentation that Jim Williams gave us about the whole book. Now we’re going to pick out some certain parts of it. Oro Valley Historical Society is really honored to have Jim Williams as a lifetime member, a past president, and our current historian. After you sit through today, which is going to be very interesting, you’ll know why he is our historian. So, I’m going to introduce Jim Williams to you and he will introduce the panel, and I know you all will enjoy the afternoon. Thank you again for coming.
Jim Williams: We have a series of programs planned that are going to be panel discussions. The one next month—and there are a few handouts in the back—but the one on March 11th will be three mayors: the current mayor and two former mayors, Mayor Hiremath and Mayor Loomis. We’ll have a discussion about change that they’ve seen in the community. Then April 8th we’re going to have three people who were involved in the original incorporation period, and they’ll be speaking in a panel like this. So, I hope you can attend as many of those as possible.
Today we’re going to be talking about how the community has changed in the 50 years since that time. None of the people here go back a full 50 years, but they have a wealth of experience in the town. On my far right, Dave Perry was the editor of the Explorer in the early 2000s. He’s been the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, and he’s now again working as a newspaper reporter.
Next, Kathy Cuvelier was a town employee back in 1980 and she retired in 2011. She served as the town clerk for most of that time. And Spencer Elliott, on my immediate right, has been a resident since 1985 and he’s been involved in many political campaigns and activities all through this period. These people have seen a lot of what’s been going on over the last 30 or 35 years of Oro Valley.
So my first question—and I’m going to ask Spencer Elliott to answer this first—is why did you move here, or why did you begin to work here, in the case of Kathy Cuvelier? When and why and how did you get here?
Spencer Elliot: Well, we moved here, really my wife and I, for a job change. I worked for what was then called Air Research Manufacturing Company of California, which ultimately many of you who are newer in the town only know as Honeywell up here on the northwest side now.
When it started, we were down by the airport on Elvira Street. That job change was a kind of major life change. We lived in northern Colorado at the time and I had two job offers—one with Ball Brothers in Boulder and the other with their research here in the Tucson area.
My wife was smart enough to say the company is going to move you, so why don’t you go where people retire? Then when you get ready to retire you don’t have to move. So that’s why I let her make a lot of the decisions in my family.
Jim Williams: Go ahead, Kathy Cuvelier.
Kathy Cuvelier: Okay, well I applied for the deputy clerk position actually prior to 1980, and my interview was a little interesting to start. I was moving into a new apartment and I had a friend who had another friend who helped us move. She started asking me questions about my prior experience and so forth. I’m answering the questions, and then she said, “Would you like to apply for the deputy clerk position at the Town of Oro Valley? You would meet with the mayor and council and talk with them.” So I did that and I was hired January 2nd of 1980 as Deputy Town Clerk. I was fortunate enough, and that just began a really wonderful change in my life and a wonderful career.
Jim Williams: Great, thank you.
Dave Perry: Thank you all for being here. It’s a pleasure to be with you. My name is Dave Perry and Lisa, and I moved to Oro Valley December 1st of 2007, so I’m much more recent to the community than my colleagues to the left. I came to be the publisher and editor of the Explorer newspaper. The paper had been sold to a publisher from Colorado, and we moved from Scottsdale to Oro Valley. We rented a house on the north end of Oro Valley, if you know High Mountain View Place. When we first came here my commute went down Oracle Road, and Oro Valley Marketplace was being scraped and built at the time that we moved to Oro Valley.
I worked at the Explorer three years and then we parted ways. Then I ran the Chamber of Commerce in Oro Valley for 11 and a half years. We love living here. We think it’s a great place and I hope to spend the rest of my days here.
Jim Williams: Great. The question that I plan to ask for almost all of these is this: because so many of us have come at different times here, what did this community look like to you when you moved here, and how different was it then than today? Spencer Elliott, why don’t you start first, because you have some of the earliest experience.
Spencer Elliott: Well, it looked a lot different, that’s for sure. There were less than 3,000 people in the town. One of the first political activities that my wife and I ever got ourselves involved with was the annexation of Rancho Vistoso, which was not in Oro Valley at the time. Oro Valley was a very small town at that point.
One of the people involved was Katy Engle, if any of you remember that name. Katy was the wife of Mayor Steve Engle, who was the mayor for the longest time here in Oro Valley. I think he was the third mayor, if I’m correct. She came by one time with a petition and said, “Do you think that the people in Rancho Vistoso should have the right to vote as to whether they want to be in the town or not?”
Well, yeah. It seems like people ought to be able to make their own decisions about whether they want to be incorporated or not. So we signed the petition, and from there it just kind of mushroomed into a whole bunch of other things. From the early days—and I don’t have all the stories in here, and Jim Williams probably has them in his book if he’s talked to the people who have been in town longer than I have—there was the notorious Oro Valley speed trap story as to how that came about.
Many of the town employees, after every rain when the streets would fill up with sand, would go out with pickup trucks and shovels. Instead of coming into the town that day they would shovel sand out of the streets, because it was the only street cleanup that we had in the town at that particular time. So I don’t know if that gets an answer to everything you’re looking for, Jim.
Jim Williams: What were you referring to as far as the speed trap?
Spencer Elliott: Well, the speed trap really was that we didn’t have a lot of police at the time. In fact, kind of a funny story: our neighbor was a man named John Dillon. He and his wife Hope were from Kansas. They knew each other back in their high school days and eventually married different people and moved their own ways. Then both lost spouses, so they got back together.
When the town was looking to incorporate, it needed to have a police official. I think it might have been Steve Engle at the time, but it might have been somebody—one of the mayors before—who asked John if he would be willing to take on that job, because they were looking for someone to be the police official to sign the incorporation papers. He thought about it for a little bit and decided, well, it’s kind of natural. If you’re from Kansas and your last name is Dillon, you should be calledMarshal Dillon. So that was our first police official that came to the town.
Jim Williams: Okay, go ahead Kathy.
Kathy Cuvelier: Okay, thank you. I’ll just continue on. So when I started working in 1980, I was the deputy town clerk, but in March of 1983 I was appointed as the town clerk for the town. Just to give you a little bit about the demographics of the area: Oro Valley was still four square miles, and Oracle Road was still a two-lane highway. The official 1980 census at that time was 1,489 for population.
I worked at the Calle Concordia location, 680 West Calle Concordia. At that time that was the official town hall, and that included everything needed there. The two back bedrooms—it was a former house—were the police department, the chief’s office, and the squad room. Then the dining room was the council chambers, and the living room was all the administrative services. So everything you needed, you came to 680 West Calle Concordia to get help. I was the tenth employee to be hired, which meant that we could qualify now for group insurance and get a special rate on insurance for town employees.
Also, around the area, there was only—let’s see—to the east of the town hall was Canyon del Oro High School that had been there since the early ’60s. Then Linda Vista Citrus Tracts were to the west of the town hall. There was a farmer, Orval Shields, who had a peach orchard and did quite well selling peaches there. Also, there was Shadow Mountain Estates and Oro Valley Estates Country Club in that area. Then there was a 7-Eleven at Hardy and Oracle, which is now the Kathy Sew & Vacuum building. Let’s see—that was about it. Oro Valley was very rural in its nature, and at that time anything north of Calle Concordia was just desert, and that was about it. So I’ve seen a lot of changes since that time.
Jim Williams: It might have been that the population of cattle was higher than the number of people.
Kathy Cuvelier: Could have been at that point. Yes, because the Rancho Vistoso area used to be an area for cattle to graze many years ago before the land swap.
Jim Williams: So, Dave, you came in in the mid to late ’90s. What do you see as the difference of then versus now?
Dave Perry: Well, I came in ’07, and we saw the—remember, I ran a business and community organization for a number of years, and I paid a lot of attention to apartment communities. We saw three major apartment communities come into Oracle Road. One thing I have really been astonished by, frankly, is the growth in senior living—the senior care communities. Today I drove past La Posada at Pusch Ridge down off of First Avenue, which is an amazing facility and large.
I remember a friend of mine, Lynette Jaramillo—the late Lynette—who ran Casa de la Luz Hospice and founded it. One time I said to her, “What’s all this senior living?” She said, “Remember that we have low taxes, we have a great place to live, we’re clean, we’re safe, and we’ve got weather that people care about. So that industry is always going to be in this community, and it’s always going to grow.” And I accept that, of course, and recognize that.
When we came here, La Cañada was still two lanes, and there was the big fight on the south end of La Cañada north of Ina about what kind of road was going to be put in—what sort of walls and things like that. It was a very contentious subject. Now we look at it and say, “Well, it’s just how it is.”
In those days, by the way, Oracle Road was just as bumpy as I remembered it until we finally got it resurfaced here several years ago. But the growth piece has been consistent in my time here. I give credit to mayors and councils that the quality of growth in this community has been exceptional. Jim Williams points that out in his book—that the look of Oro Valley is without peer, frankly, in Southern Arizona. I lived in Scottsdale for seven months when I first moved to Arizona. Scottsdale is a nice place, but it’s not Oro Valley.
Jim Williams: Dave Perry, you kind of got into that question. My next question: why have so many people moved here? The weather is great, the mountains are great, but of course the whole area has the weather and the mountains—that’s not just ours. — So, the question would be: how did we grow from 800 or 900 people to 47,000? Spencer Elliott, what do you think?
Spencer Elliott: Well, I know when we first came, part of the reason that people wanted to live here was safety. I think we were either the first or the second safest town in the U.S. at that time in the mid-1980s. Again, all the things that have been mentioned—it’s a nice place to live. My reason for moving here was my job changed and effectively required that I move here. Psychologically I can’t explain why other people do, but I think they see the same sorts of things that we found here.
We found it really kind of interesting talking to people over the 30-something years. People either love this part of the world or they hate this part of the world. They don’t seem to be neutral about it. I don’t really understand why that is, but my education was not in psychology—it was engineering—so that’s beyond me to answer.
Kathy Cuvelier: Well, I think you both have mentioned a lot of the reasons why people come to Oro Valley. Definitely the lifestyle. Public safety is so important, especially these days. You can come into Oro Valley and you’re not going to have issues with major crime. You feel safe, and the residents love that feeling of safety. Ever since I was with the town, the police department has had the dark-house program. If you’re going on vacation, you can register with the police department and they’ll check your house while you’re gone. That’s a level of safety for the residents.
Oro Valley—we didn’t always—but we now have many parks and amenities for families. This is a great place for families to live. Of course, when Sun City Vistoso came into Oro Valley, we have a nice retirement area as well. We used to have the reputation as a bedroom community, but that has totally changed. There are a lot of different things now for all age levels to enjoy.
Jim Williams: Great. I gave the three people the questions in advance so they could think about them. One question I asked was: what individuals do you think have had the greatest impact on the town? Maybe pick just one person and talk about how they had that impact. Dave, do you want to start?
Dave Perry: Sure. I’m going to bring up somebody you may not think about so much, and that’s Dr. Tom Grogan. Tom is the founder of Ventana. He brought Ventana to Oro Valley. Paul, you remember when that was—mid-’80s I believe. Dr. Grogan and the people at Ventana—and now Roche—they are a world-class company that does remarkable things in our community. By the way, they employ 1,800 people in Oro Valley. It’s the biggest bioscience company in Southern Arizona by a number of folds. They bring vitality to this place. They bring high education, high achievement, and they bring a ton of jobs. They just bought the old Sanofi building up in Innovation Park to further expand their footprint in our community.
I give Dr. Grogan—who is a wonderful man—a lot of credit. If you ever get a chance to read his book Chasing the Invisible, it’s terrific. His decisions and the decisions of others at Ventana years ago have had a lot of influence on our community.
Spencer Elliott: I’m trying to narrow this down to one. Yeah, it’s hard—one or two. Well, this could sound somewhat biased in some ways, but I’m going to have to say that my wife was. For really two reasons. One was when we came to town and first got into any of the political atmosphere that was going on in Oro Valley. Every development that came into the town had to be approved in all its gory detail, all the way down to what the roadbeds were supposed to look like, by the town council.
It was—I know my wife asked the question when she was on the council at the time—“Why do we have to go and do all this kind of stuff? Can’t we just adopt standards that already exist, since we don’t seem to have one for ourselves?” There was a lot of pushbacks about that, but eventually she was able to facilitate a change and we adopted the Pima County standards. Since that time the town, of course, will modify where needed to meet whatever specific issues go on with the town.
Prior to that, the council meetings were mostly taken up with more civil engineering tasks than any governance sort of activity. The other thing I want to say is that I think she had a big influence on—because I remember her saying, “I’ve never signed a check that big,” when the town bought the Metro Water Company so that the town could control its own water destiny instead of allowing Tucson Water to buy it.
Jim Williams: You mean—this is your wife Lee, or was that someone else?
Spencer Elliott: No, that was Lee that did that. Since you mentioned Lee, that was always an interesting thing too. Sometimes you’ll see her name written with quotes around Lee, but that really was her middle name. Her first name was Lanetta, and everybody thought Lee was a diminutive of that, but no.
The funny story in the family—not to make this too long—was that her mother wanted to have two boys and a girl. Lee came along first, and she didn’t have any boys’ names picked out, so she told her husband to go name her. He didn’t have any girls’ names picked out either, so he went down and named her after two ex-girlfriends.
Kathy Cuvelier: Oh my God. Spencer Elliott: I’m sure that went for years in the family, but that’s some of the history of what’s happened.
Jim Williams: Yeah, thank you.
Kathy Cuvelier: Well, as you say, there are so many that I can think of—so many names over the years. But I’ve got to start with James D. Kriegh, who was the original founder of the town.
In 1968 he saw and heard that the City of Tucson wanted to annex from mountain to mountain. Also, I think there was a planned Pima County substation where the park—where James D. Kriegh Park is now. He decided that it was time for Oro Valley to shape its own destiny.
So, he contacted Steve Engle, who was also one of the original incorporators, and the two of them worked together to incorporate Oro Valley. It took until 1974 to incorporate the town, but as you probably know the story—there were a lot of legal issues and battles (search this page for more stories about that!) to try to become incorporated. But it did happen, and those two, along with so many volunteers and others, helped and had this vision of what they wanted Oro Valley to be.
Jim Williams: I would chime in on that as a historian. I think very important were Jim Kriegh and Marjorie Kriegh because they saved a huge amount of documentation on the early history of the town—not just the incorporation but the first seven or ten or twelve years of the town—which would have all disappeared had they not saved that material.
Kathy Cuvelier: Yes, it’s been very important. Absolutely, I would agree with that. Jim Kriegh’s wife Marjorie, as you say, she was the town’s first historian. So yes, I would agree with that.
Jim Williams: Okay, we have to stop for a second. Okay, very good. Next question: what do you think have been some of Oro Valley’s government successes over the years? I know we’ve alluded to a few things like the police and other things. What do you think are really some of the things that the government has done right here? Dave Perry, how about you start with that one?
Dave Perry: Sure. One subject that I think is under-told in this community is our water utility and how—and I don’t have the specific statistics in front of me—but I believe that Oro Valley uses less groundwater now than it did in 2006 or 2007, even though our population has grown. We’ve diversified water supply. We now have Central Arizona Project water that enters into our supply. Of course, we’ve brought reclaimed water to golf courses and park spaces. It’s a remarkable story.
Everybody frets about water, but our community, thanks to leadership, is pretty well positioned to get through all this and, in fact, lead in terms of the way that we use that precious resource and how we might be able to responsibly grow with it as well.
Kathy Cuvelier: Well, I would say that when the town incorporated it did so with the promise that they would not enact a local property tax. They wanted to control the town’s growth and have strong police protection, good roads, and listen to their residents. At that time they had a vision of wanting Oro Valley to look like a Paradise Valley or a Scottsdale.
Also, the town has always been fiscally responsible and has always strived to maintain a balance between what the residents want and what the developers want, while also having to live within Arizona state law to honor the property rights of the developers that were developing in the town. I think they’ve done a pretty good job through the years of trying to do that. It’s not easy to do.
Spencer Elliott: Well, the water definitely is one of them, and I have to echo what has already been said by my colleagues here. I don’t know if there’s really a lot that I can add to that as successes.
Possibly thinking about how the council has been restructured over the years might be considered a success because it’s opened the town up more to a democratic possibility than was there before. When we first came, the council members were all elected by the people in the town, but the mayor was selected to be the chairman of the council and they chose the mayor amongst themselves. The people didn’t have any say as to who was going to be the mayor. It was necessary—somebody had to sign all the paperwork officially for the town—so somebody had to be in charge, and that’s how they selected that.
One of the big successes is the recognition that we needed to make this change here in the town. I think it’s for the better. We’ve expanded the council and now we have direct election, so I think it’s a more democratic process now than it was in the early days.
Jim Williams: Plus the size of the council was expanded too—from five to seven. What sort of things might the town have done differently or better, in your view? Who wants to go?
Kathy Cuvelier: I’ll go first, I’ll go first. I was just going to say I’m not sure that I’m qualified to answer that question, so I don’t really have an opinion on that, if that’s okay.
Jim Williams: Okay, that’s fine, sure. Dave Perry, any ideas?
Dave Perry: Well, again my tenure here is shorter duration. I look at the Marketplace and I see the incentives that were approved by the voters, and you know the Marketplace has struggled for so many reasons. Now I think we’ve found a way forward to create apartments there, create more of the mixed-use kind of redevelopment, honestly, of the Marketplace.
When I first came to Oro Valley, the late great Bill Adler was prominent in our community, and he’s somebody that should be mentioned as well. Bill didn’t like the whole concept of mixed use, as I recall. But that’s changed, and I think the modern council and others have recognized that in order for a place like the Marketplace to succeed, we have to do something different than what was envisioned originally. I think we’re heading in the right direction there. Looks good.
Jim Williams: Great, thank you. Citizen involvement—there have been many contentious meetings in the history of this town from the very beginning. My question is: has that been a good or a bad thing, citizen involvement in—and particularly most commonly related to land use decisions? Spencer?
Spencer Elliott: Well, I think you do have to have the citizens involved in this. Otherwise, they’re sitting out there and they’re just kind of grumbling. If it does make for contentious meetings—I know there were many times, and Kathy you can attest to this too—how many hours the council meetings went on, giving everyone an opportunity to speak.
Then of course as the town population grew and the town hall got bigger and more seats went in, I think it was Steve Engle who brought in an egg timer and said, “You have three minutes to make your point to the council, and when the sand runs out you have to sit down.” That kind of moved things along a bit. I’m not saying it sped things up too much, because there were still an awful lot of speakers. But I think without citizen involvement you don’t really have a town.
Kathy Cuvelier: Very true. The egg timer was before we had the limit timer, which is the electronic little thing that tracks your time. Citizen involvement has always been very important to Oro Valley.
It’s impacted the town in a number of ways in the government. We have so many volunteers that give of their time and talents, many of them just out of the goodness of their heart because they care for the community. They have helped this community for the past fifty years. Without citizen involvement we wouldn’t be the community that we are today.
Just like the Oro Valley Historical Society doing what you’re doing—you’re not a paid committee, you’re just doing it because you love your community and want to preserve the history. Thank you.
Dave Perry: I might have a longer answer than my colleagues here. I spent twenty-eight years as a small-town newspaper reporter, editor, and publisher in Wyoming, and I’ve been to a lot of government meetings over the years—tons of them. When I first came to the Explorer we had a very rocky relationship with Marana. So, I said, “Okay, I’m going to try to fix that.” I met with the mayor and town managers and developed relationships there, and I went to Marana town council meetings for three years.
There were many times when I was one of a handful of people in the audience. There just was not the sort of participation that we see in this community. Even in Wyoming, when the issue was super inflammatory, sure there were a ton of people there—but not on a consistent basis as we’ve seen in Oro Valley. Now it’s changing a little bit because of the pandemic and now we’ve got technology where people can plug in from home and participate in council meetings. But I’ve never seen a place where the citizens were this involved in the day-to-day decisions that go on.
Remember my context—I ran a business organization. I know those developers, and they used to complain. It’s better, it’s gotten better over the years than it was. I’m not a subscriber to the phrase “time is money.” I don’t equate those two things. But I do know that in business, time costs money. The longer things go on in the decision-making process—however legitimate and valid it may be—businesspeople see that as a negative.
The other side of that coin, of course, is that when they get into business in Oro Valley and they’ve gone through all the public processes, I walk in and say, “How’s business?” Almost invariably they say it’s great, because they now have access to this wonderful market. I draw the market lines by the way—I go to Dove Mountain, I go to SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch. I think Oro Valley needs to recognize that our public participation toward business yields a certain result. But the market area is bigger than the 50,000 of us who reside here. It’s really a unique thing. I’ve said to developers over the years, “I know you don’t like it, but that’s how it is. It’s not going to change in my lifetime.” This community will always show up and express itself.
Jim Williams: That’s something that goes back to the very beginning. The contentious meetings really went on for a long time and certainly increased in the 1980s when the town began to expand. My next question is about annexation.
The town has gone from 2.5 square miles to approximately 37 square miles in size. Why was that done, and is it a good or a bad thing in your view? Spencer?
Spencer Elliott: Well, one of the contentious annexations I remember was when it was after Rancho Vistoso was annexed and the original town of Oro Valley around the Country Club area was already in place. They were connected by a little strip of Oracle Road. And then there was this large peninsula of county land that was stuck right in the middle between the two of them, and it was surrounded on three sides by the town. Ultimately, I think that’s how the annexation came about because it was being surrounded as it was it was almost impossible for it not to be annexed in. But there were a lot of fights over what was happening with that. Annexation seems to be one of those things that bring out the good and the bad in people and what do they consider to be the most important things in their lives and who’s to say what any one of us are going to say is the thing that we considered to be most important at the moment.
Kathy Cuvelier: Well I look at annex from a ministerial right point of view with my job and that was one of the big things that I helped with were with town annexations. As you can see or have heard we have grown quite a bit so, the way that I the town looked at it is that we had the ability to grow the size of the land size, population, and it added revenue for the town to provide services to its residents. And then also – it may still be the policy but at the time annexation policy was to annex land that was not developed so that the developers in the town officials could work together to develop the property in accordance with Oro Valley standards. The town was very fortunate we had several annexations that were conducted in that manner, so I think it’s been a really good thing for the town. There’s no way we would have survived on what, two and a half miles, so I think the town is beautiful and how it’s developed and trying to develop it as close to the needs of the community as the elected officials can make it.
Jim Williams: A number of you have been here for many years. How would you assess the way the political climate has changed in this town over the years? Maybe Kathy you don’t want to deal with that because you were kind of in the middle.
Kathy Cuvelier: Yeah, since I’ve been gone for 13 years, it might be kind of hard for me to say other than the town did experience a lot of growing pains as a small town.
Jim Williams: I know you were the one that with that quote was yours originally in the newspaper.
Kathy Cuvelier: Oh, okay yes. And we had many recall elections as some of you may remember from 1993 to 2000 and that was a hard time in the clerk’s office, but we got through it. I think the reason for that is that mainly people, of course, were not happy with decisions of the elected officials or they didn’t like changes in the land use that council members had made. That’s about all I can say for that.
Jim Williams: Spencer, do you see—you and your wife were involved in elections here in the early 1990s and you’ve seen what’s going on since—do you see a change here?
Spencer Elliott: Well, I have to agree with Kathy and there were an awful lot of recalls. Lee was subject to one of them at one point and what else can one say? The climate really has changed to an extent I think for the better but at the same time it seems like it has picked up less of what we are doing here in the town for our own good and more of what the national political climate has in the way of influencing us and a way to kind of separate what’s happening from what is the thing that’s good for the town of Oro Valley from the what’s happening in the national scene which is entirely different decision in my mind to make.
Kathy Cuvelier: I was just going to say, you know, Oro Valley is known as a general law town and it’s nonpartisan, so people always want to take political sides. But in Oro Valley that it’s a nice thing that the council members don’t have to worry about is they’re there for the community, not for what political party they belong to. I think that’s a good thing about Oro Valley.
Dave Perry: I go to a lot of meetings to this day and I’ve watched some of the behaviors at neighborhood meetings, planning and zoning about apartments, you know, we’re having these conversations about apartments in our community right now and I’m not weighing in on right or wrong, good or bad, but I think that the national tone does have a tendency to drift down. If you will, that we sometimes lose our civility and we lose our obligation frankly to one another to listen and to be open to compromise and not to question motivation. I see a lot of times I’ve heard people say, “Well, you don’t care about Oro Valley.” Oh, baloney, everybody cares about Oro Valley; we just may not agree on how the community should proceed moving forward and I think we got to be careful about that, that we not become that bitter, angry, frankly sometimes intimidating environment for the minority voice. We got to be careful about that because we got so many positives in this community. Can we be respectful in our differences? Can we agree to disagree? And I’ve been reading too much on that subject lately and I think it’s comparative, especially in the national climate with a presidential election that’s going to be the ugliest thing any of us have seen in our lifetime politically. So, let’s do our best here.
Jim Williams: Thank you. Question about the future. What policies would you like to see Oro Valley pursue in the future? You know, if you had your wish list of things that the town could do, what would they be?
Spencer Elliott: Sure. Thinking about this question, one of the things that I really appreciate was the town working with the private organization to acquire the abandoned golf course and turning it into a public open space for the citizens of the community. So, I would like to see more of that kind of activity when such opportunities present itself, that is, is there a way for the town to actually do this so that it benefits all of us here in the town.
Kathy Cuvelier: And, you know, I’m retired and I don’t live in the town, so I’ll pass on this question.
Dave Perry: Let me—I’ve got two points. Spencer Elliott, I appreciate your comment about Vistoso Trails. I rode my bicycle through there today. I love riding my bike there. I saw a big group of burrowers out there this morning. I’ve seen deer, I’ve seen all kinds of stuff. And the challenge for mayor and council is how do you pay for that? You know, it needs six figures of investment every year simply to maintain it, to improve some safety considerations. It’s a jewel, but how do we pay for that? And I think we’ve got to keep that in mind.
But that’s not a policy for the future; it’s just the thought that occurs now. The one thing I—and the mayor and I, when I was around the chamber, we used to joke about how little water we used in our households every month. Our goal—Lisa and I, the kids are old and away—we try to use less than 100 gallons a day and we’re succeeding when it rains right now. And I play around with water harvesting. I got wheelbarrows and buckets and I’m trying to keep as much water in my own landscape.
The other day, when it was beautiful rain, the storm drain goes right by our house and goes down into the Highlands Wash which is behind us, and I just watched the water pour into the Highlands Wash and I said, I wonder if we could catch some of that at street level and maybe move it onto somebody’s oleanders or whatever they might be. And I also wondered about stilling some of the water in the wash so that maybe we had bigger mesquites down there, maybe richer wildlife habitat that resulted from a little bit of conservative water management that way. And I believe this sincerely: I think Oro Valley could lead the southwest in how we deal with our water resources to include what falls from the sky.
Jim Williams: Thank you. This is now the time for the audience. Do you have a question you’d like to ask the group? And if so, please stand so we can hear it.
How Oro Valley Has Changed Panel Discussion with Jim Willliams, Dave Perry, Kathi Cuvelier, and Spencer Elliott
Audience member 1: Two things. I don’t think Spencer ever answered the question about the speed trap. If we ever got back to that, how we got that reputation early on. Could you talk a little bit about how the vote went to annex Rancho Vistoso?
Jim Williams: All right, so the question is a little bit about the speed trap back in the early 90s and the annexation of Rancho Vistoso.
Spencer Elliott: Well, I don’t know what the vote was on the annexation of Rancho Vistoso, so that’s just going to be in the public record someplace as to how that one went. But the origin of the speed trap reputation was as—say there wasn’t any service here in the town, so we needed to have a police force. And we had a citizen volunteer who had a pickup truck, and they gave him a, you know, what the bubble gum machines are that the cops will sometimes take out and they’ll stick on top of the car. He had one of those, and if he saw somebody that he thought was driving too fast on Oracle Road, he’d put that on and chase him down Oracle Road and give him a ticket. And, who knows what his speedometer was actually calibrated to be, but if he thought they were going faster than he thought they should, they got a ticket for speeding. And that’s how our reputation came about.
And then I know Werner Wolff, who was the police chief when we first came here, he fought for years to try to overcome that. He told us one time—and I think you just saw an article in the paper—about 5 miles an hour over the posted speed limit and what happens with that. Werner said he told his people that if they’re 5 miles an hour or less over the posted speed limit, do not pull them over and give them a ticket.
Jim Williams: Yeah, the town had quite a reputation partly because they had a fairly aggressive magistrate that was also dealing with that issue and assigning fines, etc. But that goes back to the late 80s, very early 90s.
Kathy Cuvelier: I just wanted to clarify I think that Marshall Dylan—I think that goes back to the 70s, before I was with the town. And when I came to the town, we actually had a former police chief sitting in the audience. Maybe he doesn’t want us to know that, but I think just because Oro Valley was so small and they had time to enforce the law.
Yes, but I think with Werner Wolff, it was supposed to be don’t ticket nine or below unless there’s something else going on besides speeding. But yeah, we have fought that reputation all the way through the years.
Jim Williams: Yeah, it’s pretty well gone now. How many people here have ever heard that before? Well, some.
Audience member 2: Okay, I was told, “Go up Oracle in Oro Valley, be sure you watch your speed.”
Jim Williams: Right, that was sort of the peak of that kind of talk about town. Other questions, please stand.
Audience member 3: Will you address the history of Catalina State Park, please?
Dave Perry: Jim, you’re the guy to answer that question.
Jim Williams: That’s a long talk, but there was a group of about 10 environmental activists. None of them lived in Oro Valley—Oro Valley didn’t exist when they got started. There was a plan announced to build 6,800 homes on that property and they were all pretty much members of the Sierra Club. They met at a Sierra Club meeting and said, “We’re going to fight this.” They worked over a 12-year period to convince the county and the state to obtain that land. The county bought about one-third of the current park and the state traded land in Rancho Vistoso for the other land, the other two-thirds of it. That’s kind of in a nutshell how it came about.
I’m part of a group now that’s actually looking and trying to get a plaque put in Catalina State Park to recognize those people and what they did because, again, it’s one of those things that’s lost in the past now. All the people who were involved—well, 99% of them have passed away, and unfortunately, I did not get a chance to interview any of them. Other questions?
Audience member 4: The years of the pardon, when was it?
Jim Williams: The fight was from 1970 till it was created in 1982. A big part of it was the fact that Governor Babbitt took office because the previous governor died in office, and the previous governor was against it, and Babbitt was totally for it. That was a big turning point in getting it pushed at the state level.
Audience member 5: That would have been a good time to plug your book.
Jim Williams: Oh yeah, speaks to—there’s a whole chapter on that that goes over in detail. If you want to read a shorter summary, there’s a two- or three-page summary on the Catalina State Park website, but mine’s in a lot more detail. Other comments or questions?
Dave Perry: Can I comment about something? You brought up the speeding issue. Once I was in a chamber meeting, Chief Sharp, who served us for 20 years, somebody was complaining about his enforcement of the speed limit, and he said, “If you don’t want me to enforce the speed limit laws, which other laws would you like me to ignore?” And when he retired, I was asked to speak, and I said, “The truth is, it gets into your psyche that you don’t speed here because you think you might get pulled over. And as I get older, I shouldn’t drive fast anyway. But the truth is, we’re safer as a result. The incidence of property damage and physical injury in accidents in our community is lower than it is in places where people are speeding.” So, one more great thing about Oro Valley: we’re subconsciously aware of the speed limit.
Jim Williams: So, do any of the panelists have any final comments?
Kathy Cuvelier: I just wanted to thank you for having me here. I have very fond memories and a wonderful career with the town of Oro Valley for 30 years. And although I don’t live in the town limits, I still feel like this is my town. So yeah, thank you, enjoy meeting all of you.
Spencer Elliott: I’ll echo that. I would just like to add that looking at what’s happening with the present political climate, I would encourage all of you to talk to your children and grandchildren about civic duty. Many in the town here, as we kind of grew up with the town as it was expanding, recognize that if the town was going to go any place, we had to be involved in doing this. But I know some of the young people that I speak with today—they can’t figure out which way they want to decide on a political issue, so they decide they’re not going to make a decision. If all of us do that, then we will not have what we were handed by the generations preceding us.
Dave Perry: Well, that’s a great point, Spencer, I appreciate that. I would just share this: I ran the chamber for 11 and a half years and I got paid to tell people how great this place was—but I didn’t make it up. I lived in Scrabble, Wyoming for 30 years, and I would respectfully suggest that Oro Valley is the envy of 95% of America. I really believe that. We’re sitting here in this beautiful library; there’s a piece of public art, the Reading Tree. By the way, I can see Pusch Ridge to my left. We’re clean, we’re safe, we have this economy that is multifaceted and has some terrific fundamental bones to it, and we’ve got citizen participation. So again, I truly appreciate living here, and I think the future of this place is tremendously bright.
Jim Williams: Absolutely. All right, please thank the panel for participating. Thank you for coming.
