Tucson Council Freezes All Park Namings Rather Than Vote on Baldenegro Park; Accepts $390K Police Grant With a Caveat

Tucson Council Freezes All Park Namings Rather Than Vote on Baldenegro Park; Accepts $390K Police Grant With a Caveat

The Tucson Mayor and Council voted 4-3 Wednesday to put an immediate moratorium on naming and renaming city assets, setting aside a proposal to rename Joaquin Murrieta Park for Westside activist Salomón R. Baldenegro after an evening of public comment split over a 1973 domestic-violence allegation.

Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz, whose Ward 1 includes the park, made the motion instead of calling the renaming resolution itself. It directs the city manager to halt all asset namings and renamings while staff revises the city's administrative directive on the subject to add specific criteria for evaluating an honoree's character and contributions, including how community harm, if any, is accounted for; to route naming requests through the city manager's office rather than individual departments; to review how much community engagement such requests require; and to set a timeline for reporting back to the council.

Santa Cruz said the council was already acting on the Parks and Recreation Commission's recommendation to rename the park when recent sexual-assault allegations against Cesar Chavez surfaced, which she said had forced "a reckoning for how we name and honor people." Her office held a community meeting on naming at the El Rio Neighborhood Center in August.

The motion passed 4-3. Council Members Kevin Dahl, Nikki Lee and Paul Cunningham each told the council before the vote that they would not support it. Dahl said he had been prepared to vote for the Baldenegro renaming, citing what he called overwhelming community support, and would have backed a moratorium afterward. Lee said she normally defers to the ward council member on ward decisions but that a citywide freeze "does feel too much for me." Cunningham, participating by video, said he was not ready to make a "unilateral decision" that would block renaming even "a park bench or a small city asset." Santa Cruz, Mayor Regina Romero and Council Members Selina Barajas and Miranda Schubert voted yes. Romero said she was "deeply concerned about the reported and documented acts" presented to the council; Barajas said that in her nine months in office she had fielded a steady stream of questions about naming benches, fields, streets and bridges, and that the process needed a full re-evaluation.

During call to the audience, speakers divided over Baldenegro's record. Supporters, including his partner of more than 55 years, Cecilia Cruz Baldenegro, described his organizing with the El Rio Coalition, which fought to get a park built on the west side. She said the 1973 charges were "trumped up," that his wife and the judge knew it, and that political enemies had subjected him to "character assassinations." Opponents, including Patricia Palomera, a lifelong Westside resident who worked as a social worker for 14 years before becoming a teacher, said newspaper articles from 1973 reported that Baldenegro was seen beating and kicking his wife, that gas station attendants tried to intervene, and that he was arrested; she said charges were not filed. Palomera said she could not "separate the man from his violence."

Romero initially announced that the renaming resolution had failed 4-3, then corrected herself; it was clarified from the dais that the vote was on the moratorium motion, which passed.

The council voted 7-0 to accept a $390,696 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for the Tucson Police Department, to be shared with Pima County, but only with a cover letter stating the city does not agree to the grant's conditions. City Attorney Roi Lusk pulled the item from the consent agenda to flag what he called "troubling conditions" related to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to enforcement of immigration law, and asked the council to direct his office to send the letter. The motion to approve Resolution 24179 with that direction passed unanimously.

Also by 7-0 votes, the council approved two intergovernmental agreements with Pima County Community and Workforce Development for the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement, or PRICE, program, a federal effort to preserve manufactured housing. Schubert pulled the eviction legal services agreement, Resolution 24174, from the consent agenda to recognize the staff behind it; the companion home-repair agreement, Resolution 24176, passed on consent. Romero said the city applied for $22 million and received $11.5 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Schubert said the funds will pay for home repairs and weatherization, eviction legal help and direct financial assistance for manufactured-housing residents, and are expected to reach more than 300 households.

The council voted 7-0 to name the new softball complex at Kennedy Park the Stacy Redondo Fields, approving Resolution 24178. Santa Cruz, presenting the naming, said Redondo, a fourth-generation Tucsonan, grew up playing at Kennedy Park, played at Cholla High School and then at the University of Arizona, where she was on the Wildcats' first two national championship teams in 1991 and 1993, and later coached at Salpointe Catholic High School while teaching elementary school in the Tucson Unified School District. Family members told the council she died in 2023 at 52. Barajas, who said she played softball at Kennedy Park as a child and also graduated from Cholla, called Redondo "an inspiration." Cunningham, who said he was at the University of Arizona at the same time as Redondo, urged the city to figure out how to "properly decorate the field in her honor." The naming applies to the new complex only; Kennedy Park keeps its name.

Also at the meeting:

• Two rezonings passed by voice vote without objection: 0.84 acres of a 1.66-acre site at 6216 E. Bellevue St., near Speedway Boulevard, from R-1 to C-2 for the El Toro Square commercial center in Ward 6; and about 7.82 acres on Copper Street from R-2 residential to I-1 light industrial for Copper Avenue Partners in Ward 3.
• On the consent agenda, approved 7-0: a crash-data sharing agreement between TPD and the Arizona Department of Transportation, and authority to acquire right of way for the Limberlost Drive Complete Streets Project between Flowing Wells Road and First Avenue.
• Schubert reported the Ward 6 "Chill Space" cooling center had logged 1,776 visits from 276 individuals and provided 670 showers and served 71 pets since opening, and listed the serious crashes since the Aug. 18 meeting, including a bicyclist pronounced dead at the scene Sept. 8.
• Santa Cruz invited residents to a data-center town hall Thursday, Sept. 10, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the El Rio Neighborhood Center on the city's new data-center regulations.

This report was drafted by Claude Sonnet 4.6 from a live transcript produced by Deepgram Nova-2, then reviewed and edited by Nicholas De Leon with Claude Fable 5.1, and published at 7:56 PM MST on September 9, 2026. Read more about how this is made.