In August, Phoenix voters will decide on two issues that could fundamentally alter the landscape of the city.

One initiative could halt the city's light-rail program. The other could cap spending until the city pays down its pension debt — potentially limiting city services.

Both issues are inherently complicated and will require major education campaigns to convince voters to participate in the off-cycle election.

But with the election just weeks away, campaigns both for and against the propositions have been silent.

The campaigns say they plan to pick up the pace in the final weeks before the Aug. 27 election.

Will they be able to win over voters in time?

The initiatives and who's behind them?

Phoenix voters will see two items on their ballots in August — Prop 105 and Prop 106. Here's what they would do and how they came to be:

Building a Better Phoenix (Prop 105)

The light-rail ending initiative was born out of opposition to a planned light-rail extension in south Phoenix, which will reduce Central Avenue to two vehicle lanes.

The council had approved the two-lane plan in 2014, but some residents said they were not aware of the impact on lanes until last year.

A group of nearby residents and business owners went to the Phoenix City Council multiple times last year and asked the city to either kill the project or revise it to maintain four vehicle lanes.

Ultimately, the council voted to proceed with the original plan.

Building a Better Phoenix began the initiative process to not only stop the south Phoenix light-rail line but all future extensions.

The Building a Better Phoenix committee argues that the cost of the light-rail system is too high and that it has a negative impact on the communities it cuts through.

If voters pass the Building a Better Phoenix initiative, the city must cancel all light-rail extensions and divert the city money it would have used to other transportation needs.

The city's portion of the money earmarked for light-rail extensions comes from a $31.5 billion, 35-year transportation plan funded by a sales tax increase voters approved in 2015.

About 35% of the funding is currently dedicated to light-rail expansions, while 51% goes to buses and the remaining 14% to street repairs.

IT'S TRUE:Ending light-rail expansion in Phoenix would free up billions for projects

Responsible Budgets (Prop 106)

The pension initiative is a pet project of Councilman Sal DiCiccio, who touts himself as the city's fiscal hawk.

Phoenix has more than $4 billion in pension debt — money it will someday owe to its retirees.

Phoenix has tried some creative and some controversial methods to manage the debt in the past, but the city still spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year paying down its debt.

Last year, the city spent $376 million. This year, it plans to spend $426 million.

DiCiccio and others with his economic view don't believe that's enough, and they want the city to forgo what they deem to be unnecessary spending and catch up on its debt sooner.

That's what this initiative would accomplish, according to proponents.

The initiative has four main elements:

Requires annual assessments of pension debt based on a 10-year average rate of return on investments of pension systems.

If the city has not funded at least 90% of its pension liability, it can only increase its budget to compensate for population growth or inflation. In other words, if there's still pension debt, there can be no new city spending. Only public safety services are exempt from this limitation.

Requires the city to spend any additional funding on pension debt.

Ends pensions for City Council members.

DiCiccio teamed with two conservative political consultants to run the Responsible Budgets initiative.

Tim Mooney is the chairman of Responsible Budgets, according to city filings. He lists his employer as California-based political consulting firm Silver Bullet Group.

The treasurer is Chuck Warren, the managing director of Wyoming-based public affairs firm September Group. In an interview, Warren said that although his company is incorporated in Wyoming, he's a part-time Arizona resident. He said Mooney is also an Arizona resident.

Warren said the proposition's passage would force the city to "eat their vegetables and get Phoenix on the right fiscal path."

Invest in PHX

A substantial group of elected officials, unions, business associations and other prominent political players have teamed up to oppose both initiatives under the political committee "Invest in PHX."

Councilwomen Debra Stark and Laura Pastor are the co-chairs of the committee.

Tony Cani, the campaign manager for Invest in PHX, said it made sense to oppose both initiatives with the same campaign since his group believes both would preclude the city from making "smart investments" for the future.

He said the passage of Prop 105 would throw away decades of transportation planning and force the city to give up hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants reserved for transit projects.

Prop 106 would "tie the hands of our leaders for decades" by capping city spending, which could result in service cuts that would impact "children, seniors and those most in need," Cani said.

He said that the city has not fully recovered from the city service cuts endured during the Great Recession — such as shortened library hours — and Prop 106 would prevent it from ever doing so.

"The city has been able to responsibly balance the need to address their pension debt and provide important services to the people of our city," Cani said. "This proposition is reckless."

Where are the campaigns?

Despite the scale of what's at stake and the passion on all sides, there has been very little public presence from either side of either initiative.

Early ballots will hit mailboxes July 31 — just weeks away. Will the campaigns ramp up their efforts before then?

They all said they will.

Susan Gudino said the Building a Better Phoenix campaign was slowed by an unsuccessful legal attempt by the Arizona Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America to get the initiative kicked off the ballot.

The Arizona Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions upholding the initiative's ballot language but not before months of costly court proceedings.

Building a Better Phoenix hosted its official campaign kick-off Saturday, and Gudino said she expects things to pick up in the final weeks leading up to the election.

"It's building. It was building slowly, but now so many people are on board with us," Gudino said.

Warren said the Responsible Budget campaign will be "basic" but that voters will start seeing their messages on social media and in the mail soon.

Cani said Invest in PHX has been "strategic" in rolling out its campaign to "maximize our ability to communicate with voters." He said he expects a "big ramp up" in the days following Fourth of July weekend.

But Republican political consultant Kurt Davis said that if people are expecting a major campaign blast, it's not going to happen in a likely low-turnout, August off-cycle election.

"I wouldn't expect to see a full-scale, even-year, state-election-type campaign effort," Davis said.

Instead of trying to appeal to the full electorate, the campaigns will try to target a much smaller pool of base city voters, likely through direct contact instead of flashy campaigns, he said.

Complicated messaging

Each of the campaign committees reported struggles in educating voters on the initiatives — and the election's existence.

"People are like, 'Wait a minute. We have another election?'" Stark said.

The election comes just three months after a special City Council election in May and five months after a special mayoral election in March.

Consultant and former Democratic legislative leader Chad Campbell said Phoenix voters are likely experiencing "voter fatigue."

"For the average person, it's very hard to keep up with all of these elections," he said.

Both sides of the light-rail debate said they've had to battle misinformation about the initiative.

Proponents of the Building a Better Phoenix initiative said they've heard from voters who think that the initiative would kill all city transportation spending. In reality, the initiative would divert light-rail spending to other transportation initiatives, like bus service and road repairs.

Opponents said they've heard from voters who believe the initiative would only end the south Phoenix light-rail extension, when in reality it would end all future rail lines in the city.

The Responsible Budgets initiative is even more complicated.

"I worry that people don't understand 106," Stark said. "Trying to understand our pension and budgeting — it's so complicated. I hope that we can get to voters and explain what it means."

Warren expressed a similar sentiment. He said his team is working on how to educate voters and communicate the dense subject matter.

"Hopefully, we'll be good at it. We may not be," he said. "People really need to sit down and take the time to learn the issue. Win or lose, we hope it raises the level of consciousness on this issue."

Campbell said traditional wisdom says that voters tend to vote "no" on issues they don't fully understand — but he cautioned that may not be the case with Prop 106.

He said the wording of the initiative oversimplifies the economic impacts of the initiative and "sounds good on paper."

He equated it to Prop 126, which passed in November and prohibits state, county and city governments from imposing a new or increased tax on services. Campbell worked on the "no" campaign.

He said that while the measure sounded like a good financial protection on paper, it could have severe economic consequences and limit the state's ability to collect any new revenue sources in the future.

A bipartisan group opposed the measure but was significantly outspent by the state Realtors association that pushed the initiative to prevent taxes on real estate services. The proposition passed easily.

Davis said the most important tool to educate voters on complicated topics is simple, yet also difficult to secure: money.

Fundraising woes

The fundraising capabilities of each of the campaigns remain to be seen. The next campaign finance filing deadline is July 15.

But in interviews, each campaign said their efforts have been slow-going — and all of them said they expect to be outspent by their opponents.

"It's not as good as I hoped," Gudino said of Building a Better Phoenix's fundraising.

She said the lawsuit to try to get the initiative kicked off the ballot depleted a lot of the committee's funds. Her team is trying to build their coffers back up as they head into the final month.

Warren said he expects the Responsible Budget committee to spend about $200,000-$300,000. He said fundraising has been challenging for the same reason educating voters is challenging: Pension issues are dense, and it's difficult for donors to see why they should care.

"Hopefully that will be enough," Warren said. "We expect the other side to spend a lot of money."

Cani said Invest in PHX's fundraising is an "ongoing effort" and noted that he expects the other campaigns will have "dark money" from organizations outside of Arizona.

"We know that we're going to have to have an all-out blitz here for the next two months to overcome that," he said.

Turnout will be low. Who benefits?

The last time Phoenix had a citywide, odd-year August election was the mayoral election in 2015. Voter turnout with 20.81%.

The 2011 mayoral election, which was more competitive, still only garnered a turnout of 22.37%.

Campbell and Davis said it's all but guaranteed that turnout in this August election will be just as low.

Voters who turn out in these types of city elections — where nothing else is on the ballot — are typically more informed and more familiar with city issues than the general electorate, Campbell said.

They're also typically more left-leaning, Davis said.

"Ultimately, you're really dealing with a very small sub-population of Phoenix that's going to vote," he said.

That sub-population typically consists of people who are connected to the city in some way. The public-employee unions and other associations with ties to the city tend to drive these types of city-spending initiatives, he said.

This will give Invest in PHX a leg up. All the committee has to do is identify its base city voters and make sure they turn out, Davis said.

The pro-Prop 105 and Prop 106 campaigns will have to turn out voters who don't typically participate in city-only elections if they want to be successful, he said.

Reach the reporter at jessica.boehm@gannett.com or 480-694-1823. Follow her on Twitter @jboehm_NEWS.

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