Mike Carrafa, once the owner of one of the town’s most popular nightspots, won’t give city council a rest.

His wife, Noreen, asked the council to approve a liquor license under her name for a new bar – the Doc Holliday Saloon – to open on Allen Street this fall. The council punted, but the Carrafas aren’t done yet.

For tourists, Phoenix and Tucson are Arizona’s identity and serve as a base for expeditions into the history and legend of the Grand Canyon State. But Ilona Somerekanich, director of the city of Bisbee’s Visitor’s Center, has a different view.

She points out that Southeastern Arizona was the state’s first economic hub and Bisbee, propelled by its lucrative copper mining industry, was Arizona’s original destination for entrepreneurs and tourists.

“I might be embellishing a bit,” Somerekanich said. “But I maintain Tucson and Phoenix are here because of Bisbee.”

She’s paid to take such an attitude.

Somerekanich is a Bisbee city employee who, from her office in the back of the Bisbee Visitor’s Center, designs marketing strategies to lure tourists to town as their base for Arizona vacationing. Inspired by her success, the Tombstone city council recently began examining if the town could benefit by following the Bisbee model.

With a 100 percent hike in the Tombstone bed tax, town officials suspect to see more profit, but not everybody is happy about it.

Gordon Anderson, owner of the Larian Motel, thinks that it is unfair to place new taxes only on the hospitality businesses and not others in town such as restaurants and bars.

More than two months after canceling a presentation of a review investigating expenditures of city money by previous Chamber of Commerce administrations, officials refuse to release the report to the public.

The new mayor and council’s relationship with the chamber had a rocky start.  The January resignations of Executive Director Pat Greene, President Don Taylor and three other board members followed a city request for financial information on the chamber run but city-owned Boothill Graveyard gift shop. This led to accounting questions about how other city monies were spent. This spring, J.R. Botts, acting as executive director, used chamber funds to pay for a financial review by Heinfeld, Meech & Co.

"That phrase has worn itself thin in business and industry and that phrase is also wearing itself thin in Tombstone," said Steve Troncale, Tombstone historic district commissioner and city councilman.

With the addition of Mac McMillan, the new city building inspector, the HDC will now be able to enforce city codes that have been neglected for years.

People often begin construction or painting a building before applying through the commission, said Troncale. "In the past people basically got away with a bunch of stuff, but that's not happening today."

Lee McKechnie, owner of The Tombstone Trolley Tours and Helldorado Town has had a few hiccups in his plan to open a new vaudeville type outdoor theater.

The proposed Cosmopolitan Theatre would be on Allen Street in between Shady Ladies Closet and The Whistle Stop. McKechnie called the theater the Cosmopolitan because this was the location of the historic Cosmopolitan Hotel.

The board of directors for the Community Food Bank, the main supplier of food to the Tombstone Food Bank, agreed to step in and help the city run the newly
reacquired food bank per the mayor's request.

Clerk George Barnes said he does not suspect "any skeleton in the closet," but he is asking Chamber officials to do their duty.

Repeated calls by the Epitaph to Chamber Director Pat Greene and Chamber President Don Taylor were not returned. When the Epitaph went to the Chamber offices, Greene was not there.

Barnes says he remembers a time when locals buzzed about Boothill Graveyard, the money it brought in and who reaped its benefits.

But for the most part, that's stopped now, he said.

"The Boothill thing had been very contentious in the years before. Of course there was the who's making money and who's not and where's it all going?" Barnes said. "And all of that is kind of gone now."

This percentage comes from the latest measurement by engineers.

According to City Clerk George Barnes, there are many "opportunities" for the system to lose water.

"The water system is well over a hundred years old and in a hundred years a lot can happen. It's just the nature of it," he said.

Barnes discussed how there are no particular locations where water is leaking.

"Every hydraulic system will leak somewhere," Barnes said. "Sometimes it can leak a lot. It's a wonder it isn't more considering the city's history of mining." As for now, the city will continue repairs on known water leaks.

"You plug the leaks you find," Barnes said. "Sometimes you find leaks that have been running for a longtime."

Specific areas of water loss and the direction the city will take in solving this issue, is still up in the air, according to Public Works Director Phillip Korte.

"We're in the middle of investigating that," he said.

Talvy's enforcement of ordinances members of the new administration considered unfair was a catalyst for the new officials running for office in the first place. Once they were elected, it was almost assured Talvy would be out of the marshal's office for good.