It is genuinely hot out there. If you stepped outside this week and felt like you were being slow-roasted, you weren't imagining it — Tucson hit 103 and 104 degrees midweek, and the forecast is keeping triple digits locked in through the weekend. The first whisper of monsoon moisture drifted east of town on Wednesday, which is less a promise than a reminder that the season is out there, circling. We're not there yet. In the meantime, let's catch you up on a week that had a few genuine surprises.

What's worth knowing

The big news that didn't quite happen this week is still worth understanding. Iran's national soccer team was supposed to use Kino Sports Complex as its FIFA World Cup training base — a genuinely rare thing for a Tucson facility to host, and one that had generated real excitement alongside real controversy, given Raytheon's presence nearby. Iran Football Federation president Mehdi Taj announced the team will instead train in Tijuana, citing the escalating conflict in the Middle East. County and local officials say they're working to redirect the planning into longer-term sports tourism positioning, which is a reasonable pivot, even if it lands a little flat after months of anticipation.

The Project Blue data center keeps moving forward in ways the City of Tucson explicitly doesn't want. The Arizona Department of Water Resources this week approved two commercial wells for the facility, which is under construction in Pima County, authorizing the project to draw up to 96.5 acre-feet — roughly 31 million gallons — of groundwater per year. The wells were applied for under existing grandfathered rights by Bobcat Tucson Water LLC, an entity tied to developer Beale Infrastructure. The city unanimously rejected any involvement with the project last August, and City Manager Tim Thomure recently revoked a temporary water meter the project's contractor had been using for dust control. The state's approval essentially routes around the city's objections. How that tension resolves — or doesn't — is one of the bigger slow-moving stories in the region right now.

Closer to home and harder to ignore: a survey of the Chuck Huckelberry Loop found that 60 percent of respondents feel unsafe using the 130-mile trail, citing homeless encampments, drug use, and harassment. Overall satisfaction remains reasonably high — 42 percent called themselves "very satisfied" — but safety ranked as the top concern for nearly the same share of people. The county's unarmed security patrols have already been discontinued after being deemed ineffective, and officials say a coordinated program called "One Pima" will now take on trail safety alongside homelessness and fentanyl use. If you use the Loop regularly, this is the conversation that's going to shape what it looks and feels like in the coming year.

And a quieter but meaningful one: TUSD's governing board formally launched its school closure and consolidation review process this week. No specific schools have been named, and the process is designed to unfold over months with community input. But declining enrollment has been building pressure on the district for years, and the board's decision to formally begin the review is the kind of thing that tends to matter a great deal to the families in affected neighborhoods once it gets going.

What changed around town

South Tucson made a counterintuitive budget move this week: the small city, which is operating with a growing deficit, voted to eliminate its grocery tax. The logic is economic development rather than austerity — South Tucson has been without a full-service supermarket, and city leaders are hoping that removing the tax makes the market more attractive to a grocer. Whether it works is an open question, but it's a meaningful bet for a municipality that doesn't have a lot of chips to play.

The Tucson City Council resolved a smaller but lively local dispute: pickleball fees at Morris K. Udall Park. The city had proposed charging $3.50 per 90-minute session at courts that are currently free. Players organized and pushed back, and the council landed on something the local press is calling a "bargain" compared to the original proposal. The details of the final fee structure weren't fully reported, but the outcome reflects how organized recreational communities can move a process when they show up. Out in Oro Valley, the town council unanimously adopted a roughly $128 million tentative budget — a notable $23.5 million decrease from the current year — even as finance staff disclosed that local sales tax revenue has fallen 6.8 percent year-over-year, the steepest single-year drop in more than 15 years of town records. Construction sales tax led the slide, falling nearly 50 percent. The budget is described as structurally balanced, but the revenue picture is one to watch.

What's opening

The clearest opening of the week is The Biergarten, and it's a good one. Andre and Silke Linke, who relocated from Bavaria in September 2025, held the grand opening of their German kitchen and bar on June 5 at 2320 N. Silverbell Road, in the former Famous Sam's space on the west side. The menu runs through schnitzel, sauerbraten, house-made spaetzle, and Black Forest cake, with six German beers on tap. According to Tucson Weekly, there was no biergarten in Tucson before this one — which, when you think about it, is a gap that needed filling. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10 p.m. on weekends.

A couple of other spots are in the pipeline. A Chipotle at 4746 E. Sunrise Drive and a restaurant called Tiny's at 5975 S. Western Way Circle have both applied for new restaurant liquor licenses, with Pima County Board of Supervisors hearings on those applications set for June 9. That puts them solidly in the "planned" category rather than the "open" one, but they're worth knowing about if you're near either location.

One thing to watch

Tuesday, June 9 is a busy night for local government. The Tucson Mayor and Council hold a special meeting — required under state law — to formally adopt the city's annual budget for fiscal year 2027, which locks in spending on everything from police staffing to water infrastructure for the next 12 months. Separately, the Pima County Board of Supervisors meets at 5 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors' Hearing Room with a 52-item agenda that includes a decision on how to hire a permanent County Administrator, a long-running Foothills rezoning dispute near Campbell and River that's been in limbo since 2020, and the formal designation of vote center locations for the July 21 primary election. The homelessness housing agreement for the former Knights Inn on the east side — a project called The Craycroft — is also on that agenda, quietly tucked into the consent calendar.

The Tucson Mini

This week's mini crossword is ready and waiting — play it here when you need a few minutes away from the heat.

Thanks for reading. Stay hydrated, find some shade, and we'll be back in your inbox next Sunday.