I'm personally not coming here for anything other than local information.

I use the Local filter and its pretty much just local news, that works for me but if people are making posts locally they are getting crowded out. If there was a way to give precedence to user posts that would be welcome . I could see the amount of automatic content that is ideal could change as the number of users posting and engaging changes.

I like what you're trying to do, would offer to help but am quite busy myself.

For what its worth, I think running ads for local businesses is reasonable.

I want to eventually become solvent enough to pay moderators a living wage for what they do.

Generating revenue from tucson.social or external means? Do you have a plan for that at this point?

I'm not aware of any others, do you mean the local communities on tucson.social or are there other Tucson specific lemmy instances?