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Steve K's Newsletter 09/08/2020

Blue Light

This was the scene in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Lake Charles Memorial Hospital last week. 20 nurses and other hospital staff worked to protect 19 neonatal babies who were in the NICU as hurricane Laura approached. They stayed behind in the hospital to make sure the kids were safe during the storm. All involved made it through the storm safely. These blue light recognitions have included front line hospital and public safety staff doing COVID duty, working on forest fire lines, and now hurricane work. We remain grateful for all of the hard work and commitment we see, regardless of the challenges that continually get tossed into their laps.

Local Nursing Home Visits

Another group that falls under the ‘vulnerable’ to COVID umbrella is our friends and loved ones who are stuck in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. One of the most difficult parts of the whole COVID and health care issue has been getting family members access into the rooms to offer love and support at the bedside. Finally last week, the Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS) approved some guidelines for in-person visits into those kinds of facilities.

It’s not a ‘fling open the doors’ and let everyone come visit set of guidelines. And given the continued vulnerability of the patients, that’s understandable. Here’s what the AZDHS has passed along to health providers:

These are the general guidelines. Each care provider may have its own unique rules, so check ahead of time with them. But even though they’re not like the pre-COVID days, it’s much better than either visiting through a window, or not at all.

And on a related note, F. Ann Rodriguez Pima County Recorder’s office needs your help assuring people who are in assisted living facilities, hospitals or other care institutions will have an opportunity to vote.

In the past a special election board group would go into the facilities and assist patients through the voting process. That’s not possible now, so F. Ann is asking anyone who has friends/family members in a care facility, unable to get out to register and vote, please contact the Recorder so they can be sure to get a ballot to the facility. First though is registering. The deadline for registration for the November 5^th election is Monday, October 5^th. They’re asking that you confirm with loved ones who are in care facilities that they want to take part in the election, and then call the Recorder’s office with the information. That number is 724.4330. Some of the facilities are already working with the Recorder, but to be sure yours is, making that simple call with the name of your loved one and the address of the place is all they’re asking.

Smart and Safe Act Initiative – New Pot Law

Soon you’ll be seeing more media coverage about the voter initiative that’ll be on the November ballot related to recreational use of pot. It’s a 16 page long Initiative, so if you plan on taking a position on this in November, now’s a good time to get familiar with what you’re voting on.

A very short version of the proposed new law is that it’ll make possession and use of small amounts of pot legal for people 21 years of age, and older. The product will be subject to a 16% tax, and the proceeds from those taxes will be split among several different uses. Those include enforcement of the law, highway safety, a teacher’s academy and the AZDHS. Here’s one small section from the Initiative that spells out the broad purposes of the law:

Contained in the 16 pages are things such as employer rights, driving while under the influence, administration of the Act, and how the money will be divided up. Violations for first offenses are considered petty offenses and come with fines or community service. There are of course more stringent penalties for subsequent offenses.

We will be considering an agenda item this week that’s related to the Initiative. It’s not to take a position on the idea, or to set in place new policy. We’re simply starting what will be a rezoning process so we have our local rules in place by the time the new State law goes into effect. If we wait for the election results, we won’t have time to go through all the public outreach and have the rules in place in time.

When the medical marijuana law was passed a few years ago we had to establish some local guidelines related to the size and location of the dispensaries. Also things such as proximity to schools and places of worship, delivery of the products and the number of dispensaries we’d allow. Those same types of considerations will need to be in place, assuming the Initiative is adopted by the voters.

What we’re doing this week is giving direction to staff to begin an initial analysis and develop a proposal. That’ll start a public review process which will ultimately end up at the Planning Commission, and finally to Mayor and Council for adoption. The goal is to finish all of that by the anticipated April 6^th, 2021 effective date of the new law.

I’ve already had people sharing thoughts and concerns on the new law. We’re only starting the public outreach for zoning issues. The M&C as a body cannot take an official position on the issue. You can do your own homework by finding the Initiative at https://www.azfamily.com/pdf-smart-and-safe-arizona-act/file_0ce3f236-bae6-11e9-aad0-cbb484dc7ab2.html. That’ll take you to a site where you can look at the full text of the 16 page proposal.

What’s Happening in Colleges and Universities Across the Country?

If you see/hear large partying going on that violates the CDC and State guidelines for over 50 people/not social distanced/unmasked, you can phone that into the UA party hotline at 282.3649.

Colleges and universities across the country are now a couple of weeks into the fall semester. I’ve been concerned, as I know many others have been, that once students returned in large numbers, we’d see a reversal of what was being reported as our mid-August downward trend in COVID cases. This is what they’ve seen at Washington State University:

And here are Iowa State (orange) and UNC-Chapel Hill (green):

The difference in approach is when UNC saw the spike, they shut down in person classes and encouraged students to leave their dorms. Iowa State has continued teaching in a hybrid setting. These sorts of data are now showing up locally.

Here is a dashboard report from the UA as of Monday afternoon.

More on the testing I’ve been involved with at the UA below, but the results shown on that report include both the testing they’ve done for students living in on-campus dorms, and random testing that has taken place in other test locations scattered around campus. The data isn’t broken down into student/faculty/staff categories.

Now that schools are open, and students are congregating in dorms, off-campus housing and at parties – and in classrooms – the COVID numbers are doing what was predictable. A virus spreads when contact with targets is provided. Here’s a short list from 10 schools I came across last week in the Chronicle:

1. U of South Carolina released data that showed 557 new active COVID cases on campus and is now over 1,000 total cases.
2. U of Alabama is now at 1,043 cases on their campus. That’s one of the largest outbreaks at any school since the start of the semester.
3. U of Iowa is over 600 cases and is now running 76% of their classes online.
4. Temple University shut down all in-person instruction for 2 weeks after they had over 100 cases.
5. Illinois State has over 1,000 cases among students and a 24% positivity rate last week.
6. Colorado College flipped to all online classes for the rest of the fall because they’ve been forced to quarantine entire dorms due to COVID.
7. Cal State Chico moved to all online and has asked students to move out of residence halls.
8. Central Michigan’s total is up to 178 cases which the administration is citing as having come from off-campus activities.
9. N.C. State is up to 546 cases of COVID and is asking all on-campus residents who can move out to find off-campus housing.

And finally, this from U. of Oregon:

University of Arizona Testing

Our testing effort from Friday and Saturday of a week ago proved to be a qualified success. The success was qualified due to some criticism coming from various UA people who had expected a more antiseptic setting for the testing. Three complaints coming from people who observed, but who had not taken the initiative to do any testing at off-campus housing included (my response in bold):

1. A) we did not insist on wellness checks prior to testing a student – We were in the lobby of one of the high rises. It was their home. We were guests, hoping to get as many as possible to take the COVID test. We were hardly in the position to tell them they had to take a wellness test before coming into the lobby of their own apartment complex.
2. B) while we were in the lobby of oLiv testing, the students were not all 6’ apart - There’s about 50’ between the elevator and the front entry doors. We were located in that space, flagging down students hoping to get them to test. We had them lined up the hallway and seated around a large table. They exited the elevator in groups of 3-4, took the test together and left together. And they likely were living together. Correct – not all were 6’ apart. And they probably weren’t 6’ apart the rest of the night after they left the property, either. We were about testing, not forcing roommates to separate when they got off the elevator of their own home.
3. C) while doing the tests, students were not wearing a mask. - The test we administered was a saliva test. Sometime, preferably out of sight of others, try spitting into a cup with a mask on. Enough said on that rather lame criticism.

Much more important than the critique over process is the product. What did the testing yield? From Friday evening, when we were in the parking lot of the Islamic Center, 85 students stopped to test, and 7 of them tested positive. That’s 8.2% positive. When considering these are kids living in a congregate setting, that’s a huge number. When the results came back on Tuesday, each of the 7 was instructed to send their roommates in to be tested.

Saturday is when we were both in the ICT parking lot, and in the lobby at oLiv. Combined we tested 155 students, 22 of which came back positive. That does not include roommates. So of the 240 tests that were given, 29 came in positive. Each of those students was contacted. Here’s a ‘cheat sheet’ that includes instructions the UA asked us to provide to those who tested positive:

Each of them was also told to send their roommates in to get tested. Those results are now pending.

On Thursday of last week the County picked up my effort and tested 64 more students at an adjacent high rise. They have another contractor they use for testing and were trying to pick up where we left off and continue the outreach. It’s good that all parties now have seen this can, and should be done, and there’s some concrete follow through.

I’ll get back into the numbers below, but expect to see them increase rather significantly in the upcoming days. I’ll be back in 3 of the high rises immediately after the Labor Day holiday to continue testing. I know the UA is expanding their on-campus on-site testing. Last week they reported 37 positives combined among 3 dorms that are in the SW quadrant of the campus. Now that the UA and the County are joining in with this UA/student housing test effort, coupled with some of the large groupings I’ve been made aware of around the campus, the infections reported will increase.

If you follow this newsletter you know I’ve got a healthy dose of skepticism over the data that’s being shared through the media and other dashboards. You’ve got to look at a variety of sources, assume lag times when viewing ‘daily counts’ and now anticipate what we’re learning from the new work being done in off-campus apartment high rises. With that uncertainty, I was surprised to see the State Department of Education report on Friday giving the all-clear to the K-12 system for reopening. Here’s their announcement:

I went back and counted the number of new cases Pima County reported for the week of August 10^th through the 16^th. On the State dashboard shown above, they’re reporting 494 new cases. On the Pima County reporting chart, they’re showing 1,701 new cases (last column).

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports on kids and COVID each week. Here’s their top 10 States for kids being infected with COVID. Arizona is #2, behind only Tennessee. But Arizona defines ‘children’ in this report as ages 0-19. Tennessee defines them as ages 0-20. Based on what we’re seeing around campus, that 20^th year might have put us ahead of Tennessee.

Just something to keep in mind as you consider the State Department of Education dashboard figures:

Dr. Christ from the AZDHS says we’re ranked so high on kids with COVID because we’re doing so much more testing than anyone else. I checked the Johns Hopkins website and found that we are ranked #42 in the nation in testing. The good doctor might want to fact check before staking a claim in that position.

I know many parents and teachers who are taking advantage of the still-available remote schooling option. Until these data calm down and stabilize, I’m in support of that ‘take it slow’ approach.

Two New COVID Links

This link is what the Arizona Department of Health asks you to use for reporting businesses that are not abiding by the CDC/State guidelines for reopening. Without repeating all of those standards, the ones most commonly violated are having large crowds, not social distanced, and not wearing masks.

azhealth.gov/compliancecovid19

And this link takes you to the State site where you’re invited to order 5 free masks. They’ll be shipped to your home. Take a few over to some of the retail areas around campus. I’m sure you’ll find at least 5 people who forgot theirs when they headed out for the evening.

azhealth.gov/ordermasks 

And during his press briefing last week, Ducey and State Health Director Christ encouraged people to get a flu shot as soon as possible. Flu season runs through March, but with COVID lingering, getting the vaccine may prove more valuable this year than in the past.

Finally, this isn’t a ‘new’ link, but it’s one worth repeating, given the current issues. The Red Tag unit is still operating, and now has COVID as an extra motivating tool. Report violations to RedTag@tucsonaz.gov. This alerts the City Red Tag unit to large parties. This coming week there will also be a special emphasis – shared between the UAPD and TPD – on the areas immediately around campus.

Local Tucson

This week’s meeting of Sustainable Tucson is my Local Tucson item. The meeting is tonight, so be sure to note the time and Zoom address in order to take part.

The topic this month is how to motivate decision makers and educate community members on the issue of climate change. During the meeting they’ll start with a brief review of the climate challenges and then pivot to communicating that out to the wider public, as well as electeds. The primary reference material used will be The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, published by Columbia University. The meeting is tonight from 6pm until 8pm. To join, use this access link: Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/87027451348?pwd=U0oxYllyT0lXRUd6ZWVDNmlJeUhFUT09Passcode: 613731Join by phone (audio only)  +1 669 900 6833 US  On Wednesday we’ll adopt a Climate Emergency Resolution, and I’m hopeful the rest of M&C will support what Nikki and I hope will be transformational work on recycling and methane capture out at the Los Reales Landfill. Resolutions are aspirational – the recycling changes are putting those aspirations to work.

Commission on Equitable Housing

A few meetings back we voted to form a citizen commission to study the issue of housing insecurity. The application for joining that group is now live. The closing date for applying is September 28^th.

The intent of the Commission is to look at trends and causes surrounding housing access. Throughout COVID we’ve augmented access to housing through the rental of 3 hotels. That won’t last forever, so now is a good time to take a renewed look at the shortage of affordable housing and consider strategies for addressing it.

Please use this link to take a look at the Commission, and to send in your application. After September 28^th, staff will compile the list of applicants and will send it along to M&C. I’m hoping to see a wide diversity of thought going into the work this group performs. As you’ll see on the link, measurable and well-defined goals is a part of what we’re hoping to adopt. The issue has been with every large City forever – now Tucson is taking a fresh look at it, with your input if it’s an area you’d like to get involved with.

Environmental Quiz

In a previous newsletter I gave a rundown on the general changes I’m hoping to adopt related to recycling. If the rest of the M&C support the work, Tucson will be a leader in how we handle waste management. That will be an immediate actionable step we take showing the Resolution we’ll likely adopt on climate is something we’re taking concrete steps to address.

In advance of that discussion coming this week, I’m including a short quiz that I pulled from a larger study I found in a NY Times article. I admit that I didn’t ‘ace’ the exam, but it’s an interesting and thought provoking little exercise. See how you do. I’ll include the answers at the end of the newsletter.

#1 – Which of your household appliances are the real energy hogs?

#2 – Burgers vs Air Travel

Say you’re taking a one-way, economy flight from New York to London. You might want to make up for those emissions by giving up quarter-pound hamburgers.

How many burgers would you need to skip to offset that flight?

#3 – Comparing the type of car you drive.

You have a midsize car and you’re environmentally conscious, so you set yourself a strict limit of 100 miles per week.

If you switched to a hybrid car, how many miles could you drive while still producing the same amount of greenhouse gases?

#4 – Your diet and greenhouse emissions.

You decide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by becoming a vegetarian for one year. Your friend doesn’t want to change her diet, but decides to cut down by purchasing only bulk foods (nothing with any form of packaging).

How many years would it take your friend to save the same amount of greenhouse gases as you?

And on the heels of that environmental quiz, I want to brag on you for a minute. Headline: We Live In A Desert. And given that, water is life. We have a pretty robust conservation effort built into our water pricing tiers. In addition, the conservation rebate program run by Tucson Water continues to be a success. And credit to consumers – they demanded energy efficient fixtures and adding those to homes and businesses has helped drive down our water use. This chart shows how our gallons per capita per day use has continued to decrease since 2000.

It hasn’t rained much this year. Snowpack in the Rockies isn’t going to be great, either. That means Lake Mead is going to be stressed again, and we’ll soon be hearing predictions for how the water level in Mead may impact our position in terms of Colorado River allocations. Add to that the threat still posed by PFAS contamination outside of our central well field and you can see why continuing to conserve water is a big deal. So thanks for your focus on that. It’s a huge issue that will only continue to grow in importance.

TPD Data Analysis

In many of the neighborhood association meetings I participate in, one of the common themes is residents wanting to have a better picture of what’s happening with regard to crime in their area. Add to that the current emphasis on investigating police use of force, and the need for a larger and more interactive data pool is clear.

Kudos to TPD’s data analysis administrator, Dr. Jake Cramer for his recent recognition by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP.) Jake was recognized as a 2020 “40 under 40” winner for the groundbreaking data analysis work he’s bringing to TPD. When it’s fully rolled out, it will be an online dashboard that you can access and track several different TPD-related issues. One of those will be crime in your neighborhood.

The first area that will be populated on the dashboard will provide data on TPD’s use of force. Following that there’ll be links to look at arrests, staffing levels, crime and traffic safety work. We at the Ward 6 office join in congratulating Jake for the IACP honor and look forward to seeing this industry-leading effort as it rolls out in the weeks ahead. It’s another tool in the transparency toolkit that Chief Magnus and TPD leadership is committed to.

Harvard COVID Update

Each of the past 2 weeks the Pima County 7 day trend as reported by the Harvard Global Health Institute has been headed in a positive direction. I shared above about the reports of significant increases in COVID in the high rises and apartments surrounding campus, and on-campus dorms. And I’ve also shared the frustrations in seeing real-time data not being reflected in trend lines due to reporting lags. So what’s on the Harvard site this week for Pima County?

 To refresh your memory, these are the risk levels they base their advice on.

According to the Harvard folks, three weeks ago, Pima County’s 7 day moving average was 23.3 daily new cases per 100,000, with 244 new cases per day. Then, two weeks ago that had improved to 15.5 and 162. We were still in the Orange, but the improvement was a hopeful sign. And last week the 7 day average of new cases per 100,000 people had dropped to 11.8, with 123 daily new cases. That has been the recent trend. Here’s what their study showed for Pima County over the past weekend:

Being in the Yellow means ‘rigorous test and trace programs advised.’ If it hadn’t been for the increase in cases that we know exist around campus, that’d be great news. But this was the chart from Pima County Health that covered just a portion of last week that likely didn’t make it into the Harvard analysis:

That’s Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week (last column) showing the impact of the testing we did early in the week around the UA. Those are the new cases that were reported by Pima County. That testing will of course continue – I've got Rescue Me Wellness ready to do some post-holiday testing in 3 of the high rises, and the County has plans for testing in several other off-campus apartments. So the Harvard trend is positive, but I believe we need to give it a week or two to see how the data we’re generating affects the County-wide metrics. If nothing else, we know there’s a hot spot in the UA area. Now the work has to be around limiting it to just that area and preventing wider community spread.

Scooters and COVID

Coming this week on our consent agenda is a request by staff to continue the escooter pilot program for another 6 months. The present pilot is due to end on September 11^th. The reason the rest of M&C voted to extend the pilot was to allow time to study the impacts the program was having before deciding whether or not to make it a permanent addition to our transit mix.

The current pilot program was nearly exactly overlayed with the onset of COVID, and the shutdown of the UA campus. That’s significant because all the data points to UA students being the primary users of the program, for trips of less than 10 minutes, and for trips in the 4^th Ave/downtown/Main Gate area. With no students, and the shuttering of bars, the pilot was not generating usable data. Here’s what it did show, however:

So even with COVID and the mess that has created, there were still over 34,000 trips on escooters, mostly in the same areas as before.

I won’t be pulling the item from consent just to lose another 6-1 vote on this program, but the rest of M&C should keep a couple of thoughts in mind. One is that UA students are back. That means the trips generated with escooters will increase. In addition, UA students have accounted for a significant increase in COVID infections just in the past 2 weeks. If the M&C are serious about containing community spread of coronavirus, putting a hold on the escooter program until we have COVID under control – and then resuming the pilot – would be the responsible thing to do.

Staff is recommending we continue the pilot, basing that on the notion that people are riding escooters to the grocery store and to pharmacies. Simply put, that has not been my observation. And even if it were true, it doesn’t address the concern over these things being vectors for spreading COVID throughout the community.

Be Kind

This Be Kind is for the initiative, teamwork and outcome from a group of midtown neighbors. The project, started by Mitzi and Karen, grew into a neighborhood effort. It began like this:

Has been transformed into this:

And was capped off with a ribbon cutting and socially distanced grand opening. What had been a weedy alley that was a haven for all sorts of activities is now a dog/person run that will soon be a space where neighbors can gather, share music and just hang out together. Remember that? Hanging out together. Thanks to this group who are planning for those days in the hoped for not too distant future.

COVID Raw Data

A few months ago I used these Statewide maps as important tools in breaking down the information related to how COVID was entering Arizona, and Pima County. Now, with so many other ways to track the impacts, these raw numbers are less important for identifying trends as they are just to keep a focus on the overall impact this virus has had, and continues to have on our friends, co-workers and loved ones. When I see the protests and grumbling about having to wear a mask, I sometimes think of the now over 5,200 people this virus has killed in Arizona just since March. And that number is understated.

Here are the Statewide numbers for total number of cases, and fatalities that were posted on Labor Day.

And this is what those same data points look like for Pima County. We’re about 15% of the State population, and just over 10% of all the deaths. We closed the week with 2 straight days of having no fatalities tied to COVID. That would be a great plateau to maintain and keep it under 600.

Pima County is still running an 8.4% positive test rate.

Here’s your weekly update on the Statewide COVID numbers, by County. From last week’s newsletter:

And here are the numbers from AZDHS as of last weekend:

Here is the set of data links I refer to for some of the sections in the newsletter:

For the NY Times data sets, use this link:   

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-ways-to-monitor-coronavirus-outbreak-us.html

And you can find the Harvard data on this site: Harvard Global Health Institute Key Metrics 

The State Department of Health site is at this link: www.azdhs.gov.

And track the advice on public schools through this link: https://www.azed.gov/communications/2020/03/10/guidance-to-schools-on-covid-19/  You can find all the dashboard information at the “School Reopening Public Health Benchmarks” spot. Let your school-aged kids play with it if you can’t find the data you’re after. That might save you some time.

Sincerely,

Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov

Environmental Quiz Answers

Drum roll - These are the answers given verbatim from the Times article.

#1 – Home appliance energy hogs - You could leave an LED light on for roughly 300 hours, or 13 days straight, and have the same carbon footprint as one load in the dryer.

#2 - You’d need to skip approximately 278 burgers.

That’s equivalent to all the beef consumed by the average American in 15 months. So, if you don’t plan to stay in London and you don’t want to take a sailboat home, you’d have to give up beef for more than two years in order to offset the emissions from your round trip.

#3 - On average, you could drive about 151 miles, but it depends on the cars. For example, if you switch from a Toyota Camry to a Toyota Prius, you could drive 190 miles — almost twice as far!

#4 - You’d have to avoid food packaging for approximately 11 years to have the same impact as one year without meat, according to a 2013 study.

City of Tucson Resources

• COVID-19 Updates: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/covid-19/covid-19-updates
• I Want To... : https://www.tucsonaz.gov/i-want-to