COVID Surge
I’m going to open with this graphic. It shows how coronavirus is ramping up across the country.
To save your eyes, here are the numbers (rounded) since November 3rd when we topped 100,000 cases in a single day:
I’ll have more below of course, but please understand that this isn’t a ‘spike.’ It’s a surge, and it’s increasing, just as was predicted by medical experts when looking ahead to weather changing and many people being cooped up indoors together. It’s science.
Blue light Recognition
This blue light honor is for the caregiving staff working in nursing homes/assisted living facilities. And in all the small residential care facilities, some of which you might have right in your own neighborhood. The work is life saving, but also life threatening for the workers.
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This is outside the Menlo Park Veterans nursing home in New Jersey. Earlier in the pandemic, they had over 100 deaths inside the facility in a week. Nursing home staff nationwide had over 4,000 infected workers last week. That’s a 4x increase over the previous week.
The work these people do on behalf of our seniors is so critically important. As visitation is limited, they’re surrogate family. If you know any of them, a thumbs up is truly in order.
I want to open by thanking the many of you who have reached out to offer your thoughts and concern over the UA eliminating my position in athletics. The Star correctly quoted me as having said that I’ve worked for 4 different athletic directors, and any one of the other 3 would have called to have a personal conversation before ending a 32 year run. In fact, on Saturday morning, my former AD Greg Byrne called from Alabama to offer his condolences. That’s football game day in Alabama and he’s on the phone with me. I told him that’s the class act I expected from guys like him, Jim Livengood and Ced Dempsey.
I’ve got a few things cooking, and my bride and I will land on our feet. But it’s important to me to start this newsletter by thanking you for your support, and your thoughts on how the UA is handling this. I understand many of you have also let the UA know, and I hope that matters to them. Their actions will not have a chilling effect on my speaking out.
Small Cell Poles
You may wake up tomorrow and find this in front of your house, in the public Right of Way. It’s the beginning of the installation of a small cell pole.
And according to State law, it’d be totally legal, and there is nothing the City can do about it. That’s why I need you to consider writing to all of our State legislators and let them know the mistake they made when they caved into the cell company lobby and eliminated our local voice.
I had this in front of the City Council last month and got a commitment from our transportation department folks that they’ll contact the Ward office as soon as they receive a permit to install one of these small cell poles. But by that time the company has selected a site and the permit is simply to approve what they’ve already decided on. We need a voice way back in the process before the location is a done deal.
Small cell poles are 35’ tall. The ‘advantage’ to them is that they’re smaller than the cell towers you see around town. The disadvantage though is that because they’re smaller, there will literally be thousands of these things scattered in residential areas all over town. This is not solely a Ward 6 issue. No matter where you live in the City – or outside City limits, this will affect you.
The Bill is HB2365. It gives cell companies extremely broad freedom to install these poles. Here’s just a sample of the language in the Bill:
 The key is that these poles are not subject to any zoning review or approval. We can’t regulate them. I’ve been asking people to write to get our local voice reinstated in the site selection process. That may well mean the whole Bill gets redrafted. Clearly the cell company lobby is influential. If this is an issue for you, please let the State legislators know now. They will be meeting in December to begin putting legislation together for the upcoming session.
RTA Next
We’ve been talking w/staff about how we’re going to address the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) project list that’s being planned for the next RTA election. The current RTA expires in 2026, and the RTA board wants to get in front of the voters well ahead of that in order to secure ongoing funding for regional road/transit projects. We’ve been asked to give them a list. I think there are issues the RTA needs to address before I’ll be willing to support any such list being presented for an extension of the ½ cent sales tax.
The RTA was passed by the voters back in 2006. You can see the full plan by going to www.rtamobility.org. It’s a ½ cent sales tax, assessed regionwide that was projected to raise $2.1B over its 20 year lifespan. The projects included road widening, transit services, safety and environmental elements. What we’re being asked to do is provide a project list for the roadway portion of whatever RTA Next looks like. The non-roadway ‘categorical’ elements are being decided later on.
The current RTA plan was broken down into 4 periods of 5 years each. What we know is that the funding has not been what was projected. The idea for RTA Next is another 20 years of work, also broken into 4 periods. Because they’re running short on cash, the conversation is to push the unfinished projects into Phase I of the Next project list. The problem with that is many of the unfinished work happens to be City of Tucson projects. So the pitch is for the majority of taxpayers supporting the RTA to agree to kick in for another 20 years with the understanding that they’ve (we’ve) been funding work happening to upgrade roadways in Oro Valley, Sahuarita, and other member jurisdictions, while many of ours weren’t completed. That’s a tough sell.
Also, the current conversation is that RTA Next will not include a road repair component. That’s an obvious flaw in the current RTA, and one that caused us to have to ask voters to agree to our own ½ cent sales/property tax in Propositions 408 and 101. I’ve been raising for years this omission from the RTA plan as a necessary component for any extension. We cannot just keep asking voters to fund roadway expansions without earmarking any money for maintenance. We’ll see if they change their tune on this piece.
Another issue is that each of the member jurisdictions was asked to put together a project list valued at $600M. The RTA board is going to pare those lists down. Fair enough, but to ask City of Tucson voters to support a list of projects that gives ours the same dollar weight as the small jurisdictions in the region fails to reflect the reality that we’re nearly ½ of the tax base supporting the whole plan. That needs to be adjusted.
We’re not being asked to make suggestions on the categorical elements of the plan yet. Our weekend and evening transit service is largely supported by RTA funds. Without a commitment that those services will be included in RTA Next, there’s no reason to ask you to support the plan.
When I’ve been asked to provide input with respect to the new project list, I’ve said we need more funding for roadway safety elements, not widening existing roads. We have a backlog of requests for HAWK pedestrian and bike crossings. Smart signalization technology is needed throughout the City. Safe infrastructure for alternate modes, something beyond painting a white line of the side of the road, will help reduce our fatality rates. We’re not having those discussions, so being asked to give them a list of road projects is just a part of what we need to identify for voters before RTA Next makes sense.
More to come on this, but the RTA board seems to be in a hurry for us to put together a list for them. We have options. The City is working on our Move Tucson project list that could well become our ‘go it alone’ transportation infrastructure ‘ask’ of the voters if RTA Next doesn’t turn into something that makes sense for City voters. Prop 101 ends in a couple of years, so the timing for us to begin working on an extension of that works well with the conversation we’re having with the RTA folks. There are benefits to a regional approach to funding these items, but City taxpayers need to be treated fairly or those benefits will continue to be reflected in outlying areas, which is not something I’ll be suggesting you support.
Midtown Water Quality Group
I’ve written a lot about PFAS water contamination. We’re in litigation with a bunch of other Cities and locales, suing 3M and other product manufacturers in an attempt to fund mitigation and treatment work. And we’re spending millions of dollars tracking and addressing the location of the PFAS contamination so we’re certain the water we serve to you is clean. I’m in the beginning stages of forming a group that’ll include midtown residents so we can have regular educational meetings on what’s going on with those efforts.
Tucson Water has tested wells out at the north end of the DM runway. That testing uncovered significant levels of PFAS. Tucson Water has shut down those wells, and several others in addition, so we’re sure none of that tainted water ends up in your home. But closing wells cannot be a long-term strategy for addressing the contamination. We need to identify the location of the plume, contain it, and treat the water. That will cost tens of millions of dollars.
This is a map showing where we’re tracking PFAS.
The red dots are where we’ve found wells contaminated above the EPA limits. The blue dots are active groundwater wells. The grey shaded area is Davis Monthan AFB. You can see several red dots right at the north end of their runway. And further northwest you see all those blue dots. That’s our central well field. We cannot allow the plume to get into those wells.
Right now, there’s a group called UCAB (Unified Community Advisory Board) that’s studying the areas of concern over to the west side of the map. The group I’m forming will proactively look at the central well field sites by DM. Since some of the neighborhoods immediately north of the runway are in Ward 5, and the base is in Ward 4, I’ve reached out to both Richard Fimbres and Nikki Lee to get them involved in this group.
Tucson Water is right now working with DM, the EPA, and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) in an effort to locate the contamination and begin talks about mitigation. There’s no question in my mind that the Department of Defense needs to be funding not only all of the mitigation work we’ll be doing, but make us whole for all the work we’ve done. The source of the PFAS at the north end of their runway is work they did on base with foams that contain the contaminants. Instead of litigation, our approach is to partner with them for now and come up with solutions. And my intent in working with Richard and Nikki to form this educational group is to bring the agencies into meetings with residents so you can see what’s being done. In that way everyone involved can be held accountable in a fully transparent process.
Here’s a blow-up of the red rectangle you see by the runway on the map.
It gives a better sense of which areas are involved. Right now, I’ve asked Tucson Water to begin reaching out to our agency partners to get them on board with the meeting. Soon I’ll be reaching out to the midtown neighborhoods that are involved and see which of you would like to be included. From my perspective, there may be one or two other issues that rise to a similar level of importance for Tucson, but this one’s right at or near the top.
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Mandatory Testing
Austin Walker from KVOA did a nice job of summarizing the debate I’ve been having over the UA mandatory testing issue. I believe that debate may have played some part in the recent employment actions taken by the University. Others can judge. Here’s the KVOA piece.
Controversy over mandatory testing at UArizona- KVOA Tucson News
The current uptick in COVID that we’re seeing validates the need for wider mandatory testing. This graphic is from the press briefing President Robbins held last week. The graph shows the infectivity rate Statewide. The more important data is shown at the bottom of the picture.
What the data means is that for the zip code in the areas surrounding campus, for every person who’s infected, that person is infecting 2.22 more people. That means the virus is out of control. There should have been no debate over mandatory testing for all students, whether they live on or off campus, as a condition for taking classes at the UA.
Some of the good work being done by TPD and UAPD is monitoring partying around campus. Last week I received an email from a lady who lives out by Pima College, west campus. She says our work around campus has caused her area to become “party central.” Here’s the quote from her email:
I read about your push to have ALL University students tested for COVID. I live in off-campus college housing on the far west side, a few miles west of PCC. It's party central out here.
She pointed to numerous parties with 20-30 people crowded in small apartments. Many happened over the Halloween weekend. Masks were not being worn, either by partiers, or by management of the apartments. I reached out to TPD and they’re on it. They have identified several complexes, many of which have received red tags. They’re following up with the property management and will bring our Code Enforcement group into the mix as well.
When I’ve called for mandatory testing, it has not been only for students living in the 85719 zip code. It’s for all students who are taking classes, whether in person, or virtually. This west side behavior is an example of why that should have been the policy since August. It’s at least nice to hear some consideration of it for January when the students return to school. But even that is now being modified to students taking in person classes, which will be limited in number.
Over the weekend the UA sent out an update on COVID results for students. They’re in the midst of a voluntary ‘testing blitz’ ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. In their updates the person who puts them together italicizes the words ‘off-campus’ to indicate what a swell job they’re doing with testing that group. All of this testing is voluntary. It’s therefore a self-selected group. They announced a 1.2% positivity rate for that group. My strong suspicion is that it did not include many, if any students who live out by Pima College, or who are living in the high-rise towers in the ‘19 zip code that’s showing the 2.22 transmission rate. They continue to try to convince nearby neighbors that all’s well and the testing program they’ve got in place is doing the trick. The real data shows that’s simply not the case.
Before they eliminated my job, I wasn’t asked to be included in any of the COVID conversations. But based on the Resolution I asked M&C to adopt, and the UA’s push back against it I know they heard. That won’t change. I continue to hope their policy does.
COVID Trends in Arizona
In the past 2 weeks, testing for City of Tucson employees has shown a 16% increase in COVID positives. That’s 24 new cases, and few were related to their work environment. Same as with UA students, its behaviors happening away from work/school that are the problem. And here’s the chart for both the State and Pima County for last week. It validates the clear upswing in COVID infections.
 The 4th column reflects increases over the previous day Statewide, and the last column is the same for Pima County. This week I included the month-to-date total in that graphic. It’s instructive of how the trend is ramping up. Here’s a comparison chart dating back to March. You can see that only 15 days into November and we’re on track for perhaps our highest monthly total:
A related area of concern comes from the Pima County Health folks. Last week Dr. Cullen noted that Pima County is not able to do effective contact tracing when infection numbers get above 300 per day. You can see that several times this month we’ve exceeded that number. That means people who have been in contact with an infected person are not finding out. I’ll circle back to college campus activity below, but nothing I’m sharing this week is a sign that we’re nearly headed in the right direction with respect to COVID. Please take care as we approach Thanksgiving.
Post-Election Threats
We had some incidents a few weeks ago where someone was caught on video approaching a midtown house to post some threatening notices. It’s election-related, and sadly it continues.
This note was nailed onto a saguaro in the front yards of some midtown residents last week. The homes had Biden/Harris yard signs. That’s similar to what we experienced earlier. If you have any information that might help TPD find the perps, please let us know, or call 88-CRIME.
TPD suggests posting No Trespassing signs, and perhaps a video camera. These are not easy incidents to track down though, so another idea that many neighborhoods consider is beginning a Neighborhood Watch program. Let us know if you’d like information on how to set up one of those and we’ll be happy to connect you with the Community Service Officer who works your area.
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What’s Happening at Colleges Around the Country
Ok, back to school...
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine posted this notice last week as infection rates soared around Colleges and Universities in Ohio. If things don’t change, he’s indicating all schools might have to go fully remote in January. That’s true all over the country, and it’s going to be largely a function of behavior that determines whether or not it happens. With a 2.22 transmission rate around the UA, it’s clear we’re not setting the best example.
After Notre Dame beat Clemson a couple of weeks ago, this was the post-game on-field celebration. You don’t see a lot of social distancing going on.
It’s one college football game that did not get cancelled. Notre Dame won in double overtime against Clemson. In the aftermath of this post-game celebration, the ND president announced that no students would be allowed to leave campus for Thanksgiving until they tested negative for COVID. How they pull that off?
They’re going to place a ‘Registration Hold’ on any student who doesn’t show up for mandatory testing. It shows a sincere concern for the wider community than just what’s happening in their campus bubble. And yes, this is the same University president who took heat for attending the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court ceremony at the White House without wearing a mask.
Not all college football games were as lucky. This tweet from the Southeast Conference:
The U of Pittsburgh cited Halloween parties as the cause of coronavirus spikes on their campus. At Pitt they issued a 3 day ‘shelter-in-place' order and limited in-person classes to 25 or fewer. In addition, they’ve had to close dining halls to anything but take-out meals, and all open gatherings are capped at 25 or fewer people. It’s their middle tier response, hoping to make it to the break in 2 weeks without having to ratchet things down completely.
And in non-university news, Avenal State Prison is in the San Joaquin Valley, California. They have the largest known cluster of infections inside the prison. Over 3,300 inmates and corrections officials have come up positive for COVID. We know congregate settings such as assisted living facilities are hotbeds for spread. The same is true of prisons and jails. In an exchange I had with our City Attorney over the weekend, he confirmed that the City has made significant changes in how we’re prosecuting cases, the goal being to keep people on the street when it’s safe for the public to do so.
LA County has the highest rate of infection they’ve seen since August. And New York City has now passed 24,000 deaths due to COVID. It’s a coast-to-coast surge.
In middle America, Sioux City, Iowa has more known cases per capita than any other metro area. Nearly 9% of their residents have tested positive. And remember South Dakota – home of the biker rally I wrote about a couple of months ago? They now have the highest hospitalization rate in the nation. Forty-two out of every 100,000 people are in the hospital. And they have no mask mandate in place. And Texas has now passed 1,000,000 COVID cases. Wisconsin reports an average of over 6,000 new cases daily, hospitals are packed and over 300 weekly deaths in the recent weeks.
With all of that, I’m going to close this section with this note I received from a lady last week. She sent me a NextDoor screenshot reflecting an incident that took place out on the Loop.
The guys are idiots. Please wear a mask, social distance and keep yourself and others safe.
Be Kind: Donna Swaim
Time for a moment of Kindness. This is Donna Swaim. I’ve seen her around McKale Center for decades. She passed away last week and will leave a huge hole in the hearts of hundreds of student athletes.
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Donna taught on campus for 50 years. She led over 20 trips abroad with UA students, and I’ve seen her in way more than I can remember one-on-one mentoring sessions with students. Even after retirement, she was a fixture at athletics events, and every time she walked into any of our venues, someone would approach her with a kind greeting. She touched so many lives with her Kindness – this week’s Be Kind was an easy, and a sad one to pick.
And one more Be Kind for the staff and volunteers who serve at First Southern Baptist Church over on Speedway. I met last week with them, Kathy B.- Feldman’s president, and TPD. We’ve got a significant homeless situation that has developed in that area over time. While making sure the children at the church are safe, getting people into the services they need to turn around their lives is the key. Pastor Ed and his team report they had the opportunity to work with a guy who had made his way inside the building and was acting in a threatening manner to the people inside. They de-escalated the situation and now the man is involved in crisis intervention services. As Pastor Ed wrote to me - “It all works out.”
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Compass Auction
And this reminder that the Compass Affordable Housing support auction is happening November 27th through December 11th. You can go to their website and look at the items for bid. They’ll be adding them up through November 26th.
Compass works with families who are working their way through tough economic and personal situations, and lots with veterans. It’s all in partnership with our work to address the needs of the homeless. With COVID, the auction is Compass’ way of funding their part of that work.
Check out their site at this link. You’ll find food, musical instruments, art, and weekend get-aways.
Local Tucson: Hownd for the Holidays
This week’s Local Tucson item comes from our Economic Initiatives office. In an effort to help support our local businesses, Barbra Coffee and her staff are working with Arizona-based Hownd. It’s an initiative called “Hownd for the Holidays.” The goal is to drive traffic to retail, attractions, hospitality – all of the sectors of our local economy that are struggling right now.
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Hownd puts business promotional offers out into social media. They get their cut when the outreach ends up in spending in our local stores. Barb and her group were allocated $25K in City CARES money which is going to our local merchants so they can sign on with Hownd. Pima County matched the $25K. Isn’t it nice when we see the City and County partnering to support the region!
Customers of course have to have a way of finding the promos. You can do that by going to www.howndfortheholidays.com. Search for what you’re after by category – food/drink, health/beauty, things to do, etc – and then browse away. Also, throughout November and December, Hownd will be doing weekly drawings where you can win gift cards. It’s all to keep our locals up and running. And it’s easier and safer than fighting your way through crowded malls.
Harvard Global Health
The Harvard data has started reporting COVID risk by Congressional District. Last week this was what Arizona looked like.
 And over the weekend, this is how it has changed in a week:
The spread is taking place in our back yard. Some of that might be attributable to what’s happening right across the Texas border in El Paso. They now have more people hospitalized with COVID than most States do – over 1,100. They have 10 mobile morgues and tents set up in parking lots as patient care facilities.
This graphic shows what they’re dealing with:
 Those numbers are for 1 City, not the State of Texas. In case you’ve never had the pleasure, here’s the route:
It’s just over 4 hours by car. And we have a lot of cross traffic between our two Cities.
And what do the Arizona risk levels mean in terms of how we are being asked to respond?
If our surge isn’t controlled, we may not be far behind El Paso in terms of impact on our hospitals.
Where did we begin in all of this? This is the first State map I shared for March 22nd. It resulted in a Statewide shelter in place order not long after.
 Compared to our current Statewide counts.
Back in the ‘60s there was an ad for Eve cigarettes – marketed to women, obviously. Their tagline was “You’ve come a long way, baby.” As if to say having a cigarette for your very own was progress. Similarly, we’ve come a long way since the alarming Pima County total was 42 cases. By the time you read this it’ll be over 33,000. Governor Ducey has stated he has no intention of a new shut down. Getting our arms around this will be up to us. Please be safe and responsible so we don’t become El Paso.
I share these links each week so you can do your own research.
For the NY Times data sets, use this link:
The State Department of Health site is at this link: www.azdhs.gov.
And here’s the UA daily update link. www.covid.arizona.edu. When it opens, click ‘See Latest Updates’ and it’ll take you to a screen with the updated data.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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