Before I get to the vaccine update, I want to share a short video with you that outlines the importance of staying active, even during COVID. Seniors, in many cases have been cooped up for the duration, and the impacts are severe. Our friends at Pima County Health remind us that activity is a key to whole health. The video is only about a minute and a half, so stick with it to the end. You may get inspired.
Vaccine Update
The number of vaccination sites scattered around town continues to expand. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that getting registered for a shot is still a bit clunky. One of the primary reasons for that is vaccination sites are reluctant to make appointments beyond the date they’re certain to have doses. Pima County health does not control how much of the vaccine we’re receiving, and when. The distribution pipeline is controlled by the state. We don’t know how much they’re getting, whose getting supplied, and county health does not have a decision-making voice on the basis on which those allocations are being made. We do know that Maricopa County appears to be being taken care of very nicely. In fact, one option being suggested to our residents is to make an appointment up there and drive up. It might be quicker than waiting on the state to get us enough of a supply to increase the pace of our local rollout.
The Star had a story on Saturday that reported on the TCC vaccination site. The focus of the story was on how last Friday went. Because of a glitch in the TMC registration software, only about 130 people were registered for shots on Friday. It happens. They had about 1,100 doses ready to distribute. True to the media’s desire to find a negative spin, the article included the statement, “it’s an example of what can go wrong as Pima County’s health department works to get thousands of community members vaccinated.”
The reality is that what happened on Friday was city staff, in coordination with the county, pivoted on a dime when they were advised of the TMC problem. Calls immediately went out to teachers, health care workers, seniors, transit workers, public safety workers, and others. By the end of the day, none of the doses went unused, and over 1,000 community members received a vaccination. The article also failed to mention the dozens of volunteers, along with reassigned city workers who spent hours on-site helping get people signed up, managing the line, answering questions, and generally making lemonade out of the situation. The easy route would have been to do the 130 people who were registered and come back Saturday to pick up where they left off. We at the Ward 6 office are grateful to Andy Squire and Lane Mandel from the city manager’s office, and to the city workers and volunteers who stepped up and made Friday a success. It’s an example of what can go right when people see a challenge as an opportunity and act on it.
We’re in the 1B testing now. Those groups are shown in the table below. The groupings are established by the state. If this seems very top-down, it’s because it is. Pima County health is doing the best they can with the fractured information flow they’re trying to navigate.
|
Based on our current vaccination rate, right now, the County has about a 10 day supply of vaccines. As I mentioned above, many sites aren’t comfortable setting appointments for dates beyond when we know the doses will be available. So the registration process is extended as the County learns more about dose quantities committed by the state.
Here’s the current statewide progress, taken from the Bloomberg COVID19 Tracker. Nationwide, 6.4 doses have been given per 100 people. Arizona is still lagging the rest of the country.
Use this link to get registered. It’s good for each of the various vaccination sites that are open.
Volunteer opportunities are still available. That’s for both health care trained people, and for general work. The logistics of operating one of the sites includes all sorts of skills. Please use this link if you’d like to sign up as a volunteer. They’re asking people to commit for at least a week, so they have a continuity of people and aren’t retraining someone new every day.
There’s also a link you’ll find near the bottom of that page to donate blood through the Red Cross. They’ve got a significant need. The Pima County health people are actively partnering with Red Cross to keep the blood supply in our hospitals where it needs to be.
And I don’t want to inundate you with links, but this one is very cool. It’s called the Pima Love Notes project. It’s a way for you to hand-write a note to someone who’s isolated in a long term care setting. That can be a patient or staff. They all need to know they haven’t been forgotten by those of us who are still fortunate enough to have the liberty of being out and about.
|
On the site, you’ll find printable cards. Here are a couple of examples on the right- and yes, you can download them in both English and in Spanish.
Also on the site is a lengthy list of care facilities that are involved with this project. Handwrite the note and send it in. Somebody at the receiving end will have something to smile about when they see your greeting. It’s a great way to ‘buy ahead’ some love to people you don’t know.
Back to the data. I pulled this table below from the state website. It’s the county by county comparison on vaccine distribution. Pima County’s vaccination rate per 100,000 is still near the top among all counties in Arizona. As you can see, nobody is beyond Phase 1B yet.
|
In Pima County, we’ve administered roughly 70,000 vaccines, and we’ve had just under 100,000 COVID cases. That’s 170,000 people who may have some level of immunity. Our population in Pima County is about 1.1 million. Herd immunity is in the 65% - 75% range. We’re at 15%. It’s progress, with a long way to go.
If you need a hand with the registration process, please call 222.0119. Things change every day with this program, so don’t hesitate to call them if you’re unsure at any point in the process.
Masks
The vaccines will not be widely distributed until early summer, at the soonest. The CDC and pretty much all serious health care professionals are saying that until we get the vaccines out to a high percentage of the public, mask wearing, avoiding large crowds and social distancing remain the most important things you can do to prevent community spread. It may be a redundant message, but every week I receive messages about people in large groups, students at off-campus bars, or general reports of people just ignoring the mask requirements. The court threw out the 10 pm curfew. The mask mandate remains in place.
In Kansas, they conducted a study and found that counties that complied with their state mask mandate saw a drop in virus spread. In Kansas, counties can opt-out of the state mandate. Those that did saw their virus spread increase by 100% in the weeks after the state mandated masks be worn. The very simple message is that they work. Please continue to show your respect for others and wear a mask when out in public where distancing isn’t possible.
4th Avenue Street Fair
One group that’s doing its part in mitigating spread continues to be the 4th Avenue Merchants Association (FAMA.) Last week they sent out an announcement confirming the cancellation of the spring 4th Avenue Street Fair. That makes 2 in a row for them, both due to the pandemic. And in both cases, they did the socially responsible thing. Despite the serious financial impact it has on the Avenue.
Each Fair attracts hundreds of artists and craft workers. It attracts thousands of people to the Avenue. There is no way they could conduct an event like that and get close to following the COVID guidelines. So high marks to our friends on the Avenue. The shops are open, so please make a point of doing some take-out to help them through this mess.
Mark your calendar – forever the optimist, the December Street Fair is scheduled for December 10th through the 12th.
Crushed Glass on 4th Avenue
Anita Goodrich runs a very cool local company called Bottle Rocket. You can find her at www.bottlerocketaz.com. I met her when she called to talk about the glass crushing I’ve been doing out in the W6 garage. She has visited several times, headed off with buckets of your crushed bottles, and last weekend installed these benches outside of Pop-Cycle on 4th Avenue. So what? The benches are made out of the bottles that may have started in your refrigerator.
The colored flecks you see in the bench are small chunks of glass that didn’t go through my crusher. You see, Anita also gets bottles and takes a sledgehammer to them, leaving the residue, which is the larger pieces that you can see. They’re what gives the character to the products. The ‘sand’ she gets from me is the fill for the mortar. This is a photo of one of her tabletops.
If you go to the website, you’ll also see examples of smaller objects. They include pet bowls, candles, planters, and a bunch more.
|
I wanted to share this with you so you can see the ‘reuse’ part of the whole recycle cycle. And to introduce you to a local entrepreneur who's doing her part to keep the economy going while walking the environmental walk. Visit Anita’s site. You’ll be impressed.
Neighbors Care Alliance
Early in the pandemic, I held a Zoom with representatives of the Pima Council on Aging (PCOA.) The topic was social isolation and its effects. As the year progressed, those effects have only gotten more intense for many people. And PCOA has continued their great work in support of our seniors.
The Neighbors Care Alliance (NCA) is a network of neighborhood volunteers that are loosely sponsored by PCOA. The volunteers provide a wide variety of support activities for seniors. That includes things like running errands, delivering meals, helping with phone calls, visitation, yard work. Anything you do during your normal daily activities but can’t do if you’ve got some physical or transportation limitations.
PCOA is the program administrator. It’s about neighbors connecting with neighbors, but the folks at PCOA help get them coordinated through the NCA program. If you are interested in volunteering, or if your neighborhood would like to get some help organizing your own effort, please get in touch with PCOA. Your direct point of contact will be Debbie Rich. You can find her at drich@pcoa.org.
Sunshine Mile District
And this quick note – in what I’m hoping will be the final zoning examiner hearing on the Sunshine Mile District, the continuation of the prior meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 4th at 6 pm. It’ll be online again, and you can sign onto the meeting through this website; https://www.tucsonaz.gov/pdsd/zoning-examiner.
This is the 2 mile segment of Broadway that runs from Euclid to Country Club. The RTA package called for a substantially wider cross-width than what we’re ending up with. That’s good. The 150’ was neither needed nor did it make sense from the standpoint of how people are traveling now and the amenities that would have been eliminated with such a wide road. The Sunshine Mile District is an optional zoning overlay that will help preserve buildings and offer incentives for development that respects the preservation goal. I know lots of you have been following this process for well over 7 years. I’m hopeful that we’re nearing the end and that the result will have made all of our efforts worth the time invested.
Small Cell Poles – 5G Technology
The frustration over the installation of ‘small’ cell poles continues. I put ‘small’ in quote marks because when they’re located in the Right of Way outside your house, they’re anything but ‘small’ in appearance. And now we’re seeing more and more of the TEP meter boxes, along with the 5’ tall, orange and white PVC ‘warning’ posts. This is a photo I took of the mess at Mabel and Olson. What a beautiful home, and what an ugly addition to the streetscape out their front window. It’s what’s coming to your area unless we can get some regulatory relief, from the feds first and then from the state.
And if you have an eagle eye, you’ll also note the escooter parked in the middle of the sidewalk up the road.
In the course of responding to these poles and boxes, I’ve been looking for legal ways to at least slow down the permitting process and get more public input. That input is right now severely truncated by FCC rules and state pre-emption.
One way I’ve been asked to achieve this slow-down is by simply having the city impose a moratorium on new poles until we get some regulatory relief from upstream. Our city attorney’s office is pretty clear – we are proscribed by law from instituting a pause on installing more poles. This is the relevant section from state law:
G. An authority may not:
3. Institute, either expressly or de facto, a moratorium on filing, receiving, or processing applications or issuing permits or other approvals, if any, for the collocation of a small wireless facility.
There have also been several people asking for us to take a position on these poles based on their health effects. Right now, there’s a case being heard in the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals that is directly touching on the health issue. Until that is resolved, we cannot even consider health as a part of issuing permits. We cannot hold up permits for conditions not allowed by the FCC.
Please continue contacting our office if you see blue staking going on around your home and you feel it’s for one of these poles. While we cannot prevent them – and the reality is consumer demand is causing their arrival – we have had some limited success with Verizon in relocating poles if we’re able to catch it early enough in their planning process.
You also have three other options. One is to reach out to Senators Kelly and Sinema. They can work on our behalf to change the federal pre-emption. And there is nothing that prevents people from registering their concerns directly with the FCC. You can use this link to do that: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us. And finally, there are still some state level issues they’ll need to address once the feds lift their own pre-emption. Use this link to get ahold of state legislators: https://www.azleg.gov/findmylegislator. The state bill that needs to be amended is HB2365.
|
CROWN Act
A little over a year ago, I saw on the news a story of a young black kid who was made to cut his locks before the local New Jersey sports authority would allow him to wrestle.
I can only imagine the humiliation that caused for the guy. It was degrading, and I’m actually sorry he complied – and that his opponent didn’t speak up in his support. Look at the expression of disgust his teammate has on his face. His coach is being supportive, but support would have been for the entire team to walk out of the meet and walk down to the school board to demand change. But they cut his hair, and the tournament went on. That should not happen in wrestling or in any other venue, whether it be athletic, employment, or social. The CROWN Act is responsive to exactly that concern.
Nikki and I have asked for a study session so the City of Tucson can take a public position on respecting peoples’ choice of hairstyle without fear of being discriminated against. Here’s the agenda request memo:
 Here’s the reality. This will affect mostly black women. The results of the Dove survey speak volumes. Look at the response to the statement, “I have to change my hair from its natural state to fit in at the office.” Eighty percent of black women said they’ve felt that. It should not be.
In Tucson – everywhere, the message should be you’re free to come to work and be yourself. I have no doubt the rest of the mayor and council will be fully supportive of this change. I’m hopeful it leads to a statewide ban on this form of discrimination.
More on this in the weeks to come. I’m grateful to the representatives of the local NAACP for their active support in this effort.
COVID on College Campuses
I’ve shared quite a bit about the UA’s lax approach to requiring all students, including those taking online classes but living off-campus, to test as a condition of matriculation at the UA. A recent survey by Third Way and New America affirms that students also feel their institutions have not responded forcefully enough. Many students are serving as caregivers in their homes. That cohort has an even larger fear of contracting COVID than students who aren’t in that situation. And yet, the survey shows students across the demographic board are losing faith in institutional leadership.
Another result from the survey is a feeling that the cost of higher education is not worth what students are paying. Bloated salaries, buyouts for failed coaches, and excessive debt service on facility upgrades are a part of the cost structure for running a university. When he arrived on campus, UA President Robbins made several public statements bemoaning the fact that he had taken a significant pay reduction to come to the UA. He’s paid over a million dollars, has a healthy fringe package, and lives in a house newly purchased by the taxpayers. Students are paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend the school and leaving with debt. If tuitions had been what they are today when I started college, there’s no way I’d have been able to go. That reality is reflected in the survey results.
Embedded in the results is 55% of Latinx, and 59% of Black students agree with the statement “the college only cares about the money it can get from me.” When I was trying to get the mayor and council to adopt my non-binding Resolution about mandatory testing, UA leadership lobbied with the message that it would hurt recruiting. In fact, showing students and their parents that you care enough about their health to test – or to delay returning for the spring semester – sends the positive message that health matters more than money.
This is Mark Richter. He was a Molecular-Bioscience professor at the U Kansas. He died recently from COVID.
Each week I include one of these as a way of making sure we don’t forget that the data I share is all tied to real people. Mark was 69 years old. He suffered from the disease for 7 weeks before it took him. It kills award-winning teachers like Mark, health care workers, bus drivers, and grocery store clerks. How a university affects the surrounding community matters.
|
And it takes people such as 44-year-old Chia-Kuang Tsung.
He was a Chemistry professor at Boston College until last week when he, too died from COVID. His last days on campus were right before the holiday break. He never made it back.
The Rutgers U President has tested positive for COVID. He’s now quarantined. He believes he contracted the virus while away from campus. Right now, his symptoms appear to be mild.
The L.A. Times reported last week that 245 students at UCSD have tested positive for COVID since they returned in January. They’ve also had 61 staff and faculty test positive. “Chip” Schooley is the professor of medicine who they’ve got overseeing their COVID response. His comment was, “85% of the on-campus students who are infected went home for the holiday and are testing positive during the incubation period following their return. Going home during a raging pandemic is a dangerous thing.” Correct. This is why all students, not just those coming onto campus, must be tested as a condition of taking classes, even online.
The Baylor women’s basketball coach, Kim Mulkey, got COVID last month. When she got back to the sidelines, she was pretty clear in her thoughts about how this is being handled. Her quote says it well - “The answer is this – the season will continue on. It’s called the almighty dollar. The NCAA has to have the almighty dollar from the men’s tournament. The almighty dollar is more important than the health and welfare of me, the players or anybody else.”
Inside Higher Education had a report last week that outlined how much money various schools are getting from the federal support bill passed in December. Here’s the graphic showing what’s coming to the UA:
|
The whole relief bill was for $20.1B. ASU is getting $112M, and NAU will receive $37M. Those amounts might be slightly reduced if the school is paying an ‘endowment tax,’ but they’re significant numbers. Do I come to this with an attitude? Yes – after lobbying to defeat my mandatory testing Resolution, the UA ‘eliminated’ my position. I’ve spoken with several of their donors who agree that that personnel action, if nothing else, is a bad business decision. A couple of the top guys in the athletics department have allowed this to become personal. It’s really about embracing free speech, especially on a topic as immediately important as a virus that is killing local Tucsonans.
I continue to believe the UA can, and should have been more aggressive with respect to mandatory testing of off-campus students, and that inviting students back into this community prior to our getting COVID under control was irresponsible and shows a poor grasp of prioritizing the institutional role in the community.
Impact of Ducey Tax Cuts
While big dollar decisions are on the table, I’ll share an update on the possible impacts the city will feel from the proposed Ducey income tax cut. Cities and towns split 15% of all income taxes collected by the state. The Governor has proposed reducing income taxes by $1.2B over the next three years. Ducey believes the attraction that will have for business relocations to Arizona will offset any losses. Based on the projections, seeing that balance in a net positive way for our budget will be a lift.
The proposal is to cut income taxes by $200M next year, increase that to $400M in fiscal year 23, and increase it to a $600M cut in ‘fy24. Nothing has been agreed to – it's his proposal that’s headed for the state legislature.
Based on the 15% formula, each $200M chunk means a $30M loss for cities and towns. The League of Cities and Towns has prepared a spreadsheet that shows the impact on each jurisdiction. This is the line I pulled from that summary for Tucson:
 Having gone through 11 budget cycles as a council member, I can say with some confidence that a loss of $2.8M in year 1, and $5.6M and $8.5M in the next two years will put the mayor and council, and city finance staff in an extremely tough position. A combined $17M hit will have to be offset by some extremely significant new income streams. I don’t believe expecting businesses to file into the state in amounts that meet those income losses is a realistic expectation. We’ll soon see how the Arizona state legislature responds.
New COVID Variant Strains
Meanwhile, the new COVID strains continue to evolve throughout the country. It’s called the B117 COVID variant strain. This map is the most current one I could find. It’s effective January 22nd, so my guess is more states have discovered the new variant of COVID. The dark blue is where the new virus has been seen. Since Arizona is surrounded, expect it to be here soon. Pima County health does test samples for the new variant, so we’re watching out for it.
What do we know about the new strain? One thing BBC News reported over the weekend is that it’s potentially more deadly than the one we’ve been living with since last March. They conclude that by comparing fatality rates of people with the old COVID vs. people with the new strain. It’s a small sample, so this is just a projection for now. The science is pretty clear though, that the new strain spreads more easily than old COVID. That will place an increased impact on our health care institutions if/when it arrives in numbers. In Brazil, in a community that had ‘achieved’ herd immunity with over 70% of its population having had COVID, they began seeing another surge. They studied the cases, and it appears based on their small sample that the new strain might be doing an end-run on the assumed immunity people have from the antibodies formed once they’ve had COVID. That means re-infections with the new strain may be possible.
The good news is that our vaccines appear to be effective with the new variant, so please continue trying to get registered and get your shot. The scientists are still learning as they go, and this new strain of COVID is too early in its development for hard conclusions to be drawn.
This is the rear view of the scoreboard at Michigan Stadium. I grew up there and have been to the Big House dozens of times. Note in the map I shared above how the new strain is active in the state of Michigan. Last weekend it was reported that all sports at the UM are on pause for at least 2 weeks because they’ve discovered 5 cases of the new variant within the Michigan athletics department.
All of their staff and student athletes were told by the state health department to quarantine until at least February 7th. With the higher infectivity rate for the new strain, this could have widespread implications for the continuation of intercollegiate sports.
|
COVID Risk in Arizona
Last week I opened this section by saying, “over the weekend, the state of Arizona passed 11,000 COVID deaths.” We’re now over 12,000 deaths in the state. More than 1,600 of those are from Pima County. We were at 622 back in November when we did the Week of Mourning at Himmel Park. In between those dates were the holidays, and the UA reopening.
Last week the Harvard Global Health map showed North Dakota and a sliver of Oregon in the Orange risk category. This week the state of Maine is actually in the Green – good to go. And a few other areas of the country have moved to Orange. But this is Arizona:
Do not let down your guard.
In Pima County, the infection rate by zip code remains the same as last week. The hot spots are in the south, southwest, and in the ‘05, up in the Miracle Mile/Grant area.
The State Department of Education continues recommending all-virtual right now for teaching protocols in Pima County. Here’s the chart from their dashboard. Remember, they track with a 2 week lag, so don’t expect their recommendation to change in the next couple of weeks.
 The 9 tracking metrics for reopening are still not looking good. These are the 9 factors some are looking to for expanding in-person classes on the UA campus. The target is having all 9 in either the yellow or in the green for 2 consecutive weeks. We’re not close to being there. In fact, the charts are identical to what they were last week.
 You have to dig a little on the Pima County COVID site to find these tables, but this link will take you directly to them: https://webcms.pima.gov/cms/One.aspx?portalId=169&pageId=568644.
The State of Arizona is still leading the country in terms of percent cases p/100,000, but the numbers are improving somewhat over last week. The Covid Tracking Project had Arizona at 112 people p/100,000 last week. This week, we’re at 98. The national total is 53 cases per 100,000 people. But the actual number of new infections is still very serious. Here are the raw data behind those figures.
Our 19% ‘drop’ in cases still shows nearly 7,000 new cases in the state over that 7 day average. Is the trend in the right direction? Certainly. But an increase of 7,000 new COVID cases is anything but good news for families and our health care workers. For Pima County, here are our daily new case counts for the past week on the right.
By anybody’s standards, that’s not a good news picture. Remember, when the state was shut down last spring Pima County had 42 total cases.
Below is our statewide map. The infection numbers are why Harvard has the whole state in the high risk category.
|
Finally, the infection rate. Last week I misstated what the Rt value means. An Rt of 1.0 means every infected person is infecting one other person. That’s why we need to get below 1, and eventually to zero. Last week the state was at 1.29, and Pima County was at 1.24. The UA area followed at 1.20. Now the UA area is above the county and the state. Here are the current Rt infectivity values:
I’m going to end with exactly the same message I ended with last week. Tucson residents who are living out of the area email me and want to know if Tucson is a safe environment to return to right now. I share the newsletter with them. The data speaks for itself. And it’s pretty consistently bad everywhere, so hopping on a plane to come back to Tucson right now isn’t probably a great idea if escaping COVID is the goal.
The State Department of Health site is at this link: www.azdhs.gov.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
|
