Register to Vote
With our unique odd-year election cycle, we in Tucson are in an election cycle every year. Well, it’s ‘every year’ again, and yes, we’re in an election cycle.
The primary election for city council begins this week. Ballots will be mailed out starting on July 7th. The actual primary is August 3rd. Today, Tuesday is your last day to register. There are candidates challenging each other for the seat in Ward 3, and I have 2 challengers in the Democratic primary in Ward 6. Please use this link to get registered so you can take part in the primary.
On primary election day there will be voting locations open in each of the wards with an election. And starting on July 12th, the city clerk’s office will have election hours every weekday. If you go to this site, scroll down to “Find a Polling Place” and click on it, it’ll direct you to the nearest one to you. And of course, you can mail in your ballot as soon as you receive it in the mail.
Our relationship with the Gootters through the Ward 6 office goes back nearly 10 years. Ann, from my office has an even longer relationship with the family, and with the Foundation. The Gootters have been extremely generous in donating Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) to not only the City of Tucson, but to jurisdictions throughout the region.
This is Andrew Messing, President of the Gootter Foundation accepting thanks from Chief Magnus. They recently donated another 25 AED’s to TPD, bringing the department total to 100. These are very simply life-saving gifts for which we are eternally grateful.
Steve Gootter was a 42-year-old guy who did what I do every morning – head out the door for a run. He was a non-smoker, was athletically active, and had no history of heart disease. On the morning of February 10th, 2005, he suffered a sudden cardiac event during his run and never returned home. Since that time, the Gootter family has made it their mission to distribute AEDs as a preventative measure, hopefully saving others the tragic loss they’ve suffered.
We at the Ward 6 office join Chief Magnus and the rest of the Tucson Police Department in thanking Andrew and the Gootter family for this wonderful gift.
Free Toys
And another example of simple human kindness is this free toy give away. A couple of weeks ago I had Lt. Margo Susco from TPD highlighted for donating a pallet of toys to the Alitas kids. Now through the TPD partnership with the Toys for Tots program, Gap Ministries and Good360, hundreds of other Tucson children will receive free toys.
The first give away happens this Saturday, July 10th in the Hi Corbett field parking lot. The event will begin at 10am and will go until all the toys have been given away. The toys are suitable for kids in the 2-12 age range. It’s all a drive-thru event, so you won’t have to be hunting and pecking on a sort of shopping outing.
On Saturday, July 17th the same event will take place in the GEICO parking lot – 3050 S. MLK Jr Way. That event will start at 9am and will follow the same drill – drive thru, and open as long as toys are available.
We at the Ward 6 office are grateful for the hard work Margo and her partners on this have invested in the young people of our community.
Ward 6 Survey
I want to start by thanking Tom Heath for inviting me to an interview on his KXCI radio show “Life Along the Streetcar”. During the show we discussed the Ward 6 survey, your priorities, and the upcoming Zoom survey meetings we’re hosting. Check out Tom’s show on our community radio station:
The more than 800 responses we received is a testament to Ward 6 residents’ involvement in our community. I shared this graph last week showing your priorities. We’ll be touching on all of them during our survey Zooms.
Our first virtual online meeting is coming Thursday, July 8th. It’ll run from 5:30 until 7pm. Our topics will be water security, climate, and the environment. I’ve invited our transportation director Diana Alarcon to join us for the environment piece. What’s the tie-in?
In Pima County nearly a third of our CO2 is from transit. Diana will be speaking on our Move Tucson and Complete Streets initiatives, and how they tie in with the goal of reducing vehicular traffic, and supporting alternate modes. It’d be great if you can carve out the time to take part. Here’s the Zoom link for the meeting.
Mark your calendar for July 20th and 27th for the 2nd and 3rd of these survey discussions. I’ll share more about those in upcoming newsletters.
Thanks very much for your active participation in the survey. It was an important tool validating that we’re tracking with the issues of greatest importance to you.
PFAS
Last week we had between 95 and 100 people included in the PFAS Zoom call I hosted. Tucson Water was integral to helping me pull together the participants. In fact, I asked – they delivered. So thanks to the water staff for being such an important part of organizing the meeting.
Also on the call were representatives from the Air Force (DOD), Arizona Air National Guard (ANG), the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), our Tucson Water director and our top city attorney water authority. Thanks to all of them for their presentations.
There are 2 primary locations we’re monitoring for contaminants. When you see the acronym PFAS, it refers to a combination of several chemicals contained in the per and poly fluorinated substance chemical family. We are monitoring for at least 4 of them, and our self-imposed limit before we shut down a well is 18 parts per trillion (ppt.) The EPA has a health advisory limit of 70 ppt. Keep those numbers in mind.
The two areas we’re monitoring are out by DM, and over by the ANG operations at Tucson International Airport. At the ANG site we’ve seen contamination levels in excess of 13,000 ppt. That has forced us to shut down a treatment plant while we work on other solutions. Those solutions will cost in the tens of millions of dollars to implement. When I asked the ANG folks about stepping up and funding, they said they’d have to run that up their chain of command.
The other site is out by DM. ADEQ is helping us drill some test monitoring stations. They've come to the table with just over $3M for that work. Tucson Water has already spent in excess of $20M monitoring the problem. We’re grateful to ADEQ for this help. When I asked the DOD representatives about funding, they said they’d have to run that up their chain of command.
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This chart shows how the monitoring is being handled out by DM. The base is to the right (south) in the picture. The first “Public Supply Well” shown just inside city limits has been shut down. You can see the PFAS contaminants in the dark blue, significant enough at over 1,100 ppt to cause the well to be pulled out of use. Shutting down wells is clearly not a strategy for addressing this.
ADEQ is helping us drill and put into operation a pilot treatment facility. They estimate it’ll be done in the fall of ‘22. Originally it was due to be in operation this month but due to supply chain issues, they’re over a year behind schedule. And this is a pilot treatment plant, not the full ‘solution’.
The DOD has said they’ll study the problem until the end of 2024. When I asked what their solution would be when (not if) we find excess contaminants ahead of that timeline, this was their proposed remedy:
I wish that was a joke, but they said it during the Zoom, and it has already been done in other jurisdictions.
I truly hope the people who have very naively said I shouldn’t be involved with this since “DM isn’t even in Ward 6” have learned something about the issue. One of them was even trolling the Zoom call. This is the most important issue the region is facing. That DM PFAS plume is immediately south of our central well field. The treatment plant we just shut down had been serving over 60,000 customers. This issue matters deeply.
I texted Senator Kelly and thanked him for his advocacy. He told me they’re trying to get funding in either the infrastructure bill being negotiated, or into the National Defense Authorization Act. This is a multi-billion dollar national issue, and a multi-tens of millions of dollar local and regional issue. Our litigation against 3M will likely plod along – certainly at a slower pace than the plume migration.
I’ll stay on this topic for as long as I’m in office. PFAS is called the ‘forever chemical’ because it doesn’t just dissipate in the water. The topic isn’t going away on its own.
Move Tucson Survey
One more survey for you to consider. Move Tucson is our long range transportation planning guide. It’s in the formative stages, and we’re doing public outreach to get your input. The timing of our putting this plan together is important. We’re also in the early stages of considering whether to take an extension of Prop 101 back to the ballot next May, and we’re in talks with the Pima Association of Governments about extending the RTA ½ cent sales tax. Each of these efforts have similarities, so we need to be careful to avoid overlaps, and to choose which to put the most effort into gaining your support.
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Move Tucson is a combination of transportation-related projects. It’s not all just ‘how do we move cars around.’ For example, we’re gathering input on what are called catalyst corridors. In contrast to some of the older RTA corridors, we are explicitly planning for multiple modes co-existing along corridors and considering what happens outside the curb lines. We’re breaking those projects down into simply modernizing existing corridors without changing the number of lanes, lane reduction (road diet) projects, and some where expansion is warranted. There are 122 catalyst projects with a combined budget target of over $1.8B. So this is a big effort, and your input is important. This map shows some of what you’ll see when you open the survey tool. It will direct you through with prompts so you can comment on any of the projects you choose.
So far we’ve heard priorities include better ways to travel across town, safety and easier connectivity for all modes of travel, increasing options on how to get around, and of course maintenance, and improving access for people with disabilities. You can browse your way through the survey, or just highlight areas of interest to you. Either way, we’d love to get your thoughts. Here’s a link that’ll take you to the Move Tucson plan.
Our transportation folks are also hosting a couple of virtual town halls to present on Move Tucson. Here’s the information on those opportunities.
Eviction Moratorium
Last week the CDC extended their eviction moratorium until the end of July. That one month extension is an important opportunity for people who may be facing eviction due to COVID-related issues. It’s key though that if you’re in that group that you be proactive, and reach out to your landlord and work together on keeping you housed. If you ignore it, it’s not just going to go away as an issue.
This link will take you to a very important site. It contains access to the CDC Declaration Form – a form you must file in order to be considered for protection. The site includes the form in a wide option of languages, so please look it over and pass it along to others who may not be fluent in English.
There are funds available that pay a year in reverse, and 3 months’ rent ahead. So landlords benefit from getting involved in the program. That’s 15 months of rent they’d otherwise be losing out on if they move forward with an eviction. And through the program we keep families in their homes.
The M&C have extended our eviction moratorium until the end of this calendar year. But that only relates to housing we own and operate. The link I have above relates to all housing. Please pass this along to people you know who may be facing the loss of their homes.
ByFusion Plastic Blocks
In anticipation of this week’s M&C meeting, I hosted a meeting last week that included all of the potential players in the plastic block program. On the call we had several members of my staff, a representative from the mayor’s office, our city manager and people from his office, our CFO, the head of city procurement, our planning director and top building official, our environmental services director and his team, representatives from Republic Services, and of course the ByFusion team. It was mainly a productive meeting.
I wanted Republic Services to participate because they’re under contract to run our material recycle facility (MRF.) They’re our recyclables handler. The Republic company motto is all about the environment – note the logo on the truck:
My hope going into the meeting was that they’d see our interest in reusing plastic as being consistent with ‘protecting our blue planet’ and their participation would be more than simply ‘protecting their bottom line.’ After our meeting I’d say that we still have a ways to go with them. But everyone else on the call was looking for ways to make this work for the community.
Some meeting highlights – ByFusion's folks offered up some grant-funding ideas. We’ll be working with them on some of those. There are both purchase and lease options for the Blocking machine, so our procurement people will need to be in agreement as we move that part of the discussion forward. We all agreed that the most financially lucrative plastic types for Republic are not what we’ll target for this program. That should make partnering a more compelling option for Republic. We also noted there are companies in our local market that produce thousands of pounds of plastics that are not even making it to the MRF. So we’ll explore how to get those groups involved in the program. Nothing lost from the Republic bottom line if we bring them on board.
The plastic blocks have been tested and found to be in compliance with building codes – but the current testing has mostly been finalized for its thermal qualities (insulation). Our planning and building team indicated there are right now some legitimate local uses for the blocks. Those uses can expand once the testing is expanded to weight-bearing capabilities of the blocks. That testing is in process.
Our environmental services team is concerned with maneuvering through this in a way that doesn’t simply result in Republic handing us a bill at the end of every month. Other than the Republic representatives who were on the call, that was everyone else’s goal as well. I didn’t get the sense that anyone on the call outside of Republic was interested in deep-6ing the program while we wait on Republic to live up to their corporate motto. Everyone talked about partnerships and ways to move forward. I’m hopeful that’s what we see at this week’s M&C meeting.
There are plastic blocks available that we can buy from ByFusion right now. We can use those now as a way of demonstrating the practical uses of the product. Think park ramadas or restrooms. Even without the load-bearing testing complete, there are easy ways to frame around the blocks and take the load off from them. We don’t need to allow either that testing or Republic to be bottlenecks in moving this idea along. At the same time, testing for load-bearing capacity will continue, our hunt for grants to offset purchase costs will continue, and we’ll engage more with Republic to find ways of turning the program into one of relationships between groups who are interested in advancing our local zero-waste circular economy. I appreciate everyone who took part in the meeting. Once M&C give direction to staff on how to move this forward, I’m sure we’ll reconvene and advance the program as a local, environmentally progressive idea.
Vaccine Update
Many of the drive-thru vaccination sites are now closing due to lack of use by the public. The county is continuing to partner with FEMA on the mobile clinics, as well as partnering with local pharmacies and doctors’ offices to keep the vaccination options widely available. That matters. We’re at close to 60% fully vaccinated of the population that’s eligible. We’re under 50% fully vaccinated of all people who live in Pima County. It has become very clear that unvaccinated people are susceptible to both COVID-19, and more so to the new Delta variant.
Australia was one of the most successful nations in getting out ahead of COVID. But in the past couple of weeks their major urban hub Sydney has gone into a 2 week lock-down, with cases being fueled by the spread of the Delta strain. Other large Australian cities such as Perth and Darwin are also toughening COVID protocols as a result of new outbreaks. Health experts are seeing the community spread where gaps in vaccinations still exist.
In Indonesia they’ve got grave diggers working through the night. Oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. Bangladesh saw spread happen as urban garment workers (akin to our front line workers) returned to rural areas ahead of new lockdowns. The result was spread out into the rural areas. The same stories are reported in South Korea, Israel, China – and Missouri.
As of July 1st, the 7 day COVID infection average in Missouri was 898. Three weeks ago it was 511. They topped out at 1,383 new cases last Thursday. The same is true in Arkansas, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. I’ve been writing a warning to keep an eye on our neighbor Colorado for the past month. Now we should add Utah to that ‘watch list’. Delta appears to be the driver of increases in COVID infections in each of those states.
The remedy? Get vaccinated. Dr. David Kessler is the White House advisor on COVID. He reports that 99% of the current COVID fatalities are from unvaccinated people.
In the past few weeks, Arizona’s COVID case numbers have increased by about 30%. We’ve had 130 Delta strain cases reported. That number is expected to rise. The age group most affected is 20 – 44 years old.
Here are the Pima County health mobile vaccination sites for the upcoming week. For these, you do not need an appointment.
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For the Pima County Health clinics shown below, you should call and make an appointment. But the conditions are not what they were a few months ago when everyone was fighting for a place in the vaccination line. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting signed up for the shot at any of these clinics.
There are lots of options – all free. If you’d like information on the Pima County program specifically, use this link: www.pima.gov/covid19vaccine.
Another vaccination opportunity you’ll have is Saturday, July 17th out at the zoo. From 5:30 until 8:30 our partners from Pima County health will be in the grassy activity area behind the carousel administering shots – for free. Also for free is the music they’ve asked me to bring. That’ll be from 6-8. It’d be great to have a crowd stop by and get the vaccinations, enjoy a nice evening out at the zoo and maybe even sing along if you know the tunes.
At the start of June we had 130 new cases reported in Pima County. In successive weeks that number has increased to 256, then to 323, and last week we had 348 new cases reported in Pima County. The current trend is certainly worth watching.
These graphics show the June COVID rate of infectivity trend in both Arizona and in Pima County. Remember, anything above 1.0 means the virus is spreading in our community. You can see that we’ve reversed the progress that was made through April and May. A couple of neighborhood groups I met with last week were talking internally about when to start meeting in person again. If you’re vaccinated, the health experts say it’s safe. If not, well you can see what has been happening in the past month.
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Both hospital and other front-line workers deserved better from the Governor and leadership at the UA on the issue of mandatory vaccines. They require MMR vaccinations. Only politics can account for their failure to do the same with the widely available, and hugely effective COVID vaccinations. Let’s hope we don’t see another fall surge when students return.
Supreme Court and the NCAA
Throughout June I’ve been writing about the runup to the July 1st deadline for the NCAA to figure out how to allow student athletes to make some money off from their names, images and likenesses (NIL.) That was the date several state laws were to go into effect allowing students to sign financial deals using their NIL for a cash option. Well, the date came, and at about 12:01 am on the 1st, these twin sisters from the Fresno State basketball team signed one of the first NIL deals.
(photo credit to Samuel Marshal Photography.)
You were expecting to see the star quarterback from Alabama, or some other higher profile athlete? You will. The Cavinder twins from Fresno are already a thing on Tik Tok, so Boost Mobile took advantage of their social media exposure, flew them to N.Y. and signed a lucrative deal. Here they are already on a big screen in Times Square.
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The NCAA does not allow student athletes to earn any money outside of the scholarship and tuition benefits they get for signing on at a given school. The NCAA also makes billions of dollars from their media contracts, using the student athletes to market the product. The Supreme Court recently ruled that’s an anti-trust violation and that the NCAA can no longer prohibit them from capitalizing on their NIL options. Others who are also taking advantage of the new-found freedom; Florida State QB, and Miami QB McKenzie Milton and D’Eriq King have co-founded a business that’ll assist other student athletes in finding speaking engagements, Florida State lineman Dillan Gibbons has formed a GoFundMe to help a friend who has an incurable disease, Iowa basketball player Jordon Bohannon is getting paid to appear at 4th of July fireworks, Nebraska volleyball player Lexi Sun is branding some clothing, and 5 members of the Jackson State football team have signed a deal with 3 Kings grooming products. Here’s Dillan and his buddy as they start the GoFundMe.
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This will now grow. Congress is looking at national legislation, so all colleges and universities are playing by the same rules. As it stands, the NCAA has told student athletes to sort of behave as if they were allowed to sign NIL deals, even if their individual state hasn’t come on board yet. That’s only going to lead to confusion – and recruiting advantages until this is sorted out.
That ‘new day’ for college sports that I’ve been writing about is now here. Plan on seeing some of the student athletes you see on the tube now advertising products and being paid for the use of the fame as a local athlete.
Friends of Himmel Park
You don’t need to be a student athlete to get involved in a more local fund-raising effort. The Friends of Himmel Park are a group of Ward 6 residents who have combined efforts to raise money for some of the improvements you see at Himmel. They were active in the new entry landscaping at the library, mural work on the pool wall, and a tile bench also located over by the pool. Here’s a portion of the Joe Pagac mural you can find on the west wall of the Himmel Park pool:
They're now working on replacing the bench with a new one inlaid with tilework. And since this is a community park, they’re reaching out to the community for support. If you can help the group, please email our Parks Outreach person Sierra Boyer at sierra.boyer@tucsonaz.gov. She can get any donations into the Friends of Himmel funds that are being maintained in the Parks Foundation.
We love it when the community steps up and helps with these community assets. The Friends of Himmel are one example of that sort of all-for-one spirit.
Harvard Global Health Institute
This week’s Harvard Global map shows the acceleration of the Delta variant in the states I named up above. It’s certainly not great that 2 of them are on our border. In this graphic I’ve left the image so you can see where all the hot spots are developing – and also see how Pima County is trending shadowed on top of the map. Remember, Missouri is now up at 898 for their 7 day average for new daily cases. While we’re far below that, our infectivity rate is still above 1.0, and Delta is present in Arizona and in Pima County.
Here’s our statewide map. These are cumulative numbers. As noted above, they’re slowly increasing once again.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik Council Member, Ward 6 ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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