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Ward 6 Survey
We had around 50 people taking part in our first report-out on the Ward 6 survey last week. It was a very good conversation about PFAS, environmental policies, and how our transportation projects are moving forward – with a smattering of other questions tossed in. It’s all fair game.
I want to thank our transportation/mobility director Diana Alarcon for joining us and sharing her thoughts. She’ll also be a part of the upcoming roundtable – the second report-out on the survey. In this one, we’ll touch on 5G, development/permitting, and roadway construction. Roadway construction will include a presentation on our Complete Streets program, demonstrating that what happens outside the curb lines is a key to good corridor development. It’s about more than just asphalt.
Here’s the graph showing how the more than 800 responses to the survey fell in terms of priority areas. You can see that each of the areas we’ll be covering in the next Zoom had between 60% and 80% of you calling them either important or very important.
We’ll host the next roundtable on Tuesday, July 20th. Same as before, we’ll go from 5:30 pm until 7. Here’s a link for the event. Please share it widely so others can take part. We’ll end this summer series a week later, on the 27th. I’ll share more on that one next week.
Meeting ID: 864 6184 1023
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.
If you’d like to take a look at our July 8th roundtable, this Youtube link will take you to it: https://youtu.be/CO4cybvj1lE. We’ll record the upcoming Zooms too.
Move Tucson
I’m going to include a few survey opportunities in the newsletter this week. Just click the links I’m providing, and you can share your input. The first is a repeat of the invitation to take part in the Move Tucson survey. It’s the transportation and mobility planning document we’re forming, and your thoughts are an important piece of us setting that direction. You’ll hear a description of it in Diana Alarcon’s portion of the roundtable Youtube that I’ve included above.
Move Tucson is going to be our 20-year transportation plan. We hope to finalize a project list this fall. Use this link to look over many of the projects that are being considered – and to offer your thoughts.
There will be 2 open houses – held virtually – that you can take part in to hear more. Tuesday of this week is the first – here's the information on that one:
If you miss that one, we’ll be doing it again on Friday, July 23rd. Save this information to get involved with that one. The material won’t change between meetings, so you don’t need to carve out time twice. And if you’ve got questions ahead of those meetings, please reach out to Patrick Hartley at patrick.hartley@tucsonaz.gov. He’s coordinating the Complete Streets/Move Tucson initiative for the city.
Traffic Fatalities
While I’ve got transportation as the topic, we recently received an update on traffic fatalities in and around the Tucson area. I’m sharing this map to demonstrate that no matter where you live, work or play in the city, there have been fatal car/motorcycle/pedestrian crashes in that location that have caused loss of life.
The causes include excessive speed, impairment (driver and pedestrian,) lots happening at intersections, and many at night. Please be alert when traveling, regardless of how you’re getting around. Somebody else on the road may not be paying attention. We have the data to prove that. Thanks.
PFAS
So far, Tucson Water has spent or committed over $50M on the PFAS issue. That’s for testing, changing filters, the work of shutting down wells – all of the work we’ve funded that should be coming from the DOD, Arizona Air National Guard, and 3M. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has kicked in just over $5M. By the time we’re done remediating this problem, that’ll be a drop in the bucket.
Arizona Representative Tom O’Halleran testified in support of PFAS money last week. In his remarks, he mentioned Tucson and the issue we’re dealing with. He said, “Communities like Tucson have been fighting for years to clean up PFAS and other harmful chemicals; they need our support. Our bill provides some financial support for cities like Tucson, which has been locally funding PFAS cleanup projects for years.” That was during an Energy and Commerce Committee markup of a piece of PFAS legislation called the INVEST in America Act. It’s a $759B piece of legislation that touches many more areas than just PFAS, but it would allow for reimbursement of our costs up to $50M over 2 years. That’d certainly be a help. But our final bill will be much higher.
The INVEST Act would also direct the EPA to establish national drinking water standards for PFAS. One person asked during our survey Zoom last week whether there’s any Superfund money available to help with the costs. Until the EPA designates a maximum contamination level (MCL), there’s no standard for them to measure our contamination against and allocate money. The EPA has a ‘health advisory’ of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFAS. Tucson Water follows an 18 ppt standard before shutting down wells. Out by DM, they tested and found levels over 1,100 ppt. By the ANG, they exceeded 13,000 ppt. We clearly have a problem, and we’re grateful to our congressional delegation for taking note and working for ways to assist. Representative Grijalva was instrumental in getting that funding language into the bill, and Senators Kelly and Sinema and Representatives Kirkpatrick and Gallego are all looking to get similar language into other bills.
We now have 24 wells that have been pulled out of production. In addition to the over $50M we’ve already spent or committed, staff believes we’re looking at another $36M to replace those wells. And every time we have to change out the filters, we rack up another $500K cost.
ADEQ estimates they’ll have a demonstration treatment system (pilot project) up and running late this year. That will show whether or not the pilot project is capturing contaminants and managing the plume. Assuming the pilot system works as hoped, the full-scale treatment system wouldn’t be ready until about the end of next year. The DOD is simply studying the problem – at the speed of government – and hopes to be done with their studies by the end of 2024. While the ADEQ is working closely with our congressional delegation, DOD is off doing their own thing.
Those who have expressed surprise that I’m focused on this because “DM isn’t even in Ward 6” demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of how highly integrated our water system and aquifer is. I’ll stay on this issue as long as I’m chosen by the voters to do this job. It’s the #1 issue we have to contend with.
5th/Craycroft Coalition – Alvernon/Grant Initiative
Another important issue that we’re regularly engaged with is tracking crime that’s happening in your neighborhoods. Crime and law enforcement had 80% of you respond that it’s important or very important. It will be one of the focus areas in our last survey Zoom.
One very effective tool we have in place is multi-neighborhood coalitions who meet with our office and TPD monthly. These are formed based on the Alvernon-Grant Initiative that was begun before I took office in 2009. That group includes residents and businesses from Palo Verde, Garden District, Oak Flower, and Ward 3 neighborhood Dodge Flower. It was first formed to work on what was then a proliferation of drug houses in the area. It has continued meeting and is an important way for TPD to hear from residents what they’re seeing around their homes and businesses. If you live in any of those neighborhoods, reach out to either Ronni Kotwica at paloverdena@gmail.com or Meg Johnson at mmcjohnson@cox.net, and they’ll get you connected with the group.
Another group of neighborhoods engaging together on the topic of local crime activity is the 5th/Craycroft coalition. That includes neighbors from the Duffy, Mitman, Highland Vista, and Sewell neighborhoods. They’re also meeting monthly, currently by Zoom. The best way to get involved with that group is through Stephanie Grande at stephaniegrande@tierraantigua.com.
Our police department is understaffed. So is our 911 center. These neighborhood groups are valuable ways for the people who are patrolling your neighborhood to stay current on what you’re observing. If you’re in a neighborhood that you feel might also benefit from this sort of interaction, please feel free to reach out to my office at ward6@tucsonaz.gov, and we’ll be happy to talk about forming another group or get you involved with one of the current ones if you’re close to either of those areas.
Greyhound Racing
My friend Karyn is my watchdog for all-things-greyhound. Last week she alerted me to a bill that’s making its way through congress that will go a long way towards phasing out greyhound racing in the U.S.
The bill is HR3335. It’s called the Greyhound Protection Act. This is the real action it’s calling for:
In short, it bans gambling over the internet on greyhound racing. That’s where the tracks make their money, so if people can’t go to a sports bar and bet on races going on in, say, Florida, then that track in Florida doesn’t collect their nightly gambling handle. It’s a back doorway of stopping the carnage.
The other part of the abuse of greys contained in the bill is “live lure training or field coursing.” It’s common when training a greyhound to race to use live bait such as rabbits, squirrels, and hares as a way to get the dogs to chase something down the track. You might have heard the announcer say, ‘here comes the rabbit’ when starting a greyhound race. It’s a bunny dangled on a lure that urges the dogs to begin their chase around the track.
In training, they hang a live rabbit or other critter on a post and encourage the dogs to tear it apart – or they let it loose in a pen, and the dogs chase it around and kill it. That’s ‘coursing’. Some people feel that’s ‘sport’ and gamble on that too. HR3335 would ban all of that ‘sport betting.’ If you know a grey, you’d never know that was in their past – they’re such docile and loving animals.
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There’s a National Field Coursing Association that promotes international betting on coursing tournaments. There are a dozen such ‘clubs’ in California alone. They’ve been banned in Scotland and the U.K. for about 20 years. They’re still alive and kicking in the U.S. The greyhound racing dog abuse industry has been losing north of $30M annually in Florida alone as attendance lags. They rely on internet gambling as their lifeline. The animals are the collateral damage.
If you feel as I do and want to see this abusive industry ended, please reach out to all of our congressional delegation and urge them to support HB3335. Just because we were successful in ending it at Tucson Greyhound Park doesn’t mean dogs and their ‘training partners’ aren’t continually suffering at tracks and training facilities around the nation – and the world.
Sunshine Mile
You’ve seen the logo in my newsletter many times. Last week we finally got most of the overlay across the finish line. The Star totally missed our final vote on this important story. What began as a fight with the RTA on an unnecessarily destructive widening of Broadway has now ended with a zoning document that will preserve over 100 historic small reusable businesses, incentivize inclusive zoning for affordable housing, and create residential-scale commercial nodes along the Sunshine Mile that will serve the surrounding neighborhoods. And importantly, that new commercial will cause the corridor to be one people cruise looking for places to stop and shop/eat/recreate - not just drive by on their way to another destination.
A quick refresher – the Broadway widening was an RTA project approved in 2006 that would have resulted in an 8 lane, 150’ wide corridor from Euclid to Country Club. That design would have caused the demolition of well over 100 structures along the north side of the roadway. Many of you joined me in protest. I continue to believe that what the M&C approved was still unnecessarily wide, costly, and does not reflect the traffic need. But our voices got about 25’ of ‘outside the curb’ saved and with it the opportunity to pursue this overlay.
The colors on this overlay map represent different subdistricts along the route. Each has its own design standards. That’s because each subdistrict has its own unique characteristics – residential adjacencies, mainly commercial, industrial – a mixture that called for a flexible and more creative approach to zoning the corridor than just a one-size-fits-all approach. That was achieved.
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If you’re a zoning wonk, you can use this link to find the newly adopted SMD document: https://rionuevo.org/project/sunshine-mile-2/. Note that it’s on the Rio Nuevo site. So much of what we do in these jobs is relational. I’m proud to say that my relationship with the Rio Board and members of their design team are solid. We’ve worked together in significant outreach with many of you – neighbors who have to live with the development that the overlay will attract. I think we found a good balance, and I appreciate the many meetings I’ve invested in building a relationship with neighbors throughout the process.
Some examples of how the overlay varies from subdistrict to subdistrict; we limited height to 4 stories at the east end, but allowed more height on parts of the west end, we eliminated student housing (Group Dwelling) throughout, we are offering an incentive that will hopefully attract affordable housing in the residential areas, off-site parking is prohibited on E/W streets since that’s where most of the residential exist, and the height is set back from residential and allowed on the Broadway-fronting parts of parcels.
There’s more work to be done. Some of the Ward 5 areas are wrestling with some of the height and use issues. For that reason, we carved out a couple of the subdistricts and will incorporate those in the overlay once they’ve had a chance to land on some agreeable solutions. And we need to further define how our Housing Department will be involved in rezoning discussions that might result in relocation of existing residents. That will only occur in an existing area south of Broadway where the residential is already out of zoning compliance. The overlay may provide a tool by which the property owner can do upgrades without displacing people. Without the overlay, that’s not possible.
City staff worked well with Rio, who worked well with residents, who worked well with my office – it all came together. Thanks to all of you who took part. Soon you’ll see the adaptive reuse of bungalows, expanding Zemam’s, relocation of Rocco’s, and other examples of keeping our local businesses whole and keeping the character of the Sunshine Mile intact.
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Downtown Redevelopment
Since I started doing this in 2009, we’ve seen over $500M in private sector dollars invested into the downtown core. No thriving metropolitan area has an unsuccessful downtown. We’ve made significant strides.
Much of that success is due to the work done by our friends at the Downtown Tucson Partnership (DTP.) Now they’re hosting an online survey asking what your vision is for the next steps in the revitalization of downtown Tucson. I said at the beginning of this week that you’ll see a few surveys in the newsletter – here's the next one.
The DTP is contracting with Progressive Urban Management Associates (PUMA) to work through a strategic planning process that’ll help focus DTP’s work over the next 5 years. This survey is your chance of getting your voice heard: Future Priorities of Downtown Tucson
The Sunshine Mile ends at Euclid. Right around the corner through the underpass is downtown. All the success we’ve seen over the past decade is primed for more. We have good leadership in place to help guide that. And we’d love to hear your thoughts as the planning for the next steps move forward.
ByFusion Plastic Blocks
Here’s another important story the Star took a pass on. A couple of weeks ago, I convened a meeting that brought in all of the players in our decision on how we move ahead with the reuse of plastic in the form of blocks. There are several moving parts, and getting all the right people into the same conversation so they can hear each others’ perspective was helpful.
Last week, M&C unanimously approved moving ahead with the purchase of plastic blocks and using them in pilot projects scattered around the city. Those will be a part of our Prop 407 Parks/Connection funding. While that work is going on, we’ll continue working on the other pieces of the program so we can expand this in the near future.
Right now, the blocks have been fully tested for their thermal (insulation) capabilities. The testing for load-bearing limits is in process. But even while that more extensive testing is going on, we can use the plastic block for things such as this public restroom in our parks. How do we address the load-bearing issue? Note the wood framing that’s surrounding the blocks. In any construction project, you can deflect the weight load through the use of framing, trusses, and beams. That’s how we can move this along, even while testing continues.
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 This photo gives a little better idea of how the load is deflected from the plastic, and onto cross-members. A structural engineer will stamp a construction drawing with this sort of support system.
Ariel from my office is already in touch with the folks from ByFusion to look into grant funds to help offset the capital cost of the Blocker machine. Having that funding assistance will help us with our financial and procurement folks. Our planning department is working on buying some of the blocks, identifying projects, and getting them designed in ways that will accommodate the use of the blocks.
There may also be opportunities to capture and clean methane coming off from the landfill and use it to power the Blocker. Our environmental services team is looking into that piece. Environmental services is working with our city manager to resolve what role Republic Services will play in all of this. Right now, they gather up all the plastic we deliver to the material recycle facility, bundle it and sell it. We’re proposing keeping portions of it locally and reusing it in construction. And many of us on the M&C expect Republic to be more of a partner in this than just announcing how much we’re reducing their bottom line and sending us a bill. Our contract with Republic has about 5 years left on it. Renegotiating and extending it will require cooperation with them on our effort to set up a recycle/reuse campus out at the landfill and seeing how both the glass reuse and now this plastics program will fit into the terms of any new contract.
I’m pretty Type AA. I generally want to grab ahold of a project, get it going and move onto the next challenge. In this case, there are legitimate items we need to resolve. But during that process, we can start buying the plastic blocks and putting them to use – all a part of a circular zero-waste economy that we’re continuing to lead-in.
Differential Water Rates
I have a quick update on the differential water rate issue. To review – the M&C adopted an increase in rates that will be charged to Tucson Water customers who live in unincorporated areas of Pima County. That won’t kick in until December. In the meantime, we’re conducting a thorough cost of service (COS) analysis to confirm the 10% tiered rate increase we’ve approved matches the costs associated with serving customers who live outside of the city limits. To be clear, it won’t ‘prove’ that everyone outside the city costs more to service, but it will give an order of magnitude level of increased costs Tucson Water pays for unincorporated customers generally. My guess is it’ll affirm the 10% fees are not out of line with costs.
The county has asked to be included in the cost of service analysis. I shared with you the County Administrator’s letter a couple of weeks ago. Now, City Manager Ortega has replied. In short, Ortega has identified the existing Citizen’s Water Advisory Committee (CWAC) as the conduit for county involvement. And the county is invited to include other staffers to participate in CWAC reviews of the COS as it is developed.
 Ortega’s letter ends with this paragraph. He identifies what could become a source of inter-governmental squabbling if we don’t nip it now. We charge rates for services to county residents. The county charges us for services they provide to city residents. If we allow this to expand into a sort of bidding war, the only losers are the members of the public.
 In the past, I’ve raised questions and concerns over the amount the city pays Pima Animal Care Center and for jail board fees associated with using the Pima County jail. I’ve also spoken out against the county program that uses property taxes paid by city residents to fix roads out in the county. To be fair, the county has defended each of those sets of rates. And the county has raised concerns over the differential water rates we’re looking to implement. The COS will be an important tool for us to use to avoid a situation where one side believes it needs to ‘get even’ with the other for policy decisions that have been made. We should have that analysis around the same time the rates are supposed to go into effect.
Vaccine Update
There continue to be studies showing that getting vaccinated is the most effective way to avoid COVID and it’s effects. It’s not a secret. And it’s not “my right” to put others at risk by joining the ‘no vax’ crowd. Get the shot so we can all put this behind us.
This chart shows the correlation between vaccination rates and fatalities from COVID. There’s also a political correlation. States with a more conservative base get fewer vaccinations, and they have higher rates of death from COVID. And they probably don’t read this newsletter or the NY Times. But those who do now know the relationships.
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 You’ve got another opportunity for getting your shot and going to Summer Safari Nights at the zoo. This Saturday, weather permitting, many of us will be there in the grassy area behind the carousel. Pima County Health will be on-site again, giving free COVID shots. I’ll be there with my guitar, sharing some music. Look for the entry gate set aside for this event, and you’ll be admitted free – and you’ll receive a free pass for your next visit to the zoo. I’m not sure I’d describe my music as “folk,” but you come and decide for yourself. Most important is the preventative vaccination.
The only other mobile site open this week will be out on S. Nogales Highway – Amado Food Bank at 28720 South. They’ll be open from 9 am until noon on Thursday, July 22nd. All 3 types of vaccination will be available. You do not need an appointment.
And you do not need an appointment for these standing sites.
Go to the Pima County Health site if you want to find the list of pharmacies that’ll give you a dose or if you’re a veteran looking to be vaccinated. Use this link - www.pima.gov/covid19vaccine.
At hospitals in Missouri, they’ve had to resort to borrowing ventilators from other hospitals out of the region. Respiratory therapists are pleading for help through social media. They’ve seen more COVID cases in the past week than in any week since the pandemic began. The number of Missourians getting a vaccination was nearly 50,000 per day in April. Now it’s under 7,000. Statewide they’re under 40% fully vaccinated. It’s probably not a place you want to visit this summer.
COVID delta is now the dominant strain nationwide. This chart shows the 14-day uptick:
In Arizona, we’re just above 50% who have received at least one shot. Nearly 20% of our new cases are Delta. In the past week, Arizona had about 500 new cases recorded per day. New York and Massachusetts – both significantly more populated than us averaged 80 to 130 new cases per day. Arizona has now surpassed 900,000 COVID cases and over 18,000 COVID deaths since this all started.
Since the start of June, Pima County COVID cases have gone from a weekly average of around 130 up to in the 300s. Two weeks ago, it was 348 new cases. Last week we had 413 new cases reported. It’s the first time since spring we’ve been over 400 in a week. Given what’s happening statewide, it’s certainly worth watching.
The UA hasn’t updated their Rt (infection spread) data since June 29th. Here’s the trend I shared with you last week. Anything above 1.0 means the virus is spreading.
Hospital workers in Missouri and other Delta hotspots are in the same position ours were a few months ago. They would all appreciate your consideration by being vaccinated if you haven’t already.
Zoo Expansion
Back on May 4th, the M&C voted to suspend the expansion plans for the zoo and asked staff to go back and find a new solution. This was what staff had recommended at the time – it was called “Option D.” The expansion area would have gone into what’s shown in blue. M&C rejected it.
What’s shown in white is the outline of the current zoo footprint. Here’s the motion read by Fimbres during that meeting:
 If you add the $2.5M we had already spent on design and construction prep to the $5.5M the M&C agreed to toss into the kitty, we’re spending $8M on this new idea. And here’s what the staff is now recommending. The blue area is where they’re proposing we expand the zoo. Scroll back up and compare it to Option D. I would say there’s more than just a vague similarity. It’s the same thing M&C said ‘no’ to, except they’ve now agreed to take out much of the facilities maintenance yard and turn it into green space. We’re spending $8M to save Barnum Hill, eliminate our FM yard, and put the zoo where M&C said it didn’t want it to go. And the Save the Heart of Reid Park group also said they didn’t want it there.
I was the sole dissenting vote on doing this. I continue to believe this is a poor way to spend $8M of your dollars. Where’s it coming from? The General Fund. We have a set-aside called the Zoo Environs Fund. It’s from the vote on the zoo sales tax where we agreed that the level we were funding the zoo would be supplemented by the tax, not supplanted by it. It’s in the range of $1.5M annually and was intended to go for things such as upgrades to the marquee on Randolph Way at both Broadway and 22nd, a new filtration system in the large pond, and upgrades to aging infrastructure within the ‘zoo environs.’ Now, over the next few years, it’ll go to funding this work.
I’m told the public engagement on this is done. And I’m told it wouldn’t be coming back to M&C for a new look. The staff has evidently ‘made the rounds’ with M&C, and with the stakeholder group that was enlisted to provide input on the original expansion.
By way of reminder, when staff did the poll to see what people wanted us to do, the majority said to stay with the original Barnum Hill/south pond plan, and as a back up to put a new natural resource area into what is shown in the maps above in blue. That is what I supported then, and I still do. And I won’t go back through the history here of the many contracts we broke in order to arrive at this novel new point.
Marijuana Records Expungement
I’ll be meeting next week with the organizers from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to start talking about hosting an ‘expungement’ event at the Ward office. As with everything these days, COVID is going to be the driver in how and when we do it.
Expungement events are being held for people who have a criminal prosecution on their record for possession of pot. There’s a process the Arizona Supreme Court has adopted for filing petitions. You can find it at www.azcourts.gov/prop207. In short, you can file anytime, and the process will take a few months to play itself out. Once you file your petition, it’ll be forwarded to the City Prosecutor’s office. They’ll look it over and will have a month to object. If they do, the petition is forwarded to a judge for review. That’s where the ‘few months’ kicks in. Eventually, the expungement can be dismissed, denied, or granted. If it’s granted, your records will be cleared.
There’s an expungement event taking place this Saturday out at the Harambe Café - 6464 E. Tanque Verde. During the clinic, NORML staff will work with applicants on getting their petition process started. It’s open to walk-ins, so you don’t need to make an advance appointment to get involved. The clinic will run from 11 am until 3 pm. I’ll let you know when we’re hosting one. There’s no deadline for getting your process started.
Sustainable Tucson
Many of you know Robert Bulechek. He’s the Vice-Chair on the Commission on Climate, Environment, and Sustainability, and he’s active in upgrading buildings to promote zero emissions. In fact, Robert drives a zero-emission car, has negative utility bills (TEP must love him), and lives in a zero-emissions home. This week he’s presenting at the Sustainable Tucson meeting on the topic of, well, following his lead on cutting down your impact on the environment. He’ll present some practical ideas you can easily implement.
The meeting is once again by Zoom. It’ll run from 6 pm until 7:30 on Tuesday. Use this link to get connected with the event: www.sustainabletucson.org.
Harvard Global Health Institute
This week’s Harvard Global map shows lots of red in the Missouri area, and unfortunately, in Colorado and Utah – our neighbors. All of that is Delta-related. But it also shows lots of green in other parts of the country, so the news has its bright side.
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Here’s their Pima County data. It’s an improvement from last week by a bit, but it’s also missing the last couple of days from last week, where we jumped back up to over 400 new cases. I also hovered the cursor over several other counties and see that the trend appears positive right now, even in states with lots of red risk levels.
Another good sign is that the past few weeks, I’ve been ending the newsletter with COVID data. Last year at this time, it was the whole newsletter. The bad news is that I opened this week with another PFAS update. We still have challenges, which is why city council jobs are much more than a slogan.
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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