I hope you saw the special email I sent out on Friday about the butterfly refuge we’ve got here at the Ward 6 office. The Queens seem to have left, but there are still the yellow ones hanging out, enjoying the blossoms. I’ll let you know if they return – or the yellow ones develop into Queens.
Last Monday evening, I had the time to sit and observe the Parks/Connectivity Bond Oversight Commission (BOC) working meeting. This is the group of citizens who’s working with our park and transportation staff to move the Prop 407 bond projects. They include upgrades to parks all over town and improvements to bike paths and other connectivity elements throughout the region.
I’m opening this week with a big note of thanks to both the citizen members of the Prop 407 BOC, as well as Greg Jackson and all of our staffers, for their hard work in managing the process. Over the course of 407, we’ll have invested $225M in work approved by the voters in 2018. These slides are examples of the kinds of projects being funded and built.
If you’d like to check into particular projects to see where they stand in the queue, you can find a great summary at this link: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/parksbond.
Vaccine Update
The New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders are requiring proof of vaccination from all fans in attendance at their home games. It’s understandable – those are cities that rely heavily on tourism. So does Tucson. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the UA lead by example and make that same announcement? It’s an area Ducey has not preempted.
Last week the UA athletics director (Dave Heeke) announced that not only will they not be doing a vaccination check at the gates, but that no masks will be required, and no crowd limit will be imposed for home football games in Arizona Stadium. So no distancing, no masks, no vaccination, people seated against each other yelling and cheering. What could possibly go wrong?
Our downtown entertainment venues, the Rialto Theater, Fox, Club Congress, and 191 Toole, are all mandating vaccinations from guests or proof of a negative COVID test. So locally, there are examples of responsible public health decisions being made by groups hosting people who buy tickets to attend. Last week I mentioned that Tulane requires proof of vaccination at their athletic events. San Francisco just instituted a similar ban on indoor dining and their large events. Nothing yet of a similar nature from UA athletics or on-campus entertainment venues.
Robbins and Heeke will be ‘safely’ up in their skyboxes with invited guests. A year ago, they spent $1M on renovating the president’s skybox suite. Fans out in the stadium will be susceptible to viral infection if seated near someone shedding COVID. This continues to be about tuition and gate receipts for the UA.
Vaccination Mandate
Dr. Stacy Klutts is the Special Assistant to the National Director of Pathology and Lab Medicine for the entire Veteran’s Affairs system. He has been assigned the role of advising at the national health care level on the whole COVID testing system. He recently wrote an op/ed for the Tampa Bay Times in which he makes it pretty easy to visualize the comparison between COVID-19 and the Delta variant. He notes that COVID-19 binds to cells sort of like maple syrup – sticky and easy to bind to cells. Delta is more like Super Glue – it sticks, dries quickly, and doesn’t wash away. So it remains in the throats of even vaccinated people, spreading through the droplets we’ve been hearing about since this whole mess started. Yes, even in vaccinated people. Here’s a link to his article. It’s written so laypeople can easily understand the importance of both vaccinating and masking. Thanks to my friend Valerie for sharing the article with me.
At the special meeting we held a week ago Friday, we adopted a vaccination mandate for all city employees. Ahead of the vote, we had been given the results of a survey the city manager issued. The results led to an assumption that somewhere around 1,000 city workers have not been vaccinated. It’s a guess since many didn’t participate in the survey and it's self-report, so the validity of the survey is the honor system. Based on the oftentimes personal, vulgar, and offensive responses many of us have received after the vote, honor may not be playing an active role in the issue.
The motion was to require at least 750 newly vaccinated city employees after the vote, or a 5 day without pay suspension would be imposed. Other measures are left for the discretion of the city manager. Those included things such as masks, no travel, and possible adjustments to health care premiums. The deadline for demonstrating the 750 is August 24th. We have our next M&C meeting scheduled for September 14th to review the progress and decide the next steps.
The police union, fire union, and communication workers union filed a complaint asking to have the action suspended. On Friday, the court denied the complaint. During the hearing, they brought up Ducey’s most recent couple of Executive Orders, suggesting that we’re preempted by the governor from taking these steps. The court rejected that notion as well.
It should be said that the vast majority of city workers long ago got their vaccinations, becoming a part of the COVID solution. The pushback is from some percentage of the minority who have not. I know some of them by name, so I can say with certainty that some of the vulgarity and offensive reaction is coming from within the group who filed the charge. As was made evident over the past 4 years, we appear to have lost our ability to disagree without totally going south.
This chart shows the number of city workers by the department and their vaccination status.
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I know, that’s a lot of numbers. Here are a few key takeaways. One is that there’s not a single department throughout the city in which every employee has been vaccinated. That disappoints me. Every city worker has contact with the public. Therefore, every city worker should respect the liberty of others to be safe and get a protective vaccination.
Another takeaway is to note where the clusters of unvaccinated workers are. Fully 34% of fire, 28% of our 911 center workers (PSCD,) 26% of police, and 22% of our water employees are unvaccinated. I’m leaving out the 28% of city clerk employees because they have such limited contact with the outside world during the course of their workday. But they do interact with co-workers, and they shop in our stores. So their remaining unvaccinated places others at risk.
Between a quarter and a third of our public safety, workers are not vaccinated. Within the 911 center, the vulnerability is with co-workers. They work 12-hour shifts, seated close to co-workers the whole time. But police and fire are out in the public regularly. I’ve been contacted by fire employees who absolutely support the vaccine mandate – they live together with co-workers for days at a time. Similarly, I’ve been contacted by some of the 70% of police employees who support the mandate. We shouldn’t forget those majorities who didn’t need to be coaxed into doing the right thing. And yet, the reality remains that now citizens have to wonder when they come into contact with a cop or a firefighter whether or not that person has been vaccinated.
You’ve seen this heading in previous newsletters. Arizona joins other states such as Texas and Florida, where governing is achieved through Executive Orders. In this case, Ducey’s sub-heading is of note: issuing one EO after another is not “Returning to our principles of governance.” It’s government by edict.
Here’s the operative piece of the Order that was supposed to preempt our action.
In response, our city attorney issued this pretty clear and unambiguous statement to M&C:
“My view is that the Executive Order has no effect on the actions taken by the Mayor and Council on Friday. Just as the Governor lacked the authority to override the prior Pima County mask requirements by issuing an EO, he lacks the authority to preempt the actions you took on Friday.”
On Thursday of last week, the Superior Court agreed when they rejected the union complaint.
But earlier last week, State Senator Kelly Townsend filed a complaint with the State Attorney General. She represents the Mesa area. If you look at her bio, you’ll see she has championed a series of election and vote count measures and supports loosening gun laws. Under a state statute, we’ve had to defend ourselves against in the past, any state legislator can begin the complaint process against any of our local ordinances. Here’s Kelly’s complaint:
The AG has a few different options. He can reject her complaint. He can agree with it. Or he can say we might be in violation. Either of the last two options starts a legal process by which we’ll have to defend the action we’ve taken in the State Supreme Court. It’s all politics over public health
On Wednesday of last week, the Arizona Daily Star was kind enough to print this op/ed I had written – hoping it would urge some city employees to go ahead and get vaccinated. I’m grateful to the many of you who wrote or texted your agreement.
Thank you to the Editorial Board from the Star for running this piece. The heat this issue is generating is so sadly divisive and unproductive. The data are clear. Please get vaccinated.
COVID-19 is right now the 8th most deadly pandemic in the history of the world. With 4.3 million fatalities, and counting, it will soon jump past the Antonine Plague which happened in the 2nd century. What’s the salient difference between each of the other pandemics and COVID? None of them had a vaccine that was effective in stopping the spread of the virus.
In the past week we’ve seen multiple groups, both in the public and in the private sector announce mandatory vaccination policies for their employees. The Department of Health and Human Services, along with the Department of Veteran Affairs now require COVID vaccinations for employees in their health care units. The State of California is requiring vaccinations or weekly testing. The National Medical Association which represents over 50,000 African American physicians is calling for a vaccination mandate. And in the private sector, Google, Facebook, Tyson Foods, Disney, Vanguard and a growing number of other employers are telling workers that in order to re-enter the workplace, they must present proof of a COVID-19 vaccination.
Last week, the Tucson Mayor and City Council joined Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Denver and many other cities across the nation in requiring that our employees be vaccinated. The reality is that unvaccinated people are driving transmission of COVID. The delta variant is estimated to be 10 times more contagious than the virus we’ve spent the past 18 months trying to defeat. The longer we wait to require vaccinations, the more likely new variants will emerge. And the more likely it is these new variants will not be responsive to our vaccinations.
Right now over 184 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That’s just over 50% of the eligible population. But it does not include children under 12 years of age — none of whom are currently eligible for the vaccine. Locally we are witnessing a science experiment that has an easy outcome to predict. Bringing unvaccinated and unmasked children and staff together into closed environments for hours each day with a variant that is deadly, and is more contagious than the 8th most deadly virus in the history of the world. We should not be surprised that the age of COVID patients in our hospitals is decreasing by the day.
For city workers, consider: one of our EMT’s working with a homeless person, sheds the virus and it spreads when that homeless individual reenters a shelter. Or consider: one of our plan reviewers on the Development Services desk meets with a construction project manager, sheds the virus and it spreads when that project manager reenters the construction site. Or consider: one of our police officers interacting with the public at a serious auto accident, sheds the virus and it spreads back into the health care setting when the traffic victims are admitted for treatment. As city employees we have an obligation to our co-workers, and to the public to take every precaution available to avoid spreading COVID.
During the runup to our vote on mandating vaccinations, the word "liberty" was tossed around by those who object to our policy. Liberty works when your actions don’t directly impinge on the liberties of others. It is appropriate to expect people to sacrifice a personal liberty for the greater good of the community. It’s instructive, and it’s compelling to note that I have not heard the "my liberty" argument from anybody who is immune-compromised, from our hero health care workers who have spent 18 months working 12 hour shifts in full PPE garb, or from the friends or loved ones of the 2,500 Pima County residents who have died due to COVID. Comparisons have been made by the no-vax crowd to the experimental testing conducted by the Nazi’s during World War II. The only possible comparison is that COVID will soon surpass the 6 million deaths inflicted by Nazi Germany. Beyond that, the analogy is offensive to the core.
We are living through history. When people look back on this time from a historical perspective, knowing that we had vaccines available and yet a significant number of people ignored science and refused to do their part in stopping the spread of the virus, they will rightly wonder "what were they thinking?" We stop a virus by defeating a virus. We have vaccines available that are effective in containing COVID. This is plain and simple a public health issue. We already require vaccinations to prevent the spread of diseases. When you travel internationally you are required to submit to vaccinations for multiple diseases. The many health care institutions, cities, private employers, public agencies and the City of Tucson are correct in mandating vaccinations for our workers. It is responsible public health policy.
In Pima County last weekend there were 11 ICU beds available. That’s for the whole county. In January, much of the lower half of the country was in a similar situation. Then it eased in the spring, started to get bad again in July.
Now we’re headed back to where we were during the height of the surge.
To make reading the map easier, these color gradients show the % of capacity for Intensive Care Units. On the map in Arizona, where you see white, it simply means they didn’t have data reported.
Along the Gulf Coast, nearly 20% of ICUs are full. If you’re in a serious accident, there’s no room at the Inn for you.
Last week a number of people proudly took part in a No Mask, No Vax, Trump 2024 rally. Here are a few images from the event.
A year ago, I would never have imagined that masks and vaccinations would be the pivotal issue in American politics 18 months into COVID.
Data and Risk Level
Global Epidemics reports that 1 in 5 congressional districts are a hot spot, and 7 of 10 nationwide have accelerating rates of infection.
This is the risk level map I had in last week’s newsletter. It was pretty bad.
Here’s this week’s comparison. Nationwide there was a 37% increase in infections last week. Arizona’s new case count rose by 32% last week. And in all those Gulf Coast states, as well as Arizona counties with ‘extremely high’ rates of infection – those areas are also where we’ve been hearing all the ‘my liberty’ arguments against masks and vaccinations.
Looking more closely at Arizona, this is the Pima County data I shared with you last week:
This week our numbers have increased once again:
Maricopa County is, of course, the state’s big population center. While our infection rate is bad, theirs is far worse.
Pima County is at 54% of our residents who are fully vaccinated. Maricopa County has 44% vaccinated. There’s a correlation that the no-vax liberty crowd cannot dismiss.
Here’s a listing of this week’s mobile vaccination sites being offered by the Pima County Health Department. They’re free, and you do not need an appointment. Just show up.
This is their list of standing points of vaccine distribution.
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. There is no reason anybody cannot find a vaccination option if they’re looking for one.
During the month of August, our total infections have more than doubled. Here’s the week by week look:
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Week of 7/26 - 827 new cases
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Week of 8/2 - 1,301 new cases
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Week of 8/9 - 1,570 new cases
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Week of 8/16 - 1,737 new cases
During the first week in June, we had 130 new cases. You’ll see below that the UA is reporting the infectivity rate is decreasing. Their data doesn’t align with the new infections or the filled hospitals.
Students are now back around the UA campus. They expect to have 7,600 living on campus. That leaves in the 40,000 range for areas surrounding campus. Over 700 colleges and universities nationwide have instituted a vaccination mandate. Last fall, when students returned – and did what students do – the numbers surged. As I mentioned above, the UA is inviting event-goers into campus venues with no mask, no vaccination, and no social distancing. I’ll watch and share with you the infectivity rate data as the semester gets started. The numbers they’re reporting are counter-intuitive based on the increased infection rates. It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.
PFAS - Water Security
The “permalink” I included in last week’s newsletter for the upcoming ABC News piece on PFAS, well it wasn’t so ‘perma’. Here’s another link that you can use to watch the 12-minute segment. It’s about Tucson’s PFAS issue and includes comments with a national perspective.
Also, last week, I shared some information about how the military is slow walking remediation efforts going on in New Mexico. My point was to let you know that this is a national issue and that other jurisdictions are experiencing the same resistance to remedies from the DOD that we are. This week I’ve got another example. This one’s from back east, in a small town near Cape Cod.
This has gone on so long that for many of you, some of this is repeating. The EPA does not have a formal contamination level in place. We expect the current EPA to establish one. Having that would set a level at which Superfund dollars kick in to help offset local costs. Instead, the EPA has a lifetime health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFAS. That matters since most responsible local water districts, ours included, have established contamination levels far below that. Ours is 18 ppt for the two most prevalent PFAS chemicals combined.
In Massachusetts, they have a level for 6 PFAS chemicals combined of 20 ppt. Outside Joint Base Cape Cod, the Mashpee Water District had to shut down two wells due to PFAS contamination levels that exceeded the state allowed limits. They invested over $8M into treatment plants and sent the DOD the bill. Since their contamination levels were not above the EPA health advisory, the DOD wrote back and said, “I realize that right now you’re struggling because you have two Turner Road wells down. Unfortunately, the concentrations are lower than the EPA lifetime health advisory, which is Air Force policy right now; we can only address concentrations that exceed the lifetime health advisory.” So the folks drinking water from the Mashpee Water District will have to eat the costs for cleaning the contamination caused by the Air Force.
In Tucson, we’ve had to shut down 24 groundwater wells due to PFAS contamination. Most of those wells had concentrations well above the 70 ppt EPA standard. It’s important to note, though, that the military and the courts have resulted from a toxicology study recommending they assign a maximum contamination level of far below what the EPA now has in place as simply advisory.
In Mashpee, there is no dispute over the cause of their contamination. There really isn’t in Tucson, either. But our ‘partners’ in the DOD have said they need 3-4 years to study the issue before beginning work on remediation strategies. The plume is moving faster than that. And with the recent shortage declaration on the Colorado, our need for pure groundwater is escalated.
Andrew Gottlieb is the analogy of a council member back in Mashpee. He is quoted as saying, ‘we don’t have the water supply to take the risk and not treat it because if one other source goes down, we don’t have firefighting water or pressure in our water system. I would like to understand what other state and public health and environmental laws the military feels it is exempt from if our hazardous waste cleanup rules and our drinking water standards don’t apply to you.’
When I was talking to the ABC producer, he said a representative of the DOD back in Washington had told him there’s ‘one councilman in particular in Tucson who is’ well, a pain. That’s how ABC thought to include me in their segment. I suspect they also call out Mr. Gottlieb now that he’s holding their feet to the fire. That’s a fire to be extinguished with money, not the PFAS containing fire fighting foam that has caused all this mess.
5G Utility Manual
After at least 5 meetings between utility representatives and DTM staff, both in large groups and smaller one-off meetings, we finally have the utility policy manual in place. It went live on Friday. The genesis of the manual is the difficulty we’ve had in getting the telecom companies to get aggressive about collocating their new small wireless poles on existing ‘vertical elements.’ Those include existing street lights, street signs, and TEP utility poles. TEP continues to be a difficult ‘partner’ in these discussions. I’m hopeful this manual will refocus the conversations about where the new 5G poles go so we’re not constantly asking to have them moved from in front of someone’s home.
There are a couple of important additions to our policies that you’ll find in the manual. One has to do with public outreach ahead of construction. In fact, we’re asking for that outreach to begin during the design phase, before a final decision has been made by the telecom company on a site location. This language gives the general direction:
Then on page 53 of the manual, the specifics on notification are spelled out.
Another important new section in our policy is regarding pole placement. The specific discussion of small wireless poles begins on page 38 – for those of you who have joined me in being knee-deep in this issue. You’ll see descriptions of different pole types and how placement must take into consideration trees, native plant preservation, other utilities – collocation such as this example of a light pole:
This language is intended to compel a conversation about collocation opportunities – a conversation that is largely not happening right now until we find out about a pole and go asking about it being moved. An “SWF” pole is a small wireless facility pole – the 35’ tall ones we’ve been trying to address.
Reaction to the manual has been swift. Telecoms are talking about the manual being in violation of state law. It’s not. We have the right under state law to identify how construction happens within our Rights of Way. TEP is lawyering up. And other utilities are looking for ways to keep their legitimate work going and not be constrained by some of the language in the manual. To be fair, this began with the 5G poles. Our intent is not to impede needed maintenance work being done by the others.
Here’s a link to the manual. You’ll find it listed at the very top of this site.
I appreciate all of the attention to this given by our transportation director and many of her staffers who have been involved with the meetings pulling this manual together. Fred Felix has been the lead dog on the sled and deserves mention. I’m hopeful that now our conversations about collocating these new 5G antennas happens early in the process, and not when you see a backhoe pull up in front of your home.
Feast Food Donations
A while back, I shared with you the great work being done on behalf of those in need by the staff over at Feast. They’ve helped provide food throughout the pandemic to health care workers, youth, and last week they hit Sister Jose Women’s Center. Tomorrow they’re taking food donations out to the Casa Alitas center in support of our migrant guests. My staff and I have long relationships with each of those groups, so giving the Feast crew this thumb up is easy.
Since the pandemic started, Feast has donated over 8,000 meals to people around town. That work continues, and you can help them with donations in support of their work. Use this website and scroll down to find the next opportunity for you to get involved. https://www.eatatfeast.com/.
You can also make reservations at the site. In addition to helping others, by supporting Feast as a customer, you keep them afloat – and you enjoy their great meals.
Plastic Block
The pilot projects we’re planning for use of the plastic block are being identified. This is in advance of our buying some of the blocks and starting the larger process of getting the Blocker machine so we can create our own. Every few weeks, I check on the progress. Our environmental services group has put a list of projects together that includes using the plastic block for walls around trash compactors out at the zoo, materials bins in Reid Park, enclosures for trash receptacles at the Reffkin Tennis Center, and enclosures for vehicles at Armory Park. Sexy projects? No, but the point is to identify uses for the block while the company finishes up their certification for load-bearing projects.
As this evolves, they’ll also be looking at things such as work out at our ball fields, raised planters, seating areas such as dugouts and benches, retaining walls, and eventually other work like ramadas and restrooms that require the load-bearing studies to be finished.
Our staff is working with a design team to put the finishing touches on scoping the work they’ve identified. Once that’s done, we’ll know how many blocks to order – we'll get them on-site and put them to use. One small step for mankind? But one towards the larger, longer-term goal of getting plastic out of our local waste stream.
Harvard Global Health Institute
Since the pandemic began, I’ve tracked several different COVID data sources. My intent is to look into varying sites, so the information you read here is from a variety of perspectives. Collecting the COVID data is a challenge, so seeing different data sets will give a more accurate picture than just relying on a ‘single source of truth’ (SSOT). In fact, aggregating data from multiple sources is how SSOT is defined.
Here’s a comparison between the past two weeks’ Harvard Global Health risk level maps. From last week’s newsletter.
This is our current condition. The expansion caused by the Delta variant is pretty easy to see, no matter whose data you’re looking at. And as was true last week, the green areas are where they were not reporting data. The big blotch of green in the middle is Nebraska.
Last week the Harvard data had Pima County with 18.5 new cases per 100,000 population and a 7 day moving average of 193.4. Both showed significant increases in the past week. It makes you wonder about the validity of the UA’s infectivity rate report. COVID cases are not going down anywhere in Arizona.
Statewide, Arizona reports 40 new cases per 100,000 population and 295 new daily cases on a 7-day rolling average. So while we’re in a very high-risk situation in Pima County, the state overall is worse.
Vaccinations are free and widely available. If you get one today, you’re not covered for a couple of weeks. And you’re not fully covered until you get the 2nd dose (unless you get a J&J vaccination.) Public school started last week, and this week UA students begin to return to town. We saw this all play out last year. Thankfully about ½ of us have some vaccination protection now.
You can check what’s going on in your home county by hovering your cursor over it on the Harvard map. Use this link to access it:
Here’s our statewide map. These are cumulative numbers. As noted above, they’re increasing once again. Statewide we’ve had 18,600 COVID fatalities since this began, and we’re closing in on a million cases.
Iskashitaa Silent Auction
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik Council Member, Ward 6 ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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