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I hope you had a chance to see Jasmine Ramirez’s KOLD segment on Fernando Ledezma last week. He was honored by Asst. Chief Hall and Captains Brady and Dennison from TPD for his act of bravery.
Fernando and his family were driving on I-10 when they saw some lady toss her baby into one of the drive lanes. He jumped out of his car, ran across 4 lanes of freeway traffic, and saved the kid. We at the Ward 6 office thank him for his selfless act and TPD for making the effort to honor him for what he did.
Camino Miramonte Art
Camino Miramonte is halfway north/south street between Country Club and Dodge. Lots of people use it to cut through from 5th to Speedway. If that’s you, please remember that even though the street is wide, it’s a residential area throughout.
The residents are putting into place a series of traffic calming features to help people recognize the importance of driving ‘like your kids are playing there’. One of those new elements is the public art that’s at 3rd and Miramonte. It’s in the middle of a traffic circle, and together they make a great visual heads up that there’s a speed limit – and the neighbors care about it.
Many of you know Ruth Beeker. She was the spearhead of securing funding to get the art designed and fabricated. I join the Miramonte neighbors in thanking her for what will be a neighborhood amenity for years to come.
We’re doing traffic circles, art, traffic calming, and landscape changes in neighborhoods throughout Ward 6. Many of the streets – Miramonte, for example – carry lots of water. The features cannot end up forcing that sheet flow into peoples’ yards, but they can be designed to actually capture and use that stormwater. Bike over to the new 3rd/Miramonte circle, enjoy the art, and see if you get ideas for your own neighborhood. Ruth might even be there to give you a verbal guided tour of the process. Hint: be sure you’re not in a hurry if that happens.
Vaccine Hesitancy Forum
Even with unvaccinated people being the 90%+ group who’s filling hospitals with COVID, we still have the minority of people who insist their ‘liberty’ trumps anybody else’s. People like this meet for their small rallies proclaiming their freedom to infect others. Hospitals are filled with unvaccinated people, not people who are having adverse reactions to the vaccine.
The notion of vaccine hesitancy is not new to COVID. And neither is the legal or ethical response. In 1905, over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled against a Massachusetts pastor who didn’t want to take a vaccine against smallpox. Justice John Harlan made clear in the majority opinion that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for us to always just decide to do what we want and claim ‘our liberty’. He wrote, “Real liberty for all could not exist if people could act regardless of the injury that may be done to others.” It still makes perfect sense.
A while back, I introduced you to Maiya Block. She won the free laptop when we had the drawing from people who filled out our Ward 6 ‘what issues matter to you’ survey. Maiya was running a forum through the UA college of public health on vaccine hesitancy. It wasn’t a proselytizing meeting but was intended to facilitate an exchange in a non-confrontational setting. Maiya and her team are doing it again. This flyer gives you the links to sign up. They’ll ask you to do a pre-test first – just to get a baseline before the event happens. It’s all anonymous.
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Email Maiya at COVIDVAC@arizona.edu for the contact information related to the UA student forum – or just for questions about the forum itself.
Vaccine Update
I’ll have a pretty thorough vaccine update below. Before I get started, I want to include this flyer Maiya, and her team are using to introduce the COVID vaccine hesitancy forums they’re hosting. It lays out the choices pretty clearly. So does the data – which follows.
The city employee vaccination data is final now. Yes, there could be minor changes based on people changing their mind and choosing to get on board, but this chart shows how many and in which departments city workers have elected to remain unvaccinated for COVID.
The ‘accommodation’ requests were for religious reasons. The ‘exemptions’ were for claimed medical reasons. You can see that just over half of the requests were granted. But the more important number is 627 city workers will remain unvaccinated through the ‘request for exemption’ part of the process. In addition, there were 76 workers who simply said ‘no’ to the vaccine mandate – so combined, we’ve got over 700 who are of concern to me. And I’d add, of concern to many of the city workers and their families, and members of the public who have been vaccinated.
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COVID is now the #1 cop killer nationally since the pandemic began. All of our employees interact with each other and with you. I have advocated with city management that our mask mandate for all unvaccinated employees should be in effect while they’re ‘on the clock’. And our other workplace adjustments should be in effect. A weekly testing mandate for all unvaccinated people is necessary, and it’s costing taxpayer money. We’ve been waiting on the legal piece to play itself out – well, it has. Our policies are legal. Our obligation should be to workers and their families who have been vaccinated and to the general public
Legal Challenge to Vax/Mask Policies
The state legislature and governor rolled a prohibition against mask mandates in schools and vaccination mandates by cities into their budget reconciliation bill (BRB). They also tossed into that bill things such as bans on teaching certain curriculum in public schools, expanding access to election records, limitations on the governor’s emergency declaration powers, and a bunch more that the judge correctly rhetorically asked, “What do these measures have to do with the budget?”
The connection to the budget is key to the litigation we signed onto. The state constitution has a provision called the ‘single subject rule’ It says a bill must “embrace someone general subject.” There’s a political practice called logrolling. It’s where you load up a bill with a little of something for everyone, so individual legislators are forced to vote against their own interests if they vote down a bill, and conversely, they’re forced to vote in favor of things they don’t agree with if they support a bill that has their own ornament hanging on the Christmas tree. The single-subject rule is intended to prevent logrolling, and to let the public know from its title generally what it’s about. In the case of the BRB, the court had an easy time seeing it unconstitutionally violated that rule.
By rejecting the BRB as being unconstitutional, the prohibition against our vaccine mandate was also found to be illegal. We are free to move ahead with that policy. And the schools are free to move ahead with their own mask and vaccination mandates. The UA now has no cover to hide behind – they may require everyone taking classes or working for the UA to show proof of vaccination. We’ll see what they do, but this administration’s track record on COVID has been more focused on pleading with people to do the right thing, not on putting policies in place that assure that outcome. Here’s the summary statement from the court decision:
All of our employees whose request for exemption were denied are now subject to the discipline we voted to administer. So are the workers who simply said they’re refusing to get vaccinated and not claiming medical or religious reasons. Every city worker who is unvaccinated – including those whose exemption was granted – are subject to weekly testing, mask-wearing while on the clock, restrictions on travel and training, and potential increases in their health plan premiums. In the interest of keeping all of our city workers, their families, and the public safe, I’m supportive of those workplace restrictions.
Vaccinations and Political Partisanship
Sadly, science is being trumped by partisan politics. A Pew Research Center poll that was conducted last month found that 86% of Democrats have received at least one COVID vaccination shot, while 60% of Republicans have. In fact, the political division is so significant that when they compared what are reliably Democratically leaning states to reliably Republican-leaning states, nearly every Democrat state has got a higher vaccination rate than almost every Republican state. This graphic shows the data plotted out with the Trump-leaning states on the high end of the “not fully vaccinated” end of the chart.
That also translates into COVID deaths. The further to the right on this next graph that you get, the higher the death rate – and the more traditional Republican states are represented in the plotted data.
One last graph on the partisanship piece. They drilled the data down even more finely to the county level. In counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote, COVID has claimed roughly 47 lives out of every 100,000 people. By contrast, where Trump won less than 32% of the vote, COVID has claimed roughly 10 lives out of every 100,000. Graphically, it looks like this.
I thought I’d test the theory out with a local comparison. Pima county residents voted largely for Biden, and Mohave county went heavily Trump. Here’s the COVID data for each of those counties:
 Mohave County:
I don’t make the numbers up, and the virus doesn’t much care how you vote. And city workers can skip all the testing and masking if they simply get vaccinated.
Statewide we’re below the national average in the percent of people who have been vaccinated. Nationally, just over 55% of the population has been fully vaccinated. In Arizona, we’re at 51%. And Mohave County isn’t even our worst.
The Pima County Health Department folks are making a long list of vaccination mobile sites available this week. No cost/no appointment needed. Pima County health is doing its part to help bring this to closure. And please note, they’ve included our upcoming resource fair on the list. More on that below.
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.
Data and Risk Level
The map showing hot spots nationally continues to look better. The southern states that not too long ago were the country’s main infection area are slowly getting better. But look at Alaska. It’s an amazing place to visit, but not right now.
 
The map shows the improvement we’re seeing in Arizona. More on the actual numbers below.
Here’s the current risk level map. Remember, it’s for unvaccinated people. In Arizona last week, the only 3 counties that were not in the ‘extremely high risk’ category were Pima, Apache, and Coconino. This week, Yuma and Cochise counties joined – but we’re all still in the Very High-risk category, so it’s not party time. The national map continues to show why COVID is one of the main topics on the evening news.
  The Pima County trend didn’t move much in the past week. Last week I had this graphic in the newsletter:
Here’s the current count. We jumped up a little in the average cases per day category, but it’s generally the same as we’ve had for the past month+. And please continue to note the CDC recommendation on the graphic about mask-wearing when in confined areas.
Nationally there has been a 27% drop in new cases over the past 14 days. Our experience is much less of a success story. That’s largely due to activities in the Maricopa, Mohave, and Yavapai county areas.
I’ve been tracking the Pima County weekly counts for a couple of months. I’m going to keep the week of July 26th on the list for a while as a benchmark. It was right after then that our new case counts started to increase. They haven’t reversed course in 2 months, coinciding with the start of school.
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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
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Week of 8/23 - 1,963 new cases
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Week of 8/30 - 2,025 new cases
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Week of 9/6 - 1,720 new cases
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Week of 9/13 - 1,877 new cases
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Week of 9/20 - 1,728 new cases
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Week of 9/27 - 1,873 new cases
During the first week in June, we had 130 new cases.
We got an update on the transmission rate from the UA folks last week. The infection rate for the 85719 zip code – around the UA – dropped to below 1.0 for the first time in over a month. The Pima County-level dipped a bit, but Arizona’s rate increased. The local data for the rate of infection is promising.
Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Each year, I work with Emerge Center Against Domestic Violence to help spread awareness. COVID has taken its toll on DV victims. With so many people shuttered together in relative solitude from others, when a relationship is troubled, it can – and has – led to poor outcomes. Emerge is all about touching the lives of the victims.
October is domestic violence awareness month. Throughout the month, I’ll be sharing information on DV and signs you should keep an eye out for to signal when someone might be in an abusive relationship. I’ll also share this phone number each week during the month – the Emerge 24 hour hotline. Please put it in your phone, so you have it readily available when it’s needed. 795.4266.
There are also ways you can help to support their work – and you won’t have to dip into your wallet any deeper than you already are. Throughout October, Emerge will be hosting Stuff the Bus events where you can donate goods that will go to support the work they’re doing for DV victims. In-person events will take place at the Loft Cinema on Saturday, October 16th, from 8 am until 6 pm, and then at the Oro Valley Walmart on Friday, October 29th, from 9 am until 8 pm. If you’d like to take part virtually, just use this link to Go to the Stuff the Bus page
If you’d like to support Emerge and a local brewery at the same time, stop by the Button Brew House. Throughout October, they’re donating $1 for every pint (or larger) of beer they sell. They sell local craft beers, so you can enjoy those while knowing you’re doing your part for DV victims. And Salon Nouveau has a promo that I’ll probably skip – but you might want to take part in. During October, they’re offering purple hair extensions for just $10. All of those proceeds will go directly to Emerge. Yes, purple is the signature color for DV month.
Please consider how you can support the work Emerge is doing for DV victims. The vast majority of us live in loving and supportive home environments, so it’s sometimes difficult to empathize – but this issue is all around us, and each of us can do our individual part to help eliminate it.
RTA
During the RTA board meeting that was held a couple of weeks ago, UA Professor Arlie Adkins was on hand to share his thoughts on why some form of voting change on RTA matters makes sense. The city has been asking for this issue to be discussed on an RTA agenda for months. Finally, it appeared on their agenda, the week after we drew a line in the sand and said that if our concerns are ignored, on February 1st of next year, we’re formally pulling out of RTA Next and their effort to extend the ½ cent sales tax they’ve been collecting since 2006. Arlie’s presentation was at the invitation of Mayor Romero.
Right now, each of the 9 members of the RTA gets 1 vote on matters before the board. That’s Tucson, the county, South Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana, Sahuarita, Tohono O’odham, Pascua Yaqui, and ADOT. Our position is that since we represent over 50% of the regional population and contribute a similar percentage of the RTA tax revenues, we should have some greater level of input into decisions than, say, Marana. A point I made at our last M&C meeting is that Ward 6 alone has nearly twice the population than Marana does. The same is true of every ward in the city – and yet, Marana has the same voting power as Tucson does.
Professor Adkins’ presentation demonstrated where inequities with that voting process exist. I pulled this slide from his PowerPoint – it shows why our 11% of the vote doesn’t reflect the significance of who Tucson is and the role we play regionally.
We are very simply saying the City of Tucson should have a vote on the RTA and Regional Council that more accurately reflects the groups we’re representing regionally.
Arlie also made the point that some form of weighted voting or representation on RTA boards is not a unique idea. In fact, when considered in relation to other western cities, one jurisdiction/one vote is the outlier. This slide makes that point.
There are ways to address what we’re after without giving the city veto power or asking the state legislature to change state law and endorse a formal weighted vote. For example, by simply adding members from both Tucson and the county to the RTA and the Regional Council, that new proportionally adjusted board would effectively give greater voting weight to the larger jurisdictions. That doesn’t guarantee we’d all vote in unison with our jurisdictional partners, but at least we’d have a larger presence in the body.
Voting strength is one of several issues we want addressed. It was the primary topic of discussion last week. M&C are also beginning work on what our ‘go it alone’ strategy might look like. By February 1st, we’ll have seen how the RTA conversations evolve, and we’ll have put into place our own set of options. It was good to see our concerns get a first airing. I’ll keep you up to speed on how all of this develops. What’s at stake is how our roadway and transportation needs are addressed and funded over the next 20 years.
Benedictine Plant Sale
Last week I shared information about the upcoming Benedictine Monastery Plant Sale. The flyer shown below is now updated with all of the speakers, the date/time/location of the event. The Benedictine has a wonderful local history, and this event is your opportunity to grab a part of it.
During the event, you’ll have the chance to tour the site. Importantly, this will serve as a fundraiser for Friends of Tucson Birthplace. They’ve been nurturing plants the nuns grew at the monastery. Now you can have some to continue that history at your home. It’d be great to see you there. Ann, my chief of staff, has been an integral part of making this event possible. I join the Friends in thanking her for that involvement.
Community Resource Fair
Another partnership is coming on Wednesday, October 6th. We’re partnering with the Ward 3 staff and several community groups to bring a resource fair to midtown. The primary focus is on eviction prevention, but once the event got into the planning stages, we thought we might as well toss out a wider net and provide information on a variety of topics.
The Supreme Court caused the CDC eviction moratorium to expire on August 26th. But resources are available that will benefit both residents and landlords. Come to the resource fair on the 6th and learn how you can take part in those benefits. In addition, we’ll have booths set up for expungement of pot convictions, the Pima Animal Care Center will be on-site, Literacy Connects will have information you’ll want to get ahold of, the county health folks will be administering free vaccines, and a bunch more.
Please pass the word around if you know people who can benefit from any of those services. It’s kind of a one-stop shopping opportunity, and all of what’s being offered is free.
Substitute Teaching in TUSD
If you follow the news, you know there’s a teacher shortage. TUSD is actively hiring full-time faculty. As that process continues, they’re filling temporary openings with substitute teachers. There’s a process you’ll have to go through, but they’re making it easy. This is an opportunity for you to engage with our youth, support the District and make a difference in the community. All of the information on applying is included in the flyer. To apply online, go to www.jobs.tusd1.org.
If you don’t have a teaching certification, they’ll ask you to get a fingerprint clearance card, fill out a complete application, and provide your bachelor’s degree transcripts. Connect with TUSD through the link I shared, and they’ll walk you through the process.
Ward 6 Expungement Clinic
Please mark your calendar, and pass the word to people who may benefit from the upcoming pot conviction expungement clinic. We’re hosting it here at the ward office on Saturday, October 9th. NORML is the lead agency, but the partnership of Prime Leaf is key to helping pass the word around.
The expungement is for small possession convictions. We’ll be here from 11 am until 3 pm on the 9th. If you’re coming, please bring all the information you’ve got to help in the processing. Getting your record cleared will open up housing and employment opportunities, so please help us spread the word.
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Walk to End Alzheimer’s
Put this event on your calendar – this is both a fundraiser and an awareness-building event.
Let’s be honest. The majority of the people reading this newsletter know someone who is going through some form of Alzheimer’s at one stage or another. It touches families in so many challenging ways that can be emotionally and financially draining. The Walk to End Alzheimer’s is one way you can support those who are actively working for solutions – every day in our community. And you’ll meet others who are working their way through family situations that may be similar to your own.
The Walk will be on Saturday, October 30th, beginning at 9 am at Reid Park – 900 S. Randolph Way. Due to COVID, they’re limiting in-person entries to 250 people. But you can also support their work by doing your own ‘walk’ - with others, or on your own – and using what you raise as your contribution to the work.
If you’ve got questions about either the event or the progress being made on Alzheimer’s, contact Vanessa Santa Cruz at the Alzheimer’s Association Desert Southwest office @ 230.1754. Or you can email her at vdcruz@alz.org.
Harvard Global Health Institute
Looking at the current national Harvard Global Health Institute maps, week to week, there’s not much change. Scroll between the two maps, and you can see some spots that improved from the high-risk level, but if someone were looking at the map, that person certainly wouldn’t come away thinking things are swell.
The minor change validates that we’re at a plateau, but it’s high into the risk levels. This is the map I had in last week’s newsletter from the Harvard Global Health folks:
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 One week later, it looks like this. Above I shared maps I pull each week from NY Times data. I finish with the Harvard Global Health Institute maps for comparison purposes. As I showed graphically above, the pandemic has become unfortunately political, so I want to give more than a single perspective for you to consider. The maps and data are pretty similar in concluding that things are still in a vulnerable condition.
 Last week Harvard had Pima County’s new cases per 100,000 population at 25.6, and our 7 days moving average for new cases was 267. We were in the Red risk level. This week they still have us in the Red risk level, and the numbers have only changed slightly.
In Arizona, on a statewide basis, we moved from 249 new cases on a 7-day moving average back up to 252. And we’re at the same 34 new cases per 100,000 as we were last week.
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:
COVID has killed over 700,000 people in the U.S. alone. It’s now the most deadly ‘event’ in our nation’s history – surpassing the Civil War. In March of last year, someone predicting that would have been ignored. People who remain unvaccinated are still ignoring that reality.
COVID kills 19x more people than the flu. Please get your flu vaccination, get your COVID vaccination, wear a mask when in confined areas, and watch out for the misinformation that’s being spread.
Here’s this week’s statewide COVID map.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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