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Afghan Donations
There are over 50,000 Afghan refugees scattered around the U.S. right now. The federal process is metering out about 3,500 weekly to refugee resettlement agencies. Those agencies then have to find housing and all the supplies the families will need in their new homes. When that appeal went out, you all have responded in the compassionate way I’ve become accustomed to. And within days, the Ward 6 office was jam-packed with donations.
We’re working with Catholic Community Services, St. Marks church, Lutheran Social Services, the Islamic Center of Tucson, and the International Refugee Committee to manage the storage and distribution of the goods. Smaller items such as kids' toys, hygiene products, clothes, and towels are easy. The furniture and other household goods immediately became a challenge.
Credit Ann from my office for suggesting I reach out to Habitat for Humanity and see if we could strike a deal that benefits us both. I did, and we have.
If you have furniture, or other household goods such as microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, or that sort of thing you want to donate to benefit the incoming Afghan families, we now have an arrangement with the HabiStore that will be a win for everyone involved. They have agreed to tag all items identified as being in support of Afghans, and when those items sell, one-half of the proceeds will go to Habitat. The other half will go into a fund they’re creating earmarked for Afghan families to dip into when shopping for their own needs. Say you donate a table that sells for $100. The Habitat Afghan fund will have $50 credited, and when a refugee family comes in and maybe short of cash, that fund will be available for them to top off their bill.
Ann is affiliated with the Kaimas Foundation. Kaimas’ founder, Jan Vasilius, has agreed to seed the Habitat Afghan fund with a $5000 matching donation. If you don’t have household goods to donate but still want to help, any cash donation to the Habitat fund will be matched up to $5K by Kaimas.
When you want to make a furniture donation to the Afghan HabiStore effort, call their direct donation hotline at 230.5323. Specify that you’re calling about the Afghan fund, so they know to tag your goods. Habitat has trucks and personnel to come to your home and pick up what you have, so there’s no need for you to try to figure out how to transport your living room set, for example. We’re trying to make this as easy on donors as possible.
The families’ arrival is being spread out over such a long period of time by the federal processing that the community response was overwhelming our ability to manage the donation pool efficiently. Now, with the new deal in place with the HabiStore, much of the storage and logistical challenge is being eased.
The Ward 6 office is still a donation site for smaller items, and our hours for that work is still 9 am until noon, Monday through Friday. It’s great to find such a willing partner with T. Van Hook and JJ Swinney at Habitat. They already do great work with our local refugee community, so adding the Afghan families to the mix was an easy decision for them to make.
Please do not take anything but furniture to Habitat. Bring all other kinds of donations here to the Ward 6 office, 9-noon, Monday through Friday.
Thank you for all you’re doing in support of these families. We at the Ward 6 office are grateful for the community spirit that emerges every time a need such as this pops onto our radar screen.
Halloween Costume Contest
Last year we held a Halloween costume contest and gave away passes to the Reid Park Zoo to the winners. With the partnership of the zoo folks, we’re doing it again. While there’s no particular age limit, I can tell you that my staff (the judges) like little kids and share my love of critters. So we’ll be awarding the prizes to the top 3 ‘humans’ in costume, and we’ll save one for the best critter in costume.
In honor of this being election season, I’ll offer you this possible get-up:
For the kids’ costumes, you lean on your own creative juices.
Email us the entries at ward6@tucsonaz.gov. We’ll need them by 5 pm on Thursday, October 28th. And I’ll have the winners in the following week’s newsletter.
Thanks for playing along – not everything I include in this newsletter is ‘hard news.’
Vaccine Update
Late last week, the UA announced they were coming into compliance with the Biden policy of mandating vaccinations for employers who are federal contractors and who have over 100 employees. The UA does millions of dollars worth of work on federal grants and other contracts, so they are clearly subject to the policy. On Friday, UA president Robbins sent out this memo to all faculty and staff:
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There are about 40,000 UA students living and interacting in the wider community. The impact of the UA extends far beyond the boundaries of campus. What is missing from Robbins’ new policy is a mandate that all UA students be required to be vaccinated. And they haven’t indicated what the discipline for not vaccinating will be. It’s nice that he thought to include student employees, but that leaves thousands unaffected by the mandate.
There are over 1,100 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. that do require a COVID vaccination in order to attend their school. The UA is not one of them. The focus of UA administration since COVID began has been within the campus perimeter. They first took the position mandating testing for students living off-campus was ‘unconstitutional’, and they’re continuing to ignore the health of the wider community by only including student employees in the new policy. There is no state pre-emption any longer. The new policy is the bare minimum required by the Biden Executive Order.
LAST WEEK, the NY Times had an article highlighting the importance of vaccinations if you’ve got seniors you interact with. Even vaccinated older adults are at a greater risk of a COVID infection than younger unvaccinated people. This chart from Seattle hospitals shows just how extreme that vulnerability is. If there are seniors you’re concerned about, get vaccinated and wear a mask when around them.
 This chart shows the same dynamic is taking place internationally. These are the COVID hospitalization rates by age group in England.
The conclusion they drew is that for kids, the threat of getting COVID is real, and it’s similar to the threat of getting other infectious diseases. But for older people, as well as for people who have other serious health problems, vaccination does not reduce the danger of becoming infected to zero. But remaining unvaccinated places you at a statistically significant greater risk.
They conclude the article by making it clear that getting vaccinated is still ‘the best thing’ an elderly person can do to manage their own risk level. And yet, the COVID risk remains real, even for vaccinated older people.
I’ve shared this table before. We have about 300 employees who are not getting the vaccination. On Tuesday, we’ll talk about disciplinary options, up to and including termination.
Note that we still have roughly 100 police officers who are not getting a COVID shot. That’s ironic since COVID has taken the lives of more law enforcement officers in the U.S. than any other cause since this pandemic started. In fact, more than 4x as many officers have died from COVID than from any other on-the-job reason.
It was interesting to see the header on the Officer Down Memorial Page last week. It’s a little tough to decipher, but it says, “COVID is the #1 killer of LEO (Law Enforcement Officers) in 2020 and 2021. Getting vaccinated is just as important as wearing your vest and your seatbelt. Don’t wait any longer. Please consult your doctor to see if vaccination is right for you.”
That warning is followed by these images of officers who were lost due to COVID. It’s a partial video list that keeps scrolling and updating with new images while you’re on their page. And it makes the fact of our law enforcement group – and law enforcement agencies across the country – being some of the most adamantly opposed to vaccines hard to understand.
 Statewide we didn’t move the vaccination needle much at all last week. We were at 51%, and here’s the current data. We’re ranked #32 nationally – better than we are for education spending but well into the lower half for vaccinations.
Just for the record, here are the top 5 states nationally. All in the northeast, and all following the partisan divide I’ve written about previously.
And here’s our national scorecard for this week:
A contact I have in the local media told me last week that their station photographer was allowed to walk through one of our COVID wards at a local hospital. He said it’s patient after patient laying there with hoses and tubes connected. He came out even more of a believer in the efficacy of vaccinations and with an even greater respect for our health care workers than he had before going in.
Pima County is still a leader in Arizona.
I’ll keep giving you the Pima County vaccination sites. We’re just ahead of the flu season. Getting both the flu and COVID vaccination is key to our not having a dual-surge this winter.
No cost/no appointment needed. Pima County health is doing its part to help bring this to closure.
And 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 national hot spots are easing off in the southeast, but the states in the middle west and up on the Canadian border are still having issues. Alaska is still doing poorly, and the reports of their health care workers being verbally abused by no-mask/no-vax protesters continued through this past week. For me, that’s indefensible.
  Here’s the current risk level map. Remember, it’s for unvaccinated people. In Arizona, every county continues to be rated as either ‘very high’ or ‘extremely high risk for COVID transmission – for unvaccinated people. CDC guidelines also continue to recommend masking for everyone if you’re in a confined area indoors. In parts of Texas along the border, there was an improvement. California also has some areas improving. Otherwise, there’s not much change since last week.
 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. It dropped back to almost exactly where it was 2 weeks ago – still in the “very high risk” level, but the numbers are slightly reduced. And the CDC mask-wearing guidance continues to be included in the data reports.
Nationally there has been a 22% 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. Two weeks ago, I shared that we had seen a 4% drop over the previous 14 days – last week, that had gone to a 4% increase. This week the number flipped back to a downward trend – but less than the national trend.
All of these data simply make the point that this is not behind us, either locally, statewide, or nationally.
If you follow this newsletter, you know that 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. As you can see from the data, it was right after then that our new case counts started to increase. They haven’t reversed course in 2 months.
Last week is an anomaly because the state website had zero new cases recorded on Sunday when I closed out the weekly count. So the 1,521 you see below is for a 6 day week.
Week of 7/26 - 827 new cases
Week of 8/2 - 1,301 new cases
Week of 8/9 - 1,570 new cases
Week of 8/16 - 1,737 new cases
Week of 8/23 - 1,963 new cases
Week of 8/30 - 2,025 new cases
Week of 9/6 - 1,720 new cases
Week of 9/13 - 1,877 new cases
Week of 9/20 - 1,728 new cases
Week of 9/27 - 1,873 new cases
Week of 10/4 - 1,964 new cases
Week of 10/11 - 1,521 new cases
During the first week in June, we had 130 new cases.
The UA hasn’t updated their transmission rate data since 9/24. I’ll leave the data trend for September in the newsletter for now, but it’s 3 weeks old, so keep that in mind as you look it over.
Domestic Violence Awareness Month
I’m going to start with the Emerge 24 hour hotline. Please put it in your phone, so you have it readily available when it’s needed. 795.4266. It’s for anytime you or someone you know may be in a vulnerable position within a relationship. Please don’t wait to call if you’re at all concerned with what you’re seeing. DV is in every demographic of the community.
Pre-pandemic, Emerge was busy with hotline counseling, direct service to community members who were in abusive situations, and finding safe housing for DV families. These data show the value Emerge and their staff have played – and remember, this was for the fiscal year that ended just as COVID was hitting its full stride last year.
During COVID, women and children who were stuck in abusive relationships many times were also forced to ‘shelter in place’ with their abuser. That created and added difficulty for staff at Emerge to manage. And they have, with the strong support from the community.
You can find Emerge online at www.emergecenter.org. Their site describes all the services they offer, plus ways you can donate in support of the work being done. The issue of domestic violence isn’t going away, and in fact, with the addition of COVID, addressing the needs has only become more difficult.
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.
Housing Affordability
One of the challenges the refugee resettlement agencies face for incoming families is locating affordable housing. And one of the challenges thousands of local families face is locating housing that’s affordable. The market is hot, and landlords are raising rents to levels not seen before. And to be clear, this is a national trend, not just Tucson’s issue.
Our Housing and Community Development team is hosting a series of meetings to gather input from you on this topic. The M&C have signaled that we want options for how to address the affordability issue locally, and HCD is putting a framework together that we’ll see sometime in November.
There will be 3 meetings in which HCD will share their thoughts and get yours. The first two will be online, and one of those will be primarily to hear from developers and then another primarily to hear from the public. The third meeting will be held in person, and everyone is welcome to come and be a part of the conversation.
Please use this link to register for the forum most appropriate for you.
Tucson Airport Remediation Project (TARP) Discharge
Because of the PFAS saturation created by the Air National Guard operation at Tucson International Airport, we had to shut down the TARP treatment plant while we work on an alternate method of treating that water. The carbon filters in the TARP plant were becoming so full of contaminants that we could no longer justify repeatedly shutting down the operation to change them out. Working with the ADEQ, there’s a plan to discharge water into the Santa Cruz riverbed and let it recharge instead of serving it to customers.
On Tuesday, October 19th, at 6 pm, the ADEQ will hold a public hearing to gather public input on the plan. The hearing will be on our application for what’s called an Arizona Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit for the TARP facility. It would not be on their agenda if it wasn’t for the PFAS contamination.
The permit is asking for the ability to discharge up to 10.2 million gallons of treated groundwater from the TARP to the Santa Cruz River. I’ll have some questions for staff about the proposed project during our study session on the 19th, so tune in if you’d like the benefit of their responses before deciding on whether or not to take part in the public hearing later in the evening.
This public comment period began on September 3rd. This public hearing is the last opportunity for you to weigh in. The EPA health advisory for PFAS is 70 parts per trillion. Our permit application is for the ability to discharge 14.2 ppt of the combined “PFOA and PFAS.”
If you’d like to see the permit application and fact sheets that have been submitted, use these links.
And here are the links for learning more about the public hearing and for registering for meeting access. It’ll be online.
DM PFAS Update
Over by DM, the ADEQ continues working with Tucson Water on identifying strategies to treat and contain the PFAS plume. This graphic shows the direction the plume is headed – north, towards our central well field. It also shows the location of public Tucson Water wells that we’ve had to shut down due to contamination. The one in the graphic is less than a mile from the base. You can see that when functioning, it’s pumping groundwater from well below where the PFAS plume is. The concentrations found out by DM are, in some cases, over 1,100 ppt. Remember, the EPA health advisory begins at 70 ppt. We now have over 20 wells scattered throughout the valley that are shut down due to PFAS.
The timeline for addressing the DM plume extends out to the end of next year. This is just to get the ADEQ pilot treatment facility up and running. The military has announced they plan on studying things for at least another year beyond that. I’ll have questions during our study session about how all of this is being coordinated and how it relates to control of the plume. This graphic shows the proposed timeline for the ADEQ work out by DM.
Our litigation against 3M and other product manufacturers continues to inch along the judicial process. As I’ve said throughout the current campaign for re-election, this is priority 1 for me. Safe groundwater will be a necessity as climate impacts force us off from the CAP allocation we’re now receiving.
Blenman Elm Water Project
And some good news on the waterfront. This is a picture my bride took as we walked past the ongoing Blenman Elm basin and butterfly garden project. It’s on a Tucson Water well site, and we’re partnering together with the neighborhood on funding. We’re kicking in some Green Stormwater Infrastructure funds, and they’re using some of the Park Tucson funds they’ve built up.
Right now, we have several of the GSI projects in progress in Ward 6. Get in touch with the office if your neighborhood has areas that might benefit from basins to catch and use stormwater runoff. The Blenman Elm project is located at Treat and Seneca – easy to find if you’d like to stop by and watch the progress.
National Lead Poisoning Week
The last water adds for this week – coming next week is National Lead Poisoning Week. El Rio’s community health team is going to present an online educational event where parents will learn about blood testing their kids for possible lead poison exposure. Also included will be information on our Lead-Based paint hazard control program. A blood test is the only way you can know if your child has lead poisoning.
The event will be held online on Tuesday, October 26th at 1 pm for English speakers and beginning at 1:20 pm for Spanish speakers. Please use these links to get registered for one of these important presentations. I’m always impressed with the quality of public involvement we see from our El Rio health care partners.
As a part of this week’s RTA update, I’m opening with a safety reminder. We still have some of the Slow Street signs you can post throughout your neighborhood. Just reach out to us at the Ward 6 office, and we’ll arrange to get some to you. They're not exactly like the one in this graphic I received from Sam Hughes friend Bill, but they get the point across – slow down while driving in our residential areas.
As for the RTA, the M&C are continuing to juggle the question of continuing as a part of the next RTA regional package or what ‘going it alone’ might look like. One reason the conversation is necessary is the roadway needs in Tucson are vastly different than they are in other towns in our region.
The current RTA package is heavily slanted towards expanding existing roadway capacity. That may be a very important consideration for, say Oro Valley. I’ve told our transportation team that for midtown, our needs aren’t for wider roads, it’s for newer roads. Fix what we have. And repurpose some of what we have to address other transit priorities such as protected bike lanes and safety elements for pedestrians.
Based on both growth trends and the changes in how people are getting around, our transportation folks project that by 2045 if we do not invest in expanding our streets, less than 60% of the roadway capacity will be used during peak morning and evening travel times. It’s the same argument many of us made when talking about widening Broadway – we're spending money, adding heat island impacts by widening the roads, and doing that so the road can be underutilized for 22 out of 24 hours every day. Even during peak times, we’re not forcing people to stop and go like the LA freeway images we’ve all seen. This graphic shows what I mean – it's from our Move Tucson/Complete Streets framework we’re working on in conjunction with considering our RTA Next move.
 Right now, we use a portion of our ½ cent Proposition 101 money for road repair. None of the half-cent RTA sales tax goes to road repair. We do have some state gas tax money that has to be spent on road repair, but the combined amount from all sources isn’t enough to do what we need done. This chart is instructive. It shows that in many cases, the funding sources we’re relying on for roadwork are also the sources we have the least control over how it can be spent. The RTA is one of those. It’s a factor in the conversations we’re having about our role in that when/if it goes back to the voters for an extension.
 As a general statement, the more significant our funding source, the less control we currently have over how its spent. Here’s the ‘needs list’ we’ve submitted to the RTA. Their next meeting is at the end of October. This whole topic is now a regular agenda item for M&C.
And with the Broadway widening project finally winding down, our transportation team is doing public outreach to gather input on transit improvements being considered for Broadway. The purpose of what we’re looking at is to improve cross-town transit options. Here’s a list of the public meetings coming on this topic:
Monday, October 18th - 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm – Randolph Park Rec Center
Friday, October 22nd - 9:30 am to 10:30 am – online; information at www.suntran.com
Wednesday, October 27th - 4:30 pm to 5:40 pm – Houghton Park-n-Ride
Thursday, November 4th - 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm – Ronstadt Transit Center
Tuesday, November 16th - 6 pm to 7 pm – online; information at www.suntran.com
Wednesday, November 17th - 9 am to 10 am – Udall Rec Center
Halloween Party
I opened with our Ward 6 costume contest that our zoo friends are helping us with. The Southern Arizona Transportation Museum team is back to semi-normal this year, and with that are offering a free, family-oriented event on Saturday, October 30th. It’ll run from 10 am until 2 pm down at the Historic Depot. They’re located at 414 N. Toole.
The event will include a costume contest at noon, plus all the Halloween stuff the kids are looking forward to. And that your dentist is looking forward to. They’ve got bills to pay, too.
This flyer has all of the information you’ll need to plan on being at the train depot. Last year this wasn’t possible. It’s a hopeful sign. I’m grateful to the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum guys for making this possible.
One more Halloween item that’s important to keep in mind. Halloween just happens to also coincide with the time many of our urban critters are showing up more frequently. They find a habitat that includes security and food. Keeping your alley trimmed back is important. If you don’t want one of these guys on your front porch
– you might want to keep the pumpkin indoors or in the backyard behind a fence. Game and Fish will not come out and relocate urban wildlife unless there are particular signs of aggressive behavior or numbers that are getting out of control. Minimize the food sources you make available, and they’ll look for another area to call home.
Chief Magnus
Many of you know that TPD Chief Magnus is being considered for the position of Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. His nomination process has been on hold while congress wrestled with Homeland Security over information related to the protests that took place in Portland, Oregon, last year. That has been resolved, and Magnus’ nomination is now moving forward.
On Tuesday morning, October 19th, Chris will be in front of the Senate Committee on Finance to begin his testimony on this nomination. The hearing will begin at 6:30 am Tucson time. If you’d like to get more information on the hearing and the process, you can use this link:
I cannot imagine Chris not being selected. That’s going to be a big loss for our community when it happens. But from a career-move standpoint, nobody can criticize Chris for giving it a whirl.
Harvard Global Health Institute
For each of the past 2 weeks, Apache County in northeastern Arizona was in the Orange risk level. It’s that long rectangle on the Arizona section of the map below. Two weeks ago, it moved back to Red – high risk. That left tiny Santa Cruz County as the only area in Arizona that was out of the red risk level.
This week Pima County joined Santa Cruz in the orange risk level. While it’s still a high-risk condition, it’s improvement we all welcome. Here’s this week’s national risk map from the Harvard Global Health team. With us once again being right in front of colder weather, people then gathering indoors, and the flu season, throwing down our guard right now doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
 Last week Harvard had Pima County’s new cases per 100,000 population at 26.9, and our 7 day moving average for new cases was 282. We were in the Red risk level. This week the numbers are both improved – as shown in the graphic. That’s consistent with the trend the NY Times data showed up above.
In Arizona, on a statewide basis, we moved from 240 new cases on a 7-day moving average down to 220. And our cases per 100,000 dipped from 33 down to 30. So Pima County moving to Orange is consistent with the statewide trend.
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 20,000 Arizonans and over 2,600 people in Pima County. I remember back to the first state map I showed. The number of cases in Pima County was 42. Who knew?
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. Remember, they didn’t have any new cases recorded on Sunday, so this is only a 6 day week on the AZDHS website.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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