January 2021
Each year I do a year in review end-of-year newsletter. I follow the previous calendar year month by month and try to capture some policy items we’ve achieved and also give a taste of the other issues we’ve faced together throughout the year. In the first ‘21 newsletter, I opened with this picture, adding that we all hoped the 12/31/21 newsletter would end on a more hopeful note. Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way.
 In researching for this newsletter, I found it interesting to compare where we began the year with regard to COVID and how we’re ending it.
This was the Harvard Global Health risk map for Arizona in January of this year.
 The first week of the year, we were seeing in the 1,000 new cases per day range. That was the peak of COVID for Pima County. Last week in Pima County, we had just over 2,000 new cases. That’s not good, but it’s not where we were at the start of 2021.
As we close out the year, the Harvard Global map for Arizona looks like this. They changed from reporting by congressional district to reporting by county. It’s still a pretty bleak looking map, regardless of how they’re drawing the lines.
Back in January, I was writing about concerns the science community had about a new emerging variant. That one was coming out of the U.K. It was called B.117, and it caused a new round of shutdowns in Britain. By the end of January, this map shows how far it had spread in the U.S. The dark blue areas are where the U.K. variant was detected.
 As the year progressed, you now know that B.117 never had the impact future variants would. But in January, it raised the attention of the health care community that without widespread vaccinations, COVID would mutate and spread.
Speaking of vaccines, in January, we were plodding through the early phases of eligibility. People were having trouble even making an appointment. I had this graphic showing who was able to get vaccinated, and people watched for their turn in line.
 Who knew that months later, getting a COVID vaccination would become a political hot button. In January, ‘vaccine hesitancy’ wasn’t a part of our lexicon.
While COVID took up most of the space in our lives early in the year, January was also when we announced the end of curbside glass recycling. Beginning in February, the 21 city locations for glass would go into effect. I was still crushing your bottles in the Ward 6 garage, and I had pictures of some of the uses it was being put to in the newsletter. This is one of the Bottle Rocket created benches you’ll now find on 4th Avenue.
 Anita, the owner of Bottle Rocket, and I continue to meet about monthly to crush her more glass using the crusher I still have at the office. The one-at-a-time crusher I've got beats the heck out of her having to smash her glass with a sledgehammer.
February
In February, I was pleased to co-sponsor our local CROWN Act with Nikki Lee. That’s the ordinance we adopted that, at its essence, says you may not treat others differently in the workplace based on natural hair. The acronym stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural hair. This issue was brought to me by representatives of the Tucson Black Women’s Task Force. Annie Sykes from that group shared her thoughts with M&C on the day we adopted the ordinance.
 I didn’t know it at the time, but later in the year, Nikki and I would partner on another hair-based ordinance.
In February was when I began a big push to get the attention of telecom companies on where they were placing the wireless poles in our neighborhoods. The goal was this – collocation on existing poles.
 Not this – planting new cell poles in front of peoples’ homes.
 We began a series of meetings with the telecom companies, and by mid-year, we had issued a new utility manual that will guide future installations. In last week’s newsletter, I shared the plans telecoms have for their next round of poles. Every one of them is a collocate. That’s a positive outcome, and I appreciate the partnership we’ve achieved with representatives from Verizon and AT&T.
The maps of the variant strain spread began to have quantities of cases included. These were the good old days when case counts in entire states were in the single and double digits.
 At the time, early in the year, it was all pre-Delta. But health care professionals were concerned about the emergence of new strains. That concern was borne out as the year progressed.
March
In March, we started seeing a significant increase in asylum seekers – and in response, the Ward office once again served as a donation center. The Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy was eased, partially as a way of easing the COVID exposure people were experiencing when held in over-stuffed detention facilities in Mexico. The result was increased needs here – and your donations to the Ward office made their way out to the tienda at the Alita's Center, where new migrant guests found clothes, hygiene kits, and travel supplies. We were grateful then for your generosity and continue to be grateful for that same heart we see in regard to the Afghan refugees.
 March was also when we started our push to get city concerns over how the RTA was being run addressed. Those were and continue to be issues such as representation on the Board that aligns with our population/tax representation in the region, how and when our projects will be funded, more diversity represented on the citizen advisory committee, road repair included in the next RTA, and some others. At year’s end, those discussions have begun, but there’s a deadline for seeing progress coming soon. Many of us on the council see the value in regional collaboration. And yet, any 20+-year-old policy can use a face-lift. That’s what we’re after. Many of us on the council also believe it should not have been this difficult to even begin the dialogue.
The variant maps continued to show spread. They had to change the color coding and numbering to accommodate the rapidly increasing new cases. And this still wasn’t Delta.
 While that was happening, the UA partnered with Ducey and opened a vaccination center on campus. While that may sound nice, it cannibalized the vaccine allotments that the county was being sent by the state. The net result was to make it more difficult for remote areas of the city and region to receive vaccinations. It was another example of the UA’s focus on its own perimeter and not on the wider community's needs.
Ducey opened the doors to bars and indoor establishments, people let their guard down, and we set the stage for the resurgence that began soon afterward and resulted in Delta. These were the 4-week totals for March. By today’s standards, they look pretty good. Simply put, we got complacent.
April
It was in April that Nikki and I brought our second hair-related item to the M&C. This group of women took part in the presentation in which we were asking for a change in our local code to allow home base hair salons. The prohibition dated back to a time when Pima County wastewater was concerned with the salons dumping caustics into the sewer system. The county had already updated their code – our effort in April was aligning ours with theirs. Especially during the pandemic, allowing for more home-based options was a game-changer for this group.
 April was also when I presented the idea of reuse of plastics to the M&C. The photo below is of a wall constructed with blocks made from plastic bottles that had been heated and formed into big Legos. As the year comes to an end, the city is finally working with the company that produces the Blocker. We’ll be buying several hundred ‘blocks’ and building demonstration projects around the city. My goal continues to be the city working a deal with ByFusion on the purchase of the machine, working a deal with Republic Services, so they’re a partner in this, and then start repurposing plastics that come into the Material Recycle Facility in productive ways – such as the wall in the photo. There’s progress. It’s just slow.
 Also, in April, I did a story with KVOA’s Lupita Murillo on the cost of the new ‘soft-sided facility’ Homeland Security was buying to house migrants. It’s a tent with air conditioning. And spending over $105,000,000 for it doesn’t strike me as a good use of taxpayer dollars. The great work being done out at Casa Alitas on behalf of the asylum-seeking migrants could address the needs of thousands of guests for that kind of money. It’s an example of our broken immigration/refugee resettlement process that is still unresolved at year’s end (see Afghan refugees at the end of the year look-back).
 The COVID counts continued to increase. The UA had resisted mandatory testing for off-campus students during the fall surge. Similarly, they were late to the game on insisting on vaccinations, despite entire state college systems in other states leading on that issue.
 That failure began to be reflected in the Rt numbers, with the UA zip code surging ahead of both Pima County and the rest of the state in rate of spread.
It wasn’t helpful that the ‘scientists’ leading the UA ignored the national surge the rest of the country was suffering through.
 May
In May, the state legislature announced that in Arizona, we would no longer recognize federal gun laws. A new state law was passed that I believe to be fundamentally unconstitutional as it ignores the U.S. Constitution supremacy clause in which federal law is deemed ‘the supreme law of the land’. But not in Arizona.
 In respect of the twin-demic of COVID and gun proliferation, I asked M&C to adopt an ordinance that very simply says in the City of Tucson we will enforce federal gun laws. I suspect once we act on that in a given case, one of the gun-guys from Phoenix will be challenging our law. That certainly will not be a unique experience for us.
May was also the month I hosted a forum with a group from Burlington, Vermont. Save Our Skies was an advocacy group who fought the decision to base F-35s in Burlington. They ultimately lost, and in the aftermath, multiple homes near the Air Force base became unlivable. This before/after photo shows where homes once were, but no more due to the extreme noise created by the overflights.
Given the interest in this topic, primarily from midtown residents whose homes would be in the flight path, we had a very good turnout for the presentation. The main lesson learned by the SOS group was a lot of behind-the-scenes deals had been cut ahead of them receiving the planes. Very little could be done at the local level to stop it. Their message – communicate with federal officials early and often on the issue.
On the COVID front, this map shows the colleges and universities across the country that had instituted a vaccine mandate. Note there still were none in Arizona.
 The new case counts in March were hovering around 100 per day. Here’s how they were creeping up by May.
Arizona was about 34% fully vaccinated. And the state was slowly advancing in the risk levels monitored by the Harvard Global Health team. We’d love to see a map like this today.
 June
In June, I hosted a zoom meeting that was focused on PFAS. The water contaminant is a direct threat to our central well field. We know the source is DM Air Force base and the way they handled and disposed of a fire fighting foam. This map shows the likely limits of the plume – outlined in the red dashed lines. And the blue dots are water wells in midtown.
 The EPA has set a health advisory for PFAS at 70 parts per trillion. We’ve found concentrations outside of DM at over 1,000 ppt. It’s worse over by Tucson International, where the Air National Guard operates. There we’ve found concentrations of over 10,000 ppt. It’s important to note that we are serving Colorado River water, not our well-pumped groundwater, to over 90% of our customers. And that the other 10% is getting water treated so that PFAS is at non-detect levels. So why is it an issue to me?
The region is in a 10+ year drought. We will need to begin serving groundwater within probably a decade. When we do, it cannot be contaminated with PFAS. The Air Force has already had to resort to serving bottled water to some customers while they remediate issues related to PFAS. That’s not a solution. The zoom included representatives of the EPA, Tucson Water, the DOD, and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. The issue is now being discussed in several federal bills such that funding may be coming. But the plume seems to be moving faster than the process. June was not nearly the end of this conversation.
Another conversation that’s still in play is the TEP transmission line project being proposed to run down Kino/Campbell. This map shows in green the preferred route – preferred by TEP. In June, I shared in a newsletter that the preferred route is also one of our Gateway Corridors.
This language appears in our land-use code controlling how new utilities are to be constructed on a gateway. And no, TEP was not planning on putting them underground.
 At year’s end, we are in negotiations with TEP about where they might engage in a public special exception process, asking to overground utility lines in some portions of gateways and/or scenic routes. As is true with the new utility manual governing how telecoms operate in the city, this is a new day when it comes to how the electric utility operates in our city. So much of the issues I grabbed onto last year fall under the umbrella of gaining a public voice in decisions affecting our homes, visual aesthetic of the city, and property values.
The vaccine numbers were climbing slowly, and everyone was chomping at the bit to resume normal living. Some city pools reopened, and these running events were sponsored by our Parks and Recreation staff.
 Nationwide cases were starting to surge – as shown in this NY Times graph. And Pima County and the UA area continued to be super spread areas. The early June numbers were beginning to reverse and head in a bad direction.
July
In July, I asked for an update on the plastic Blocker idea. I felt it was important to include Republic Services in the meeting since they’ve got a contract to run our recycle center, and to this point, they’ve been something of a bottleneck in moving the idea forward. I wanted them to walk the talk of the logos that appear on their trucks:
 The July meeting really only served as a starting point for further negotiations with them. I think there’s a way forward by pulling out of the waste stream some of the plastics they’re losing money on but leaving in the products they can sell for profit. In a subsequent meeting with them, they identified a good source of plastic we can use in the Blocker, so there’s a gradual partnership building. It’ll be an important step I want to get done early this year.
One of the significant zoning successes we had in July was the adoption of the Sunshine Mile overlay. It was a story the Star oddly took a pass on. Odd because the Broadway widening has been controversial for a decade, it ties in with our current RTA discussions, and the overlay itself will be a catalyst for saving and expanding multiple small local businesses along Broadway between Euclid and Country Club. And I’m hopeful the process serves as a model for future roadway expansion zoning discussions.
The overlay is a series of subdistricts, each with its own development standards designed to make them compatible with the adjacent neighborhoods and character along Broadway. The Rio Nuevo involvement was key to making the concept work. They’ll be able to step in and assist some of the local businesses in ways the city is prevented from doing. I’m grateful to their board for seeing the opportunity and stepping towards it.
Also, important players in pulling this together was the team that includes Project for Public Spaces, Lazarus & Silvyn PC, and Swaim Architects. Of course, the many neighbors who participated in the lengthy public sessions that were held as the process evolved. The color-coding on the map shows the subdistricts and how they were crafted with adjacencies in mind. It was a long process with a very good outcome.
And throughout that lengthy process, COVID continued its rebound. These numbers show what we now know was the early emergence of the Delta variant.
It was July, immediately ahead of the resumption of classes at the UA. They continued to resist mandating vaccines for the returning 40,000+ students. That would soon result in what many of us predicted – a surge that extended into the fall and through the rest of the year. The spread rate around campus was another sign of things to come.
The vaccine debate had clearly taken on a partisan political tone. I had this graphic in a July newsletter showing that divide.
Note, the reverse correlation between the Blue team getting vaccinated and the beginning of the country to turn Red again – due to COVID. Vaccines work in mitigating virus spread. Politics worked in allowing it to spread.
 August
The utility manual went ‘live’ in August. That means all new permits for cell poles will need to go through the process outlined in that manual. One of the provisions is that any cell pole cannot be located within 150’ of another ‘vertical element’. That means a conversation about collocating on existing TEP poles, street lights, street signs, etc will have to be a part of the site selection process. That’s a big step forward.
Another positive step that’s included in the manual is the public outreach that’ll happen. This is the notification section as found in the new utility manual:
 All of the new pole permits we’ve received in the last 2 months of the year have involved collocating on another existing pole of some sort. That’s a very good sign of a very good outcome.
We held a special meeting at the M&C in August to consider mandating vaccinations for all city employees. The county had considered that after County Administrator Huckelberry sent out a memo that contained this recommendation:
The county never approved that policy. We took a step in that direction in August with a mandatory vaccination policy tied to 5 days of suspension without pay for employees who refused. At the time, I spoke in support of making vaccinations a condition of employment. We weren’t quite there yet in August.
At the time of our vote on the 5 days off, there were roughly 1,000 city workers who had not been vaccinated. We gave a deadline of seeing at least 750 of that group get vaccinated, or the suspensions would go into effect. The police union, fire union, and communication workers union filed a complaint asking to have the action suspended. 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. Here’s the part of that Executive Order they hung their hats on:
 The court agreed that we have the authority to implement the mandatory vaccination policy. I had this chart in an August newsletter showing where the unvaccinated groupings were among the various city departments.
 August was the post-primary election, and my opponent in the general was taking part in rallies with signs like this being displayed. From the perspective of science, they’re simply wrong.
The spread rate around the UA campus continued to escalate, as was also true for Pima County generally. Things were looking similar to the huge spike in cases we saw in December 2020 when the UA refused to mandate testing for off-campus students.
The national COVID map continued to show a significant spread, largely due to Delta. Way too much of the oxygen in the room was being used up fighting against vaccinations and arguing through legal briefs. The only winner in that was COVID.
 September
In September, we took another step on the TEP transmission line issue. This photo shows the impact we are working to avoid. The lines you see crisscrossing Campbell and Speedway are simulations of what TEP is proposing. We held a study session to talk about our approach.
 In response to our moving forward with the gateway ordinance position – demanding undergrounding the utilities – TEP went back to the drawing board and identified a new route that would avoid the gateway. It’s shown in green on this map - route 5A. It had been considered by TEP early in the process and rejected as having too significant an impact on too many neighborhoods. Now that we were saying our gateway ordinance mattered, none of their earlier concerns with the green route mattered to TEP any longer. They did to us. Coming from our study session was direction to staff to advise TEP that the M&C will not consider route 5A and that our gateway ordinance still matters. There were hearings in front of the Arizona Corporation Commission committee formed to consider the transmission line issue scheduled for September 13th. We let TEP know that we’d be there taking part as a party in the hearings.
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TEP ultimately decided to delay the hearing and to sit down with our legal folks to try to come to a negotiated resolution. Coupled with the change in the relationship we’ve achieved with the telecoms, this reflects a new approach to how utilities will approach their work within the city. In both instances, I’m grateful to my colleagues on M&C for digging in with me and arriving at these positions.
The RTA conversation continued, and in fact, took a new turn in September. Getting any traction on issues such as proportional representation, road repair, membership on the citizen advisory committee, and funding of our projects, we decided to draw a line in the sand. The intent was to force serious consideration of our concerns. The alternative would be for the city to opt-out of participating in the next RTA. Here’s the motion we unanimously adopted.
I move to direct the City Attorney to report to M&C within 60 days with information on the legal applicability of pursuing the MAG model of governance, including proportional voting and veto power, for PAG, RTA, and RTA Next. And I direct staff to report back within 60 days with an update on funding for the remaining City of Tucson RTA projects and governance concerns raised today. Finally, I move that, unless otherwise directed by subsequent Mayor and Council action, that the City of Tucson withdraw its participation in RTA Next on February 1, 2022.
Since that vote, I’ve had a few conversations with members of the RTA board, and that group has had some general discussions about the areas of concern to us. But no formal and binding changes have been adopted. We’re now within about a month of the February 1st deadline for making a decision. The RTA meets in January. So do we. It’d be great to continue in that regional collaboration, but not without some changes to how it’s being managed right now.
The border migrant situation took on a more urgent tone in September. This is an image I had in the newsletter of roughly 12,000 Central American migrants camped out under a bridge in the Rio Grande Valley. Many ended up at Casa Alitas. Your donations were very much appreciated in support of those in need.
 It was in September that my involvement with the Afghan refugees deepened. Tucson is programmed to receive in the neighborhood of 600 – 700 refugees. I began working with some of the refugee resettlement agencies on gathering provisions for the incoming people and identifying some of the needs we’d have to address. We began meeting with some congressional aides, state ADES folks, and others. Those meetings have yielded little in the way of concrete solutions and progress. Where I have seen the greatest progress is in working directly with the Tucson Afghan Community and the Muslim Community Center of Tucson. Habitat for Humanity has also been a great partner. And, of course, you have shown yet again what a wonderful heart Tucson is made up of. Our community room at the ward office has become a distribution site for donations – and it’s full all the time. The slow pace of the federal government metering out the families and the challenge locally in finding housing for them once they arrive has resulted in community donations outpacing the process. It’s a good problem we’re dealing with at the ward office.
Representative Grijalva’s office has emerged as a true outside-the-box thinking partner in getting past some of the bureaucratic process the International Rescue Committee and others are stuck in. And I’ve been in touch with support groups as far away as Turkey and on the east coast of the U.S., working to get humane treatment for some of the refugees who are still stuck in Afghanistan and surrounding countries. The deeper into this I get, the clearer it becomes just how broken our immigration/refugee resettlement process is. It’s an initiative that will continue out of this office well into the new year.
The COVID numbers continued their escalation. Here are the weekly stats I shared in an early September newsletter showing the increases. In May, we were rightfully concerned seeing case counts reaching 400 per week. The fall surge was now in full swing.
- 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
 It wasn’t simply an increase in case counts. COVID deaths were also on a troubling upward trend. We were once again outpacing other developed countries. Those countries didn’t have the anti-vax crowd that continued to hamper our ability to get this under control.
Even the national leadership of the Firefighters Union went public with a plea to their membership to get off the anti-vax bandwagon and do the right thing. I had this video in a September newsletter. It didn’t move the needle much with the Tucson firefighter union.
 Watch Video
Some of the groups who resisted the vaccine were taking a religious avoidance position. The use of fetal tissue in testing drugs was sometimes cited as a justification – despite the leadership of every major world religion saying vaccines are both good, and taking them is socially ethical. I included this list of other drugs that used fetal tissue in their development – as a way of suggesting that if our workers claim this newly found religious problem with the COVID vaccines, they should also refuse any of these other drugs. We wouldn’t want any of them to be internally inconsistent.
 The 5-day discipline, pleas from major religious leaders, the TFFA president, and hypocrisy on which drugs a person is willing to take – none of that was having much of an impact on how many city workers were getting vaccinated
October
Our relationship with the local Afghani community expanded and evolved in a very positive way in October. It has continued to throughout the balance of the year. My staff and I have been receiving donations and getting the things you’ve brought it out to the refugee community. The most difficult part of all this locally is finding housing. The most difficult part on a wider scale is the inefficient federal system that quite literally has left behind an untold number of Afghans whose lives are in danger every day.
 We were able to establish a process with Habitat for Humanity to help distribute your donations to the refugees. The Kaimis Foundation funded an Afghan assistance program that refugees may now use at the HabiStore. And I’ve found that working directly with the Tucson Afghan Community and the Muslim Community Center of Tucson is the most direct route to the local refugees. For those who are finding housing, it’s all going well. Most, though are still stuck in hotels.
The big COVID news in October was our upping the ante with unvaccinated city workers. Instead of sticking with the 5-day discipline for employees who chose to avoid getting vaccinated, we said if you’re not vaccinated by December 1st, you’ve forfeited your employment with the city. I’d have gone for that, to begin with but seeing that most of the unvaccinated were not moved by the 5 days off, we passed the termination policy on a 6-1 vote.
Included with the new policy was the opportunity for workers to claim a medical exemption or to request a religious accommodation. This chart shows how many of those requests were made and how many were approved/denied. Roughly 300 employees remained subject to termination if they remained unvax’d by 12/1.
 I ran a couple of This or That graphics in October newsletters. This one was the more science-based one.
This one spoke more to the irrationality underlying the no-vax movement that was going to cost people their jobs.
Based on the Biden administration adopting a national policy requiring federal contractors to implement vaccine mandate policies, the UA finally edged towards a scientifically sound policy. They failed to take the opportunity to mandate all students be vaccinated, though. This is their new policy statement – it falls short of saying that even though the UA attracts thousands of 19 – 24-year-olds into our community every semester, only student workers would fall within the vaccine mandate.
 The data continued to make clear that unvaccinated people and especially unvaccinated seniors, were the ones filling hospital rooms and ultimately filling morgues. COVID had become our number 1 cause of death. And the no-vax community dug in and resisted.
 November
It was in November that I first began raising concerns with city staff and publicly about the proposed Becton Dickinson facility. That culminated with a December study session, but none of the initial concerns changed. And none have been resolved.
This is the map I’ve had in newsletters showing the location of the proposed BD plant.
 One concern is its proximity to the DM approach/departure corridor. Even the DOD raised objections to putting the operation so close to where they fly aircraft carrying live ordinance. Even without the bombs, a plane crashing into the BD plant would create an unmanageable environmental disaster.
BD is an operation that will sterilize medical equipment. Nothing wrong with the goal, but the process involves the use of Ethylene Oxide. That’s a highly flammable and a highly toxic chemical. I’ve asked staff to come back to us with responses to this list of issues:
- a) Ethylene Oxide (EO) is highly regulated at the federal level. EPA is currently reviewing the toxicity and exposure standards. When they did this 5 years ago, they found it to be 60x more carcinogenic to humans than previously believed. They're going to ramp up the exposure controls after this review. If PDEQ generates the air quality permit based on current standards, they'll be obsolete as soon as the new ones are generated.
- b) Transportation - Pima County wrote a letter to the Hazardous Materials Division of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration asking questions about transportation, storage, etc. They haven't received a response. I would want assurance they're not transporting the EO on city streets, all of which pass through residential areas.
- c) TFD does not have a response plan for a catastrophic incident - rollover during transit/air accident by the base, etc. Even a 10 lb release of EO requires notification to the National Toxicology Center w/in 15 minutes. Concern for TFD crews and for residents w/in the spread area in the case of such a release.
- d) DM told Sun Corridor at least twice that they don't want the facility so close to their approach/departure corridor. They fly planes w/live ordinance right past the site every day.
- e) Social Justice report diluted the low income/minority areas NW of the base by including Vail and Rita Ranch. The DOD EIS for the F35 cited a disparate impact on the Julia Keen, etc areas such that the basing decision moved to Boise. That's about noise. Certainly, we should be able to take exception to locating EO upwind of those neighborhoods for similar reasons.
- f) BD plans on using up to 450,000 lbs of EO annually. Might we require 'just in time' delivery and limit the amount they store on-site at a given time? Anything over 10 lbs in a release generates the notice to the feds. We should have authority to tell them to limit what's on site to less than that.
- g) We have no certainty that either storage, use or transport will not create off-gassing issues. Covington, Georgia is in litigation vs BD right now over alleged cancer clusters related to their facility. Can't our planning team require on-site facility standards significantly superior to those used in Covington? Also, the city staff doesn't have the technical skill set to do that sort of an assessment - so slow down the plan review process and get some outside expert input on what we should be requiring for safety on site.
- h) We have no emergency preparedness plan for a significant release of EO. TFD cannot honestly say they’re ready for a roll over, or an explosion at the plant. EO is not only highly toxic, it's highly flammable. Think of that smoke plume wafting towards midtown.
I know some of the members of the Board of Supervisors have similar concerns. Saying there’s nothing we can do is not an acceptable answer.
Also, in November, we finally put the commercial-scale glass crusher into operation out at the Los Reales landfill. That facility is in the process of being transformed into an environmental sustainability campus, and the glass operation will fit right in.
Putting the fully baked glass crushing process into effect is being hampered by some COVID-related issues. Those primarily revolve around staffing, the loss of our Department of Corrections workers, and just the reality that pretty much everything has hit a bit of a pause as we work through COVID. But it’s great to see the large crusher finally arrive and the fruit of all your efforts bringing bottles to the W6 office drop-off site – as well as the 20 others scattered throughout the city - in support of creating a secondary use from recycled bottles.
The COVID conversation began to shift in November. Delta variant was still by far causing the most severe impacts. But at the end of one November newsletter, I touched on a new variant they were calling Omicron. It was popping up in Southern Africa and seemed to spread much more quickly that other forms of COVID had. I shared this table showing one reason that part of the world was susceptible to a new strain of the virus. Hardly anybody was vaccinated.
The domestic increases in COVID cases continued, but it was still being driven by Delta.
 As the deadline approached for our vaccine mandate to go into effect, I ran this chart showing how previous vaccines had worked to clamp down on a variety of illnesses. It continues to be puzzling to me that we’re even having this divide over such a basic health measure.
 The calls for a religious accommodation were piling up among primarily public safety workers within the city. In fairness to our health care workers, I ran this graphic which pretty clearly shows how I feel about those accommodations. I know several people who work in hospital settings. Many are now saying the unvaccinated patients who are in need of significant medical interventions have sometimes become belligerent, telling their caregivers to not bring up their vaccination status. To me, the topic is totally fair game when we’re in the process of triaging health care.
Speaking of ignoring basic health care measures, despite these published rules surrounding fan behavior inside of McKale Center during basketball games -
 The UA failed to enforce the rules in any meaningful way. All of the 12,000+ people who attended the games would take their exposure out into the wider community. What happens outside the UA campus perimeter wasn’t of interest to Robbins/Heeke when I called for mandatory testing, they put a half-measure mandatory testing into place months after it was something other schools were doing, and they allowed thousands of unmasked fans to cram into McKale for events. That’s demonstrably irresponsible.
 As a way of comparing our COVID experience to what we had gone through in 2020, I included this chart in November newsletters.
I kept these weekly counts from 2021, showing that we had returned to case counts matching early surge months. And December would bring an all-new challenge with the new variant.
- Week of 10/4 - 1,964 new cases
- Week of 10/11 - 1,521 new cases
- Week of 10/18 - 2,233 new cases
- Week of 10/25 - 2,746 new cases
- Week of 11/1 - 2,856 new cases
- Week of 11/8 - 3,597 new cases
- Week of 11/15 - 4,353 new cases
- Week of 11/22 - 3,432 new cases
December
On December 6th, I was sworn in for a new term on the council. Congratulations to Richard for also being reelected and to Kevin Dahl, our new colleague. For my ceremony, I asked a new Afghan refugee Ahmad Naeem Wakili do the honors. He is a former judge who worked alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, adjudication Taliban and Isis. He was thrilled to be a part of our democratic process just a couple of months after having been caught up in the tragic evacuation we all witnessed on TV.
 Also, the Bible my bride is holding was my mom’s. It has been in the family for over 100 years. Those touches made the swearing-in event very meaningful to me.
The Afghan refugee process is our current object lesson showing just how broken our immigration and refugee resettlement process is. Ahmad’s wife and 2-year-old daughter are still caught in Turkey. Congressman Grijalva’s office is working with me to try to extract her – but time is now running out since her residency permit for being in that country may expire this week. All sorts of things may result, and none of them are good.
During the time I’ve been working with Ahmad on getting his family reunited, I’ve come into contact with others who have done some wonderful work in Afghanistan in support of literacy for young girls. And I now have evidence of dozens who are in mortal danger, still stuck in and around Kabul. This is a story that will extend into the new year. Simply put, lives are at stake, and our system is full of silos such that accountability is virtually impossible to assign to a particular person or department. Much more coming on this.
In December, we took a step that I’m hopeful will be an important tool in opening up access to housing for some of our lower-income residents. Our Housing Director and I were kicking around possible solutions to housing affordability and homelessness and the difficulty we were having in finding landlords who’d accept clients coming through our Housing Choice (Section 8) program. Other jurisdictions have adopted prohibitions on refusing a tenant solely based on the source of their income. We’ve seen other fixed income sources also be denied, including social security, SSDI, and veteran’s benefits. In December, I asked for a study session to address ‘income source discrimination’. The M&C unanimously passed a simple new ordinance that will say in the City of Tucson, it shall be illegal to deny tenancy to any individual solely based on the source of their income.
To be fair to the landlords who pushed back against this change, many of them had gone through bad experiences with how the city Section 8 program has been operated in the past. Delays in inspecting apartments, delays in making rent payments, not paying for repairs when tenants in our program trashed apartments, and just the difficulty in filling out government forms were all valid reasons to refuse to take part any longer. We had a good discussion at the study session about putting guard rails on the program, so the city is responsible for doing our part in running the program efficiently. I trust Housing Director Liz Morales and her team to keep that happening, and I’m hopeful this change will be an important tool for people looking for housing in this skyrocketing market.
Also, in December I asked M&C to adopt a new policy governing the use of weapons during film, and film-related activities taking place in Tucson. The catalyst for this was of course the shooting death that happened on a film set in New Mexico. Nobody has come up with a good reason the gun that resulted in that death had live ammunition in it. That’s because there isn’t a good reason. And there isn’t a good reason to have live rounds in any gun used during any film shooting.
Our ordinance will track the safety guidelines put out by the Actor’s Equity Association. Their focus is primarily theater, but all of the standards they follow will apply equally well to film sets. This is the full list of the guidelines, with the primary one being ‘no live ammunition allowed on the set’. Anyone who knows much about me knows I’m a huge supporter of the local film industry. This change gives every person on every set being shot in Tucson the assurance that a New Mexico incident will not happen here.
At the start of December, Omicron accounted for just 3% of the new COVID cases in the U.S. At year’s end, Omicron is accounting for roughly 75% of the new cases. That’s how fast it’s spreading and is a testament to how contagious the new variant is. And while some vaccinated people are catching the virus, two important points need to be made. One is that their symptoms are much less severe than the unvaccinated. Also, it’s the unvaccinated who are filling our hospitals.
The city vaccine mandate took effect on December 1st. When we first announced the policy, there were about 1,000 unvaccinated city workers. Some were concerned that our policy would result in the loss of a large number of employees. In the end, only 11 city workers chose to forfeit their jobs and remain unvaccinated. That’s from the nearly 4,000 city employees we have. But the final numbers also contained the bad news that over 300 continue to claim some medical or religious reason for continuing to be a danger to co-workers and the public by remaining unvaccinated. Here’s the final breakdown:
Fully vaccinated city workers – 3,513
Unvaccinated with no medical or religious claim – 11
Unvaccinated with a medical claim – 108
Unvaccinated with a religious claim – 241
Employees who claimed both a medical and religious exemption – 50
Of the 11 workers who decided to leave their jobs behind, there were 1 each from city courts, TPD, 911, TFD, parks, and Tucson Water. There were 2 from our business services department and 3 from environmental services. We will refill those vacancies. And we will put testing requirements into place for those who chose some exemption status instead of simply getting a vaccination.
As the year closes, Omicron is headed towards our highest average daily case counts, which were north of 200,000 per day. This NY Times graph shows that trajectory. And while it’s evidently causing less severe reactions than Delta, the remaining unvaccinated population places us all at the risk of seeing it merge with another COVID form and result in yet another variant. Think of Delta + Omicron – a highly deadly variant combined with a highly transmissible variant. That possibility cannot be ignored as we see millions of people travelling over the holidays.
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Christmas week, we had 2,022 new COVID cases in Pima County. We’ll have to keep an eye on that to see if reporting data was limited due to the holidays and if Omicron causes a new spike as the calendar rolls over.
Here’s the Arizona COVID map I shared in the first newsletter of the year.
Here’s this week’s statewide COVID map. With a week to go in the year, Pima County has gone from 74,108 cases to what will be over 170,000 cases by New Year’s Eve. We were all hoping 2021 would be better than 2020. Those numbers are our reality, though.
As the year comes to an end, I want to thank those of you who voted in support of me and my team at the Ward 6 office. We’re all excited about the upcoming 4 years and are looking forward to taking on the challenges they’ll bring. Enjoy the New Year’s holiday – safely and with someone you love.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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