Home Sharing
Over the weekend, the Star ran a piece on an out-of-state apartment flipper who is pretty proud of himself for making money by kicking seniors out of their homes. I suspect he’d put profit over his own parents if the money was right. Here’s a link to the story - https://tucson.com/news/local/california-investor-buys-tucson-seniors-complex-raises-rents-by-50/article_df3f34de-61ce-11ec-8e7e-9b0949b2ba69.html
A while back, I had a piece in the newsletter advocating for home-sharing as a way to beat the housing affordability mess the real estate market has turned into. Another opportunity is coming for you to talk to people who are both promoting home-sharing and who are living it.
Sharon and Deb began a home-sharing arrangement a few years ago. They’re joining with Lucy Read and presenting a community conversation on how the system works, its benefits, and likely some of its challenges. This flyer has the details for the meeting. It’ll be by Zoom, so you’ll need to register.
Please email tucsonhomesharing@gmail.com prior to January 28th to request a Zoom link. To alert them that’s what you’re after, they’re asking that you put “Community Conversation Ward Six” in the subject line. I’m sure they’ll be happy to host interested people who live outside of W6 as well.
On Friday, Dora and I met with a senior Veteran who had just received a letter from his landlord advising him of an upcoming rent increase. His landlord also told him that they were not renewing any of the existing leases. As Carol Ann Alaimo said in the article, in Arizona, nothing the California flipper jerk is doing is illegal. It is certainly unethical, though. In order for that to change, it will require a change in the state law pre-empting local involvement in rent amounts and increases.
Saguaro Rehab
A couple of weeks ago, I had a photo of a saguaro that had fallen over on a car. I figured it was due to the combination of rain making the ground soft and the wind we had that weekend. I’ve now learned that the cactus was diseased at the top, and it toppled over as a result.
Last week I saw some guys replanting the bottom portion of the cactus. Their goal is to see if they can salvage the portion that wasn’t diseased. Let’s hope. Here’s a picture of their replanting. They told me we should start to see buds forming around the top. If/when that happens, I’ll share the image of this re-creation. Whatever we can do to preserve our saguaro population is worth trying.
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Genna
Many of you have followed the evolving story of Genna Ayup and how she was killed by her live-in. It’s going on 10 years, and the family is still living with a ‘justice’ system that has left them wondering where it got its name.
The case will be back in front of a judge on February 18th. At that time, the killer will decide whether or not he wants to take a plea deal that has been offered. In a nutshell, it’s for probation with the possibility of up to 12 months in jail at the front end. The jail part would be up to the judge. If he refuses the deal, it’s off to court.
I join the family in hoping the killer is combative enough to want to test his luck in front of a jury of Genna’s peers. We’ll see on the 18th. For now, here’s a story Lupita Murillo from KVOA did last week. When this is all done, I’ll give a very full history on how this has been handled and mishandled.
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PFAS Update
It’s going on 4 years ago that I first brought the then mayor, city manager, city attorney, water director, and the legal team of Napoli and Shkolnik together to talk about the city’s role in litigation against 3M as a manufacturer of the fire fighting foam that’s now causing our groundwater to become polluted. As a result, we’re now joined with over 70 other jurisdictions in a lawsuit seeking damages from the product manufacturers. That process will take longer and we will have to wait before getting our arms around the PFAS problem.
As you can see from the map, we have had to take many of the 25 wells out of service due to the contaminant, many of which are around the central well field in midtown. Tucson Water now has an active dynamic detection map for the region. It includes testing of our production wells, our monitoring wells, and private wells. The goal is to show the extent of the PFAS contamination in the region. As you can see from the map, many of the 25 wells we’ve had to take out of service due to the contaminant are around the central well field in midtown. Many of the others are near Tucson International Airport, where the Arizona Air National Guard trains. Both the Guard and DM are the likely cause of the majority of the pollution.
 Tucson Water has been working with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) on putting some testing together upstream of our central well field. That’s the DM area. The ADEQ put just over $3M towards a pilot treatment plant that finally went online a couple of weeks ago. We hope to have the full scale pilot system up by fall. The $3M will not come close to covering the full cost of the treatment plants we’ll ultimately have to put into place or make us whole for the costs we’ve already absorbed. Those right now exceed $50M. Because there’s very little doubt the DOD is going to have to be a player in funding the eventual remediation, it was good to finally see them ante up $1.7M towards the pilot treatment work happening out by the base.
The pilot plant that’s now running is going to do a few things. One is to remove PFAS from that immediate area and help contain that portion of the plume. The hope is that’ll limit the movement of the plume. It’s upstream of the central well field, so containing it is critically important. The pilot will also tell us how effective the Ion Exchange process is in treating for PFAS. That information should serve as an important data point for how Tucson Water plans on developing the full-scale treatment process that will have to be in place both by DM and over by TIA. I’ve said before that the plume is moving faster than the process. This pilot is an important step in getting that under control.
This map shows both where the Central Tucson Pilot Project (CTPP) site is, and the blue arrow shows the direction the plume will flow if it’s not contained. The pilot is step 1. But having it in place is one of the first tangible on-the-ground steps we’ve seen since that Napoli Shkolnik meeting happened a few years ago. We also see several pieces of federal legislation finally acknowledging the importance of this issue – not only for Tucson but for virtually every jurisdiction across the country that has a military base in the area. It’ll be a multi-billion dollar clean-up. We’re in on the front end of the litigation, and we’ve established good rapport with those who we’ll eventually rely on to foot the bill.
 Judge Ahmad
Last Friday, I brought together a partner from the Hasanaat organization (Muslim) Catholic Community Services and the Jewish Family and Children’s Service for an interview with Judge Wakili with the Arizona Republic. You know the CCS work from the Benedictine. Hasanaat is working with refugee youth locally to encourage continued schooling and/or trade training. Many are here with parents who don’t speak English, and so the kids get caught up in low-end pay work just trying to keep the family fed. And JFCS was just recently named a refugee resettlement agency in Tucson, joining CCS, Lutheran Social Services, and IRC in the Afghan work. I thought it was important for the Republic reporter to see that this community is coming together in support of refugees, despite Washington’s indifference. We had Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the same room advocating for changes in policy.
Over the weekend, I hosted several Afghan arrivals – picking up donated goods that you may have been a part in providing. On Wednesday, I’ll do the same with a group JFCS will be bringing over. Tucson Afghan Community is here regularly. Yes, your donations of household goods, kid’s toys, personal hygiene items – they're all welcome.
Above I shared the Star story on the guy who’s flipping apartments and putting people on the street. Consider that you’re here as a refugee, have no immediate income, no rental history to show a landlord, don’t speak English well, if at all, and you’re suffering the trauma of the poorly planned and executed evacuation we all saw. Add that set of facts to the housing shortage, and it’s easy to see the challenges the refugee population is facing.
Angelique Lizarde from KVOA did a nice piece last Friday showing how the community is coming in support of the refugees. Here’s her story: https://www.kvoa.com/news/afghan-refugees-facing-housing-challenges/article_6fbfb3fe-7b37-11ec-8154-4fafa2d5d38e.html A special thank you to Brenda Matalone for her work in support of 3 Afghan families.
In 2019, the final year of the Trump administration, the number of refugees allowed into the country was around 18,000 – the lowest in the history of the program. As a result of the severly reduced number, the federal infrastructure put into place to manage the flow and processing was largely dismantled. The same thing happened with many of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) that were involved with the work. Why have staff and capacity if nobody’s being allowed in? Then COVID hit, and many of the volunteers who had been working in support of the NGO’s chose to stay home and minimize their exposure to the virus.
This year we’re going to see nearly 6x what we had just 2 years ago. The Afghan evacuees are among those. In an effort to reunite Judge Ahmad and his wife and daughter, I’ve been in touch with 2 congressional offices, one senator’s office, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, International Refugee Assistance Project, and our State Department. Each has pointed to “protocols” and “policies.” The State Department guy said they’re “counseling patience.” They’re trying to implement protocols that were slow when we were working with 18,000 refugees, and they’re trying to do that with a dismantled internal infrastructure in support of more than 120,000 refugees this year. People are dying as a result of the bureaucratic inability to see that what we are requiring of these people, and the system simply is not working.
When Kabul was evacuated, we brought over 70,000 refugees out of harm’s way without ‘protocols,’ ‘policies,’ and ‘patience’ getting in the way. We saw an emergency, and we addressed it. I know there are 115 Afghan families now situated in Turkey waiting for reunification. Ahmad’s wife and daughter are among them. I also know of former State Department contractees working on literacy for Afghan girls who are stuck in Afghanistan being told they need to cross an international border in order to apply for entry to the U.S. And there’s the group of 25 women journalists who are also stuck with talibs entering homes and doing what they do. That group, too was under State Department contract prior to the evacuation.
I’ve told all of the people in the congressional offices and the State Department I’ve spoken to that our protocols are getting people killed. And that we simply need to be better than this.
Last week I filed yet another form in Ahmad’s case – this one is headed to the Turkish government. But before it gets there, the Arizona Secretary of State needs to stamp it. Our city clerk met me in the rain in a parking lot to help with the notary piece of this. I then walked across the street to the State building to get the Secretary of State stamp. I was told that they’re not seeing anybody in person. The guard told me, ‘there are two women up there, but the door is closed, and they won’t see anyone.’ I called their Phoenix number and asked if I drove up to Phoenix would the Secretary of State’s people stamp the form up there? Nope – they're not seeing anyone in person either. So the Arizona Secretary of State isn’t seeing any of the public in person anywhere in the State of Arizona. Oh, the form? It’s to get Turkey to extend the residency permit for Ahmad’s daughter for a month while we exercise patience with our process. It’s due in less than 10 days. I had to mail it across the street to get it stamped. The Secretary of State says their turnaround time for stamping a form that’s mailed in is 10 days.
We are witnessing a huge psychosocial humanitarian issue. And the taliban is much more efficient at what they do than our government is at what they do. My office will stick with this until we get resolution. We’re hoping for a good result.
Thank you for your support of the Tucson refugee community.
Omicron Surge
Last week I shared some information on what to look for to assure the N95 mask you’re buying/wearing is the real thing and not a counterfeit knock-off. The CDC was criticized by some when they advised people would be best served in this current environment by wearing the more secure N95. It’s really pretty simple – Omicron is more highly contagious than other forms of COVID. So wear a better mask. Or don’t.
 Some parts of the country are starting to see COVID numbers start to dip. But they’re dipping from extremely high levels. While the trend is hopeful, the immediate reality is health care institutions are flooded. I was disappointed to see that none of the Afghans who came to the office over the weekend came with masks. Yes, I gave them all packages of 5 reusable one’s. Do what you can to continue the current downward case trend.
 The fact that this surge is on top of prior surges is causing staff shortages in our hospitals and other health care settings. People are getting burned out. This graphic shows how that’s causing nursing shortages nationwide. So many of us have said throughout this pandemic that we owe it to our front-line health care staff to do the right thing. And so many have played the ‘my liberty’ card. It continues to be the unvaccinated who are filling COVID wings at hospitals.
It’s no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention that law enforcement is one of the two main groups who have resisted vaccinations. Knowing that COVID has been the number one cause of fatality for cops since this began has not changed that resistance. The graph for nursing job postings looks eerily similar to the one for police COVID deaths. It’s data, and it’s hard to figure out why the mentality or philosophy won’t recognize that the numbers don’t lie. And that there’s a solution.
  More on the COVID numbers below, but first, let’s see what’s happening with the spread of the flu bug this week.
Flu Season
As the flu its advance. This chart shows that uptick for the past week. Much of the escalation is happening from the bottom levels of risk, advancing to more severe.
Have you had your flu shot? Here is this week's flu infection map. It’s good to see California and Arizona dropping back from higher infection levels to moderate ones. It’s January, and we all see the weather reports of snow in cities. This one-week very slight dip in flu cases is not likely to last.
 Glass Reuse Program
Last Friday, I did a story with Perla Shaheen from KGUN on the glass reuse program that’s now about a year old. They wanted to do a follow-up to see how the community was buying in – or not. In the intro, their anchor referred to program ‘failures.’ That’s a mischaracterization of the program. There was one glaring inaccuracy in Perla’s piece, but it was wrong through no fault of hers. If it had been true, the way they characterized the program would have been closer to being right.
Before we changed policy and requested that you no longer put glass into the blue barrels, we ended up with about 5,300 tons of glass at the Material Recycle Facility (MRF.) By the way, if you saw the story, the MRF is in Tucson. That’s where the city delivers the recyclable material. We never drove our recyclables “121 miles” to Phoenix. Republic Services might depending on market conditions, but that misquote was on her. Anyway, back to the tonnage.
KGUN had this graphic on their story. It was intended to show how much we picked up before the program went into effect vs how much is showing up in the 21 purple glass recycle bins that are scattered around town. If 600 tons had been accurate they’d have been right in saying the program didn’t have public buy-in.
 In doing some prep for the story, I asked our Environmental Services folks how much glass is piled at the landfill waiting to be crushed and processed. We had a communication flub – the 600 tons is what they told me but neglected to add in the other amounts that come from the weekly pick-ups of the purple bins. Here’s the correct data.
Before the program started, we took about 5,300 tons of glass to the MRF annually. In the year since the program has been in effect, we’ve collected roughly 2,300 tons from the purple bins. That’s still a drop-off compared to when people just tossed glass into the blue bin, but it’s not the “90%” drop-off that KGUN reported. Their report was accurate as far as they knew – I gave them bad information based on my communication glitch with E.S.
So the program is not a ‘failure.’ We’d love to see more people using the purple bins and increase the tonnage we have to reuse. What’s troubling is that Republic Services still found over 2,400 tons of glass in the blue barrel material we delivered to the MRF. None of that should be in the blue bins.
Please do not put glass into the blue bin. Take it to one of the 21 purple bins that are placed around the city. We have a large one here at the ward office. Use this link to find all of the locations.
https://www.tucsonaz.gov/es/announcement/glass-reuse-plan
One final note on recycling. The contamination rates for what’s delivered to the recycle facility are above 25%. That is costing us money every month – which is factored into the rates people pay for trash and recycling service. Do not recycle many of the things you see in this picture I took of a neighbor’s recycle bin – don't put plastic bags, styrofoam cups, food waste...You can find the do’s and don’t’s of what goes into the recycle bin at the City of Tucson Environmental Services website. https://www.tucsonaz.gov/es/announcement/recycle-it-right
The picture is of a student house in my neighborhood. Aside from the contaminants, they’re sending to the MRF, the visual they had out on the street all weekend isn’t fitting for our city either. Please check the website links I’ve shared, and please wait until the morning of the pick-up to drag the bin out to the street.
Sunshine Mile
City planning and Rio will be hosting a workshop to review the Sunshine Mile overlay for prospective commercial and/or residential users. The workshop will be virtual – sign-up information is in the flyer shown below.
This is the stretch along Broadway from Euclid to Country Club. Hundreds of us worked for years preserving as much of the outside-the-curb from demolition as we could. It was one of the 2006 RTA road widening projects that, in its original form, would have taken out roughly 125 buildings, many of which were historic. Under the terms of the overlay, preservation of an historic building is required in order to take advantage of the incentives built into the zoning plan.
 There are 4 different sub-districts along the corridor. Each has its own zoning allowances, and each brings some parking, landscape, height, and other conditions intended as incentives for using the overlay. The road construction is nearly finished, so this will be a good time to get educated on the overlay terms if you’re interested in restoration and reuse of some of the existing spaces along the Sunshine Mile.
One final note on Rio Nuevo – thanks are due to Mark Irvin for his 12 years of service on that board. Last week he announced his resignation. He joined at a time the board was dysfunctional and under improper control by the city. That all changed, and in the past decade, we’ve established a very positive rapport with Rio. Mark has been a part of that change, and his work on the board has been a part of the resurgence we’ve seen in our downtown core.
Andrew Street Bike Boulevard
One more forum that’s coming will introduce plans for the Andrew Street bike path upgrades that are coming. These are part of the Prop 407 connectivity bond package you passed a few years ago. Andrew Street is a 5.6-mile segment that runs from roughly Wilmot over to Tucson Blvd. The changes will include streetscape amenities, landscaping, stormwater collection, bike lane changes, and lots more.
There will be 3 in-person meetings plus a virtual one. Each will present the same information, and each is set up to take in your thoughts. All of the dates and times are shown in the flyer below. I hope you can plan on taking part if you live in the area or if you bike along that route from time to time. I believe you’ll like what you see.
 Verizon/AT&T 5G Poles
If you follow this newsletter, you’re familiar with the many challenges we faced getting the attention of the telecom providers on the issue of where they place new 5G cell poles. Many of us met out in neighborhoods with residents who were somewhat less than amused to see a new 35’ pole popping up in front of their home. None of the telecom representatives I spoke with agreed that they’d appreciate finding one in front of their house. But existing state law allowed them to move along pretty much without our voice involved. Until now.
We spent months with the industry working on a utility infrastructure manual. It’s now live and available online. Much of that is old news. What’s new and good news is that every one of the newly proposed cell tower sites I’ve seen for midtown since that manual went into effect is a collocation on an existing vertical structure. That’s either a streetlight, traffic control device, or a utility pole such as that shown in this picture. We could have seen this all along. It’s too bad it took so much effort to bring everyone to the table and get this result.
 I am grateful to each of the telecom representatives, TEP, SW Gas, and other utilities who took part in our utility manual meetings. Our transportation department representatives put in a lot of work pulling the manual together. I know we’re hearing from some of the utilities about tweaks they’d like to see – largely in the area of how many permits we issue and their cost. But the collocate piece is staying. And it’s producing.
COVID Case Counts
At the end of 2021, our COVID case counts were headed in a downward direction. They were still very high at over 2,000 per week in Pima County, but the trend was promising. Then Omicron hit, and everything changed. Here’s how we ended last year.
Week of 11/29 - 3,639 new cases
Week of 12/6 - 2,965 new cases
Week of 12/13 - 2,493 new cases
Week of 12/20 - 2,022 new cases
Earlier I had some graphs showing how COVID case counts seem to be leveling off in some parts of the country. Local health experts predict the same here, but timing is everything, and as you can see from our own case counts, we’re not there yet. And to be clear, as is true where the counts are starting to peak, they’re peaking at extremely high levels, so there’s a long way to go.
Week of 12/27 - 4,229 new cases
Week of January 2nd - 10,433 new cases
Week of 1/10 - 15,472 new cases
Week of 1/17 - 18,308 new cases
With a week to go, January 2022 will be the highest monthly total of COVID cases Pima County has had since this all began in 2020. These case counts are largely Omicron driven. They do not include the flu. Families in the W6 office have had recent bouts with the flu and with COVID. We stay safe, but when you’re out in public, it’s impossible to know who around you in a store or other public setting is shedding one or another of the viruses. That’s why regardless of your vaccination status, it’s important to follow mask-wearing and distancing recommendations. So many of the battles we’ve had to fight on this are based on ignorance and self-absorption. Here’s how we feel in the W6 office.
 Harvard Global Health Institute
Most of the very few counties around the country that were not at the high-risk level for COVID last week have now joined the rest of us in the red. It’s the Omicron surge, and despite the notion that Omicron isn’t as deadly standing alone as Delta was, there are people dying in hospitals as a result of either direct impacts of Omicron or from collateral impacts of having delayed or compromised treatment for other conditions as a result of overcrowded conditions. Your liberty, right?
 Above I showed the case counts. This is how they track by population count.
Week of 12/27 - 4,229 new cases – 41 cases per 100,000 population / average 430 per day
Week of January 2nd - 10,433 new cases – 111 per 100,000 / 1,167 per day
Week of 1/10 - 15,472 new cases – 189 cases per 100,000 population / 1,983 per day.
Week of 1/17 - 18,308 – 241 cases per 100,000 population / 2,524 per day
I know this issue has divided families. Some of that is due to how COVID has been politicized. In other cases, it’s quite bluntly due to the death of a family member. I’m showing you data. Those aren’t made-up numbers. Set aside your politics and follow the science.
If you are experiencing any symptoms, or if you’ve been in contact with somebody who you know has tested positive for COVID, you should be tested. Omicron is highly contagious. This a listing of the Pima County testing centers. They’re free – but you must make an appointment. And 2 of my staff have gone to Rescue Me Wellness over at 5601 E. 5th. Their rapid tests cost $20. It’s the place the firefighters said I’m getting a kickback from. And I’m still looking for that lottery check in the mail – but they do excellent work.
 In Pima County, we’ve now registered 3,369 deaths due to COVID since this all started. As bad as that is, that number is understated. And it doesn’t include the impact on people who have had to put aside ‘elective’ surgeries due to short staffing and shortage of beds.
And here’s my usual closing – the current Arizona COVID count by county. There have been over 25,000 COVID deaths in Arizona and over 1.7M cases. Those are data, not political statements.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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