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Date: 04/04/2022
Topics in This Issue:
Last Friday the County announced that Chuck Huckleberry is offering his resignation. They’ll vote on it at tomorrow’s Board of Supervisor meeting. Chuck has been head administrator in Pima County for nearly 30 years. He can proudly take into retirement credit for navigating the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, upgrades to the Pima Animal Care Center, completion of the Loop and plenty more. I’ve enjoyed working with him and wish he and his family well in this next phase. I’m certain that Jan Lesher will do an excellent job after the Board votes to approve her as new head administrator. I’m sure many of us will from time to time reach out to Chuck and use him as a resource. He has left marks on this region that will benefit generations to come. I’ll be looking for a pair of those arm warmers!
Humanizing the Homeless
Stormy is 32 years old. Stormy is 'gender fluid' and on the day we spoke she was identifying as a woman.
Stormy was born in Phoenix. She has a high school degree and has worked for a variety of mid-level jobs at credit card companies and fast food. After high school she married and together the couple tried to adopt a 17-year old guy who was fleeing a dysfunctional family situation. The adoption failed when the U.S. Marshall's showed up and arrested the young guy on a sex offense. It was later determined that his mother had turned him into the Marshall's to protect the real guilty party - the father.
Stormy was diagnosed with congestive heart issues. It was later found to be a misdiagnosis. Her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Between the medical bills related to the testing for those medical conditions, and the costs they were paying to get the kid they were attempting to adopt, they lost their house and began couch surfing. During that period, she heard of what sounded like a lucrative job offer in Mexico. She could earn roughly $400 per person from the Mexican Mafia by smuggling immigrants across the border. She was caught by Border Patrol in Douglas and ultimately returned to Mexico where she was captured by the cartel, tortured, raped and finally released. She made it back to Tucson and has spent 4 years moving from camp to camp in our washes and desert areas.
Stormy estimates she has been in about 20 different camps in that time span. Stormy enjoys 'exploring' and donating provisions she finds 'dumpster diving' to other homeless. That includes blankets, bedding and food. She is hurt by betrayals, and by experiencing how people treat the homeless. Her efforts to get into shelters have largely been unsuccessful due to a lack of bed capacity. Her message to the wider community - treat others as equals and don't look down on somebody else who is struggling daily just to survive.
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Afghan Refugees
Title 42 is a reference to a federal statute used by the Trump administration to shut down entry through our southern border. It’s a public health regulation and Trump used it to keep people in Mexico during COVID. Title 42 was continued into the Biden administration. It will soon be rescinded.
This is a portion of the 30-page document announcing the end of Title 42. Note the portion I’ve highlighted. The termination date is May 23rd.
Right now Border Patrol estimates that roughly 85% of the people trying to gain access into the Tucson Sector from Mexico are being denied entry by force of Title 42. We are currently seeing about 200-300 people per day at the Alitas Center. That’s capacity for the shelter. If 85% are being denied entry to the U.S., that means after May 23rd the number will immediately exceed the ability for housing at the Alitas Welcome Center. Other community shelters are also full.
Border Patrol has already announced that if there is no place to house the people, they’ll consider street releases at transit centers. That could mean hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers being left at the bus depot, train station, the airport – all over town with no place to go, and nobody to assist.
Our federal delegation has until the middle of May to assure the city and county sufficient funds to rent hotel space for this group of people. That also means food, help with transportation costs, medical needs and personal hygiene products. We’ve done this together before at the Benedictine – and we’re doing it together right now with the Afghan refugees. With the lifting of Title 42 it will not only continue, but the needs will ramp up again.
So why am I putting this Title 42 piece in the Afghan Refugee section? Because people are people; their needs are the same regardless of where they call home. For now, we will only be taking the food, hygiene products and home furnishings that we have been taking for the Afghan families. We’ll assess other needs as we get closer to the ending of Title 42.
One issue that is key for me is that the Ukraine situation cannot relegate the Afghan needs to the back burner. That’s true of those families who are in Tucson, and it’s equally true of those of their family members who are stuck in Afghanistan and surrounding countries. The judge’s wife and daughter, for example. I’m extending a big thanks to Curt Prendergast from the Star editorial board for running my piece on Saturday. Here’s the copy in case you missed it:
Last August the world watched the horrific evacuation of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. It was a humanitarian disaster that continues today.
A month ago, the world watched as Vladimir Putin encircled Ukraine, virtually unopposed. The humanitarian disaster that resulted also continues today. The invasion of Ukraine has rendered Afghanistan yesterday’s news.
To be clear, Ukraine and the human pain being inflicted by the madman Putin deserves all of the media coverage it is getting. That we sat and watched the invasion unfold in slow motion and have shied away from a confrontation in defense of a free people is appalling. And yet, every day people are being slaughtered by Taliban in Afghanistan. That is not yesterday’s news to any of the families involved.
More than 75,000 Afghani refugees were brought to the U.S. Most have been sent to local jurisdictions, leaving resettlement agencies and cities to sort out housing, food, transportation, education and other provisions. In Tucson we have received roughly 700 refugees. I have spoken with dozens of them. Each tells the same story; family and loved ones are stuck in Afghanistan. And they are being murdered daily.
Under the current Taliban regime girls are not allowed to attend school beyond grade 6. Females are not allowed outdoors unless they are in full cover burka. And females are not allowed outdoors without a male companion. Widows are therefore relegated to starvation. And all women and girls are relegated back to 2nd class status under Taliban rule. That is what we left behind.
Under the current Taliban regime anybody who was remotely associated with the U.S. is subjected to public beatings, family members are shot in front of loved ones, homes are ransacked, people are abducted without trace and women are taken into forced marriages with Talibs. That is what we left behind.
Journalists are Taliban targets. Anybody associated with the former judicial system is a target of Taliban. Public safety and military are targets. With the shattered economy people are starving, and homes without fuel for heat result in people freezing to death. This is every day in Afghanistan – in the wake of our departure.
Our refugee resettlement process was dismantled under the previous administration. We reduced the cap on the number of refugees we would receive to 18,000, the lowest in the history of our program. The new cap is 6 times that number. There is insufficient staff to process the refugees who were fortunate enough to end up on U.S. soil. Refugees who are here are largely stuck in hotels, unemployed and struggling with language, education and cultural issues. They are struggling with the trauma they experienced during the botched evacuation, and with the trauma they continue to experience when they receive daily updates from loved ones who were left behind.
If the process of resettlement is broken domestically, extracting people from the slaughterhouse that Afghanistan has become has proven next to impossible. People cannot safely leave their homes, and yet our process requires them to cross international borders to apply for certain forms of visas to come to the U.S. Visa requirements have been waived for many countries – not for Afghanistan. The U.S. exit from Afghanistan has resulted in the death of thousands of people whose only crime was supporting our efforts prior to our leaving.
The people in Ukraine deserved a more robust response to the obvious threat Putin posed prior to the invasion. Now our allies in Eastern Europe wonder if they’re next in line. The people who allied themselves with us in Afghanistan don’t have to wonder. They have become next in line for Taliban atrocities. That’s every day’s news now. It may be out of the news cycle, but it remains a burden our federal structure owns and must address.
Last week UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterras requested over $4B from the UN and from developed nations to support Afghans. He told the assembly that “nearly all” don’t have enough to eat, and some have resorted to selling their own children or body parts in order to get money for food. I have shared emails I’ve received from people who are on the ground in Afghanistan that validate Guterras’ statement. Things have worsened since the Taliban returned to power in the wake of our departure.
I hope to have great news about the reunification of Judge Ahmad’s family in the not- too-distant future. His wife and 2-year old are in danger daily over in Turkey. Across the border in Afghanistan things are horribly worse. News cycles capture our attention for a while – but it’s important to remember that when the cameras move onto a new calamity, it doesn’t mean the one they’re leaving is resolved.
Biden just announced 100,000 visas for Ukrainian refugees. He also announced the lifting of Title 42. And Afghani refugees are still struggling to get settled in our community. Thank you to all who have supported these groups over the past several years, and currently. George Carlin did a skit on the amount of ‘stuff’ we accumulate. We at the Ward 6 office have seen a lot of that ‘stuff’ becoming a treasure for needy and grateful families.
ByFusion Blocks
The plastic construction blocks have finally arrived. These are blocks we purchased in order to build a demonstration project using the recycled/reused melted plastic. Staff is getting some bids for miscellaneous concrete and earthwork – a foundation and prep for the site – then we’ll go to town building a double dumpster enclosure. It’ll be located out at the El Pueblo Community Center. I had hoped for something more centrally located at Randolph Park, but maybe that’ll be next.
Structural Concepts is our local contractor for doing the design drawings. They’ll do a field check to verify the size of the blocks matches what they’ve got in the construction docs – then we’ll deploy crews and get this thing built.
By way of quick reminder, these are the blocks made from super-heating plastic in a machine called a Blocker. The heated plastic is dropped into an extruder, formed into a construction-grade block which is ejected and is ready to build with. That’s what you see on the pallets in the picture – they're here in the city warehouse waiting for SCI to complete the construction docs. It has taken going on 2 years to get to this point. Republic Services is our contractor for running the recycle center. They have been slow to come on board with this project because they sell recycled plastic and make some money from it. The truth is they only do that with certain types of plastic. The money-losers will all work in the Blocker. There’s a deal to be made, which is where I hope to nudge this as soon as the pilot project is completed.
Garden District Multi-Home Yard Sale
There are now 21 homes participating in the Garden District yard sale. It’ll be held on Saturday, April 9th. Garden is bounded by Speedway and Grant, and by Alvernon and Swan. All of the sales will begin between 7am and 8am on the 9th.
Garden is a very walkable-friendly neighborhood, so you can easily park and walk to the various yards – same as they recommend for their porch fest events. A live link for the yard sale map will be posted by 6am on the 9th on the Garden website – www.thegardendistrict.org.
COVID Vaccines
It has been a while since I had a separate section in the newsletter for vaccines. With COVID winding down – hopefully – and things opening back up, there’s much less attention given to masking, distancing or vaccinations. Vaccines are still an important piece of assuring we don’t repeat the surges we went through last year.
Especially if you are immunocompromised, you face a much higher risk of severe illness from COVID than is true of a young, healthy person. A booster shot sharply reduces the chances of severe illness for that group. As we have known since all of the vaccine talk began, getting vaccinated will not completely eliminate any risk – what it does is impact severity for everybody who catches COVID. That risk is reduced even more for the vulnerable than for the healthy person. This chart is one I shared a while back – it shows the positive impact of vaccinations for COVID.
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According to Kaiser Family Foundation research, right now about ¼ of adults in the U.S. have still not gotten even one COVID vaccination shot. Another quarter have been vaccinated but not boosted. As we’ve come to observe in many things, there’s a partisan political component found in the data. You can see that in this chart compiled from data provided by the CDC. It’s from the Kaiser study published in January of this year – so it’s current stuff.
One final chart – this graph shows how the number of people getting vaccinated/boosted has fallen significantly. In fact, it’s at the lowest level of shots given per day – including both initial doses and boosters – since the start of the mass vaccinating that began in early 2021.
Science suggests that everybody who is eligible should get a booster. A second booster is now available for immunocompromised – and for eveybody over 50 years of age. In the past week I’ve had 3 friends come down with COVID. It is not behind us. All of them were vaccinated, and all had symptoms. All would have been worse off but for the vaccinations. I’ll have more on the current COVID numbers later, but here’s the Pima County list of vaccination sites for this week. You do not need an appointment at any of these sites – and all 3 brands of booster are available at each location.
TEP Undergrounding
On Wednesday, April 6th the Planning Commission is hosting a public hearing during which they’ll take input on the proposed Special Exception process for transmission lines that I’ve written about in previous newsletters. The issue is TEP wants to overground new transmission lines. Some of the areas they’ve targeted are our gateway and scenic corridors. Our local ordinance requires undergrounding all new utilities in those areas. TEP is looking for a vehicle through which they can request a variance.
The reality is they already have a vehicle to request a variance from our regulations. It’s called the Board of Adjustments. In fact, they’ve already taken one ‘undergrounding’ case to the BOA. That was back in December – here's the Board agenda item:
Based on impacts to archeological sites, the BOA approved overgrounding these lines on a unanimous vote.
One problem with the Board of Adjustment is the public involvement is very limited. They have a hearing, decide the case and then any appeal must go to Superior Court. The vast majority of cases that go to the Board have their variances approved. As this TEP transmission line project has evolved over the past couple of years, it became more and more clear that a more robust public process was needed. That’s the point of the Planning Commission agenda item; to consider amending our Special Exception process to allow for consideration of overgrounding/undergrounding new utilities.
This is the description you can find online for the Board of Adjustment. As you can see, they’re already set up to consider these cases.
The Board of Adjustment (B/A) is established to hear and decide requests for variances from provisions of the UDC, appeals of Zoning Administrator’s interpretations, appeals by the applicant from administrative design review decisions, appeals from limited notice procedure decisions and other land use issues as provided by the UDC.
I’ve shared multiple times in previous newsletters about the proposed DeMoss-Petrie transmission line route. And many of you took part in the public outreach TEP conducted over the past couple of years. Their mantra throughout was they’d propose a route to the Corporation Commission, get it approved and move forward. When I brought the gateway corridor issue into the conversation, the utility hit the brakes, pulled their issue from the Commission agenda and now we’re exploring ways to look at the issue that will necessarily involve more public process in a meaningful way. That’s how the Special Exception process entered the mix.
In a Special Exception, the applicant must first hold an advertised neighborhood meeting in which the affected residents are noticed and can share their thoughts. Following that the utility presents their proposal to our planning department. Then follows a zoning examiner public hearing. A recommendation is made to M&C and if the ZE case is appealed to us, we hold yet another public hearing before deciding on whether or not to approve the requested variance. Comparing that to the Board of Adjustment, followed by Superior Court and its clear which process gives you a greater voice.
TEP has not disclosed which segments of their proposed alignment they’ll request the variance for. First comes establishing the process they’ll be asked to follow. The Planning Commission hearing will begin at 6pm on April 6th. It’s going to be by Zoom – here's the link:
To be clear – the change that’s being proposed does not exempt TEP from any of the requirements of either our gateway or our scenic route ordinances. What it does is provide a vehicle that contains a much more robust public process than what now exists with the Board of Adjustment. It will also include a list of criteria the Zoning Examiner will have to consider when reviewing the variance request. I know there have been some emails and social media exchanges going around that suggest the city is giving TEP free rein on getting variances approved. That’s simply not the case. I invite you to take part in the Planning Commission public hearing. They’ll open with a factual review of what’s being proposed with the Special Exception option.
COVID Update
The new subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, has led a surge of COVID cases in Europe. It’s now the dominant strain of COVID in the U.S. That’s from CDC data they posted last week. The light pink is BA.2. The darker purple is our first Omicron variant. In the last column you can see BA.2 is now over half of all COVID cases in this country.
In fact, the World Health Organization reported last week that it’s the dominant version worldwide now. It was first seen in South Africa late last year, is more highly transmissible than Omicron and is certainly living up to that billing.
In Arizona we’ve seen our statewide numbers go from just over 5,100 three weeks ago, to 4,566 last week, and this week the Arizona Department of Health Services reported over 10,000 new COVID cases. I’ve heard that’s somewhat of a reporting error, and that it included some cases that should have been included in prior weeks’ data sets. Even if that’s true, it shows the drop in case counts is levelling off at roughly 5,000 new cases weekly in Arizona. That’s a lot better than where we’ve been, but it’s not a free pass by any measure. There were still nearly 400 COVID deaths in this state last week.
Our Pima County cases increased slightly to 669. It was below 500 last week. And there were 22 more COVID deaths in Pima County in the past week. Families are still suffering loss due to this virus. Wearing a mask when in confined public spaces continues to be one way of showing respect for those around you. There’s no way you can know who near to you is immunocompromised.
Here’s this week’s Arizona, county by county COVID map.
Testing when you feel symptoms coming on is still the most important piece of COVID management. It is a significant tool for reducing community spread of the disease. These are the Pima County health free testing sites. All of them recommend that you make a prior appointment.
Use this link to make a COVID test appointment - https://webcms.pima.gov/cms/One.aspx?portalId=169&pageId=575060#county
The flu is spreading at a high rate in New Mexico, and at a moderate rate in Utah. I mention them because they’re both our neighbors. In Arizona we’re still in the minimal spread category, so that’s a good sign.
Harvard Global Health Institute
The Harvard Global Health Institute risk level map has some news for Arizona this week. Maricopa County jumped back into the Red – high risk – category, and Pinal County moved to Orange – moderate risk. I’ll of course watch that to see if it’s a new trend, or if it falls in line with what might be the reporting glitch I mentioned above. Next week’s data should show that answer. There are still some hot spots scattered throughout the nation, but this is nothing like when I was putting maps in the newsletter that were red from end to end.
Our Pima County counts all increased slightly last week. We were at 6.7 cases per 100,000 and 70 per day on a 7-day average last week. Now both of those numbers have increased – the 7-day daily average inching closer to where we move back into the red risk level.
A good note to end on is that in Pima County over 75% of the population has been vaccinated. Given that the effectiveness of the vaccination decreases over time, if you’re in that 75% please reflect on how long it has been since you got the vaccine, and check with your personal physician to get a recommendation for a booster based on your own personal health characteristics.
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