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Last week the city updated our TPD General Orders to comply with the abortion resolution we adopted. Here’s the new language.
 The state had an anti-abortion law in effect dated in the early 1900’s. After Roe was adopted, that law was declared unconstitutional. Now that Roe is no longer standing, states will have to stand up new laws related to abortion. When that happens in Arizona, we’ll likely have to readjust the General Orders once again. The current Arizona Attorney General is now saying everything that used to be on the books is once more alive. We’ll see what the courts have to say.
On a related note, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running for governor in Arkansas. She was once Trumps WH press secretary. She jumped on the abortion topic last week in a campaign speech and said “We will make sure that when a kid is in the womb, they’re as safe as they are in a classroom.” (Insert long pregnant pause here...) It will truly be an interesting mid-term election season.
College Athletics
There’s a phrase ‘The future belongs to the bold.’ USC and UCLA walked that out last week while the Pac12 rookie commissioner, league school presidents and athletics directors were caught asleep at the media rights/big money wheel.
I’ve had this poster since the early ‘80’s - a few years after the UA and ASU joined the Pac8, forming the Pac10 conference. The two Arizona schools leaving the Western Athletic Conference and running with the big dogs was considered a step into the bigtime.
I worked in the UA athletics department for 32 years, beginning in 1988. The first 3 athletics directors I worked for were men of character (Ced Dempsey, Jim Livengood and Greg Byrne.) They navigated the department through some tough economic times, were figures respected in the wider community and operated with integrity. Things have changed in college sports. The UA hired football coach Larry Smith for $75K per year. Under the current athletic director Dave Heeke they just paid 2 coaches nearly $10M to leave before the end of their contract.
Last week USC and UCLA announced they’re leaving the Pac12 conference and joining the Big 10 in 2024. It's all about the money. The Pac12 conference splits approximately $340M in media money between the member schools. The Big 10 splits just under $700M among its member schools. Losing the L.A. market will only hurt the remaining Pac12 schools’ ability to attract an improved media contract. Gaining that market will be a boost for the Big 10.
Student athletes may now sign contracts to market their name, image and likeness. They may also transfer from one school to another relatively freely. The entire time I worked for Intercollegiate Athletics, athletes were prevented from flipping burgers to earn a few bucks. The NCAA has been its own worst enemy and now the tables have turned – and schools are following the money just like the students are. Before Heeke joined the department we never ran in a deficit. After paying football coach Kevin Sumlin over $6M to leave, Heeke hired the new coach, increased the football budget, did over $6M in upgrades to what was the newest addition to the football stadium (adding a barber shop for the kids,) and since claiming poverty at the start of COVID they’ve increased the number of staffers to more than at any time since I started in ‘88. He brought in an HR person from his former employer Central Michigan. At a salary north of $175K annually one of her initiatives was to put a “Happy Jar” outside her office where staff were expected to put a slip of paper in telling what they were happy about that day. He brought along his #2 guy from Central Michigan making a salary north of $275K who once told me he was going to draw up a document outlining what I was going to be allowed to say in public, and what I was not going to be able to say. The crack HR director was there to hear it and didn’t bat an eye. I’m told by an attorney that #2 later lied to the UA General Counsel about the conversation. All of this is happening with the blessing of UA president Robbins, while the faculty senate and others wonder what the actual mission of the institution really is any more.
Intercollegiate athletics is chasing a broken fiscal model. Schools like those in the Southeast are running athletics budgets bumping up against $200M. That’s now going to be true in the Big 10 as well. USC just hired a new football coach for over $7M from Oklahoma. OU is leaving their conference and joining the Southeastern Conference. Now USC with their new high dollar coach is leaving the Pac for the Big 10. Watch what Oregon does – with Nike money keeping that program flush it won’t come as any surprise if they end up joining USC and UCLA in creating what may become the first of the super conferences. It’ll be interesting to see how the non-revenue sports fare as this tidal wave of change hits ‘amateur sports’ at the collegiate level. Sports such as softball, volleyball, golf, tennis, track and field, swimming – olympic sports – they all rely on football and men’s basketball to pay their bills. Under Heeke at the UA, if you’ve got money, you’re a ‘prospect.’ Once you write a check you become an ‘account.’
In 2011 both Colorado and Utah joined making it the Pac12 conference. Now they’re back to 10. It won’t end there – the money won’t let it. Fans will still show up. Donors still respond to the Heeke/Robbins asks. The atmosphere surrounding college sports is changing. When I ran the big screen in the stadium it was the beginning of our having to follow a script running canned ads during every media break. Those are getting longer – to pay the bills. It’ll be sad when going to a college sporting event just feels corporate. The last project I managed was upgrading Robbins’ skybox suite to the tune of over $1M. The money is crazy. The model is broken. Bear Down!
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Homeless
That word evokes a wide variety of people – certainly far more than the mental image that popped into your mind when you read it. I was speaking to a county administrator recently who told me Green Valley is experiencing a homeless surge. Think of two seniors, both in a second marriage. One dies and the children from the first marriage end up with the assets. Or one pensioner dies leaving the surviving spouse with far more in bills than in income. We see the senior homeless issue in Tucson as well – rent increases bumping against locked-in social security income.
There are DV victims, youth runaways, drug addiction, mental illness, veterans with PTSD, single mom’s living in a car working minimum wage jobs, or victims of rent increases who were barely making ends meet before the landlord jacked up the housing cost. It’s any or some combination of all of those. The city has one tool we use to address it – housing first. It’s a great model, except we don’t have anywhere close to the number of rooms we need for people, and a very large percentage of the unhoused community simply will not thrive in a shelter setting. We know that to be true from the experience the city has had with our current Wildcat Inn property – and others.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 homeless people in the community. We regularly have no beds available in shelters – even for those who would accept one. Our approach is to move people from one spot to another. And then back again. I have been advocating for the city to invest in a low/no barrier shelter. And I have been advocating for safe parking areas where people who are living in their cars can safely park overnight. Of course, the controlled camps where we’d provide a water source, porta-john and TPD/service provider oversight. Each of those is a policy decision and there has been no support.
The result is a homeless population that’s gathering in one spot or another. Often under large shade trees which are sometimes on private property. Business owners have gotten fed up waiting for the city to adopt something beyond the No Room at the Inn model and in the past 2 weeks we’ve seen their unfortunate response. In the context of taking the problem into their own hands, we’re seeing people remove the ‘attractive nuisance’ (shade trees) on their own. Here are some photos of this happening in midtown:
Those are not acts of defiance. They’re acts out of frustration. I know there are conversations going on between the city manager and county administrator about how we can partner on solutions. I applaud that attempt – whatever the outcome, it will have to embrace an approach that includes a destination other than across the street into a new shady spot when we send our homeless protocol team to address an encampment.
Not to be outdone, this contraption arrived behind a midtown business last week. They availed themselves of the hose bib, defecated on the property and eventually were removed from the site. A controlled camp with a porta-john and water source is still my preferred solution – especially when compared to this happening over and over behind local businesses and residences.
More Loss of Trees
We’re trying to plant a million trees. I believe the goal is for that to be a net increase and not factoring out trees removed to address a homeless camp, or trees we allow to be destroyed because we continue to ignore our Native Plant Preservation Ordinance (NPPO.)
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with midtown neighbors on assuring a multi-family project being built follows all the proper development steps. In March I sent photos of vegetation on this particular lot, indicating that an NPPO would be needed – identifying the plant pallet that exists and putting together a mitigation plan for those that would have to be moved. Here are a couple of pictures I sent to staff alerting them to what was on the property that needed to be identified in the NPPO plan. You can see that some clearing of the building on the property had begun, so the concern was assuring they follow the steps we have in our own policies.
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This is in a neighborhood that’s also working with my office on installing some Green Stormwater Infrastructure chicanes on that same street to capture stormwater flow. Our hope was to transplant some of what was on the property and repurpose it into some of the chicanes. Well, last week the development work began in earnest. Here are a couple of photos I took and sent to city staff showing how our 3 months of giving notice and requesting proper oversight had gone ignored. By city staff and by the developer.
When I asked code enforcement to check on the work this is the report that was issued:
 After a closer inspection it was determined a Notice of Violation was indeed warranted – and issued – along with a ‘verbal admonishment.’ The plants are toast.
Two months ago, Kevin Dahl and I brought to the council a study session item in which we stressed the importance of native plant preservation. We have business owners chopping down trees because of our homeless policies, and we have developers feeling they have the freedom to skip steps when clearing a parcel – and our inspections show ‘no grading – only few plants removed.’
Sorry for opening with some expressions of frustration. But my staff, neighbors and I put a lot of effort into this work. Business operators show a ton of patience waiting on our policies to adjust to their realities. These outcomes are beyond unfortunate.
More Frustration – Broadway
The seemingly endless Broadway widening project will be coming to an end – sort of soon. From now until mid-July you’ll see the final asphalt going in from Norris to Country Club. There’s an underground water line going in this week at the east end of that stretch. Also, by the middle of the month they’ll have that work done so the paving can be completed. There will be temporary striping laid around July 20th and 21st. Around August 1st you’ll see some work in the roadway raising manhole covers. Finally, near the end of August the final thermoplastic striping will go down.
The Ashton Construction folks expect to have the Country Club to Campbell section opened to 6 lanes of travel by Friday, July 22nd. If the monsoons ever get started, those plans can change.
Many of us felt from the start that this widening was not necessary. The 20-year-old data used to justify the project in 2006 was demonstrably inaccurate by the time the project was to begin. The RTA will be going back to the voters soon enough. Whether the ability to show some flexibility in plans to account for data corrections is included will be one factor voters should take into consideration.
Film Bill
When Gene Maddaus from Variety Magazine called last week to talk about the film bill that’s on Ducey’s desk waiting for signature I told him that while I support the idea of the bill and hope it passes, this one has some provisions that are concerning. But yes – pass the bill and let’s see if Tucson and Pima County can work together to overcome its shortcomings.
The original bill was held up by conservatives who oppose either tax credits generally, or maybe more specifically those that will benefit the “liberal left wing in Hollywood.” I’ve heard that rhetoric since the day I started doing this 12 years ago. It was worn and meritless then and still is. I met with then state representative Andy Biggs several years ago and he said he couldn’t support ‘targeted tax credits’ - right after the state had supported a targeted tax credit for Intel in Chandler.
Last week’s film bill was attached to a bill that originally had to do with pharmacists. They struck all the language in the original bill and added the film incentives. It’s a game legislature playa all over the country. Here’s the final approved version of the bill:
https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/bills/hb2156s.pdf
The good parts of the bill are those that offer a tax incentive (rebate) to film productions that are shot in Arizona. There’s an escalating scale based on the size of the production. It’s not quite what New Mexico and other nearby states have, but it gets us back into the film game. That’s something I’ve advocated for since 2009.
The bill requires that all pre and postproduction be done in Arizona. That’s not a necessary requirement, and in fact might cause us to lose some business from major production studios. They can come here and spend time doing the filming and return to their facilities in say L.A. to do the grooming of the cuts. But the legislature left the requirement in the bill.
The bill also requires that for films with indoor components, those must be shot in a sound stage that’s 10,000 square feet or larger – and be tricked out with state-of-the-art sound/lighting amenities. There is not a qualifying sound stage in Arizona outside of Maricopa County. Imagine that!
Pima County should be the home of major motion pictures in this state. We have been traditionally and should be once again. We have location advantages that offer productions a wide variety of settings, all within an hour of each other. We still have local crew. Films come in and use hotel rooms, rent cars, hire catering, build sets, and hire actors and extras. It’s clean industry that when they’re gone all they’ve left is their tax money – and good publicity for Visit Tucson to use marketing us as a destination.
I hear there are some people working on fixing the sound stage issue. I’m hopeful that having the bill signed and in place is just Act 1, Scene 1 and will serve as the catalyst for that investment. Here’s the piece KOLD’s Bud Foster ran on the bill last week.
https://www.kold.com/video/2022/06/30/movie-making-may-be-its-way-back-southern-arizona/
San Gabriel Bench
Quick note to those of you who have been asking how to get ahold of ByBlocks to build your own structures. I’m working with ByFusion on some DIY kits that they’ll make available for a variety of projects. I’m expecting that will include benches of varying sizes, enclosures and other rather simple designs. I don’t have an exact date when the list will be released but watch this space - I'll be sure to let you know as soon as some of these are available.
Also – I'm working on ways we might be able to help provide some of our unrecyclable plastics to ByFusion and have them turn what we send to them into blocks for our own use. You’ll be a key to making that work. So, start setting aside the plastic items that we DO NOT want in the blue bins. In the next couple of weeks, I should have more specifics on how we can put that to good use. Here’s a list of the kinds of things I’m asking you to start setting aside.
To be clear – do not put that stuff in the blue bin. Get yourself a large plastic bag and just store it. If you need some large plastic bags, we’ve got some here at the Ward 6 office. I’ve got some meetings this week with those I’m working with to put the details of the project together. It’s all about walking out the mayor’s climate action initiative. Everyone has a role to play.
Sex Trafficking
It’s summer and there are lots of young people who are spending more time on computers, surfing the internet and browsing around on various forms of social media. It’s important for parents to be aware that social media is one of the sources used to ‘recruit’ youth into sex trafficking. It’s also important to be aware of certain vulnerabilities for being trafficked.
Sex trafficking is defined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. It’s a situation “in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.” You cannot ‘consent’ if you’re under 18. That’s the law.
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is a researcher from the ASU college of social work. She issued a report recently that goes into detail on who is vulnerable for being trafficked, and signs parents and friends can look for as signals that someone might be being trafficked. Some of the vulnerabilities include things such as substance abuse, poverty, a history of running away, language barriers, gang involvement and having a history of being abused. That’s not a full list – this is a page I pulled from the report listing things you can look for as warning signs:
Individuals are recruited from places where it’s not out of the ordinary for a stranger to make contact and speak with others. Places such as bus stops, malls, parks, coffee shops and even at school. And the study contains an important section listing reasons that youth who have disabilities might be particularly vulnerable. They list these as reasons that may be true:
The goal is to keep our kids safe. Social media and the internet have some very unsafe places for young people to ‘hang out.’ If you suspect someone might be a victim of sex trafficking, you can contact the national Human Trafficking Hotline at 1.888.3737, or text “HELP” to 233733. And if somebody you know is in immediate danger – call 911.
It’s not the olden days when we hung around outside way after dark until we heard the ‘summons’ being yelled from home. And now trouble finds its way right inside the home through the computer.
These links contain information on sex trafficking interventions.
https://socialwork.asu.edu/stir/training and https://www.sextraffickinghelp.com/learn.
Water Supply and PFAS
I write a lot about the PFAS contamination in our groundwater. Last week I had a pretty lengthy section on the recent EPA action in which they lowered the health advisory level for exposure to an amount we can’t even test to detect. Their message – any amount of contact is too much.
In the context of PFAS I also write a lot about our Central Arizona Project water – the fact that we’re serving well over 90% of you CAP (Colorado River) water and storing groundwater for our future needs. Right now, we’ve got about 6 years’ supply stored. It’s that supply that must be protected from PFAS contamination so we can safely use it when we must. That day is coming sooner than we had anticipated even a couple of months ago.
I write often about Lake Mead. It’s the reservoir that feeds us our CAP water. This map shows it being upstream from the Hoover Dam. If the water elevation gets too low in Lake Mead, no water would be able to flow downstream past Hoover Dam. That would effectively cut off anyone in Arizona or California for all, or for parts of the year. It’s not a hypothetical concern. The Bureau of Reclamation made that clear last week.
The term of art for when Mead can no longer pump water past the Dam is dead pool. This chart shows how close we’re getting to dead pool:
‘Minimum power pool’ is a level that comes ahead of dead pool. Reaching that level means that Glen Canyon Dam can no longer generate hydroelectric power and water doesn’t pass Hoover Dam for users in Arizona and California. But there’s a larger problem.
Lake Powell feeds Lake Mead. Glen Canyon Dam is in place to store water and release it to the lower basin (Lake Mead.) Lake Powell is at 24% of its maximum elevation. In the chart above you can see how close it’s getting to its own minimum power pool elevation. The loss of power is one thing, but the way the dam is constructed is really what’s causing the feds heartburn. When the water gets to minimum pool it all has to be funneled through 4 small pipes that are encased in concrete within the dam. Those pipes are not designed to handle the amount of water we’ll need to push through them. If any one of them is damaged the repairs are significant and would radically reduce the amount of water that could flow downstream to keep Lake Mead alive. It’s all tied together – and we’re all taking far more water from the river than it can sustain.
On July 12th , I’ve asked for a study session to discuss the recent call by the Bureau of Reclamation that all 7 basin states come together and reduce our use by from 2 to 4-million-acre feet per year. To put it into perspective, 2-million-acre feet is enough to flood the entire city of Phoenix with more than 6 feet of water. Cutting off Phoenix, L.A., Denver and Las Vegas still would not be enough to reach the savings Reclamation is calling for. This is real stuff that goes far beyond just turning off the water when you brush your teeth.
Keep PFAS in the back of your mind. That’ll also be a part of our conversation on the 12th. Regina wanted that piece – to see where we are with getting the DOD and others to fund remediation of the plume they caused.
One more chart – don't let all the lines get the best of you. Focus on the box at the right side “EOY 2023.” That’s end of year, 2023. It’s the varying projections for where Lake Mead will be. The ‘most probable’ elevation they’re predicting is 1,019’ feet. Scroll back to the earlier chart and you’ll see that’s only 19’ above minimum power pool elevation. That’s where all the trouble begins.
Here’s what we know. Everyone will have to make significant changes in our water use or the feds will step in as early as this fall and impose a ‘solution’ on us. We also know that if runoff from the Rockies is below average next year, we are vulnerable to falling below the minimum power pool levels on both Lake Powell and Lake Mead. If 2023 runoff is like it is in ‘22 we will need an additional 2.5-million-acre feet to stay above 1,020’ on Lake Mead.
Reclamation is leaving it up to states to propose how to make the cuts. They’ve given us until August to come up with a plan. I wish I could say I was confident that’ll happen – I guess my uncertainty is the reason I asked for the full and public conversation about this on the 12th.
Also on a related note, last week I sent the risk manager for the Tucson Airport Authority an email asking for a complete PFAS mapping of the airport property. We know the Air National Guard did fire training on that property – which means the same fire retardant used over at DM was also used on the Airport Authority site. Most of the over 8,000 acres that make up TIA is owned by the City of Tucson. We lease its operation to the Tucson Airport Authority. The Risk Manager has yet to reply to my note. He really should know the question wasn’t rhetorical. The region deserves a full and transparent answer.
With all of that, here’s the link to the PFAS zoom I’ll be hosting on the 14th at 6pm. We’ll have people from the DOD, Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Tucson Water and the City Attorney on the call. As you can see, this is important stuff.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84137080185?pwd=K05UK3VJT1kzV1Fmb0FyS0owVzQzQT09
Meeting ID: 841 3708 0185
Passcode: 11111
COVID
There are now two new COVID variants – both tied to Omicron. They’re called BA.4 and BA.5. Together they now constitute the most dominant strains for COVID cases in the U.S. As of last week, combined they account for about 53% of all COVID being reported in the country. Based on the news reports showing millions of people travelling without much care for masking up, the expectation from the CDC is the COVID numbers will only continue to increase.
To be fair, while these new versions of Omicron are more highly transmissible and less susceptible to vaccines, they appear to cause less severe symptoms and fewer fatalities among people who have been immunized than earlier COVID variants. The operative part of that is the vaccination piece. It is not too late to get vaccinated. Having said that, the reality is if you haven’t by now, you probably won’t unless you lose a loved one due to the new strain.
Pima County is offering a free prescription for an oral antiviral treatment if you test positive. It’s called their ‘Test to Treat” program. You do not need an insurance card to qualify. The way it works is you are evaluated by one of the providers at no cost if you test positive. Then, if you meet these criteria, you may be deemed eligible for the free anti-viral meds:
People are potentially eligible for oral antiviral treatment after a positive test if:
- They are 12 or older
- Weigh at least 88 pounds
- Have mild to moderate symptoms
- Have a high risk of severe COVID-19 illness
Use these links to get more information on where to go to get tested and evaluated, and information on the treatment itself.
pima.gov/covid19testing.
pima.gov/covid19treatment.
Our Pima County case counts dropped just a bit in the past week, but they increased somewhat statewide. We had an increase in COVID fatalities statewide over the previous week (63 vs 52.) In Pima County we lost 7 more loved ones due to COVID last week. Here’s the continuing chart I’m using to keep track of the trends. Pima County we lost 7 more loved ones due to COVID last week. Here’s the continuing chart I’m using to keep track of the trends.
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Week of
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Pima County
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Arizona
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April 24th
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260 new cases
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2,350 new cases
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May 1st
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510 new cases
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3,911 new cases
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May 8th
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776 new cases
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5,404 new cases
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May 15th
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1,090 new cases
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7,204 new cases
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May 22nd
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1,692 new cases
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11.498 new cases
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May 29th
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1,985 new cases
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13,042 new cases
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June 5th
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2,200 new cases
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14,677 new cases
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June 12th
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2,451 new cases
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16,334 new cases
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June 19th
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2,559 new cases
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15,373 new cases
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June 26th
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2,263 new cases
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16,514 new cases
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Here is this week’s Arizona ‘by-county’ COVID case map dating back to the start of all this in March 2020. In that time over 30,000 Arizonans have died from the disease.
Of course, vaccines and boosters continue to mitigate the severity of COVID for those who become infected. Here are this week’s Pima County Health vaccine centers.
 You can still order your in-home COVID tests through this website: covidtests.gov. The federal government is making 8 per household available.
The Harvard Global Health Care risk level map shows some clear spreading of the virus during the past week. Here is the map I had in last week’s newsletter. Compare it to the one below it – the current COVID risk level map. It confirms the opening comment that the new Omicron strains are more easily transmitted. After the July 4th weekend travel, it’s likely this will continue.
 Current Map:
Above I showed the Pima County numbers having decreased just a bit in the past week. Here they are – compared to 34.9 per 100,000 and 365 new daily cases last week. Please recognize that our risk levels are still considered ‘high.’ Risky behavior therefore has a high degree of likelihood that you’ll contract the virus.
Sincerely,
Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov
City of Tucson Resources
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