A Message from Steve K...12/12/2022

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Date: 12/12/2022

Topics in This Issue:

• Refugee Needs

• Artisans Beyond Borders

• Housing Affordability/Homelessness

• Plastic Blocks

• 5^th/6^th Street Road Diet

• Campus Crossings Balcony Issues

• Redistricting

• TEP Franchise Agreement

• Transportation Museum

• 29^th Street Thrive

• Flu and COVID Update

Help us find this Grinch

Following last weekend’s tree building event this is what our community holiday tree looked like all lit up. I think it’s pretty cool. 

But click on this link and see how some jerk chose to spend his time at 3:30am last Tuesday night.

IMG_4470.mp4 

Mama always said nothing good ever happens after midnight. Here’s the still image of the guy. I realize this isn’t like grand theft, but it certainly shows a guy devoid of character. The star was probably worth $20 at Walgreen’s. He probably burned that much in gas trolling around the area making sure the coast was clear.

Sadly, this is the best image of his car that we captured. The guy has some nice wheels though. You’d think he could afford to buy his own star.

If you know him you might suggest that he return the star and bring some donations for the Community Food Bank as a way of atoning. Thanks to KGUN9 for running this story.

https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/thief-steals-star-from-atop-christmas-tree

In case it has been a while since you read How the Grinch Stole Christmas, here’s a page turner for you. Maybe you can share it with our Grinch. We’re not giving up on our star.

https://fliphtml5.com/dopzg/wogb/basic

Refugee Needs

While that particularly needy guy was stealing a $20 plastic Christmas light, this email I received last week describes the terror Taliban continues to inflict on people in Afghanistan. I will not post the photographs I have of people who were beheaded or the limbs that were cut off, but this is the announcement of the upcoming stoning that is referenced in the email. It’s from the Afghan Feminist Movement. There is a similar group formed in Iran that I am aware of.

Dears,

          I am sorry to send the picture of Ahmadullah Asakzai from Kandahar and  sorry to write that Taliban have changed more wild these days in Afghanistan for previous Afghan army , commados , inteligence officers and those who have worked with foreigners. They capture ,imprison , torture and kill them but don't take the resposibility in media.

           Last week Taliban slaughterd an Afghan army officer from my tribe Ahmadullah Asakzai in Kandahar they cut his head , hands and foot attached in the picture.

They slashed and killed poeple in loger and kabul provinces on football ground in front of thousand of people.

Today on 08:00 am wed, Dec , 07, 2022 Taliban salashed 25 people and slaughterd two persons with knife and stoned to death  in Farah province on football ground in front of thousand of people which they had anounced yesterday in Farah city for inviting people to excution.

Girls schools are still colsed.

Womem are not allowed to work in offices and go to parkes, restourants & social ceremonies.

This is the satuation that we live in , see the killing of people and waiting for own number.

          I hope the US government do some thing for our evacuation and for changing the satuation in Afghanistan.

I bolded that last sentence of the email. They haven’t forgotten our involvement – but our government seems to have forgotten what we left behind. The donations you bring are not going to remove the post trauma stress the refugee families continue to suffer – they're aware of the conditions ‘back home’ too – but they do serve the needs of the families as they try to settle their lives here in Tucson.

Blankets and the hygiene products are still important items. New kid’s toys would be great as the holiday season is coming. I know, Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas. But the families are here and my office is trying to be inclusive in the holiday spirit. 

NEW - See Specifics below: 

New and unopened underwear, (men’s - sizes small & medium only, women’s sizes small & medium only and children’s), new socks, personal hygiene products. That’s shampoo, conditioner, sunscreen, lotion, toothpaste, feminine products, soap – that sort of thing. New children’s toys, bath towels only (washed) and blankets (no sheets).

NO CLOTHING PLEASE. Just the items listed. We’re located at 3202 E. 1^st Street – across Speedway from the Loft. Our office is open until 1pm every weekday. We appreciate the responsiveness of the community.

Of course, the Community Food Bank collection box at our front entry is being filled and emptied regularly. Especially as we enter the holidays the CFB is stretched thin in terms of what they are being called on to provide in support of the community. Your donations are an important part of meeting the growing needs. All non-perishable foods are in need. Varieties of canned vegetables are always helpful.

Having been in direct contact with many of the families who benefit from your donations I can tell you without hesitation that the people receiving from you continue to be very grateful for your graciousness.

Thank you to all of you who are helping meet these ongoing needs in the community.

Artisans Beyond Borders

Many of you may remember Valerie Lee James from when we hosted the asylum art in the ward 6 community room. She was managing the art program when the Benedictine was hosting asylum seekers. The art was made by young kids who were simply asked to draw what they love. It all came from the heart and much of it displayed some of the trauma the kids had suffered. Well, Valerie is back with her team of volunteers and we’re happy to host the monthly meetings of Artisans Beyond Borders. 

The ABB group met at the ward office for a couple of days last week. In this photo you see them putting together bags of needlework supplies. Casa Alitas is right now having from 500-800 guests dropped off by Border Patrol daily. Some will end up in a 10-day isolation due to COVID. The needlework supplies will be given to them, so they’ve got some productive way of staying busy while they recover.

Val and her team are also putting together bags that contain yarn and other material that is being sent to various asylum groups around the country. If you’ve got supplies, you can donate – or probably more likely if you’ve got an interest in buying new material to donate you can contact Val to learn the most important items, they’re after. You can find her at www.artisansbeyondborders.org.

Housing Affordability/Homelessness

Last Thursday before noon I had spoken to the director of La Frontera about transitional housing for the homeless, the La Frontera board about the overlap between homelessness and opioid addictions, the director of Sister Jose about expanding their capacity for homeless women, a member of the real estate community about the purchase of land for low barrier affordable housing, and the director of Catholic Community Services about the number of asylum seekers they’re seeing at the Alitas Center. As I mentioned above that number is from 500 to 800 people daily. Housing is a daily and reoccurring topic in the ward 6 office. The city’s sole focus on Housing First is good for a limited number of people. We need more affordable units, quickly and more transitional low barrier options than just the 150 beds the city owns in various hotels.

Fast forward to 12:30pm last Thursday when my staff and I toured the fabrication/educational facility of Idea’l Institute. Located on South Campbell. They are building customized modular homes that begin at about $80K. These can be used as Accessible Dwelling Units (the size works under our ADU ordinance,) and the speed at which they can be constructed can have an immediate impact on our housing needs.

Their model is to offer free tuition to students, a 6-month totally hands-on course during which the students work under the direction of experienced construction professionals, and they end the course having built roughly 80 units. The students are allowed to keep the tools they’ve been using and are immediately qualified to jump into the construction industry. Schools are largely not teaching the trade skills at an in-depth level. Idea’l Institute is, and they’re providing affordable housing units at the same time.

The state department of housing has the jurisdiction over inspecting modular homes. There are about 50 modular home building companies in the Maricopa County area. There are 2 in Tucson. So, the state has been very slow at inspecting and allowing the Idea’l Institute units to flow into the market. They’ve got about $3M in units ready to go, waiting on the slow-walk from Phoenix to get them out the door. I’ve reached out to the city manager asking for the city to intervene and offer to serve as the local inspection agent. We can do it under existing state statute, with the approval of the ADOH. That’s an active conversation I’m having.

Idea’l is a combination of workforce development, education in the trade fields, and manufacturing affordable housing. During my most recent visit I also pitched the notion of using ByBlocks in the construction process. Having that ‘green’ no waste addition can only make the product more attractive. That conversation is also active.

Idea’l Institute has applied for some of the city ARPA grant funding as well as the Barstool Sports local business funding. They are clearly an attractive candidate for each of the grants for which they’ve applied. I share all of this to highlight the overlap in how our ward office is active in the whole homeless/housing affordability space. There’s a lot going on. Much of it is under the radar screen. A part of the value of this newsletter is to push out some of this information so the public is aware. And to help facilitate some of the bureaucratic changes we need to put into place to further the great work some of our small local businesses are engaged in.

When I was out at Idea’l Institute I spoke to students ranging in age of high school up to a 79-year-old retired Raytheon software guy. It’s everyone in between as well. If you’ve got people in your life who want to learn a trade, can afford the small $500 fee to take part, and want to be ready to market those skills in as short a time as 6 months, check the Idea’l Institute website at www.idealtrade.institute.

Homelessness is affecting every ward in the city – every county in the state and every state in the nation. This table shows the camps that have been turned in from all over town and how they’re being addressed. To refresh your memory, Tier 1 means no occupants were found at a camp, but clean-up was needed. Tier 2 is where there are campers on the site that was reported but they’re going to be allowed to stay since no public health or safety issues were found. And Tier 3 is where the camp had issues requiring it to be disbanded. If you follow this newsletter, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of this system and that I’ve been working with people from the county and from La Frontera to come up with solutions for the people who simply do not fit into our Housing First model. Despite resistance, we’re making progress.

Plastic Blocks

This is like mowing the lawn – over and over – but please do not put Styrofoam or bedding into the plastic-only bin. Both are contaminants and both will simply cost the program money, and possibly end it if we can’t control the amount of ‘debris’ that’s being thrown in with the actual debris we’re after. Also don’t throw cardboard boxes into the plastics roll off. Dump your plastic in and you can leave the cardboard box inside the cardboard dumpster at the east end of the ward 6 drive thru.  Thanks.

Many of you will remember our first bench install over at the San Gabriel pocket park – Irving and Santa Barbara. The park is getting the finishing touches on 12/18 from 10am until around 1pm. Neighbors will be joined by the folks from Tucson Clean & Beautiful, as well as city Green Stormwater Infrastructure staff to do a large planting effort. Plan on stopping by. There’ll be food and activities other than the planting. It’s a great group of people and these finishing touches will be a cool amenity to the neighborhood.

Another new business partner joined us this week. Amy’s Hallmark in Park Place Mall sent over 6 large bags of the plastic they’ve gathered. We’re grateful to have them on board with this plastic reuse effort. Check them out at 5870 E. Broadway – clearly, I’m a fan of theirs for their help in promoting Nightmare Before Christmas with this Sally ornament.

Don’t forget to be at the Loft at 2pm this Sunday for their annual showing of Nightmare. Ten percent of the proceeds will benefit Friends of Aphasia.

Up until roughly 2017 China was absorbing about ½ of the waste plastic that was being traded internationally. It was then that they stopped taking plastic as an imported commodity. The result was Southeast Asia becoming the world’s dumping ground for plastic. In Malaysia it only took a year for them to triple what they had been taking in. In Vietnam it doubled the following year. And in Thailand their plastic imports went up by a factor of 10 after China shut their door.

These new markets saw the plastic trade as an opportunity to establish new ‘green’ industry in plastic recycling. But there was no market. The result was huge piles of abandoned trash being set on fire. Bootleg recycling operations began, and the environmental impacts included toxins in their soil and in their food supply. The developing countries didn’t have the technology to properly dispose of the plastic waste.

This is a photo of officials collecting plastic waste from the Mekong in Laos. They’re dredging the banks, ruining habitat to make room for the plastic waste.

This graphic shows how various countries have been disposing of the plastic they’ve been absorbing on the international market. When I was in Africa, Thailand and in China, I saw it being burned along with other trash on the sides of the roads. The air quality was horrific.

Companies like Republic won’t divulge in a fully transparent way where their plastic waste goes. Many deals with brokers who buy and sell recyclables into the international market. More and more that’s Southeast Asia. The brokers claim privacy when asked to say where they’re disposing of the waste products. What we do know is that it’s not serving anybody a productive and useful purpose.

Enter the Tucson plastic collection effort. This past week you surpassed 31 tons of plastic collected since August. We’ve got a few weeks to go before the end of the year. The program will continue, but just for fun I’d love to top 35 tons – our goal was 20 tons by New Year’s Day. We’ve collected another 6+ tons from a commercial partner but the graph showing what has been collected only includes what you bring – our residential partners who are coming over to the ward office to donate. Here’s our current tracking graph.

I’ll be meeting with the city manager’s office, ByFusion and others later this week to continue the discussion about how this program continues, scales up and gets us the ability to manufacture the blocks locally. It’ll happen – we're working on the details.

5^th/6^th Street Road Diet

Over the course of the past year, I’ve participated in several neighborhood meetings along with transportation department staff, the purpose of which was to share a concept in which we would remove one drive lane on 5^th/6^th street from Campbell out to Wilmot. The presentations were conceptual, aimed at gathering public input.

While those informational meetings were happening our transportation staff was collecting data on road conditions and the impacts a road diet would have on crashes, traffic snarls, and impacts on adjacent neighborhood streets. That data has now been collected and transportation staff has advised that weighing all factors, they are not recommending a road diet.

Here’s some of what the transportation data analysis yielded:

• If one lane is removed from the roadway, all signalized intersections along the corridor will operate at Level of Service F, in other words failing
• Because of the amount of traffic on 5^th/6^th, side street delay will be more than 600 seconds making it difficult for vehicles to access 5^th/6^th from the neighborhoods
• 81% of all crashes occurred at the signalized intersections with one pedestrian fatality and one motor vehicle fatality
• There is no funding to make improvements to the signalized intersections

We get occasional emails from some of you who had participated in the meetings asking for updates. I appreciate your having invested the time in those outreach meetings. For now, the repaving east of Country Club captured under Prop 101 will begin next year and the outside the curb line upgrades captured in Prop 407 will follow that work. At this time, we will not be removing the outer drive lanes though – for the reasons noted above.

Campus Crossings Balcony Issues

You’re very likely familiar with the issues we’ve had at the student housing towers over on Tyndall. Items being tossed off the balconies placing peoples’ lives in danger below. Until last week that activity had been contained to the Main Gate area. Last week we had reports of balconies at Campus Crossing Apartments being used as launching pads. It wasn’t a good news series of emails from the affected neighbors.

Campus Crossing is in Rincon Heights – immediately south of the UA campus. As is true of the Tyndall towers, the UA considers these private housing complexes and so treats them entirely differently than they do when behavioral issues crop up in the on-campus dorms. Last week I reached out to the owner of CC with this email. 

Dear Mr. Orth;

This is Steve Kozachik, Tucson City Council member representing ward 6 writing. Campus Crossing is your property - it's located in the heart of ward 6 and is a part of the Rincon Heights neighborhood. Rose Veneklasen from RHN is cc'd, as is my staff.

Last weekend we experienced incidents involving bottles being thrown from balconies at Campus Crossing. Sadly, having debris tossed from student housing balconies isn't unique to your property. It's a serious matter of criminal endangerment that we've been addressing for the past several years with some of the towers over on Tyndall. In fact, last week, working with Vespers Holdings - the new owners of Sol y Luna - we had them act on their lease terms and evict tenants caught on video throwing objects from their balconies.

In the case of Sol y Luna, I had video evidence that documented where the items came from. Vespers used that in their evictions. They also have lease terms calling for a zero tolerance in any case of the balconies being used to put others below at risk.

So, my questions are; does your property have similar language in your leases? That is, will you evict when you have evidence of somebody throwing bottles or other objects from the balconies at CC? Are you aware of the incidents that took place over the weekend? If so, how do you plan on reacting in support of the surrounding community? 

My hope is to establish a solid working relationship with you and your on-site manager. Further to that, the Rincon Heights neighborhood association meets monthly. Having your property manager attend their meetings in order to establish a rapport would be a good move. I hope to hear back from you on how you're responding to the recent incidents, and how you'd like to work together to avoid this in the future.

Thanks very much - Steve Kozachik

                                     Tucson City Council, Ward 6

When reaching out to the ownership at the Tyndall towers I’ve more often than not had a difficult time finding someone in management who would take the incidents seriously and work with me to resolve the issues. That was not at all the case with Campus Crossing. Within 24 hours of my having sent my email I received this one back from their owner.

Steve,

Thank you for your note.  I was not aware of the incidents that you outlined below but have reached out to our Tucson team to get information.  At this time, we understand that our neighbor had items including bottles thrown from resident balconies into their yard.  We absolutely have a zero-tolerance policy for this type of issue and will be sending a resident notice out regarding the issue - that resident notice is included below and will be sent out today. 

Alicia Silvers, our area manager for our Tucson properties will follow-up and reach out to attend the Rincon Heights neighborhood association meeting and will attend their meetings - or one of her team members will attend.  Alicia's contact information is below:

The contact was made, the issues are being resolved and a new and productive relationship is advancing. I’m grateful to the Campus Communities owners for stepping up and being a part of the solution.

Redistricting

Last Tuesday we held a public hearing on the proposed redistricting options we’re considering. That public hearing will continue on December 20th, and we’ll be making a final decision as to how to move the ward boundaries that evening. I am already on record as supporting what is being referred to as option 2C. Here’s the graphic of what is included in that option:

As for ward 6 the only affected piece is over west of Armory Park where a slice of the area would fall into Ward 1. The other parts of the city that’d be affected are outlined in red on the map. It really is the least disruptive of the options we have in front of us. Nikki has asked to retain a portion of ward 4 that is being proposed to move. They’ve been working on some development involving state land and want to continue that effort. There are about 25 people impacted so I’ve got no problem making that adjustment in the map.

Council member Santa Cruz asked to keep option 2D on the table. Here’s that map:

The advantage of 2D is that it reduces the population disparity between wards better than 2C does. But it also impacts far more residents. We’ll be doing this again in a couple of years, so I’m not inclined to spread the impact as far as 2D does at this time.

The redistricting committee was faced with some irreconcilable challenges. The city presented them with some policy guidance that was to frame how they navigated the redistricting discussion. For example, they were instructed to maintain the established ward boundaries to the extent possible. They were also asked to try to achieve ‘rough proportionality’ in minority representation between wards and reduce ‘packing’ minorities in specific wards. That can’t be done if they’re also avoiding any changes in ward boundaries. We gave them about a month to work through the process. Next time around we’ll have to fine-tune the policy priorities and give the group more time to do the public outreach before bringing options to M&C for our consideration. They did a good job with what they had to work with this time around and I appreciate all the work they did on our behalf.

Here’s a full list of the policy objectives the committee was working with. As you read through them think of how you’d respect maintaining ward boundaries while still achieving some of the others. Simply put, they’re internally inconsistent.

TEP Franchise Agreement

The city is nearing the end of a multi-year franchise agreement with Tucson Electric Power. That agreement gives them the right to put their infrastructure in public rights of way, and in exchange they pay a fee to the city that’s based on their net revenues. It’s a whole lot more complex than that – of course, lawyers are involved – but that’s the gist of the arrangement. The current agreement expires in 2026.

For the past several months I’ve been talking to representatives of TEP about the undergrounding issue that has gotten lots of attention. Their primary issue with the city forcing them to underground distribution poles in our scenic and gateway corridors is the cost. My conversations with them have revolved largely on preserving the integrity of our ordinances while finding a funding source for the undergrounding. The Arizona Corporation Commission has signaled that they’re not going to approve adding those costs to ratepayers so we’re trying to thread the needle between keeping the decision local and as a part of our partnership with TEP vs. giving them an incentive to turn to the state legislature for a solution. Tacking on some additional amount to their franchise fee and earmarking it to undergrounding has been one idea I’ve kicked around informally with them.

The franchise agreement is ultimately approved by the voters. It’s not something the city council votes on to approve. Given the situation TEP is in with respect to finding funding mechanisms for the undergrounding, they’d like to get the updated agreement to the voters next year if that’s going to be how the work is funded. Until the funding source has been identified they’re pretty much on hold with respect to the system upgrades they want to perform. Our options for running an election next year are March, May, August, and November. March won’t work because it’s too soon. May would be tight. Each of the other options bring their own challenges, so we have not landed on a date for when we hold this franchise agreement vote.

Another part of my talks with TEP have involved them enhancing their commitment to renewables. The city has our climate action plan and solar is a big part of our current direction. I’ve asked TEP if building some level of solar commitment into the franchise agreement is something they’d be willing to do. So far, we’ve just been speaking in generalities, but with their interest in bringing the agreement to the voters sooner than later I’d expect them to warm up to the idea perhaps more so than they had earlier in the year when I brought it up.

The M&C will have a study session item on December 20^th to talk about the TEP franchise agreement. The conversation will likely include the franchise fee and how it relates to undergrounding, the duration of the franchise agreement, how enhanced solar can be incorporated into the agreement, and the date we’re targeting for the election. Other council members may have been having their own sidebar conversations with TEP so there might be other items brought to the table on the 20^th.

We cannot take lightly the option any utility has to bypass working with the local jurisdiction and running to the state legislature to get pre-emptive legislation implemented. The cable providers did that, and we ended up having to craft our own utility manual to keep 5G poles from popping up in front of your house. So, finding a sweet spot in our negotiations with TEP on fees and what’s incorporated in the franchise agreement that goes to the voters will be critical. We’ll know more about the pace of this conversation after our meeting on the 20^th. 

Transportation Museum

Reminder that this coming weekend is the resumption of the transportation museum holiday activities. Please consider the high rates of infection for the various virus’ making their rounds in the region – social distance and wear a mask. Don’t go to the event if you’ve got symptoms.

The event is happening on December 17th from 10am until 3pm at the historic depot downtown. It’s located at 414 N. Toole. All the activities are included in the flyer shown below. The kids will have a great time meeting Santa and climbing on the locomotive. It’d be great to see you there.

29^th Street Thrive

Nadia and I joined Nikki and her entire staff out at Freedom Park on Saturday for the Thrive on 29^th Street block party kick off. The weather was perfect and lots of the residents came out to enjoy the event.

In addition to the residents, TPD, Tucson Parks, Tucson Water, TFD, United Way, Goodwill, City Housing and even the National Parks Service were there with various bits of swag for the people. This will be a long-range development effort that’ll require the engagement of residents, businesses, and city resources. If you live in the general 29^th/Swan area, please reach out to Nadia at the ward 6 office and she will let you know about the monthly meetings and how you can best get involved. Her email address is nadia.ispiani@tucsonaz.gov.

Flu and COVID Update

With that COVID/Flu/RSV warning in the depot item, here’s this week’s COVID update. I should start calling it the virus update to capture the variety of what is going around.

Last week the guy who has been spearheading the UA wastewater testing program conducted a zoom for campus employees. I’m still connected with a bunch of them, so the content of the meeting quickly made its way over to me. The guy’s name is Dr. Ian Pepper. Other scientists were on the call as well. The critical piece of information they shared was that of the wastewater samples they’re collecting on the UA campus, 2/3rds of them are coming back positive for COVID. When I was having my public disagreement with Robbins about how the UA was disengaged from testing in the off-campus student housing towers, he was quite proud of the fact that they captured a single ‘outbreak’ in a single dorm on campus by using the wastewater sampling. Now with 66% of the samples coming back positive I haven’t heard much boasting from his office about their successes. And there’s nothing in Dr. Pepper’s study that is related to the off-campus student population. 

I can say all of that – Robbins can’t fire me twice.

There’s a Dutch study that was shared with me in which they studied the efficacy of over-the-counter self-tests. The study revealed that for asymptomatic people the OTC tests are not highly sensitive for the Omicron variants. Unless you’re carrying a high viral load, if you’re not showing symptoms, you might test negative while in fact, you’re shedding the virus. Here’s the conclusion statement from the study:

"We conclude that SARS-CoV-2 self-testing has limited value for asymptomatic individuals wishing to protect vulnerable persons and may even lead to a false sense of security. The high SARS-CoV-2 infection rate within 10 days of a negative RT-PCR test that we found in our study emphasizes the importance of re-testing over time, especially when symptoms develop, to reduce missed infections as much as possible."

With that in mind, if you’re going to be around vulnerable people and you’re not showing symptoms, you might want to either retest, or wear an N95 mask when you’re around those other people.

Last week I opened this section with the flu infection rate map. I’ll do that again since it’s one of the tri-fections going around and is causing significant hospital activity. There’s no place in the country that’s safe from the flu right now. Vaccines are easily available at all major pharmacies.

If you have a meeting scheduled in the ward office and you’re experiencing any symptoms, please call and reschedule. We are also recommending that groups using our facility self-regulate and ask attendees to wear a mask. We have them available all the time on the table by our office entryway. 

Ok, how about RSV? This graph shows the how the positivity rate among those being tested for RSV has changed in the recent past. The spike is likely partially caused by the increase in the number of tests, which only means it has been with us, but we weren’t testing for it like we do for COVID. But it’s clearly here, and it is not just affecting kids.

Who gets RSV? This is a quote from the CDC site:

Each year, it is estimated that between 60,000-120,000 older adults in the United States are hospitalized and 6,000-10,000 of them die due to RSV infection. Adults at highest risk for severe RSV infection include: Older adults, especially those 65 years and older. Adults with chronic heart or lung disease. 

The disease is contagious both from adult to kid, and from kid to adult. If you have cold-like symptoms, please consider being tested for RSV.

Ok, the ‘star of the show’ has been COVID since 2020. I was visiting a homeless shelter last week and the person giving the ‘tour’ said ‘now that COVID is behind us...’ It’s not. And it’s a long way from being in the rear-view mirror. COVID case counts increased both in Pima County and statewide last week. When we saw these kinds of numbers 2 years ago businesses were requiring masks, and nobody was going to large public indoor gatherings. It’s odd that with the flu and RSV now added to this mix that so many people are taking it all very lightly. Here’s the current count that I’ve been keeping.

Sincerely,

Steve Kozachik
Council Member, Ward 6
ward6@tucsonaz.gov

City of Tucson Resources

• COVID-19 Updates: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/covid-19/covid-19-updates
• I Want To... : https://www.tucsonaz.gov/i-want-to