A Message from Steve K...02/13/2023

Kay-Ann McKenzie is an American who’s working in Turkey. She’s also part of an on-line marketing group partnering with some folks in Pima County on a collaborative book. Kay-Ann has reached out to that book group and asked if they can help promote a Fund Me effort Kay is leading. The link is here:  

https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8RqI4ifhDL?fbclid=IwAR3lFc5Y55hQnZrmPrZ-DdSVCavFMYMTH7zIM4bH4Ri8LWpyUNpWlyf2aq0   

The money will be used to help people impacted by the earthquake with food, clothing and warm bedding items. If you can help Kay-Ann, I know the gift would be very much appreciated. 

On Wednesday, March 8th at 5pm there will be a rally in support of the Muslim women living in those two countries who are being persecuted. The event is being organized by the Tucson Afghan Community, in cooperation with other Muslim groups – and this office.  There will be no marching in the streets, but there will be a presence outside the federal building on Congress. The goal is to reinforce the need for our government to own the human rights positions we espouse and help the women in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rally is open to anyone who will stand in support of the cause. Please consider joining us.  

And the work we do in support of the refugee/asylum community at Alitas continues. Warm coats, blankets, hygiene products and kid's toys are still important items. New underclothes are in short supply – for rather smallish people. Please bring sizes small and medium only. Our office is open M-F from 9am until 1pm, and you can do the Amazon delivery to 3202 E. 1st – 85716 if that’s easier for you.  

Thanks so much for your partnership in these efforts. I brag on the Tucson community all the time. The support of those in need is one of the big reasons for that. 

The attendance at the event will be capped. Please use this invite to register: http://evite.me/78Xj37hucr 

The event will begin at 5:30 with some mingling and cocktails. I’ll be playing some music throughout the evening. We expect the event to be fully booked quickly so please get registered soon if you’d like to go and enjoy the celebration.  

What’s shown in the picture is thousands of tons of baled plastic waste. Customers have been bringing their plastic to Woolworths and Coles supermarkets, dropping it off with the expectation it’d be recycled and not sent to a landfill. Their experience is what we deal with at the ward office – but on steroids. That is, lots of very excited and involved people wanting to avoid simply throwing away the plastic.   

In Australia the supermarkets have created fire hazards by storing the bales in ways that block exits, stacking them floor to ceiling and blocking ventilation systems. So far, they’ve got enough to fill 3 ½ Olympic-sized swimming pools. They don’t have a recycle outlet.  

The Australian equivalent of EPA has given them 6 days (now expired) to dispose of the waste. The options included exporting the material, figuring out a way to reprocess it (ByBlocks?) or landfilling it. Given those options it appears the junk is headed for a landfill. Everyone’s good intentions buried in the plastic debris. 

In another example of how buried we are with this stuff, Exxon Mobil sent out a chest-thumping memo last week sharing that they had “one of the largest advanced recycling facilities in North America, capable of processing more than 80 million pounds of plastic waste per year.” Sounds impressive. 

The rest of the story is that the company produces more than 13.2 billion pounds of plastic waste per year. In fact, Exxon is the largest producer of virgin polymers – used in plastic – second only to a Chinese company called Sinopec. The reality is they’re extracting fossil fuels to make the polymers used to fuel the transport that’s disposing the waste. Our project is about creating a circular zero waste stream. The Exxon circularity is extracting fossil fuels to make, and to eventually dispose of plastic.  

The state of California has banned the use of the triangle recycle symbols that appear on plastic that is not widely reusable. I’m certain companies like Republic would cry foul if we tried that in Arizona.   

And speaking of Republic, they’re HQ is in Phoenix. Their CEO is John Vander Ark. Last year he received just under $8M in total compensation. His salary is $906,539. He got a $2.1M bonus and over $4M in stock. Not bad for running a company that continues to refuse to work in partnership with the Tucson community in support of the plastic program.  

The community has now provided 49.01 tons of plastic to this effort. Last week you brought just under 2 ¾ tons of plastic to the ward 6 roll off. It’s the second week in a row that you’ve set a record for the most tonnage donated in a week since we started the program back in August. I’m sorry to say that we pulled this from the bin – it’s not plastic and we do not want the contaminants mixed in with the plastic that’s supporting the program. The same goes for the Styrofoam we continue to get tossed into the bin. 

We will announce the added drop off sites in the next couple of weeks. When we started this program the ward 6 roll off was getting about a ton of plastic weekly. Now that’s over 2 tons. The added sites will ease some of the burden on our location, and it’ll help keep people from having to drive added miles to participate.  

And on a related note, last week I included an invitation to a tour of the recycle facility and Los Reales campus. The slots filled up quickly so they’re scheduling another tour for Earth Day in April. I’ll have that information in an upcoming newsletter as soon as our Environmental Services team gets it arranged. 

These operations are in parks in several areas of the Pacific northwest. Don’t get hung up on the specific commodities shown on the cans – I’ve got in mind plastic, glass, food waste and trash. Doing something like this in monitored areas throughout the city can limit contamination, help people do it right (most want to) and divert significant amounts of trash from being landfilled.   

The glass was step one. The plastic is a big step two. Let us know if you’d be interested in an even bigger step 3 where food waste, plastic, glass and other commodities could be dropped at designated areas and become a part of our climate plan as it relates to recycle/reuse. 

Every piece of land in the city is zoned to allow certain types of development. By definition then certain other types of development are not allowed by right and must go through a public rezoning process to get changes made. During my last election campaign there was talk among some of the candidates that it was time to eliminate R1 (residential) zoning and allow for multi-family and other types of development in our neighborhoods. For differing reasons, it’s a space the extreme left and the extreme right seem to overlap in agreement. I did not, and still do not agree with the notion that the zoning conditions people relied on when they invested in their property should be unilaterally removed without any public process.   

The idea of eliminating zoning restrictions is back on the table. In the state legislature SB1117 is being pushed through committee and towards the senate floor. The bill would mandate approval of say apartments in residential areas without any assurance of their affordability, and without any public conversation about whether they fit contextually with the surrounding area. The bill is being pushed by Republican Steve Kaiser – he came through Tucson last year in a statewide tour intended to gather information on how to impact housing affordability. Evidently this was in his plans well ahead of him making the tour. 

Multi-family developments (apartments) would be allowed "by right" in any existing commercial, mixed-use, and multi-family zoning districts. This could include multi-family buildings up to 60 ft (roughly 5 stories) or the highest allowable height within one mile. Think about the tallest building allowed up to a mile away from you. That’s what’s allowed in this bill in any area that even ‘supports’ mixes use in our General Plan. Those areas very often include single family (R1) zones in Tucson. If the project is within two miles of a rail stop, it can be up to 80 feet. That’s within 2 miles of the streetcar route.   

It’s what’s called a ‘striker’ bill – it takes an existing bill and eliminates its existing language and adds all new provisions. This one is quite long and includes new provisions on what’s allowed, where what kinds of public process is required (or eliminated in this case,) licensing and permitting rules, and a bunch more. The bill intentionally bypasses local zoning terms and those of area plans and gives unilateral power to the developers. Here’s a link to the full striker: https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/1R/summary/S.1117COM_STRIKERMEMO.pdf  

Another zoning-related item is the proposed Becton Dickenson facility they want to build out by the DM runway. The operation will clean medical equipment using the chemical Ethylene Oxide (EO.) The chemical is highly toxic when breathed in. The BD team assures us that their on-site storage and on-site operations will be strictly monitored so they’ll be able to detect minor leaks.   

Last week there was a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The train was carrying vinyl chloride – another highly toxic chemical. As a result of that incident, they’ve had to evacuate parts of the area, close schools and they’re right now monitoring to see the extent to which water and air contamination has occurred. The issue of a transit-related catastrophic incident related to EO and the Becton Dickinson operation is exactly the concern I raised when their item came to M&C for approval.  

The federal government regulates transportation of hazardous chemicals. When we voted on the BD item, I requested staff petition the feds to request authority for us to adopt local rules governing the transportation of EO through our community. In the aftermath of the Ohio derailment, I requested an update from staff on that request. I will share it with you once it has been issued. 

BD says they plan on using up to 450,000 pounds of EO annually at the new facility. They have not, and they cannot identify a safe plan for getting the chemical to the plant by transporting it through the city. Nobody can forecast a train derailment or a rollover on our city streets. And when that happens the plume will be impacting the people in the area before hazmat teams have time to arrive on the scene to begin controlling the mess. Granted that the vast majority of chemicals reach their destination without incident – some don’t. Our inability to control the impacts of the rare large releases is why I continue to oppose the BD location. And so does the military. They wrote letters of opposition before the plant was approved.  

Greg Regan is the president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department. He is concerned with an increased risk of train derailments due to major freight railroads shipping longer trains with fewer employees. Prior to the worker cut-backs Regan said their inspectors had about 2 minutes to inspect each railcar for safety. Now that’s under a minute. And the inspections of track conditions are even more troublesome.  

Becton Dickinson does important work. It’s just that they want to do it in the wrong location.  

Of all the vacations I’ve ever taken probably the most interesting and engaging was the game safari I took with my bride and little girl to Kenya. We spent about 10 days travelling around the outback filming animals out in their natural surroundings. Conservation of many of those animals is work the Reid Park Zoo and the Tucson Zoological Society are directly engaged in.   

On Sunday, February 26th the zoo will team up with the Fox Theater and host a National Geographic Live show featuring photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale. She’ll be on the Fox stage beginning at 3pm sharing her award-winning work.   

This is Ami out doing her thing filming in Africa. I did my filming from out of the top of a pop-up roof van. 

In 2014 I proposed a local ordinance in which retail pet stores would have to source any dogs they sold through local rescues and shelters. The target was to stop them from getting their dogs through production line puppy mills. Those mills are still in operation throughout the U.S., and in Arizona pet stores continue to get their dogs from them.  

Puppy mills are unquestionably inhumane. The female dogs are bred to death. The puppies are kept in unsanitary and cramped conditions until they’re shipped out to retail stores. When I proposed the local ordinance, we had it fashioned after a similar ordinance that had been adopted in both Phoenix and Tempe. Our vote to adopt the local law passed on a 6-1 vote.  

At the time we voted there was an active lawsuit filed against the Phoenix law. A part of the M&C passing ours was to put it on hold until the litigation in Phoenix played itself out and we had clear legal guidance on whether our ordinance would stand up if challenged. We never got that far. The state legislature, under heavy lobbying by one of the retail pet store owners passed a bill pre-empting local jurisdictions from passing puppy mill ordinances. Our local law is still sitting on the shelf, and some local pet stores continue to source their dogs from puppy mills. 

Right now, there’s a bill making its way through committee up in Phoenix. HB2340 would very simply repeal the pre-emption on us acting on our own behalf. Here’s the full description of 2340: 

It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Repeal it and we can move ahead with a puppy mill ordinance in Tucson that would force local pet stores to get the dogs they sell from local shelters such as the Humane Society and PACC.  

The same guy who lobbied the state back in 2016 to pre-empt our local ordinance is still active in the local pet store market. And he has stores in Phoenix. If you agree that we should have the ability to pass a local law preventing sourcing dogs from puppy mills, then please contact your state representatives and ask them to support HB2340. 

The Armory Park Senior Center staff is about to resume nearly full operations. At least for the month of March. More on that in a bit.  

The meals for the seniors’ program is back up and running. To participate you’ve got to be at least 60 years of age. You don’t need to sign up ahead of time, but they’ll ask you to fill out a form when you show up to eat. Here’s what’s on tap for the remainder of this week: 

The serving days are M-F from 3pm until 4pm. They ask for a $2 donation to help the program stay afloat.  

In addition, beginning on March 7th at 12:30pm they’ll offer Yoga in the Park. The first 6 weeks of this program will be offered for free and its open to people of all ages. This flyer gives you the information on the yoga class. 

There are other activities going on at the center. Everything from fitness dancing to tax prep help, Tai Chi, signing, spinning, sewing – lots of options. Contact recreation coordinator Stacey Belhumeur at Stacey.belhumeur@tucsonaz.gov for more information.  

Beginning during the first week in March the indoor activities will be placed back on hold again – until around the middle of April. They’re redoing the flooring and the fumes from the adhesives make the indoor space unpleasant while that work is going on. But get involved up until then and stay tuned for the reopening. And the outdoor events are still a ‘go’ throughout the work. 

Another outdoor activity coming to downtown is happening this weekend – Saturday, February 18th on the MLK lot. That’s what used to be our downtown beach volleyball court. It’s scheduled to be a boutique hotel soon enough, but for now it’ll play host to the Tucson Together artisans show.  

The event will run from 11am until 4pm. There will be over 70 local artisans selling their products. The event is a benefit for Youth on their Own, so please bring along some non-perishable food and household items for donation to YOTO. The flyer has all of the information on the event. 

The case counts increased again last week. They are at a manageable level for our local health care providers. Most are not terribly debilitating, and yet in Arizona last week another 54 people died from COVID. For vulnerable populations it can still kill. Here’s the running count I’ve been keeping showing the new case trend.  

You can check the Pima County health site if you want to see where to test or to get a vaccination: https://webcms.pima.gov/cms/One.aspx?pageId=527452   

I was at a city council meeting last week and some lady spent the better part of the day sitting behind me coughing up a storm. Wear a mask and/or stay home. Even if it's not COVID people around you deserve the courtesy of you being a responsible adult and not spreading whatever it is you’ve got.  

Please do not come to the office if you have any symptoms – COVID or otherwise. Call and reschedule. And if your group is using the ward office, we strongly encourage you to require participants in your meeting to wear a mask. My casual observation is that some groups are requiring it, others are rolling the dice. Respiratory diseases are spread in part through airborne transmission. While not 100% effective, masks do help in reducing spread.   

Here’s the statewide COVID count map by county. Note that in the upcoming week Maricopa County will pass 1.5 million COVID cases.