A Message from Steve K...06/26/2023

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Date: 06/26/2023

Topics in This Issue:

• Midtown Rodents

• Summer Safari

• Housing Affordability

• Refugee Donations 

• Campbell/6^th Rezoning

• Tucson Plastic Program

• Microgrid Proposal

• Fireworks

• RTA

• Ready, Set, Rec

Midtown Rodents

A quick reminder of next week’s in-person/hybrid meeting to talk about rodents in midtown and strategies to address them. Last week we met with the Sam Hughes neighborhood to begin the discussion. That’s just one of the neighborhoods having the problem. My approach is to avoid having the same conversation multiple times, but to invite everyone to hear about the issue together.

During last week’s meeting Paula Rivadeneira from PACC joined us and walked through some of the ways a rodent problem can be approached. The consistent message was there’s no such thing as a quick fix. Also, if you’ve seen a few mice around, there are probably a couple of dozen that you’re not seeing. And finally, if left unaddressed, the problem won’t simply go away. It will spread.

One suggestion to make your yard a less desirable destination for mice and other rodents has to do with outdoor compost piles. If you’ve got one, turn it regularly and be sure to keep it at the right temperature. If it’s just a pile of debris and food waste laying there, it will be an attractant.

In her presentation Paula tossed out a couple of ways to address the problem – assuming it is already on your doorstep – so to speak. Both come with pros and cons.

One option is PACC will provide for free some neighborhood cats to help control rodent populations. They need a caretaker while they get acclimated to the area, they don’t cover a whole lot of territory, and if you feed them well while they’re getting used to the area, they won’t be hungry enough to chase the mice. On the other hand, if they are hungry, they’ll also go after birds. On the upside, once they become habituated to an area, they’re low maintenance, and they’re free. This is one of the slides I pulled from Paula’s presentation that covers the community cat option.

Another idea is to introduce barn owls to the area. Given their small size, they’re not going to deal with large rodents. But a few families of barn owls can cover a large area and can control mice pretty well. They do need a nesting box that’ll keep them safe from predators, and there’s a process for getting approval that runs through the state game and fish folks. Here’s Paula’s barn owl slide showing the pros and cons of this option.

On July 11^th beginning at 6pm we’ll host the inter-neighborhood presentation on this topic. Paula will hand the reins off to her colleague Dawn Gouge. Dawn is coming down from Phoenix where she works as a medical entomology professor. She’ll drive home that night so we’re ending the meeting at 7:30. The one option we will not be recommending is to put out poisons. All critters can get ahold of that so it’s not on our list of solutions.

Here’s the zoom link – join in person if you can.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81977177649d=RW16NXVTbzAxeEtyZ3dvVERwb1dGQT09

Meeting ID: 819 7717 7649 

Passcode: W@rd6

Finally, this shows the most common rodents that are found in Tucson. Based on how people are describing the behavior of the critters seen in midtown the roof rat is what Paula suspects we’re dealing with. During one of my phone conversations with Dawn, she felt it might be more likely we have pack rats – also known as wood rats. Both are shown in the graphic. Both are gross in my world.

Summer Safari

This reminder – a fun critter item coming this Saturday at the Reid Park Zoo. From 6pm until 8pm Summer Safari will be happening. It’s the TMC Health combination of food, activities for the kids (and kids-at-heart,) educational presentations by the zookeepers and I’ll be in the background providing music. This week’s theme animal is the Grevy’s Zebra.

I’m grateful to Nancy from the zoo for helping me out with some tickets I’ve given out to some of the refugee families here from Afghanistan. The zoo staff does all they can to make the facility available to people of all means. If you see folks at the event wearing a hijab, greet them warmly.

The event runs from 6pm until 8pm. While I love the rain and our monsoons, I’m hoping it waits at least one more day this week. Guitars and rain don’t play well together.

Housing Affordability

Over the course of the past several months I’ve been having discussions with a variety of people about getting some tiny home villages set up around town. The problem is our current zoning doesn’t allow for those without requiring the developer to go through long, costly processes which in many cases would significantly limit the number of homes we could build or allow on a site. That process would add costs making the product unaffordable. One example is turning existing trailer parks into tiny home villages. I’ve been in touch with a group in Flagstaff that’s already doing it – here's a rendering of their site: 

Refugee Donations

Last week I received an update on the border situation. In the past couple of weeks there has been a significant increase in migrant activity which has once again necessitated involving shelter partners in the Phoenix area. I used some of the ward office money to help Casa Alitas – they're maxing out at just over 500 new arrivals every day. Border Patrol has been releasing about 700 per day from Douglas, Nogales and Naco. The people Casa Alitas cannot take in are the ones being transported to Phoenix.

The population we’re now seeing is much different than what many of you worked with at the Benedictine. Now there are people coming from India, Pakistan, Mauritania and Ecuador. It seems there are lots of very troubled areas in the world and many residents from those countries are ending up on our southern border looking for survival and the start of a new life. With the change in demographics also comes a bit of a change in what we need. Still bring sunscreen, lotion...those basics. A new need is for new t-shirts – just basic t’s, small, medium and large. And still new and unused underclothes. The money I donated to Casa Alitas will largely go to buying clothing. We do not want people bringing clothes to the ward office – it's usually not something we can use. If you would like to help in that area then you can send financial donations to Catholic Community Services/Teresa Cavandish, 140 W. Speedway, Suite 230 / 85705.

We’re all set for the Family Food Project presentation coming on Thursday, July 6^th. This is where youth are taught cooking skills and are sent home with the mixins’ for a healthy meal they’ll cook for their family. For the 6^th I’ve been working with Awad Ramdan from Lutheran Social Services. He’ll be bringing about 20 youth who will represent multiple nations, languages and customs. We’re the melting pot – they're here as members of refugee families and will be learning cooking skills and sharing cross-culturally during our event. On the 6^th we’ll have members of the Tucson community, some restaurant owners, family members of the youth who are being trained and others. That event will start at 3:30 – everyone is welcome. The youth will be leaving with some newly learned cooking skills plus everything they need to make a meal for their family.

There’s still a need for new pots and pans to support this program. Here’s the list of what we can use:

Frying pans (preferably  non-stick) Sauce pans of all sizes Roasting pans Baking sheets Colanders Wooden spoons Spatulas Mixing bowls Kitchen towels

One of the programs Awad is leading is an all-day multi-cultural event held over at the Maracana indoor soccer facility. The event is free and open to everybody. You’ll see young people from all over the world sharing music, food and just a good time kicking the soccer ball around together. Yes, there’s some good-natured international competition involved, but it’s not like the world cup and you won’t see crowds crashing onto the field in a frenzy. This is for a good time, and is another expression of the culturally welcoming city that we are.

The event runs from 10am until 7pm. Please be respectful of the neighborhood parking – don't block driveways, mailboxes, etc. But do plan on spending a little time supporting the event. This flyer has the date/time/location.

One of the groups who’ll be joining us for the Feed the Kids event will be the Pima County CommunityShare project organizers. CommunityShare is an online program where community members can connect with local school teachers and offer to engage with students. Often community members have real-world experiences and skills they can share within a classroom. The online platform CommunityShare brings allows you to create your own ‘community member profile.’ Teachers can search the site for partners to match their classroom curriculum. It’s a way of helping our local teachers with their class prep, and it gives our educators a wider set of resources – directly from the community – to pull from. Ultimately the students benefit. I’ve invited CommunityShare to the Feed the Kids event to help establish a relationship between those two groups. It’s youth learning new skills – and feeding their families.

This flyer gives you information on how to connect with CommunityShare.

Campbell/6^th Rezoning

A little over a year ago the M&C rejected a bid to rezone and redevelop the southwest corner of 6^th and Campbell – directly across from the UA. The proposal was for a combined student housing, apartment, retail development. I won’t go back through the history of what led to the denial, but the broad strokes of that decision had to do with scale, uses, parking/traffic, housing affordability and an inability to reach a suitable middle ground. When a rezoning is denied, unless there is a significant change in the project the applicant must wait for a year before resubmitting. There has been no significant change being proposed – and the project is coming before the zoning examiner again this week.

The neighbors and the development team have been meeting for the past few months trying to come to that compromise. This graphic shows what is right now proposed to go to the zoning examiner:

The rectangle on the far left (orange) is the 80’ tall student housing, in the red is a 70’ tall apartment/condo project, the yellow is a 50’ tall retail/mixed use and in the tan is a parking structure. To be fair, the proposal is not specifically for ‘student housing,’ but the property owner has signaled that he won’t be the developer so given the location and the size of the structure it’d be a surprise if one of the out of state student housing companies wasn’t somehow involved.

City staff presents a status summary of the project to the zoning examiner. I pulled this piece from what was produced by staff. Note the highlighted sentence:

That statement summarizing the in-person neighborhood meeting is provided to city staff by the applicant/developer. While it is accurate to say there were several attendees who expressed support for the project it would be more accurate to add that there were many more people at that meeting who had concerns about what was being proposed. It is from that latter group the neighborhood pulled volunteers to continue meeting with the development team and work towards a compromise.

About 2 weeks ago I was given a letter from that volunteer group they had sent to the developer. In it they listed several areas they were prepared to ‘give’ on the condition that the developer reciprocated in some other areas. The main sticking points at that time were on affordability, how the restaurant/bar area is to be split up and used, parking and what activities will be allowed on rooftop swimming pool areas. So far there has been no response from the developer to that letter. Given the history of the project and the fact that it was denied the last time around, going in front of the same ‘judge’ with pretty much the same set of facts wouldn’t be an approach I’d choose. But it’s only Monday. The zoning examiner hearing isn’t until Thursday. It’d be great if the sides could announce an agreement.

This project is #3 on the zoning  examiner agenda for Thursday. You can access it online by going to the city of Tucson zoning examiner site. The meeting begins at 6. This item probably won’t begin until about 7pm.

Tucson Plastic Program

I will keep this week’s update brief. There’s no point in just filling space if there isn’t any real meaningful new information. In the past week I had several meetings and phone calls with both city staffers and ByFusion leadership. Here’s the basic challenge – we're in a phase in the project where there’s no revenue coming in but we’re all absorbing some costs. The city continues to pay for hauling the plastic you bring, we’re entering into an agreement with a local contractor to form the loose material into bales for either storing or shipping, BF is freeing up space in their own production queue to process Tucson plastic and we’re still gathering financial information to compare the two sites under consideration for the placement of the BF operation once they relocate to Tucson.

ByFusion still has not finished their Do It Yourself bench kits. Those could be a revenue stream. They also haven’t begun talks with local commercial operations to divert the plastic private haulers are now charging them for over to our program. That could also be a revenue stream for them.

The city has not finalized getting cost information on the two sites we’re considering. They also haven’t finalized deal points with a private company to bale and store the material. And we still need an exit strategy to get the bales now being stored at Tank’s off his property. It would be difficult to express my frustration level with both sides. But we’ll get through it and keep an eye on the ultimate prize of getting the operation up and running in Tucson.

We did have a good meeting last week with a couple of rather large projects – general contractors and architects now gathering cost information on those. That’s also a revenue stream once the projects are done.

Meanwhile you’re faithfully bringing your plastic to us – and in some novel ways. This guy uses his sidecar to bring his plastic over. We appreciate it all – no matter how it arrives.

Another 4 ton+ week bringing the running total to 118.16 tons. During the memorial at the Fox on Saturday 3 people approached me to talk about the program. We appreciate the involvement from Redondo Towers, Our Savior’s Church and all of the residents throughout the city who continue showing those of us pulling the levers to figure out the final landing site for ByFusion that the work is worthwhile.

Microgrid Proposal

There’s an online news option you might want to take a peek at and consider signing up for. Some of the people who have been getting it started come from the Star. Through that they learned both the business aspect of news media and the reporting piece. Their focus is largely on local news – something that in my opinion doesn’t get sufficient news coverage from the traditional outlets.  I understand – that's a staffing issue and it comes with having large out of state conglomerates owning multiple papers/news stations across the country. Local content isn’t what they care about. Fortunately there are local options such as The Sentinel – and now Luminaria.

Luminaria recently ran an extensive piece on the microgrid proposal I brought to the M&C. Reia Li is the reporter. She and I shared several phone calls and emails, and as you’ll see in the article she did her homework and got the input of some experts in the field of solar arrays. Here’s a link to the story.

https://azluminaria.org/2023/06/21/tucson-considers-building-its-own-solar-microgrid/

Luminaria also sent a photog over to get some pictures for the article. In the one posted in the article the guy shot the picture from his drone. Pretty cool. I didn’t realize it but before he could even fly his drone at about 20’ in the air by the ward 6 office he had to alert DM that he had the ‘aircraft’ up.

In the past week I’ve shared a few emails related to the microgrid proposal with the Commission on Climate, Energy and Sustainability as well as a representative from the city manager’s office. My hope is for their reactions to the proposal to be back in front of M&C in September.

Fireworks

With the 4^th of July coming next week and fireworks tents popping up around the city I thought I’d remind people of the law regarding the use of fireworks in Arizona. Here’s a quiz – what do all 4 of these images have in common?

Answer – all 4 are illegal for non-licensed users in Arizona. Everything from the large boomers you see and hear during the sanctioned shows down to M80’s and firecrackers are illegal. Things such as sparklers, snakes, party poppers and those kinds of fireworks are fine. But in Arizona if it leaves the ground and detonates over 6’ in the air, it is illegal to use year-round. That’s bottle rockets, firecrackers, and aerial fireworks.

And if you’re travelling into a national forest even sparklers are not allowed. Please don’t be that guy who is responsible for starting a brush or forest fire because you had to have your fun shooting off a Roman Candle on the 4^th. And similarly, don’t be that guy who ends up in an ER hoping to get your finger reattached because your M80 went off before you could throw it.

RTA

After that, something fun. With the heat July will be a shortened month for rolling out the RSR van. But there will be opportunities within ward 6. Here’s the listing we received from parks administrator Sierra Boyer last week. Keeping these parks activated with residents is one effective way of keeping some unwanted activities from happening in the parks. Please consider taking some time to go out and support the van staff when they come to a park near your home. 

Sincerely,

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

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