A Message from Steve K...07/03/2023

Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page. |

Date: 07/03/2023

Topics in This Issue:

• Diana’s Grandbaby

• Midtown Rodents

• Residential Road Repair 

• Refugee Donations

• Axis for Autism 

• 3M PFAS Settlement 

• 6th/Campbell Zoning 

• Tucson Plastic Program 

• Neighborhood Aesthetics 

• Microgrid Proposal 

• Structured Camps 

Diana’s Grandbaby 

Next time you see our Diana, you can congratulate her on her new, and her 1^st grandbaby. This is little Scarlett Margarita Amado. She entered the world several days behind schedule so she’s already behind in her chores. But there’s lots of time to catch up. We’re all very happy for the entire Amado family.

Midtown Rodents

Final reminder for the rodent meeting. Some meetings are tough to give a name to – this one seems to catch peoples’ attention. Tuesday, July 11^th at 6pm here at the ward 6 office. There will be a brief presentation and then we’ll open things up for Q&A.

A couple of clarifications. The options I’ve presented in the past few newsletters are options that have been introduced by PACC. Some of you have suggested I might not like cats because in one newsletter I made the point that if the cats introduced to an area for rodent control are well fed they won’t be hungry for the mice. I was not suggesting – as a few emailers were concerned about – that a way around that would be to avoid feeding the PACC cats (not to be confused with the pack rats.) Please do not starve your kitty. And the fact that cats were introduced by PACC as an option does not mean either I or PACC recommends them as the go-to option. Check the most recent newsletter and you’ll see that idea has more ‘cons’ in the graphic than it does ‘pros.’ As I said to one lady – nobody, including PACC is embracing cats as the solution. But they are an option – just not one we’re going to land on at a neighborhood scale. Individual homeowners may certainly deploy a housecat as one way to control mice if they choose. I know my bride is grateful that our neighbors have a cat, for exactly that reason.

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

Residential Road Repair

Last week the citizen oversight committee (IOAC) approved the first phase of Prop 411 residential road repair projects. These are a part of the 10 year, ½ cent sales tax assessment the voters approved to address the condition of residential roads in the city. Phase 1 of the plan represents about $240M of what is anticipated to be just under a $600M road repair revenue stream over the next 10 years. There are 2 more phases worth of projects yet to be finalized.

The projects were selected by the committee following a road condition evaluation that was conducted by our transportation department. The committee used the overall condition rating as one criterion for selecting projects. They also considered ward-by-ward proportionality – investing in each ward roughly equivalent to the number of streets that lay within that ward. And they assigned an equity adjustment to the score reflecting areas with higher transportation needs consistent with our Move Tucson plan.

Over the 10 years of the program, the needs of every residential street in the city will be addressed. Of the sales tax revenue collected 80% will go to the road repair (that’s the $600M noted above) and 20% will be directed to safe street improvements. That portion will account for about $150M. We have a separate citizen oversight committee looking at how the 20% is assigned to projects.

Use this link to see the Phase 1 projects, and early indications of how the next 2 phases will be rolled out. The link has an interactive map so you can get background information on each project.

https://tucsondelivers.tucsonaz.gov/pages/better-streets-safe-streets.

Refugee Donations

With the heat ramping up I’ve noticed that more and more people are selecting Amazon as a way to donate to the refugee population. That’s totally fine. We’re now getting those trucks dropping off items pretty much every day of the week.

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, soap, shampoo...those basics. A new need is for new t-shirts – just basic t’s, small, medium and large. And still new and unused underclothes. 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.

Our Community Food Bank bin is overstuffed pretty regularly. Thank you for helping the CFB of Tucson and Southern Arizona meet the needs of community members every day. For food donations please limit what you bring to non-perishable goods. The CFB folks come by the ward office weekly to pick up what you’ve dropped off so if you’re leaving something that’ll spoil, it probably won’t make it to the CFB in time to get used.

Thanks for all of your great support for refugee families, homeless residents and the portion of the community experiencing food insecurity.

Axis for Autism

Another group active in the community touching lives in meaningful ways is Axis for Autism. They’ve been up and running in the Phoenix area. Last week Nadia and I had the opportunity to welcome their first Tucson clinic.

The typical waiting period for getting an autism evaluation is about a year. That’s just to get the initial evaluation, not to get started with any clinical work. Axis is staffed and operates with the goal of reducing that time lag to under 60 days. As I said during the ribbon-cutting event, as is true of any medical condition, early interventions lead to better outcomes. Axis estimates 1 in 44 Tucson residents are affected in some way by Autism. It’s great to have them here reaching into that community and offering assistance.

I was happy to be joined by State Senator Priya Sundareshan during the welcome ceremony (2 people over to my left.) She and I took some time off to the side to talk about the success of the plastics program. Priya works in the environmental space, so she has a particular affinity for the work we’re doing reducing the plastic waste stream.

If you or a family member would like to connect with Axis you can call 602.888.8882, visit their website and make appointments at www.axisforautism.com, or head over to their Tucson office located at 5055 E. Broadway. I’m working with their CEO Christine Ehrich on trying to identify a second location in the southwest part of the city or county. They’re not done expanding – the need isn’t nearly addressed by even the good work happening at the new Broadway clinic. 

3M PFAS Settlement 

A couple of weeks ago I shared an update on the litigation the city is involved with related to PFAS. It seems the shareholders of 3M are seeing some writing on the wall that has lots of dollar signs connected to it. The company announced early in COVID that they’ll phase out PFAS by 2025 – not soon enough, and the damage is already done. They also announced they’ll be making investments in what they call ‘state-of-the-art' water filtration technology in their manufacturing operations. And they’re offering financial settlements as a way of cutting the financial losses they’d suffer if they were to go to trial.

When I introduced the group that is now our litigation team to the city attorney, city manager and mayor Rothschild a few years ago the litigation effort was just starting nationwide. Shortly after that initial introductory meeting, I brought the matter to the mayor and council and we voted to join the ongoing lawsuit against 3M and a few other PFAS manufacturers. The recently announced settlement figure for the group of litigants we’re a part of is just under $1.2 billion dollars. At this time we do not know how that money would be divided up, or even if the court will accept the settlement offer.

Last week 3M offered a settlement involving a claim brought by Stuart, Florida, one of about 300 communities included in their class action. That offer was north of $10B. It could run as high as over $12 billion over the 13-year payout depending on how many more communities detect PFAS. Pretty much any city with a military base has the stuff. What caught my eye about the Stuart, Florida announcement was that it was reported out of Traverse City, Michigan by the Associated Press. Traverse City is on Lake Huron. I used to swim and fish in Lake Huron. There was one summer when the fishing boats weren’t taking people out because the shores were lined with dead fish. Nobody ever quite identified the cause.

None of the actual trials have begun. The Court is still in the gathering information stage. Ahead of that it appears 3M is negotiating possible out of court settlement agreements.  The complaint by Stuart, Florida was scheduled to start this month but has now been delayed so the sides can negotiate the settlement. Any of these settlement offers is subject to court approval.

We’ll have more on our case in an upcoming study session. Whenever I get done doing this work knowing my role as being the catalyst for our involvement in this litigation will be one of the things, I’ll be most gratified by.

We are still working with the EPA and Department of Defense on identifying their role in paying for cleanup. The ultimate cost just at the Tucson level will be in the tens of millions of dollars. We’re already in for over $50M and there isn’t even a long-range treatment plant(s) plan in place.

6^th/Campbell Zoning

The zoning examiner hearing on the proposed redevelopment at 6^th and Campbell took place last Thursday – and was continued until July 13^th to allow for further discussion between the parties. As I said during the hearing, we’re very close to reaching agreement on the terms. Having the ZE make a determination last week would not have been appropriate.

Quick review – this is the proposed site plan. It is a combination of student housing (leased by the room, not by the bed,) apartments, commercial and parking. The heights have been a point of contention. What began at about 120’ is now down to an 80’ structure on the west end of the project, dropping down to 50’ on the Campbell-facing portion. Agreement on those heights is contingent on agreement on other issues that I’ll share below. Here’s a rendering of the site plan -

And this is a rough architectural rendering of what the street level view at Campbell and 6^th could look like. This is an early rendering. There’s a long way to go before a final design has been approved.

Some of the deal points that have been agreed upon include no ‘Group Dwelling’ (renting space by the bed,) no stand-alone bars, decoupling the leases from parking as a way of incentivizing non-auto mobility, about 90% of the top level of the parking structure will be covered by solar panels, a dedicated Ride Share space on the interior of the development, and the developer has agreed to work with the city on the abandonment of part of Martin Avenue. That will reduce cut-through traffic into Rincon Heights, and the remnant piece of the road could become a landscaped pedestrian path. There’s still discussion about how much parking should be required in the project.

There are two issues the sides have been working hard on resolving. One is how the commercial space is divided up. The owner wants the space to have the same liquor license as bars have (Series 6.) The reason is a restaurant license (Series 12) comes with the obligation to maintain at least 40% of your revenue coming from food, not alcohol sales. Getting a Series 6 does not bring that accounting and sales responsibility. The neighborhood has agreed to a Series 6 on the condition that the hours of operation reflect restaurants, not bars. There are some closing time suggestions on the table. That’s one of the items to be worked out before the 13^th.

The other issue that has been pretty tough to work through has to do with affordable housing. A year ago, when this project was first rejected there was no willingness by the owner to incorporate any units in the project for affordable housing. Since then, we’ve tossed some creative approaches into the conversation and seem to have found a path forward.

Early this year the city council approved on a 5-2 vote (me and Kevin voted against) a rezoning at La Cholla and 36^th. One of the wins the mayor and council members who supported the project pointed to was a commitment by the developer of putting in 14 affordable housing units. They had a cap of 137 total units allowed. In their pre-development package, they’ve identified only 114 lots. When I checked into why they were not building the allowed 137 I found that they’re in fact not including any affordable units. On the night of the public hearing, the city attorney read into the record a change that had been negotiated between the developer, city staff and the ward 1 office. This is the change that was announced at our public hearing:

The number of lots in the project shall not exceed a total of 137, subject, however, to the additional condition that 14 of those 137 lots shall be restricted, in perpetuity, for development, and use, as affordable housing.  The 14 lots that are restricted to this use shall be disbursed throughout the community and not concentrated in one area, although they will be separated from the area that the home developer designates for the model sales home area. To satisfy this the developer can develop the 14 lots as affordable housing or can provide for the development of the 14 lots as affordable housing by transferring those lots to the city or to the city's designee for that purpose under mutually negotiated and agreed upon terms. (my emphasis)

What we’re finding is lending institutions don’t want to risk lower rents so the La Cholla/36^th development will be at all market rate and I’m told that instead the developer is negotiating an amount per/unit sold that will be donated into our housing department funds – likely for low income down payment assistance. That’s not transferring ownership of the lots to the city or our designee so I’d expect this change in condition to have to come back to the M&C for approval.

Back to 6^th/Campbell. We know the project will not have affordable units. The developer has made it clear that he can’t get funding for the project if they set aside units at below market rate. The conversation is now about how much money, and over what time frame, will be dedicated to our own city affordable housing work. That appears to be the conversation happening at La Cholla – we're just doing it up front at 6^th and Campbell and if agreed on it’ll be a part of what the M&C vote on. There are a couple of options on the table – one will end up having been decided on by the July 13^th resumption of the zoning hearing.

Some of the deal points left to work out are going into the zoning document. Things such as height, parking, and sizes of the commercial floor plate – those will be in the zoning document. Other important items such as the affordable housing support and closing times will need to be in a separate side agreement negotiated between the developer and the neighborhood. That’s what we needed the extra time to achieve. We’re so close that I’m hopeful.

Tucson Plastic Program

The zoo staff has been steady partners in our plastic reuse program since the beginning. Side note – thanks to them for the invitation to share music at last Saturday’s Summer Safari Night event. They’ll continue the 2023 Safari Nights each Saturday from 6pm until 8pm until August 12^th. This guy was strutting his stuff throughout the crowd all evening – call it an eclectic crowd for the event.

I open the plastics update with a mention of the zoo because for the 5^th straight year, the Reid Park Zoo is taking part in a month-long effort to reduce the use of plastic. It’s called the Plastic Free Ecochallenge and is sponsored by the coalition of zoos and aquariums.

The goal of the ecochallenge is to encourage people to build new habits into their lifestyle that include avoiding plastic packaging, single-use bags and any other creative ways you can devise to cut down on plastic use – which means to cut down on plastic waste.

Side note here – reducing the use of plastic is not easy. If everybody in Tucson joined this ecochallenge (and I hope you do) and was able to cut even 50% of your plastic use out, the impact on the ByFusion program would be negligible. The stuff is pervasive in our lives.

Our partners at the zoo are offering any member of the public who joins the zoo team and scores the highest on their team leaderboard during the month a behind-the-scenes tour at the zoo. I’ll toss this in for the winner – as soon as ByFusion gets their Do It Yourself bench kits up and running, the ward 6 office is going to donate one of their benches to the zoo and we’ll include a plaque with the ecochallenge winner’s name on it.

Use this link to join the zoo team and start reducing your use of plastic today -

Join the Team!

This Wednesday, July 5th from 6pm until 7pm my team will be joining our friend Miguel Ortega in El Parque de San Cosme in Barrio Viejo to share about the plastics program. We’ve been hearing that the Barrio residents would like to hear more directly about ByFusion and how the program is evolving. We’ll have some examples of the blocks on hand along with informational material on the program. Drop by and grab some of the flyers, get some free clear plastic bags to begin your own collection process, ande learn more about the program. We appreciate Miguel’s invitation to join him and help get the word out about the plastics reuse effort. The park is located at 530 W. Simpson Street – directly behind Fire Station #1 across from the TCC. 

We made some important decisions in our local program last week. Tank’s Green Stuff has been an absolutely top-notch partner in this program since we started it. We all went into this not knowing how things would evolve – kind of a leap of faith because we all believe in the program. The public’s support of the program has gotten out ahead of our ability to continue managing the plastic out at Tanks. Starting this week, we’ll be moving the bales from his yard and begin taking what you deliver to our drop-off sites out to a new location – still being determined. We have to do this so Jason can recapture his own space and get back to his own business. We’re all grateful to him for his involvement in the ByFusion work to this point. If you’re ever in the market for organic composting material, please consider supporting Jason and his operation. Here’s a link so you can see the variety of products they offer: https://www.tanksgreenstuff.com/

In order to get some of the long lead-time items ordered we made some technical decisions on how the MDP (block-making machine) will operate. Not sexy stuff, but getting materials ordered in what is a not-so-friendly material supply international market was an important step. TEP cost us money by being unresponsive to some pretty basic questions we have with respect to providing power to one of our locations. We’ll get our answers without them if that’s how things need to be at their end. The city manager formally gave ByFusion the notice to proceed – all of the signatures on all of the legal documents are finally in place.

The other 2 collection stations are beginning to pick up some steam (plastic.) There’s a little irony in my making the pitch for the zoo ecochallenge in the same week that for the first time the community brought in over 5 tons of plastic to the 3 sites. The ward 6 location is being emptied 6 days per week. The ward 4 location had to be emptied twice last week and topped a ton for the first time. It’s great to see that the program is expanding. The total collected since August is now 123.24 tons.

Neighborhood Aesthetics

Our environmental services team has been extremely supportive of the plastics program. When you drop off your bags at the ward 6 office and the bin is out being emptied, the bags are left on our back wall. Recently the E.S. crew has been jumping in and helping load the bin when it arrives back at the ward office. We’re grateful for that.

One area they could use your help is to report when your own home trash or recycle bin needs to be replaced. Sometimes the drivers can see broken or worn bins and they turn them in for replacement. But that’s not always easy from the truck – and they’re focused on moving from house to house. If your bin is in bad condition, please email Eshelp@tucsonaz.gov - give your address and request a replacement. It’ll help out both the drivers, and your neighbors will appreciate not having the visual clutter.

Microgrid Proposal

And while I’m on the environmental theme, last week I met with the city managers representative from the city climate action team and the chair of the citizen climate action team. They wanted to meet to talk through what I’m hoping to see as a deliverable when we readdress the microgrid item in September.

The proposal Kevin and I presented was to use the 15-mile Norte-Sur transportation/development path as a microgrid route. That’s a huge undertaking. There is no expectation that by September we’ll be anywhere close to implementing even a design effort for that. As I said to the guys during our visit last week, I tossed all my chips on the table. Let’s take some of them and start down the microgrid path.

A few of the ideas I floated to them when we met included identifying some of our critical infrastructure sites along that route and powering it with a microgrid. Water pumping locations for example. If TEP suffers a prolonged outage being able to deliver water without relying on them could be an important public health consideration. Roughly one-half of the electricity the city buys from TEP is to operate our water system. There is both financial savings to be realized, and taking some load off from the TEP grid. Also, we have cooling stations scattered throughout the city. One of them at the Donna Liggins Center is also on the Norte-Sur route. Let’s explore how microgrids could help assure power to cooling stations even during a TEP outage. Or using microgrids to power EV stations located along the Norte-Sur route.

Microgrid power is not something novel or unique. It’s used all over the world – these women in Yemen are benefitting from solar power coming from their microgrid:

I’ll be meeting with the city manager and citizen group again later in July to talk more about the program. The reality is I tossed out the Norte-Sur route because we’re already in funding efforts for development along that route, it has a significant transportation component to it, and there’s plenty of built environment we could augment power to. If the decision is to step towards this idea in some other parts of the city, I’m all for it. We just need to begin embracing the notion of taking power from the sun, and doing it in ways not tied to the larger power grid that we hear so much concern over from our TEP suppliers. We’re not competing for sun rays with them – this is a complementary effort.

Structured Camps

In the aftermath of being sued – and losing – by local businesses, Phoenix is moving towards testing a model I’ve been proposing for well over a year. Some don’t like the term ‘controlled camp’ - Phoenix is calling them ‘structured camps.’ It’s a rose by any other name.

The Phoenix camps will be located close to city/non-profit services. They’ll have security, showers, and restroom facilities on site. They’re not intended to be a permanent solution but a transitional arrangement for when more suitable shelter/housing shows up. What they’re also intended to do is get people into a location where service providers can find them, do assessments, and begin services without having to chase them around from camp to camp after one is shut down by their homeless protocol team. In the case of Phoenix, they had simply allowed The Zone to expand and become what the court declared a public health nuisance. In our case, we allow camps in residential and commercial areas until criminal activity is identified at the site. There are better locations than behind somebody’s backyard fence.

This is the site Phoenix is considering. They plan on allowing up to 400 people at their campground. They’ll do it in stages, bringing on about 100 at a time, getting people settled, and then bringing in another 100. I think that’s far too large and will be difficult for them to manage. My proposal has been to identify multiple locations for a couple of dozen people with water, security, and services.

We’ll be having a discussion about zoning and housing affordability in July. Other cities have found ways to allow for some limited camping and/or tiny home villages that we don’t have in our codes. Here’s one example:

They’re using expedited permitting as a way of building tiny homes as temporary shelter for people.

Here’s how Seattle is approaching the issue of location. They came up with these changes after their own experience in allowing a camp to get out of control. They address zoning, size, property ownership, proximity to transit and not clustering camps together.

Others allow camps on church property – another idea I’ve floated but have not gotten any support for at M&C:

During our most recent study session on the homeless issue, we received this bit of good news:

The Housing First Team successfully assisted 49 households move into permanent housing in March and April.

It’s great that we got those 49 households into permanent housing. Our total number getting into permanent housing is over 600. That should be the goal for all of the homeless population. That’s also not a realistic expectation given the complexity of the issue. Phoenix has finally gotten to the place where they’ll try using a structured (controlled) environment for permitted camping. They will continue to have a significant number of unhoused people to work with – they won’t have enough slots at their camp. We’d be in the same situation of not ever having enough room in our camps. But as a transitional piece of the larger issue, it’s one idea we simply have not tried.

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