A Message from Steve K...08/07/2023

We have evacuated the ward 6 building while repairs from last weeks storms are in progress. Here’s a Channel 4 story showing some of what the office looked like during the Monday night rains -  

https://youtu.be/YmMZqc2ZnCo 

And this brief tour through the mess. 

The monsoons might have put our office out of commission for walk-in traffic, but it didn’t deter you all from filling the big orange roll-off. Last week was our first week in which we (you) topped 6 tons of plastic donated to the program. The word is certainly spreading. Late last week Nadia and I spoke to the Rotary about the program, I had people from Flagstaff connect and ask for a presentation, and two groups from Phoenix want to hear about what Tucson is doing. I had meetings with city staff about preparing an upcoming agenda item for approval of the operations site, a non-profit let me know they’re ready to move ahead with a large project, we’ve booked a presentation to a local middle school, a mining operation reached out wanting to get their waste plastic into the program – every day this program expands. Once ByFusion is finally up and running in Tucson we’ll have some serious catching up to do in whittling down the accumulating pile. 

Bill O’Leary from the Washington Post had a good article recently titled “Most Plastic is Not Recyclable – Here's Why.” In it he points out that most people see the recycling symbol on the packaging and assume it will be recycled. Natural assumption, but in the majority of cases the material simply adds to the contamination stream and goes into the landfill. Even the material that is recyclable, such as plastic water bottles often end up in the landfill because material recycle facilities have a difficult time sorting them from the other plastic.  

The UA is about to resume classes. Neighbors who live around the perimeter of campus will start seeing these scattered around – note what I’ve circled. And note to UA students – how about being a part of the solution and dedicating a bin in your house/fraternity/sorority for plastic cups! We can use them in the ByFusion program. Your neighbors, and someday your kids will appreciate the effort. 

Because of the confusion and resulting contamination surrounding recycling of plastic, California has   passed a law that bans the use of a recycling symbol on products unless they’re accepted for recycling at in at least 60% of the recycle facilities in the state. None of the items shown above would be allowed to have a recycle symbol. Even the Federal Trade Commission is  updating its guidelines to make the recycle labeling clearer. We’re often asked why we don’t just create a list of plastic products we’ll accept into the ByFusion program. The answer is simply that there’s no way it could be a comprehensive list. If it’s plastic, it’ll work in our program. 

For example, this list shows items followed by the percent of material recycle facilities in the nation that will take them for recycling – you can see that the %’s drop off pretty quickly. 

PET#1 Bottles and Jugs 375 (100%) 

HDPE#2 Bottles and Jugs 375 (100%) 

PP#5 Tubs 194 (52%) 

Plastic Clamshells 41 (11%) 

Plastic Cups 32 (9%) 

Plastic Trays 17 (5%) 

Plastic Bags 3 (1%) 

Styrofoam Food Service 4 (1%) 

Plastic Lids and Caps (Loose) 9 (2%) 

Plastic Plates 6 (2%) 

Plastic Cutlery, Straws and Stirrers 1 (0%) 

Plastic Food Wrappers and Pouches 0 (0%) 

PP#5 or PS#6 Coffee Pods 1 (0%) 

The Tucson Downtown Lions Club has been a big supporter of the plastics program since we started it. They’re having their 100-year anniversary this year and for that event they’re going to recognize the plastics program as a part of their program. The event will be held at the Savoy Opera House in Trail Dust Town. If you haven’t been to Savoy, or to Trail Dust Town you might consider this event. It celebrates the program, and walking through Trail Dust Town is fun. The event begins at 5:30 – go early and wander through the town. I’ll be playing the music for the event. Contact the Tucson Downtown Lions Club president Cynthia at clrmusicat@cox.net and she can get you all the information on tickets for the event. 

This is a photo of LA International airport (LAX.) If you’ve ever been there, you know what a zoo it is.  

But to their credit the people who operate LAX have put into place a new policy that bans their vendors from selling plastic water bottles. Here’s the logo for their program -  

In their announcement of the policy airport officials included this statement - “With ample water bottle refill stations across our terminals, we encourage guests to bring reusable water bottles to avoid waste.” They’re shifting to selling water, but only in sustainably packaged alternative materials. Their ban applies to water sold at vending machines, restaurants, concessions stands, lounges – passengers will have to bring their own drinking bottle into the airport. San Francisco Airport has banned the sale of any soda, tea, or juice that’s sold in plastic packaging. It’s a national trend – the Tucson Airport Authority should join the city in our ByFusion work and follow the lead ward 6, California, certain airports and the Tucson community have demonstrated.  

A part of the 6+ tons collected last week was the largest weekly collection out at Nikki Lee’s ward 4 office. We appreciate their involvement and advocacy. And that mining operation I mentioned above --- they’ll be using the Fire Station #15 location so that site will soon begin adding larger numbers to what’s donated. 

The Tucson community demands that we take a leadership role in all-things- environment. The plastic program is one example. Our work on water conservation is another. Tucson has been a leader in that for decades. It shows in our accumulated water stored for a ‘rainy day.’ 

Each year Tucson Water (TW) puts out our annual Water Checkbook. It gives us our ‘account balance’ showing how much water we’re using, how much we’re saving and how much we cumulatively have saved. Because Tucson and our residents (you) have done such a great job on conservation our checkbook balance is very much positive. 

A part of our annual supply is Colorado River water (CAP.) Tucson is right now allocated 144,000-acre feet of CAP water each year. Because of the drought and its effects on the River, we have voluntarily left some of our allocation on the River in 2017, 2018, 2022, and now we’re negotiating further support for the River for calendar years ‘24 and ‘25. Even with us doing our part to preserve the Colorado, our net checkbook balance is in our favor. 

This graphic shows that for 2022, even with our dedication of water to the River we still have a 32,295 positive acre foot balance for that year. That’s a testament to how well our community responds to conservation incentives offered through TW and M&C policy. But this graphic is just for 2022.  

Here’s a graph showing how well we’ve managed water since 2008. You can see the dips in our balance for the 3 years I mentioned where we’ve chosen to not take our full CAP allocation. But in every year, we’ve had water we can ‘put in the bank’ for later when we’ll need it. 

This graph shows how the balance we have available has accrued over time. The total is well over 500,000-acre feet of water stored. It equates to roughly a 5-year supply if we received zero CAP water and if we had no other source (rain.)  

There continues to be a drought, and there continue to be talks among the 7 states, tribes and Mexico about what to do with the current allocation entitlements that are drying up the Colorado River. Above I mentioned we’re talking about what to leave on the River in ‘24 and 25. The likely total, including what we’ve already done for 2023 will be around 110,000-acre feet. The feds will compensate us for that water at around $400 per acre foot – potentially a $44 million dollar paycheck to Tucson Water.  

The Colorado is a major source of water for 40 million people. Preserving it is a big deal. One reason we have been so successful is our forward-thinking investments into water infrastructure. That’s where we’re targeting much of the money, we’ll be paid for leaving a part of our allocation on the River. Tucson isn’t alone. So far Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, Gilbert and ASARCO copper mine have also signed agreements to help conserve the Colorado. What we need is a new law governing how much each of the 7 basin states and tribes are entitled to from the Colorado. All of these voluntary reductions are good, but the federal government isn’t going to keep paying huge amounts of money for us to avoid draining the River.  

For now, Tucson is in a good place with respect to our groundwater supply. With PFAS challenges and an on-going drought, we cannot ignore the need to keep pushing for PFAS remediation money, and for a new Law of the River that reflects our current climate reality. 

A few months ago, I asked the M&C to approve a change in the quorum requirements as they relate to our Boards, Committees and Commissions (BCC.) Until now in order to meet quorum a BCC had to have present at a meeting at least 50% of the number of members it is allowed. If for example a BCC was allowed to have 20 members, but only 10 had been appointed, that committee would still have to have 11 members present at a given meeting in order to meet the quorum requirement. In this example, there’s no way the commission could meet. We found that missing quorum was becoming more and more common with our BCC’s.  

The change I asked for was to allow quorum to be based on the actual number of people who are appointed to a BCC at the time they’re meeting. So, in the example I gave above that committee would only need 6 members present in order to meet. That’s not a quorum for them under our current rules, but under the change we’re implementing it will allow them to meet. 

On Tuesday staff is bringing us back a proposed policy change. It will create two classes of BCC’s - one category will be made up of BCC’s the M&C have established and who have members solely appointed by the city. They serve a purely advisory function. It is these BCC’s who will be subject to our new quorum rule. This is a list of those that will now benefit from the relaxed rule: 

There are BCC’s that are not solely made up of city appointees. And there are some that are not purely advisory but instead exercise some level of independent decision making, sometimes with implications for city finances. These will not be included in the quorum change rule we’ll be voting on Tuesday. Some examples of this category include the Police Public Safety Personnel Retirement System Board, the Fire Code Review Committee and the Tucson/Pima County Historical Commission. These BCC’s, and others in this category will continue to need 50% of their allowed membership before they can conduct business. 

Staff did some deep research into this item – I appreciate their efforts.  

On Tuesday, we’ll be having an important study session item related to housing affordability. Not to be confused with ‘affordable housing.’ When phrased that way peoples’ minds often go to our Housing Choice Voucher program (Section 8.) There are things we can do within our codes to facilitate getting people into houses that do not require them to also be very low income to do so. 

Last week Bud Foster from KOLD ran a good piece that explains the breadth of what I’m hoping to talk about on Tuesday. Here’s a link to his story:

https://www.kold.com/2023/08/05/tucson-change-zoning-building-codes-accommodate-tiny-homes-tiny-home-villages/  

Our friends at PCOA will be hosting some important community informational meetings beginning this week. One set of presentations will focus on 2023 Medicare – the differences between Medicare and Medicare Advantage, information on Medigap, Medicare savings programs and enrollment information. There will be both in-person and virtual meeting options. Here’s the August meeting schedule: 

Wednesday, August 9th from noon until 3pm at PCOA The Katie – 600 S. Country Club –in-person registration is at https://katiemedicareip.eventbrite.com, and the zoom link can be found at https://umvirtual22.eventbrite.com.  

For the August 16th meeting they’re only offering it in-person. This meeting will be held at the Wheeler Taft Abbett Sr. Library – 7800 N. Schisler. The meeting will from from 10am until 1pm – register at https://wheelertaftabbetsmedicare.eventbrite.com.  

And their final August meeting will be held at the Murphy-Wilmot Library on August 23rd.  It’ll run from 2pm until 5pm. It’s also in-person only – https://murphywilmotmedicare.eventbrite.com.  

You can find additional presentation dates at the PCOA calendar – www.pcoa.org/calendar or just call them at 520.546.2011. 

The other important informational meetings will be offering free training for informal, non-paid family caregivers. This is an immensely important issue with today’s population demographic. All of the training will take place at The Katie – the PCOA headquarters at 600 S. Country Club. The workshops are broken into two parts – a morning session where they cover a variety of topics including dementia behaviors, financial resources, support groups, stress management, and lots more. The morning sessions will run from 9am until 12:30pm. Then in the afternoon, they’ll cover some physical care and safety issues. These will include things such as proper body mechanics, home environment safety, fall prevention, transferring techniques – to name just a few. You need to register – and if you’re staying for both sessions, they ask that you bring your own lunch. Here are the dates: 

This is a reminder for those who are interested in our transit system to go on-line and take the survey the city, PAG and the RTA have put together. The survey will ask your thoughts on issues such as: 

• Realigning and extending routes 
• Investing in high-frequency service 
• Improving access and quality of service 
• Extending service hours 
• Adding weekend frequency 

Here’s a link to the survey: Take the survey 

There will also be a series of town halls and pop-up events where you can give your input. Those will be scattered around the region. This map shows the dates/times and locations for these events. If you’re doing the on-line, they want your input before the end of the day on September 8th.  

The arts and crafts fair is an annual event hosted by city parks and rec in Reid Park. This Thanksgiving weekend event has been held for more than 4 decades, with a year off during COVID. They’ll draw over 140 vendors, many of whom fly in from all over the southwest. With the limited space and the popularity of the event, the event planners are looking for vendors who will offer unique homemade goods and not off-the-shelf mass-produced stuff. The display spaces will fill up so if you’re an artisan or a craftsperson you should submit your application now. Use this link:

Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair 

The vendor fee for the fair is $90 for a 10’x10’ space. It’s a two-day event running on Saturday and Sunday, November 25th and 26th.