A Message from Steve K...09/11/2023

• Background Checks – Gun Safety 

• Capstone Neighborhood Meeting 

• Yellow Brick Coffee 

• Plastics Program

• Sex Trafficking          

• TEP Energy Savings Program 

• TEP Board of Adjustment Hearing 

• Parks and Rec Leisure Class Survey 

• Tucson Pops Fall Concert Series 

• Tucson Meet Yourself

• Camino Miramonte Bike Boulevard 

• Dragonfly Day  

Under current law if you are not a licensed firearms dealer you do not need to do a background check when you sell a gun. People sell firearms online all the time without having to do background checks. They sell them without background checks at the Pima County Fairgrounds during every gun show you see plastered on signs at street corners about every 6 months. When I did the gun buy-back several years ago people were paying cash for guns on the street corner within 50’ of where we had the police command set up for people to turn in their guns. No questions asked. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is finally proposing a new regulation that might have bi-partisan support. They need to hear from you in support of the proposal. It’s being supported by gun safety groups, including Everytown for Gun Safety. I’ve participated in numerous rally’s with the Everytown group. 

The BATF proposal is pretty simple and intuitive. The assumption behind the regulation is that if you are selling guns online or at gun shows you are presumed to be doing it to make a profit. That means you need to get a license – and that means you need to do background checks on every customer you’re selling a gun to.  

I’ll get to the climate updates below, but for now this’ll send a dual message: 

You’ve likely heard of the “gun show loophole.” This proposed regulation addresses that. I’m not sure how they proposed to regulate selling guns out of the trunk of your car, but any step towards regulating private gun sales over the internet and at gun shows is a step in the right direction. Please let the BATF know that you support the proposed regulations. You can do that by going to this Everytown site. Scroll down and you’ll see where you can put in your own personalized message. 

Submit your comment today in just two clicks: Tell ATF to close these dangerous loopholes. Gun sales online and at gun shows must have background checks! 

Capstone Neighborhood Meeting 

Final reminder of the Capstone housing development meeting coming up on September 27th. It’ll be held at the Trinity Church that’s located on University and 4th Ave.  

Capstone is the student housing developer who’s proposing a change of zoning for the SE corner of Speedway and Euclid, the purpose of which would be to add student housing at a height that’s not currently allowed in the Main Gate Overlay zoning. This meeting is the culmination of multiple meetings Capstone has held with West University neighbors, a broader representation of near-campus neighborhoods and my office. The next step after the meeting on the 27th will be a zoning examiner public hearing. 

While we’re still displaced, we’ll continue the Thursday in-person connections at Yellow Brick Coffee. It’s located in the commercial area that’s immediately north of the Benedictine. Mark from our office will be out in front of the coffee shop from 10:30am to noon and will have the free plastic bags for the plastic program and will also be taking notes on any concerns you’ve got. As long as it’s proving valuable to you, we’ll keep posting him out there.  

Please consider stopping in the coffee shop and supporting this local business. They’ve got an excellent product and friendly staff to help you decide which of their goodies to select. 

Last week was the largest single week of collections we’ve had since the plastics pilot began last August. At 7.76 tons we continue to see the program grow each week. When ByFusion is here and operating locally they’ll be doing greater outreach into the commercial sector and the current numbers will jump. For now, we’re struggling to get blocks produced, projects designed and struggling to keep up with you. Thank you for all you’re doing to demonstrate the value of this program to the wider region.  

We continue to have people coming to the ward office dropping off plastic from all over the county. Just last week I spoke with people from Oro Valley, ‘east-siders’, and several who are gathering plastic for entire neighborhoods and running it over by the carload. We appreciate all of you. 

In October we’ll be hosting a trafficking forum along with some other activities, all aimed at heightening awareness of the issue of sex trafficking in Tucson. Our youth are being bought and sold daily. That’s not hype – it’s the reality of how exploitation works through social media, on known websites and how it preys on vulnerable targets. More to come on the ward 6 efforts. 

Coming in September 24th at 2pm, the Loft will host an event being sponsored by The Haven. The film is Motel Drive – it's a documentary that follows a Fresno family for several years as they wrestle with housing insecurity, addictions and mixing in raising a young kid with all of that. The event is free, but the seating will be limited to the first 100 people in attendance. 

This is National Recovery Month. The title sponsor for this event is the Governor’s Office of Youth, Faith and Family. Also involved are some of the agencies the ward 6 office is aligned with, including Sister Jose, Interfaith Community Services, the YWCA and JFCS of Southern Arizona. Why do I include a story about housing insecurity, drugs and recovery in the Sex Trafficking section? Because traffickers look for vulnerable targets. “Couch Surfing” for homeless youth is trafficking – by definition – when they’re trading sex for the ability to sleep on someone’s couch. Trading sex for drugs is trafficking when the addict is a minor – by definition. We at the ward office are working to broaden the understanding of how the federal government defines trafficking so our response is more robust. The Haven event at the Loft will keep the conversation real. Our events coming in October will do so as well. 

If you’d like more information on the Motel Drive go to the Haven website at www.thehaventucson.org.

Last weekend we had yet another record-setting hot spell. From the looks of it those will become our new normal. TEP is offering customers a free smart thermostat that will help you save money on your cooling and also reduce the demand on the TEP power grid during peak hours. 

Using energy at the right time will help decrease demand on the regional power grid. And it will save you money. Most of us increase our power usage around the dinnertime and early evening hours. It’s during those ‘on-peak’ hours that energy is most costly. It’s also more carbon intensive during those times in part because lower cost renewable energy coming from TEP is more widely available during the non-peak times of day. TEP is encouraging customers to make small, automatic adjustments to your thermostat during the peak hours to reduce the impact on the grid. And if you’re on their time-of-use pricing plan it’ll lower your own energy costs even during non-peak times. 

The free smart thermostat offer is a ‘limited time’ deal so if you’re interested you should act on it. They’ve also got some increased financial rewards if you sign up for their Smart Rewards program . Through that program it’s the utility that makes the thermostat adjustments when peak demand is highest. It’s all optional but setting aside differences we might have on other energy-related topics these programs are easy ways to help reduce carbon emissions, reduce demand on the power grid and save yourself some money. 

The Board of Adjustment is a quasi-judicial public body that’s made up of people M&C have appointed. The appointees are generally people with planning, architecture or some zoning-related backgrounds – although if you look at the roster, you’ll see that’s not universally true. The Board is the appeal group for developers who are dissatisfied with a determination made by the city zoning administrator. In this case the developer is TEP. Because the Board is quasi-judicial contact with Board members outside of the hearing is not allowed. 

This case is TEP’s appeal of our former zoning administrator’s decision on whether or not the Gateway Corridor provisions of our zoning code apply to TEP. Specifically, TEP argued that they should not be required to underground their new transmission lines along the Kino/Campbell gateway corridor. They requested a determination from the city. 

TEP argued they should be exempt from the undergrounding requirement for several reasons. They argued the city had not previously told them they had to underground utilities along that corridor, that the undergrounding requirement should not apply to work done in the right of way but only to the area immediately adjacent to the street, and that the new 138Kv poles are not “new” development but only an upgrade to existing infrastructure so the ‘gateway’ requirement for all ‘new’ construction to be undergrounded should not apply. 

In response the city took the position that the undergrounding requirement could not have been addressed until a formal plan had been submitted for review. The ZA response requiring undergrounding is the answer TEP was asking for. The ZA rejected the notion that work in the ROW should be exempt from undergrounding. TEP said the right of way is exempt from the undergrounding provisions of the code. The Zoning Administrator correctly read the complete sentence in the code which concludes “The Zoning Administrator may allow, within the right-of-way, only those uses or structures that are permitted on the property immediately abutting the right-of-way.” (my emphasis) Since the poles are immediately abutting the ROW and even TEP concedes undergrounding is required in the abutting area, it is also required in the ROW. And to the rather spurious claim that this is not a ‘new’ project the ZA referred TEP to their own comments they had made before the corporation commission. They will be installing new poles, and new poles that are significantly larger than the existing ones. A simple upgrade of an existing system would result in a largely unrecognizable outcome. These new transmission lines will be huge, obvious and ‘new.’ 

Following the ZA determination TEP began work on including funding for the undergrounding in their proposed new franchise agreement. The voters rejected that. Now TEP is circling back to the original ruling and trying out their arguments with the Board of Adjustments.  

There is an important distinction between the zoning examiner and the zoning administrator. The examiner is the one most people are familiar with. There is a public hearing that’s followed by a recommendation to the M&C. The zoning administrator is a different person and a different process. With the zoning administrator there is a decision rendered and the developer has the right to appeal that decision straight to the Board of Adjustments. It never comes to M&C. Appeals from the BofA hearing go straight to Superior Court. The public has a right to submit comments and to speak during the BofA public hearings. All of the information you need in order to submit comments and/or to take part during the meeting are included in the graphic I’ve shared up above.  

Most of you reading this know the history of this specific item. You probably were not aware of the arguments TEP has been making trying to exempt themselves from our gateway requirements. Now they’ll try out those arguments on the BofA.