A Message from Steve K...11/20/2023

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

Date: 11/20/2023

Topics in This Issue:

11/20 Event at St. Phillips in the Hills 

The final details for tonight’s event at St. Phillips have been set. Here’s the list of the people who have accepted an invitation to speak. Don’t be turned away by the list – instructions are to keep remarks to 5 minutes or less, and this is about preserving democracy. It won’t be a series of competing faith statements. The event will begin at 7pm and unless some of the presenters get carried away it’ll be around an hour long gathering.

For those who may have more of a non-sectarian orientation they’ve asked me to provide some music. The song will be Imagine by John Lennon. It fits the message of us all coming together, regardless of race, religion or nationality. Pastor Scott is bringing his choir for a song, there will be a cantor and some other music scattered into the event. 

Parking at St. Phillips is around the back and to the east of the church. Turn on the news and pretty much regardless of which part of the world you see on the screen there will be some news validating the need for safe, secure, free and fair elections. And the results of the alternative are all over the news. 

I’ve been in touch with appropriate security agencies and there will be a presence. It’s sad to have to do that but it's our current reality. 

It will be helpful if you can use this QR code to pre-register if you’re coming.

Propositions 413 Election Recount

Last week I had a section in the newsletter describing the process by which our pay increase election would go through a recount. That was based on the closeness of the vote. Late on Friday the city attorney sent out an email saying that according to his reading of the state statute there will be no recount. His opinion is that the statute only applies to items ‘referred’ to the ballot on a statewide level. Here’s the relevant portion of his email: 

Under long-established Arizona law, a recount can only be conducted if the authority or requirement for that recount is provided by statute. The relevant statutes are ARS 16-661 through -667, attached.

The recount provisions of the statutes apply only to the types of elections specified in those statutes. The recount requirements relating to local, municipal elections only apply to elections of candidates to an elected office, rather than referred non-candidate ballot measures. The recount requirements relating to referred, non-candidate measures only apply to referred measures that are called and administered as a statewide general election; and not as a local special election.

Proposition 413 is a local referred ballot measure that was called as a special election, and administered as a special election. It is not a measure that elects a candidate to a local office. Accordingly, the recount provisions in ARS 16 661 et seq. do not apply.

With that, thank you for the raise. 

Nightmare Before Christmas / Friends of Aphasia

After watching the news that includes all of the killing consider taking your kids to see a real love story. And the tickets will go to support Friends of Aphasia.

Aphasia is a condition that can be caused by blunt trauma (think of Gabby) or it can be a progressive disease that eventually takes away your ability to speak, or to understand words. That’s how it affected my brother Pete. He was nominated for an Oscar as Director of Photography and Special Effects Coordinator on Nightmare. Here’s an article that was recently written about his life in the film industry:

 https://www.icgmagazine.com/web/the-magic-man/

On Sunday, December 17^th Friends of Aphasia and my office will be teaming up at the Loft for a Nightmare party. Come in costume and enjoy watching the courtship between Jack Skellington and Sally. And if you want to learn how the movie was made, and some of the cool ways they created the effects such as Zero the dog you can go onto Amazon and find Pete’s book – Tales from the Pumpkin King’s Cameraman.

Nightmare at the Loft has turned into an annual occasion. With Pete’s passing this year it brings even more meaning. Friends of Aphasia will be on hand to answer any questions you might have about the condition. And the kids (and kids at heart) will have fun with the movie.

TEP Midtown Reliability Project

Last week TEP advanced some of their planning for the midtown transmission line project. Prior to the public meeting held last Thursday they had announced an expansion of the project study area. That’s the perimeter of where the new transmission lines could go. The update last week shows which segments within that perimeter may be under consideration for getting the poles.

This is the new map TEP provided last week. The midtown ‘destination’ is the substation located at Banner hospital just north of the UA. I’ve circled it in red on the map so you can more easily see where they’re trying to connect the lines:

The blue line along the east (right hand) side of the map is Country Club. That’s now the eastern-most boundary of the project study area. By now you likely know that Campbell is a gateway corridor and is therefore subject to our ordinance requiring undergrounding new utilities. Country Club is not a gateway so that’s why they’ve moved the study area over a mile to the east.

Remember, their ultimate destination is what’s circled in red on the map. So even if they run the poles down Country Club, they still have to somehow snake the lines over to Banner. What’s shown on the map in green are the streets/corridors they’re now looking at for possible line segments to make that connection.

Those green lines are also possible routes they’ll use to get from the Kino substation (bottom center of the map) into midtown. None have been decided upon yet, and the purpose of the public outreach is to gather input they’ll use in deciding which route they’ll ultimately propose to the corporation commission. This is a quote from the letter sent out by TEP last week:

Each of the opportunities identified on the attached map have been reviewed by TEP’s Engineering Group and represent segments that the transmission line could reasonably be constructed and operated from an engineering perspective within the area of opportunity. These preliminary segments do not represent proposed transmission line routes.  This is the very first step in putting lines on a map for further evaluation. 

Take part in public meetings. If your neighborhood association would like to have a TEP representative come and give a presentation, please reach out to me and I’ll help facilitate that. Their goal is to get a proposed preferred route to the ACC by early next year, and to have the project under construction by ‘25.

If you’d like to see these segments in more detail, please visit the project webpage at www.tep.com/midtown.

UA Financial Condition

I’m sure you’ve read that the UA made some financial miscalculations, and their financial projections are about $250M short of what they had anticipated they’d be. There’s some talk that their financial projection model was flawed and now they’ve got a new one in place. Many are wondering about the lack of oversight and awareness at the top administrative level of the institution.

The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) oversees all 3 state universities. On Thursday of last week UA president Robbins gave a presentation to ABOR. The presentation was focused on the science and research investments they’ve made. Nothing about athletics, nothing about the $55M Robbins ‘loaned’ to athletics that hasn’t been repaid, nothing about the controversial purchase of online Ashford University, and nothing about how they’ll be digging out of their financial hole. ABOR will be looking for that game plan by December 15^th.

As I watched the presentation I kept waiting for the explanation. The question isn’t “does Robbins know how to spend other peoples’ money.” Based on the financial shortfalls the answer to that is obvious. The question is, does he know how to manage it. The same goes for Athleitcs Director Heeke. Last week the message was simply ‘here’s how we spent the money’ - money they didn’t have.

Robbins’ report last week touched on the main non-athletics areas they’ve invested in. In broad categories those are captured in this slide:

Each of those ‘key investments’ is admittedly expensive. That’s not in dispute. What I would hope ABOR wants to know is why the UA continued spending when they should have known about the shortfall. And there was no mention of the ‘investment’ into the UA online college that members of Robbins’ own inner circle as well as faculty throughout the university advised him to avoid.

Robbins spoke about how enrollment has increased during his tenure. This graphic shows that trajectory:

One way the UA has attracted new students is through financial aid. Robbins said that in order to stop the financial bleeding they’re looking into reducing merit-based financial aid while retaining needs-based financial aid. No specifics were given. One would hope that those are to come in December.

The total cost for these research and development investments is nearing $1B. Each grant received for funding important science-based initiatives such as Osiris-Rex requires some seed money. This graphic shows how the R&D investments have escalated in recent years at the UA:

It was clear from the comments 2 of the regents made that they’re allied with Robbins. Regent Duvall called the presentation “incredibly important to see to help understand the numbers” and “important to see that ROI (Return on Investment) isn’t immediate.” Regent Penley noted the $1B in investment will be economic generators statewide. Those were the only two regents to speak after the presentation.

Some of the presentation got close to being a flippant mocking of the concerns raised about the significant unpaid ‘loan’ to athletics. Robbins said he ‘likes to say that scientists are almost as expensive as football coaches because they need lots of equipment.’ He also said that he ‘used to say the most important things going on in the football stadium are science (tree ring lab and mirror lab) but now we’ve got some balance because the football team is doing better.’ Nobody mentioned that scientists don’t require $6M buy-outs to their contract when they fail at their job.

More to come on how the UA handles their financial challenges. Thursday’s presentation was Robbins telling where some of the spending went. Nobody in the room asked why it was allowed to get out of control, and nobody asked about spending nearly $2M on stadium upgrades that included a barber shop for football players, nearly $3M in skybox upgrades that included creature comforts for Robbins and Heeke (athletics director), nearly $6M buy-outs each for two former football coaches, and all of that on top of the $55M ‘loan’ to athletics while their employees were being eliminated and asked to take unpaid furlough days off.

Shortly after this mess was discovered Robbins’ hinted-at solution was to cut sports in the athletics department. I’ve worked in that space and hope that at least this time he does a little homework before making changes that will have very little financial effect. The UA has 22 NCAA sport programs. Because of Title IX and the requirement to keep participation numbers of men’s and women’s sports relatively equal, it’s highly unlikely that they’d be cutting any women’s sport program. The reason is simple – football is all men, and it’s the only sport program that has nearly 100 players participating. The result is, in order to maintain a balance in participation numbers there are more women’s sport programs in the department than there are men’s teams. The only two sport programs from among the 22 that make money are mens’ basketball and football. So don’t look for cuts to either of those sports. They support every other sport program in the department.

For possible elimination, that leaves baseball – unlikely given the long-term contract the UA signed with the city to use Hi Corbett Field, they just put another $2.75M into the team rooms at Hi Corbett, and the history of the program locally. Then there’s men’s tennis, golf, track and field and swimming. But in each of those cases there’s a women’s counterpart. If you eliminate say men’s tennis, you still have to have the tennis facility, trainers and equipment room staff to carry on with the women’s tennis team. By eliminating the men’s program you’d save some scholarship money and a few low-end salaried coaches. But the facilities maintenance costs would not go away.

While the presidential skybox suite was being upgraded the athletics department was successfully lobbying the president’s office to implement a student fee to help offset athletics department costs. Those are decisions that reflect administration priorities. Time will tell if ABOR chooses to hold the actual decision makers accountable.

City Compost Program - FoodCycle

Roughly a third of what ends up in the landfill is food waste. Think of every restaurant – and every home – and the food that doesn’t get eaten. When I was in Africa some of the lodges out in the outback fed the waste to hyena’s. We toss it into the landfill.

Starting right after the first of the year our Environmental Services folks will be starting a food scrap drop-off pilot project. Similar to how we tested the plastics program before jumping in with both feet, the food waste pilot will test to see if the public will support the program sufficiently enough to make it a permanent thing. Based on the comments I get from hanging around our plastic and glass roll offs I’m betting on you supporting the program. We will be putting out food scrap collection bins at 6 locations scattered around the city. Here’s a map showing where they’ll be located (No, ward 6 is not adding food to our already large array of bins.)

The ward 6 bin will be located in the Highland Vista community garden. In fact, 4 of the locations will be at one of the existing community gardens we have through a partnership in this program with The Community Gardens of Tucson (CGT.) Environmental Services will host the other two sites.  

We’ve been partnering with local restaurants and grocers through our FoodCycle program and since April 2021 we’ve gathered over 1,400 tons of food and green waste, all diverted from the landfill and used to make composting material. We’re partnered with the UA CompostCats. You’ve met some of them here at ward 6 office during some of our plastics/recycle events.

In order to control contamination, the 4 CGT sites will have scheduled hours, will have someone on site to monitor what’s being tossed into the bin and will be locked after hours. The two ES sites will be available 24/7 but will be padlocked. The pass code for the lock will be made available to people who have gone through the city-run training that will begin in December. All the controls are to assure the organics that are being collected are not contaminated.

In addition to the 6 sites, through a grant ES received from the Arizona Recycling Coalition they’ve purchased 150 compost tumblers. The pilot program will also include distributing 25 tumblers to residents in each ward of the city that they can use in their own yards. Each resident using a tumbler will control the contaminants, and they can use the compost material they produce. Here’s an example of one of the tumblers.

In order to be eligible for a tumbler homeowners will be required to downsize their trash container since all of your food and yard waste should now go into the tumbler. There will be training offered for the recipients of the tumblers – that will be scheduled to begin in January and the tumblers will be distributed in February. Thanks are due to Carlos DeLaTorre and his team at Environmental Services for putting the logistics of this program together. My hunch is that it will be well-received by Tucson residents and that it will serve as a model for other jurisdictions to follow – just as the plastics and glass programs have become.

Parks Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair

Coming this weekend will be the annual City Parks Arts/Crafts Fair. They’ve already got 140 vendors lined up for the weekend event. These are a combination of local crafts people, and some come in from other cities just because this fair is a go-to among artisans. One example is the young lady who’ll be selling handmade embroidery screenprints – she's here from Phoenix just for this event. In addition, you’ll see photographers, jewelers, clay and woodworkers. And more.

The fair will be held in its usual location – just across from the DeMeester band shell. If you’re on the west side of Reid Park, you can’t miss it. It’ll be up and running from 9am until 4pm both Saturday and Sunday this coming weekend. It’s a great way to get started on some holiday gift ideas.

Zoo Lights

In addition to the craft fair, another sign that the holidays are right around the corner is the start of this year’s Zoo Lights.

Zoo Lights is the Reid Park Zoo annual display of thousands of lights, exhibits, light shows, food/drink, falling snow and music. And Santa. Opening night for Zoo Lights is Saturday, December 2^nd. It runs from 6pm until 8:30pm. New this year will be their 33’ tall, decorated holiday tree.

The event will continue to run on select dates through January 7^th.  You can get a discount on tickets by bringing any of the following:

1. 2 cans of food for the Community Food Bank
2. A dog or cat toy that’ll be donated to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona
3. A new, unwrapped toy that will be donated to La Frontera
4. Or recycle some of your old holiday lights at the door

Thanks again to TEP for sponsoring this annual event. And thanks to the zoological society and zoo staff and volunteers for making these evenings available to the community. Use this link to see the dates/times and to get tickets:

https://reidparkzoo.org/event/zoolights-holiday-magic-2023/

Disability Pride Parade

100% full credit for this event goes to Paul Cunningham and his ward 2 staff. For the second year the TCC will play host to Disability Pride Day. It’s on Sunday, December 3^rd in the TCC exhibition hall. This is an event in which people with disabilities will share their successes and strength of character. It's a part of the international celebration of people with disabilities.

The event will run from 11am until 7pm. Paul and his team still need some volunteers to help facilitate the event.  If you can carve out even a portion of the day to help, please use this link to get signed up.

Disability Pride Day Tucson Sign up to volunteer

Flu Update

With all those fun holiday activities coming, please be aware that flu season has begun. Traditionally that happens more in December and January. But this graph showing flu trends nationally indicates that we’re already in flu season.

The hardest hit areas are in the southeast, but our neighbor New Mexico is also seeing high infection numbers. Here’s the national map:

Please be cautious and make good decisions as we approach Thanksgiving and traditional large gatherings. Flu vaccines are available for free at all major pharmacies.

Catholic Community Services Tax Assistance

Rivaling flu season on the ‘groan factor’ scale is upcoming tax season. Our friends at Catholic Community Services (CCS) are gearing up for their annual tax prep assistance program. They’re recruiting people to help others complete their tax forms. You do not need to be a CPA to take part in this. You just need to have a willingness to help others.

The flyer has all of the contact information for people who’d like to get involved. And please note that the volunteer help they’re after is not solely for tax preparers. CCS is looking for people with varying skill sets. To get involved please reach out to Jonetta Trued at jtrued@ccs-pio.org. She can give you all the information you’ll need about the online training to get your IRS VITA certification. And she can tell you the non-tax prep roles they’re looking to fill.

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