A Message from Steve K...02/12/2024

• Friends of Big Bear Valley 

• City Therapeutic Center Open House 

• Sex Trafficking 

• Arizona Senate Bill 1195 

• PFAS Progress 

• Lead Exposure 

It can be kind of mesmerizing but you can leave it on in the background and check in from time to time if you hear activity.  

Ok, now the human stuff. 

This facility is one of the cooler city-offered functions we’ve got. It’s the therapeutic center located over by Reid Park Zoo.  On Thursday, February 29th from 4pm until 6pm they’re hosting a free open house. Stop by and see what they’ve got to offer. 

The Center serves people who have a disability – ages from 3 through seniors. There are summer camps, outdoor activities, getting ready for Special Olympics sports and the important opportunity for socializing. And whether you’ve got a person in your life who is disabled or not, there are ways you can support the Centers work. Please mark your calendar and stop in during the open house. 

In the past several months TPD has placed a high priority on sex trafficking investigations. In late January into early February our Human Sex Trafficking (HST) unit partnered with another 11 agencies and through a series of undercover operations arrested 9 sexual predators. All 9 of them were booked into Pima County Jail and are facing charges ranging from Luring of a Minor for Sexual Exploitation, Aggravated Luring of a Minor for Sexual Exploitation, Child Sex Trafficking, Attempted Sexual Conduct with a Minor, Transportation of a Person for the Purposes of Prostitution, and more. 

The agencies involved ranged from local to county to state and federal. The support given to TPD from both the Attorney General’s office and Pima County Prosecutors was excellent. And the relationship being nurtured between the new TPD HST unit and Dominique Roe Sepowitz, our partner from the ASU Sex Trafficking Intervention Research (STIR) is both excellent and growing. 

My team at the ward 6 office is extremely grateful to chief Kasmar and his group for all of the attention they’re giving to this issue.  

Consider this – last week’s police intervention prevented 9 children from being trafficked in Tucson area. And consider this – in March the Final Four will be played up in Glendale. There will be more than 9 children trafficked as a result of that event taking place in our state. The work being done on this topic addresses every parent’s nightmare.  

The relationships are now formed. Count on more great work from this team in the days to come. 

The city of Tucson has adopted a climate action plan. We’re investing significant dollars in its implementation. We do study greenhouse gas emissions – so does the Pima Association of Governments. We also implement bike boulevards in an effort to reduce vehicular travel through residential areas. Our Compete Streets Program is intended to create more walkable pedestrian/bicycling destinations. The same is true of the recently adopted Sunshine Mile Overlay. The mayor is a member of a national mayor’s group focused on climate issues. And I could go on and on. 

You see Kern is concerned that – well, I’ll just let you see it in his own words: ‘There is a move in our country to bring in Marxism, to bring in anti-God, pro-Marxist ideology, anti-freedom, anti- Constitution.’   

This bill would give any resident in the state the ability to bring suit in any court in the state against any of our actions related to climate action. That could include our work in the plastics program, solar technology, purchase of electric buses – let your imagination go wild. Kern certainly did in crafting this piece of work. 

If you’re so inclined, please advocate with our state legislature and help get this bill killed.  

And sadly, they’ve even approved what’s called a concurrent resolution (SCR) that would send the measure to the November ballot and bypass the ability of the governor from vetoing it. All of this is now headed to the full senate for approval, so your involvement is important. 

In 1980 congress enacted a process called CERCLA. It’s an acronym that stands for The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. It’s also known as Superfund. What it does is authorize the president – largely through the EPA – to respond to hazardous substance releases, assign liable parties and compel clean up and financial remediation. It’s a wonderful program. The problem is that it moves at the pace of the federal government. Our PFAS plume is Jesse Owens compared to plodding through CERCLA in relation to cleaning up the contamination that’s in our water. 

Last week the Department of Defense (DOD) released the names of 30 DOD and National Guard installations where PFAS has been identified as a problem. This map shows the location of those 30 bases. Let your eyes focus in on Southern Arizona – Davis Monthan is listed. 

The list is important because it signals the DOD recognizes they need to become a part of a solution to a problem they’ve caused. And most importantly the DOD list indicates locations where they know ‘interim’ actions need to be taking place – and they are prepared to jump the regular CERCLA process and accelerate the remediation work at those locations. 

In their notice the DOD stated that “interim actions can include removal of soil ‘hot spots’ and installation of groundwater extraction systems.” The city is already working with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality on a treatment facility that will begin construction late this spring. It’s a key part of the remediation effort related to the DM pollution because that plume is directly south of our central well field. Intercepting it at the location near Randolph Park is important. And having the DM site identified by DOD as one of the 30 nationally that deserves to jump the CERCLA process may mean they can join the work Tucson Water and ADEQ are already involved with.  

We’re going to need more than a single treatment facility. The extent of the contamination touches a wide geographic area throughout the valley. Having DOD now an apparent partner in both participating in the actual remediation work, but also hopefully in bringing some serious dollars to the table is what many of us have been working towards since the PFAS issue bubbled up. 

We are also still working through the litigation process that I helped to be a catalyst for back when Jonathan was mayor. There are settlement discussions happening, the point of which would be to free up money to help pay for the problem 3M and other product manufacturers caused. So this is a good news report on the PFAS pollution. We’ve finally got DOD to acknowledge some level of complicity, they’re evidently ready to move more quickly than their normal CERCLA process allows, and 3M’s attorneys are talking about settlements.  

Last week during our study session update on PFAS I went on record as opposing the EPA’s planned Maximum Contamination Level (MCL) of 4ppt for PFAS. They’ve acknowledged exposure to any measurable amount is a health hazard. And they’ve assigned an exposure goal of zero. The zero goal is based solely on health considerations. The MCL considers cost factors. Profits do not deserve a priority above health. Ask the people who live in Flint, Michigan how they’d feel about that balancing act. That aside, the news on the Tucson clean up effort was largely good last week. It’s nice to be able to share that bit of positive with you. 

Last week I did another segment (first Thursday of each month at noon) on The Bill Buckmaster Show. He’s on 1030AM. You can find the interview at https://www.buckmastershow.com/ I mention it here because one of the topics Bill raised was of course the UA financial debacle. It certainly is the talk of the town, as well as the talk state-wide, and even in national publications. It was a front-page story in the Arizona Republic up in Phoenix on Sunday. 

Below I’ll share some quotes from The Chronicle of Higher Education (national) and The Athletic (also national.) Here though I’m opening with giving credit to the local online news source The Tucson Agenda. You can find them and their full story here: 

One of the prime concerns raised by faculty and staff at the UA is affectionately referred to as ‘administrative bloat.’ It’s the growth in administration that has far outpaced investment in faculty and staff at the UA. Here are some examples of huge administrative salaries, each contained in the Agenda article.  

Craig Henderson – VP who works in Robbins’ inner circle - $281,000. He’s a relative pauper compared to some others. 

Dave Heeke – former athletics director - $875,000. He’ll continue to collect that through next March even though he was sent packing. 

Michael Dake – VP for health sciences - $958,000. He’s one of Robbins’ long time friends who Robbins brought on shortly after his arrival. Many of you may remember that Dake’s appointment was challenged by one member of the search committee. His advice was ignored, Dake was hired. Shortly afterwards the person who objected left the UA and is now the CFO at UCLA. His husband was a UA health sciences employee who was fired, alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation. Dake is still collecting his salary. 

Laura Todd Johnson – VP for legal affairs - $454,000 

Jon Dudas – Robbins' chief of staff. He’s also the guy who showed up at a city council meeting and called my idea of a non-binding resolution calling for the UA to require COVID testing for students whether they lived on or off campus to be both “pandering and unconstitutional.” It’s of course neither, but the M&C were not willing to pass the common sense resolution – it failed on a 6-1 vote. Dudas is being paid $454,000.  

Michael Abecassis – dean of the College of Medicine - $822,000. 

Karthik Kannan – dean of the Eller College of Management - $620,000 

Shane Burgess – dean of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences - $411,000 

That’s just 8 of Robbins’ pals within the UA hierarchy. Combined they’re being paid just under $5M per year – not counting any bonus incentives that are also built into their contracts. I shared a list of those that Robbins is collecting in last week's newsletter. Given those numbers it’s no surprise that faculty and staff who are concerned with layoffs due to the financial mismanagement created by some of the people listed here. 

The Chronicle tried to get answers to how the UA so woefully misunderstood their financial liquidity position. Not surprisingly the UA failed to be responsive. This is a quote from the Chronicle article:  

Liquidity is your rainy-day fund. In March, 2023 the UA projected ending the fiscal year (June 30th, 2023) with about $925M in reserves. They actually ended it with $699M. It would have been worse had it not been for a last-minute cash infusion that came from the purchase of Ashford College. The operations costs of that transaction are still to be determined. 

This chart is pulled from The Chronicle article. It shows projections versus actuals – you can see all of the arrows are pointing in the wrong direction. And this even gives them the benefit of the Ashford cash that is not netted out vs operations costs. 

In Mike Candrea’s opening press conference since being named interim athletics director one of the first things he mentioned was the need for transparency in communications. That has been lacking both in the athletics department and university-wide. Was an employee’s resignation accepted, or not? Is the deficit $255M or $177M? Will the departments be taking 5% to 15% budget hits or not? Will there be layoff’s or not? In ‘explaining’ the financial mess they’ve created the Robbins/Arnold team is creating more confusion than clarity adding to the continuing hemorrhaging of their own credibility. That impacts the credibility of the UA institutionally, and the tri-state system generally.  

One example of the loss of credibility is the series of notes I’ve been given – often handwritten or typed and with the express desire to not be named. I can certainly understand the concern over retribution from the Robbins administration. Here’s one example related to how the Global Campus (Ashford) employees’ integration as UA employees may have a cascading effect on faculty and staff layoff’s - This is the text of one of the letters left at my office. There are others of a similar nature related to UAGC: 

Some faculty have been told that employees that originated at UAGC are currently being moved into UA regular HR positions. The assumption is that this is being done to save their jobs and keep them from being fired. But that will result in layoffs of increased numbers of UA staff. The result would be the UA staff are let go in the dollar crunch, but the UAGC people get protected.  

It remains unclear how the UA plans on integrating the Ashford workers into the overall UA system. If there’s indeed a hiring freeze, adding them would seem to be counter to that. But remember, Robbins has received bonuses based on progress being made on the acquisition of Ashford. The deal was finally brought to fruition on the very last day of last fiscal year. While that allowed the UA to bring some Ashford cash into the system, it also allowed them to avoid even further reducing the ‘cash on hand’ that they announced. This is a quote of segments I pulled from another Chronicle of Higher Education piece written about the UA financial mess: 

The timing of the acquisition and the effect that timing had on the university’s financial position is noteworthy in and of itself. The deal formally took place in late June 2023 — as in, literally the last minute of the university’s fiscal year: at 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 2023. Because of the way the university timed the deal, the institution was able to incorporate the transfer of $44.3 million in cash from UAGC onto its books — without needing to also incorporate all the operating expenses that UAGC had run up between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. 

Without that last-minute infusion of $44.3 million in cash from UAGC, the “days’ cash on hand” ratio recorded by the University of Arizona for the 2023 fiscal year would have been closer to 103 days than 110. It’s unclear whether this infusion factored into the university’s March 2023 model that projected what liquidity reserves might look like on June 30, 2023. The university declined to provide an answer to that question in its statement to The Chronicle. 

Is that sort of financial gymnastics honest? Here are the data – in March, 2023 (before the end of the fiscal year purchase and Robbins’ bonus) the UA projected it’d end the FY with about $925M in liquidity reserves. Instead, it ended the year with $699M. That figure was actually aided by the instant UAGC cash infusion. But the operating expenses along with the addition of faculty and staff from Ashford are going to cause further disruption. The uncertainty of that is likely one reason the UA wouldn’t respond to The Chronicle.  

There will be significant operating costs. That will affect restoration of the UA liquidity reserves – maybe not Robbins’ since his bonus wasn’t affected by the financial impact Ashford would have long term on the UA.  And depending on how the UA handles the ‘new’ employees, their incorporation into the UA HR roster may impact layoffs of current employees.  

As I said to a reporter from The Athletic last week, every capital project approved for the athletics department had to also be approved by both the Office of the President and by ABOR. There’s a lot of credibility in question as this fiasco continues to drag the institution into the mud. 

That’s a lot about credibility with faculty and staff. What about with students. This is data I pulled from a Grist article on how trust fund dollars the UA receives is invested. These are the average costs to attend the UA for an in-state student. 

Way back at its inception the UA was one of just 52 colleges and universities throughout the U.S. that was a beneficiary of ‘land grant’ money that came to them through the Morrill Act. You can do your history research on that act, but in brief it was signed into law by President Lincoln. It took millions of acres of land that had been expropriated from indigenous people and used it to help seed a network of new colleges throughout the country. The UA was one of those. What’s the relevance to today? Just this – one of the commitments Robbins seems to have made is to protect need-based financial aid. And yet without layering several sources of aid even in-state students who come from modest means are forced to take out loans. That’s not protecting.  

With the state land trust history as it relates to indigenous peoples’ land one might think the Native American student cohort would be given some consideration. Instead of honoring the heritage of the land, the UA is one of the leaders in investing in mining and fossil fuel investments on their land trust acreage. This chart makes the point from Grist. 

With thanks to Jerilynn, here’s a link to the full article.   

https://grist.org/project/equity/land-grant-universities-indigenous-lands-fossil-fuels/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly  

RTA vs Move Tucson  

Roughly 3 years ago we adopted a 20-year transportation and mobility plan called Move Tucson. It’s our roadmap for all-things-transportation for projects within the city limits over the next 20 years. It forms our analog to the RTA regional roadmap that’s now under consideration. At the time we adopted Move Tucson we knew outside funding sources would be needed in order for us to pull it off. When we went to the voters and asked you for a ½ cent sales tax to fund our residential road repair (Prop 411) we intentionally asked for that ½ cent, leaving alone for that moment the ½ cent you’re already paying for the regional transportation work under the RTA umbrella.  

When we went out for Prop 411 the anticipated annual revenues the city would earn from the sales taxes were assumed to be around $70M per year, at the top end. To validate that assumption the city manager’s office contracted with the Eller College to do an independent financial analysis and tell us if the projections were on target. Last week we got that analysis back. Our fiscal year ‘22 Prop 411 revenues were about $69M. In FY’23 they jumped to over $76M. We appear to be right on track for our road repair work. 

But the Eller study also demonstrated what a ½ cent city sales tax would yield in comparison to what the RTA Board is right now asking the city to sign onto for RTA Next. Without getting wonky and throwing a bunch of numbers at you, here’s the broad strokes overview. 

The current RTA proposal we’re being asked to support allocates about $1.01B to the city over the next 20 years. That’s less than ½ of the total sales tax ($2.3B) being projected for the RTA to collect – the rest is to be shared among the other 8 RTA jurisdictions.  

The Eller projection shows if the city ran its own ½ cent sales tax – only collecting from within the city limits – we would generate roughly $1.65B over the next 20 years. The quick math shows that by participating in RTA Next under the current RTA Board proposal the city would be leaving $650M on the table vs us running our own sales tax election and keeping those dollars for city-only work. That’s the price of entry the RTA is asking us to support. 

If you divide 650 by 20 you get 32. That’s telling us by going-it-alone the city is going to have an extra $32M every year to dedicate to our transportation plan. If we sign onto RTA Next that $32M is shared with all of the other RTA jurisdictions. 

If you compare the Prop 411 sales taxes we’re already collecting (only from city residents) to the RTA sales taxes being collected region-wide, it shows the city’s contribution (if the 411 money was going towards the full RTA) would be over 60% of the total RTA money collected every year. We’re being asked to support getting less than 50% of the total. 

For quite a while I’ve been questioning the wisdom of signing onto what the RTA is asking us to do. Now with the Eller data it should be pretty clear, even to the RTA director that the city is being asked to agree to something that no other jurisdiction in the region would agree to if the shoe was on their foot. Without a significant change in the RTA Next plan, I don’t see any way I can support asking city residents to forego $32M every year for the next 20 years simply to be a good regional team player. We’ll be having this discussion during our 2/21 study session.  

From time to time, I share information on the Tucson Home Sharing program. They’re still up and operating – you can find more information about that program here: https://www.tucsonhomesharing.org/  

Another option that’s specifically geared towards seniors who are facing housing instability is the Administration of Resources and Choices (ARC) program. This is a HUD-Certified housing counseling service that incorporates elder services of all sorts. We will be hosting the launch of their affordable senior housing initiative here at the ward 6 office on Tuesday, February 13th at 4pm. 

The initiative’s goal is to increase housing affordability options for seniors and allow homeowners to generate added income. The idea is to start a Boarding Home business by renting out unused bedrooms in homes thereby providing independent living for seniors in a residential setting. ARC will help you navigate the business process and will serve as a connector to potential residents.  

This isn’t a way to circumvent our group dwelling ordinance and simply create more student housing. It’s a program tied in with serious senior-focused support agencies. Here are some - 

If you know of a senior who may be involved with abusive living conditions, please share this Elder Crisis hotline – 520.339.2801. It’s up and running all day, every day. 

Some of us knew the Accessory Dwelling Unit program we adopted last year was not going to ‘solve’ the housing affordability crises we face. Building a new structure doesn’t address the costs associated with labor and materials. We’ve seen some ADU’s, but nothing close to the hype that came with the idea.  

Similarly this boarding house idea will not immediately solve the housing affordability crisis. But as one more tool in the toolkit, it can help. Come on the 13th and hear about the idea. For more information on the program, you can call 520.623.9383, or email to info@arc-az.org. See the full array of work being done by the ARC folks at this website:  https://arc-az.org/  

Last week I shared a piece on how the 311 non-emergency call line is now up and running. It’s for people to call and either report on or ask about city services – not for emergencies. Those still go to our 911 system. 

In addition to calling 911 another way you can report criminal activity is through the 88-CRIME number. All calls to 88-CRIME allow the caller to remain anonymous but can be important tools in helping to solve crimes in the region. And if your call leads to an arrest you can earn up to $2,500 for the tip. 

The list of crime shown on the flyer below is not exhaustive. But it does give an idea of the breadth of areas you can call about. We’re grateful to citizens who keep an eye out for the community and when they do see something, they say something. 88-CRIME is one tool for doing that. 

Time flies – this is the 5th annual downtown Haiku contest. What’s Haiku? It’s a Japanese poem form that contains 3 lines. The first line has only 5 syllables, the second line contains 7 syllables and the third line has 5.  Entries will be received through February 29th.  

The theme for this year’s competition is Serenity. There will be 20 winners selected by Tucson Poet Laureate TC Tolbert. One entry will be accepted per person – each entry may contain up to 3 poems. Only Haiku that follow the 5-7-5 syllable format will be considered. 

While this is largely a Tucson contest, last year of the 1,556 submissions received, roughly 400 were from outside of Tucson, and 28 other states were represented. Here’s one of the winners from the 2023 contest – their theme was planting seeds.  I chose one that pays some homage to our plastics program: 

You can see all of the winners and see instructions on how to enter this year's contest at this site: https://downtowntucson.org/events/haiku-hike  

The 20 winners will be printed on an acrylic sign and placed in planters located along Congress Street. They’ll be up from March 19th through the end of May. So enter, or just plan on an urban poetry hike through downtown while the winners are on display. Our thanks to the DTP and the UA Poetry Center for once again organizing this event.  

Also coming to downtown is the #This is Tucson artisan market. It’ll be held at Congress and 5th Ave – 55 N. 5th Ave. - on Saturday, February 24th from 11am until 4pm. You might know it better as the vacant lot just east of the MLK building where we hosted the sand volleyball and ice rink a few years ago.  

The event will include over 100 arts and crafts creators, food trucks, hand’s on ‘making’ opportunities and a ‘book hunt.’ There’s of course no price of admission, but the sponsors are collecting non-perishable food and household goods that will be donated to Youth on their Own. Please stop by and support our local arts community, and our local youth. 

I opened with a piece about the Arizona state senate concocting a climate denier bill. If its adopted residents will not be subject to the bills conditions and may combine forces to address climate change if they’d like to. In fact, the folks at Sustainable Tucson are once again doing outreach to plan on a resilient neighborhood festival. It’s all grassroots so if your neighborhood would like to take part you should reach out to the ST folks now. 

The purpose of the festival will be to help envision a neighborhood with safe, shaded and activity-focused neighbor interaction. The event is about both building resiliency into our neighborhoods, and also about community building. Both are valuable and necessary. 

Right now, the effort is to identify Neighborhood Champions – a group who’ll work together to plan the larger festival(s) for this fall. If resiliency, community building, climate adaptation and interactive neighborhoods is something your neighborhood would like to partner in please reach out to Tres English and he’ll let you know how to get involved. Email to tres@sustainabletucson.org.  

One ‘resident’ that’s not so welcome in our neighborhoods is Stinknet. It’s an invasive weed that presents a triple-threat; the weed outcompetes native plants, eventually killing them off; it can cause severe allergic reactions; and it is highly flammable. The eradication is something that will take a community-wide response. You can help by using this link to report where you see the invasive sprouting up – stinknet.org 

Now through May is typically when you’ll see the flowers in bloom. You hear a lot about buffelgrass – also an invasive that can choke out native plants. Stinknet is another culprit. To get more information on proper eradication procedures please reach out to Ben Tully at the UA – bentully@arizona.edu. 

There you go – two positive contributions to the community that come from the UA – poetry and control of invasives.