Last week was my first official week on the job, and I couldn’t be more fired up about tackling the work at hand. We want to thank everyone for working with us with patience and grace as we transition the new office staff and ease into the rhythm of the Ward 6 office. Keep reading to find out more about the team.
Here are some of my highlights from the last week:
Monday: I eagerly biked into the Ward 6 office bright and early and spent the day in meetings and completing the onboarding process.
Tuesday was consumed by the swearing in ceremony that took place during a special Mayor and Council meeting held at the Tucson Convention Center. All four of my parents and my younger sister and brother-in-law came into town from Las Vegas to attend. Here’s a photo my friend Julius Schlosburg took of all of us, plus my wife Maass and mom-in-law Katie:
 It was a beautiful event marking the beginning of a new era of collaboration. The divided vote over the selection of Vice Mayor during the Council meeting only strengthened my commitment to building positive relationships with every single one of my colleagues.
I was also honored to receive a friendship bowl from Tohono O’odham Nation Chair Verlon Jose and Vice Chairwoman Carla Johnson, and a lapel pin of the Pascua Yaqui flag from Chairman Julian Hernandez.
 On Wednesday night, Kylie and I were delighted to see a group of bicyclists pulling up to the Ward 6 office for the Mitman Neighborhood Association meeting. I had the good fortune of being available to attend, and we had some great conversations about traffic calming and Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) among other topics of interest. As we bring more staff on board, the Ward 6 team and I will carefully consider how best to allocate our time and resources to ensure we are connecting and communicating with all our neighborhoods regularly. So, stay tuned!
Thursday marked my first time in a meeting that included multiple City of Tucson departments. We all sat around a table and discussed a complex situation involving the fentanyl crisis and lack of investment in addiction treatment and rehabilitation; the criminal justice system; public health; and lack of support for small businesses. Folks from Housing First, Code Enforcement, and Tucson Police Department each shared the next steps and solutions they could offer. There are no easy answers, but I’m proud to join a city that hires people with lived experiences and takes a holistic approach to community safety that balances accountability with compassion and long-term solutions.
That evening, I was a panelist along with Vice Mayor Santa Cruz, Supervisor Jen Allen, and Representative Nancy Gutierrez at a forum titled “Power, Progress, and the Public Good” that brought together city, county, and state representatives to discuss the integrity of democratic institutions, the impact of corporate and technological influence, and how local governance can ensure equitable access to public resources—from energy and housing to transit and education. The forum was co-hosted by the Southern Arizona Education Council and Tucson Young Professionals.
Friday started off the way it has for me for the past 4 and a half years: at 6AM at Casa Maria, making and serving soup. I would quickly learn later in the morning of the ICE raids that impacted Tucsonans, Pima County residents, and communities scattered around southern Arizona. The workday was filled with meetings, including with Mayor Romero in her office at City Hall.
It was a difficult and emotional end to the week for many in our community. In moments like these, the strength of our team becomes even more important. That’s why I’m pleased to close this week’s update by introducing two new staff members who will help us serve Ward 6 with even greater care and connection.
Kylie joins us after five years serving the residents of Pima County’s District 2—a largely urban area that includes portions of Ward 6 south of Broadway, as well as Sahuarita, South Tucson, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and parts of downtown Tucson. During her time with District 2, Kylie advised on transportation and environmental policy, public health and active transportation, planning and zoning, and economic development.
If Kylie’s name sounds familiar to many Ward 6 residents, it’s likely because you’ve worked with her through Cyclovia Tucson. For ten years, Kylie served as a transportation advocate with Living Streets Alliance, the nonprofit she co-founded in 2010 and which brought Tucson’s popular biannual open-streets event to neighborhoods across the city. She has also chaired the Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee and previously worked at BICAS, where she taught bicycle repair to hundreds of people from all backgrounds, including newly resettled refugees.
Public service has been at the core of Kylie’s life for decades. After completing her undergraduate degree in Flagstaff, she joined the Peace Corps and served in Guinea, West Africa. She came to Tucson to attend graduate school in 2006 and, like many of us, found a sense of community and connection to place she had been searching for.
Although she has called Tucson home for 20 years, her connection to the city goes back even further—spending childhood summers here riding Sun Tran and visiting the then-new downtown library while visiting her father, who many remember as the City of Tucson’s first bicycle and pedestrian planner.
All this is to say that Kylie’s roots in Tucson, and in the movement to make our streets safer and more accessible for people of all ages and abilities, run deep. She is thrilled to join the Ward 6 team and looks forward to providing excellent service to residents and working together to address some of the most complex issues facing our community.
Marlene Avelino has spent the last four years as part of the Ward 3 team, serving as Council Aide for Council Member Kevin Dahl. In that role she focused on constituent services and neighborhood engagement. She moves over to Ward 6 excited to expand on those skills and learn all about these great neighborhoods and community groups.
 Marlene is first-generation Mexican American, that's baby Marlene being held by her mom! She is also a mom of two young children and an excitable chihuahua named Princess. Marlene is a firm believer in radical empathy and strives to find common ground whenever possible. She prefers biking over walking and green salsa over red. In her spare time, she enjoys resting.
The Tucson Community Rapid Response network provides a way for people to respond to fear and anxiety in our community as a result of the increase in immigration enforcement and attacks against our communities. The volunteers at Rapid Response believe in the importance of community presence in order to hold law enforcement accountable. The network provides a 24 hour hotline to immigrants facing arrest by local law enforcement or federal immigration agents. Upon receiving a call, they dispatch “community observers” to the arrest location to bear witness to the interaction between law enforcement and the detained person. Following the arrest, and or detention, of an individual the“accompaniment volunteers”offer support to families throughout the detention process. Rapid Response volunteers are trained to observe peacefully and lawfully and document the detention process to ensure accountability and transparency.
What happens to the children and families after breadwinners have been detained and deported? Who makes sure medications can be picked up, kids who are left behind and are fearful of returning to school receive meals, and family members can receive legal representation? The folks at the Sunnyside Foundation began preparing for the moment many Tucson families find themselves in after last Friday's actions. Please consider making a donation to the Juntos Fund.
 Defend Tucson / Tucson Se Defiende (DTTSD) is a cross-sector Tucson coalition—labor, faith, mutual aid, students & educators, immigrant rights advocates, small business, environmentalists, veterans, human rights advocates, peace advocates, and pro-democracy orgs—committed to democracy, nonviolence, and local self-governance. They organize peacefully, lawfully, together—so everyone can participate in public without fear. They are hosting micro-trainings this weekend so you can know your rights and protect the rights as others in peaceful, lawful ways. Stop by the Reid Park Bandshell this Sunday, December 14th from 10am to 1pm to learn more.
"Thank you for having me and inviting me to share a poem today. I’m queer and trans and when I first moved to Tucson from Tennessee (almost 25 years ago) I was immediately struck by how queer and trans this city is – and yes, on the one hand I mean there are a lot of queer and trans people here in Tucson. But I also mean queer as in existing outside of, in opposition to, or obliquely alongside cultural norms."
TC Tolbert, Tucson's Poet Laureate,
We are so pleased that the Ward 3 newsletter has TC's opening remarks as well as the poem in their entirety. Click here to go there.
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