Topics in This Issue:

- January – RTA Next
- February – Becton Dickson
- March – Genna
- April – PFAS
- May – Proposition 411
- June – TEP Distribution Lines
- July – Nilofar and Kawsar
- August – Plastic Pilot Program
- September – Source of Income Ordinance
- October - Juneteenth
- November – Sol y Luna
- December – Holiday Tree
- COVID

Each year I use the final newsletter of the calendar year to do a month-by-month recap. I choose a particular topic that we at the ward 6 office worked on – a topic of significance. I give a review, and where appropriate bring the issue up to its current status. Some of the items were raised and resolved during the individual month. Other topics had an important piece take place early in the year and are still on our table. It’s sort of a Year in Review/Best Of combination. Every time I do one of these it reminds me of the ground we’ve covered together – and the ground we still have ahead.

Here’s another reminder – this is last weekend in Chicago. The wind chill was below 0 degrees. She sure looks like someone who might take a call from our Metro Chamber right about now. In Tucson, it was 70 degrees throughout our holiday weekend. So why do we live here?

January – RTA Next

Given how much discussion this topic has involved I could probably list it as a key item in pretty much every month of the year. But back in January, I wrote about a September 2021 motion we had to act on prior to February 1st. Here’s that motion:

Unless otherwise directed by subsequent Mayor and Council action, that the City of Tucson withdraw its participation in RTA Next on February 1, 2022.

We had identified several points of contention we wanted addressed in order to avoid leaving the RTA and ‘going it alone.’ Those included more proportional representation for the city on the RTA and fully funding our remaining RTA projects. To address the representation piece the RTA agreed to add members to the Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) who came from the city of Tucson. And they affirmed a commitment to fully fund our remaining projects. As a result, we voted to stay at the table and continue working collaboratively with the RTA on what a new 20-year regional transportation plan might look like.

In the months following that vote, we’ve seen that RTA vote begin to unravel. At least 4 ‘city’ members who sit on RTA committees are being threatened with removal. The director says they’re harassing RTA staff. I’ve seen many of their exchanges and while the city members are persistent in asking questions about process and calling for more transparency in how RTA matters are addressed, nobody is being abusive or otherwise so inappropriate as to warrant removal from the commission. And it’s noteworthy that only city of Tucson representatives seems to be asking the tough questions, and as a result it’s only city of Tucson representatives who may be asked to leave their volunteer citizen commission seat. Absent a clear and compelling reason to remove our representatives this can only be described as a reversal of the January RTA vote to address our representation concerns. Our intention was not to simply appoint a bunch of wall flowers.

As for fully funding our remaining projects, in an effort to help the RTA balance their books, in November the M&C agreed to place two of our projects on hold and include them in RTA Next – assuming there is a Next. But the RTA continues to challenge our design changes for 1st Avenue, they are trying to tie a flood mitigation project in with that roadway construction, adding millions to the city’s responsibility and placing the project back to the point of requiring public engagement. In addition, the RTA has agreed to Phases 1-4 on the Grant Rd expansion. But Phases 5 and 6, priced in 2006 dollars at roughly $78M is still in early design. The RTA is scheduled to sunset in 2026. Finishing Grant Rd is therefore very problematic. The city has already pushed 2 projects to Next. I will not be supporting pushing any more of our projects to the next round of RTA. Doing so simply shifts a burden to the city that forces our support for the upcoming RTA ballot measure.

The RTA would like to get their measure to the ballot by 2024. They still have not identified commitments for safety elements, and environmental infrastructure such as EV readiness, and they’ve not identified any transit element commitments. There’s a lot of work left for them to do. Eliminating the Tucson citizens on the CAC from those discussions is not going to end well for the RTA. If forced to vote today my preference would be for the city of Tucson to place a ½ cent sales tax on the ballot and dedicate all of the roughly $75M in proceeds to city work contained in our own 20-year transportation plan. Over 50% of the tax base and over 50% of the population base in the region are from the city of Tucson. We should not have to address this level of the dispute with the RTA, unless of course some of their members would prefer to see us off in the horizon and not involved with their clique any longer.

My message to that small portion of the RTA board; be careful what you hope for.

February – Becton Dickson

Becton Dickson is a manufacturing plant scheduled to go in immediately adjacent to the DM runway. It's shown in red in this graphic. You can see the DM runway ahead and to the left of the plant in the yellow-shaded area.

Map shows location of the manufacturing plant scheduled to go in immediately adjacent to the Davis Monthan runway
Their work involves sanitizing medical equipment. That’s a good and an important end game. But in the process, they use Ethylene Oxide (EO.) That is a highly flammable and highly toxic substance. It has no place being located under the flight path of military aircraft, many of which are carrying live ordinance.

The DOD has written a letter to Sun Corridor advising that the military does not want the plant located near their runway. Sun Corridor ignored it and has recommended the plant move ahead. The jobs and economic impact in this case appear to trump the public health and safety concerns.

In February I asked for a study session item to review the city and county’s ability to reject permit applications made by BD. The county believes they’re obligated to issue clean air permits as long as the company complies with existing design and performance specs. They seem to have done that. The city does not feel we have the ability to refuse permits ‘just because we don’t want the business where it’s being proposed.’ I believe that’s a failure of government and so offered this motion:

That the city send a letter to BD stating that unless and until they can provide a risk assessment demonstrating that TFD has the capacity to control a catastrophic event, they are not welcome in this city. Also, to have staff petition the USDOT to allow us to impose local regulations for the release of Ethylene Oxide

The letter was late in going out – but it has been sent. Tucson Fire officials called me to try to convince me that they’ve got the situation handled. While that may be the case when it comes to slow leaks being detected at the BD facility, nobody on the call said they could address a catastrophic leak, whether caused by an incident at the plant, or by a rollover in traffic as the EO was being delivered to the site through city streets. BD plans on using up to 450,000 pounds of EO annually. That’s a lot of toxic material moving through the city.

The plant is right now going through design. We have not yet received approval from the USDOT to allow us to impose our own local regulations on how EO is transported through our city. If the project goes into operation jobs will be created. And the citizens will be placed at risk for a release of a contaminant that can kill. I know County Supervisor Heinz agrees with me that we should find a way to prohibit BD from operating. If we don’t, or if we can’t then the government will have failed in our obligation to protect in a proactive manner the public health of the region.

March – Genna

At the age of 27, Genna Ayup was shot in the head and killed by her live-in. That was just over 10 years ago. In March of this year the court system failed Genna, the family, loved ones, and the wider community. The killer was sentenced to 3 years of probation. He said the killing was merely an accident. The system eventually agreed. The message – if you want to kill somebody, shoot them, have a ready alibi and be sure the only person who witnesses the shooting is a 2-year-old kid whose statements cannot be taken into evidence.

The killer had been out drinking at O’Malley’s. We have the receipts showing how much he had consumed. The court said drinking could not be used in evidence. The shooter was proficient in the use of firearms. There’s plenty of evidence showing that as well. The court said it could not be used in the case. The 2-year-old son witnessed the killing and affirmed that the killer had not been installing a new grip on the handgun and that it accidentally went off. Nothing he told TPD was admitted into evidence by the court.

The case was dismissed by the then-Pima County Attorney (PCAO.) My office hired a private investigator to review the evidence we had gathered with the help of the family. His conclusion was the case clearly should go forward. We represented the evidence to TPD, they then did the same and PCAO reopened the case. The case eventually had to be transferred to the Pinal County Attorney because of conflicts of interest involving the current Pima County Attorney. Throughout all of this, the family watched one after another anniversary of the killing pass.

I was in the courtroom in March on the day of sentencing. One by one family members spoke about their loss. One friend of the family had to leave the courtroom because he was so openly irritated at how the process was being handled. The prosecuting attorney – allegedly advocating for Genna – closed his case by encouraging the family members to find a way to let bygones be bygones and put the past behind them. It’s still not clear to me which side he was on. The judge opted for probation. I believe now and will always believe there was nothing anybody could have said during that final day that would have changed the result. It was a done deal walking in.

This is Genna’s mom – Toni. She’s looking at the locket that contained Genna’s remains on the day the sentencing decision was made. It’s all she and the family had left of Genna other than fond memories.

In September Toni died. I know she died of a broken heart. The people involved in defending Genna’s killer might reflect on that. I’m still in touch with the family. They know the system failed. And they have some comfort in the belief that if Genna is ‘looking down’ on the process, she knows they played every single card they had to play – in the end it was not for lack of effort that we could not get Justice for Genna.

April – PFAS
This is another item that could take up space in every month of the year. In April however, we received a game-changing letter from the Department of Interior. The letter addressed the ongoing situation on the Colorado River. That directly affects our need for clean groundwater. That’s the tie-in with PFAS. Here’s a critical piece of the Interior’s letter to us:

PFAS is a contaminant caused in large part by how the Department of Defense has disposed of firefighting foam it uses. The foam contains the toxic chemical – it does so because the DOD includes PFAS in the spec for their firefighting foam. We know based on admissions from DM personnel that they’ve hosed the foam into the soil and dumped it down the sewer system. It’s no surprise then that we have had to shut down over 20 groundwater wells in the area around the military base.

We receive 144,000-acre feet of CAP water annually. We use about 44,000 of that to serve Tucson Water customers. The rest has been stored in our aquifer for when the Colorado River isn’t yielding such an abundant amount. The letter from Interior makes it starkly clear that the days of our relying on being able to ‘bank’ 2/3rds of the CAP water we receive have ended. The River is right now dangerously close to being unable to supply enough water to run hydroelectric turbines in both Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam produces about 4 billion kilowatts of power for Arizona, Nevada and California. Glen Canyon Dam produces about 5 billion kilowatt hours, serving all 7 of the basin states (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, plus the 3 lower basin states I’ve listed.) That’s 40 million users on those grids. Without water to run the turbines, lots of folks are in a world of hurt.

The DOD has said they need another roughly 3 years to study the PFAS problem that’s immediately southeast of our central well field. The plume is moving faster than their process. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has helped us with about $5M to build a treatment plant on the north side of Randolph Park. But we will need several plants, scattered throughout midtown and over on the SW side of Tucson. Tucson Water already has over $50M invested in addressing the problem – and it’s not close to being fully handled. We will need our groundwater to be pure sooner than we had planned. The letter from Interior made that clear. We need the federal government to act like this is an emergency – because it is.

There are several bills making their way through congress, each of which contains money to address PFAS. The EPA lowered the health advisory on the chemical virtually to the point where if you detect any at all, it’s a problem. And the DOD continues on its procedural pathway that is effectively allowing the contaminants to continue migrating toward our production wells. We’re in litigation with 3M and other product manufacturers, but neither the court process nor the DOD ‘study it to death’ process is aligned with the climate-driven shortage on the Colorado. More on this in 2023. From my perspective, water security is our #1 climate issue for the immediate future.

May – Proposition 411

In May we asked the voters if they’d approve a significant investment into our roadway maintenance, and in roadway safety items. By an overwhelming margin, you said Yes! Prop 411 is the single largest investment into Tucson streets that has ever been made. It will be a game-changer in the quality of life in our city.

You’re going to see a lot of this activity going on for the next 10 years. Prop 411 is the ½ cent sales tax increase, 80% of which is going to maintenance of our residential roads. That’s roughly $600M over the next 10 years. Every residential street in the city will be touched during the term of 411. There is an engineering analysis being done right now which will result in the pecking order being identified. We have a citizen bond oversight committee already in place to assure the money is spent as was promised in the ballot measure.

As Howie Fisher from Capitol Media Services says – but that’s not all. The other 20% is being dedicated to roadway safety elements. That is another $150M over the 10-year period. Those funds will be broken down into these categories:

Table shows funding category for Proposition 411
That $15M annual investment is consistent with our own 20-year transportation improvement plan, and our Complete Streets plan. It’s also an example of what we’d like to see in an RTA Next package – but as I shared in the January section, that conversation is stalled. If it remains stalled, we can consider our own ½ cent Complete Streets ‘ask’ and do more of what you see in the table shown above on our own with city-driven sales tax dollars.

We’re grateful to the 73% of you who voted in support of Prop 411. The other 27% will continue to drive on our streets, and may one day reflect back on the wisdom of the electorate in adopting this $750M investment into our street system.

June – TEP Distribution Lines

This is another issue that could probably be inserted as a key item in every month of the year. The issue is about protecting the sanctity of our local gateway and scenic corridor ordinances. They prohibit this kind of development. It’s what TEP had proposed for the Campbell/Speedway intersection.

The Demoss/Petrie transmission line project began with a public outreach in which residents were told that the Arizona Corporation Commission line siting committee would make the final determination on which route the project could follow. The problem with that is we have local ordinances in place that prohibit any new above-ground utility lines on our scenic corridors and gateways. Campbell/Kino is a gateway.

I raised the issue of the ordinance in my newsletter, and then during a study session. The city does in fact have the authority to enforce our ordinances. The line we’re walking is supporting the intent of our local codes while at the same time working on a good faith basis with TEP to find ways to mitigate the cost and aesthetic impact of what they had originally planned. We’re making good progress.

During our final study session of the year, we discussed in open session how we can use the TEP franchise agreement as a tool to help pay for undergrounding. There are other areas we’d like to see included in a new franchise agreement. Those include enhanced commitments to solar, commitments to remove ghost poles quickly, low-income assistance, and flexibility in the agreement so we have the ability to shift funding sources over to new technology that will develop over time. And of course, undergrounding.

TEP wants to get the funding decisions made before they can move ahead with the Demoss/Petrie project. In order to do that they must get the franchise agreement redrawn, updated and placed on a city-wide ballot for voter approval. There are 3 options we’ve got for calling that election; May, August and November of 2023. During our first meeting in January, we’ll talk about that, and also about which elements should be included in the agreement that goes to the voters.

In 2021 we had some considerable success pushing back against the 5G installers as they were moving along installing new poles for their equipment in residential areas. In 2022 the utility with which we had to engage was TEP. During my campaign, one of my primary opponents said we really shouldn’t have to fight over these issues. The reality is that being willing to fight on behalf of residents’ interests is the only reason we’re in a good negotiating place with TEP today. We’ll know more in January as to when the franchise agreement vote will take place.

July – Nilofar and Kawsar

This is Judge Ahmad doing my swearing-in right after the 2021 election. He had been in Tucson for about a month when this took place. He was evacuated from Afghanistan during the August withdrawal. As I got to know more of his story getting his wife and 2-year-old daughter out of that region and reunited with Ahmad became a daily goal.

Ahmad was a judge in Afghanistan. He adjudicated Taliban, imprisoning hundreds over the period of time he worked alongside the US military. For his efforts in support of our mission in Afghanistan, Ahmad was shot, his home was bombed with a rocket-propelled grenade, and his car was blown up. Ahmad spent weeks in the hospital recovering. Threats were lodged at his young wife and so they moved her to Turkey while he continued supporting our work, traveling back and forth across the Afghan/Turkish border.

On his last trip back to Afghanistan, Ahmad was shot by Taliban. On the weekend of his discharge from the hospital, the Afghan government fell and the US evacuation happened. He was caught up in that evacuation, first stopping in Qatar, then in D.C. and finally in Tucson. He was not given the option of returning to Turkey to reunite with his wife and child.

After 8 months of very costly and exhausting work, we were finally able to get Ahmad’s family back together. This is Ahmad and Nilofar – finally together. We have of course stayed connected. Our families have shared meals and outings.  Ahmad is working, they have an apartment and there’s a baby on the way.

Picture of Judge Ahmad and his wife sit together with Steve Kozachik stand behind them
I regularly write in my newsletters about the atrocities that continue happening under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Much of it is directed against women. Nilofar knew that if the Turkish government had deported her back to Kabul she would have been slaughtered within a week. Instead, she’s here, sadly knowing she and Ahmad have family in Afghanistan who will likely not get out, but happily knowing they’re here raising a young family and beginning a new chapter in their lives together.

August – Plastic Pilot Program

Early in the year, I connected with ByFusion over in California. They make construction-grade blocks out of non-recyclable plastics. Those early conversations were about how we can siphon off the contaminants that Republic Services is now charging the city for and put them to good use in our local market. Save the landfill. Save some money. Find a good use for plastic that is otherwise simply polluting our city, state, nation, oceans and world. The line in the 1960’s movie The Graduate “the future is in plastics” was prophetic, for all the wrong reasons.

Those early conversations evolved into the start of a pilot project on August 1st. We had several goals; learn if the community cares about the issue of plastic, learn what a program like this will cost the city to manage, learn if there are commercial partners who want to be involved, learn if there’s enough support for our ByFusion partners to make a go of it in the Tucson market.

As we near the end of the year it is clear we will have collected over 35 tons of non-recyclable plastic since August 1st. Our goal was to see if we could get to 20 tons. You blew that goal out of the water. In addition, I have joined ByFusion in meeting with several commercial partners, the combined efforts of which will produce enough plastics to enable ByFusion to have a sufficient local supply to make a go of it in Tucson. Throughout this pilot, I’ve been surprised to learn how much plastic is in our lives. Companies in Tucson produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic every month that is going straight to the landfill. The winner is Republic Services who charges them by the ton to haul it so it can sit in the ground forever. We’ve got a better idea, and thanks to your support since August it’s clear we have to figure out the financial part.

Every single time I walk out behind the ward office to be sure the roll-off isn’t overflowing some of you drive by. It’s a revolving door, the popularity of which has surprised me, my staff and the ByFusion team. And from conversations I’ve had with many of you I know we’re all surprised at just how much of what we encounter in our daily lives is plastic. And it’s plastic that is polluting our community.

It’s not just our community that suffers from the overuse of plastic. Southeast Asia has turned into the world’s dumping ground for junk. Millions of tons are contaminating what in the past were pristine wildlife habitat areas in Laos, Cambodia and in Vietnam. Illegal dumping is a new and financially enriching industry. From our mutual experiences during this pilot program, we can all agree that the over-reliance on plastic even in our own community is contributing to the global problem.

We won’t fix the global issue, but we can make a difference locally. This is Scruff the border collie sitting with plastic he has picked up from the roadside and parks since the pilot began. He’s an advocate of the program. We know many of you are as well. I am confident that in January we will find a way to honor your commitment to the program and frame relationships that will keep it alive.

How Tucson does this will be a model for other jurisdictions. Several are watching how our pilot evolves into a real program. The millions of tons of plastic that are polluting every city and stream in the world will not be moved an inch by what we do here. But as others see what we do and they follow suit, we could be the tip of a large and growing spear that does make an environmental impact.

September – Source of Income Ordinance

It’s no surprise to anybody who’s paying attention that we have a problem with housing instability. Rents are escalating, evictions have increased and there’s no quick-fix solution. The city has invested millions of dollars in rent and utility support throughout COVID. We’ve also adopted inclusionary zoning and incentives to facilitate more housing affordability along transit corridors. We adopted an Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinance to allow for appropriately sized ‘granny flats’ on existing residential lots. We’ve purchased housing and dedicated it to affordable units. And we’ve got plans for the purchase of land on which we’ll place some affordability components prior to awarding a development agreement to investors. And with all of that, it’s not nearly enough.

We need more housing stock. The interest rate hikes caused a pause in that industry. But it’ll come back and the new zoning changes we have in place will help generate more units. What we do not need is for landlords to continue ******* up rents and driving people who are living on fixed incomes out into the street. Addressing housing discrimination based on a person’s source of income was the focus of the item I brought to the M&C in September.

Under city code, and under federal law it is illegal to discriminate in housing based on somebody’s race, creed, color, national origin, sex, or sexual orientation. What we adopted in Tucson in September was to add “source of income” to that list of impermissible restrictions on housing. There is a preemption in state law that prevents the city from imposing rent controls. So, in Arizona landlords can increase rents as they see fit, and we cannot restrict that. What we can do – and did do – is to say a landlord may not cancel or refuse to extend a person’s lease solely based on the source of their income. Whether that’s social security, veteran’s benefits, Housing Choice Vouchers, the source of a person’s funds cannot be the reason a landlord chooses to stop renting to a person or to their family.

In mid-December, Attorney General Brnovich advised us that the incoming speaker of the House in the Arizona legislature has filed a complaint against our source of income ordinance. Brnovich has given us 30 days within which to rescind the current ordinance. Our option – which I fully support – is to say ‘no’ and we will not rescind the ordinance. Instead, we will make our case at the State Supreme Court. If we win, the ordinance stays in place. If however, the conservative court rules in favor of rescinding the ordinance, we’ll have to get rid of it or face losing over $130M in state-shared revenues.

Carol Ann Alaimo from the Star wrote about this issue last week. Here’s a link to her story:

https://tucson.com/news/local/outgoing-ag-orders-tucson-to-repeal-new-rent-discrimination-law/article_0d9e16ae-8228-11ed-9fb6-ff721a5a3b09.html 

To reiterate my comment to Carol Ann, it’s too bad that Brnovich has to display a discriminatory attitude against people who are living on a fixed income. His last great act of defiance against the poor as he heads off into the sunset. We’ll win this in court.

We work a lot with Sister Jose women’s shelter. Over the weekend I received this very nice and on-point message from the Director, Jean Fedigan. It’s all about our responsibility to those in the community who are facing obstacles to getting on their feet.

When we hug a weeping woman, broken by life.

When we feed women hot oatmeal or hot sandwiches from Starbucks.

Not to mention coffee, hot chocolate and water.

Or a dinner cooked by loving caring hands.

When we guide Guests into the shower who are soiled and beaten.

Giving Guests clothes with love and compassion and

Helping a Guest with laundry when they wash everything they have – in one load.

The many small services we Provide:  IDs, birth certificates, housing vouchers,

blankets, carts and many animals we feed, leash and help the Guest whose

best friend has four paws and not allowed anywhere else.

I appreciate staff and volunteers who come in everyday with open hearts

To serve the very least among us.

October - Juneteenth

When Richard Fimbres called and asked me if I’d like to sign onto a study session naming Juneteenth as a formal city holiday I didn’t hesitate. Kevin Dahl also signed the item. But the designation of the holiday was adopted by the M&C unanimously.

During our remarks at the study session, I made a reference to how the state of Arizona had to be financially coerced into making Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a state holiday. The NFL had the Super Bowl planned for Glendale and threatened to pull it if Arizona continued to resist what was a rightful national move making MLK day a holiday. Money talks louder than racism and ultimately Arizona relented.

Juneteenth commemorates the day on which the Union army established authority over Texas and effectively ended slavery in the confederate states. It took place on June 19th, 1865. The holiday has been celebrated widely in the African American community ever since. Having it recognized and celebrated in Tucson is totally consistent with who we are as a community – inclusive and pretty much the black sheep in Arizona.

It’s not as if slavery and its impacts suddenly disappeared back in 1865. We all went through an election cycle in which divisions along racial and gender lines were front and center. For us to adopt the holiday as all of that rhetoric was boiling up made what we did even more important. The state won’t follow suit until they’re threatened with some big financial loss again. But in Tucson, we can lead by example, and we did.

Last weekend I spent time on the phone with my brother and sister-in-law Katy who live up in northern California. We did a Facetime and a part of it was me showing them the donation room here in the ward office. Katy’s comment was that the farther away from the border people get, the less real the needs become. I also showed them the Amazon package that had arrived at the ward office containing underclothes for migrants. It was a good opportunity to show both how they can be involved, and how giving and inclusive Tucsonans are. Juneteenth being adopted as a city holiday will give us all another chance to reflect on our local ethos, who we are, and what our values are, and maybe even thump our chest a bit when we think of Tucson in comparison to much of the rest of the state.

November – Sol y Luna

Some of these look-backs could appear in multiple months. This one could appear in multiple months dating back about 7 years. Sol y Luna is the student housing complex that sits adjacent to the Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT.) Over the years I’ve written plenty on the history it has of students tossing bottles and other dangerous objects from balconies onto the mosque parking area.  Getting the Sol y Luna management to proactively address the open balconies has fallen on deaf ears. The mismanagement hit a crescendo in August of ‘22 when move-in day arrived and the facility was nowhere near ready for the hundreds of tenants, each of whom had paid north of $1,000 per month, per bed. In this case though the saga has what appears to be a happy ending.

I was connected with a Facebook page of parents and students that contained over 700 participants. We were engaged with the then management, Nelson Partners, on a series of issues. Some of them warranted city fire inspector involvement. Those included elevators not working, trash in hallways that blocked access, improper use of extension cords by staff to power appliances, and tenants pulling Exit signs from the walls leaving live bare wires exposed. Notices of violation were issued as Nelson Partners slow-walked the repairs.

Other issues included quality of life and safety of tenants concerns. Those are more of a landlord/tenant issue, but my staff and I were in the middle of advocating for resolution. To check some of the claims being made, Diana, Dora and I tested them one afternoon by simply walking into both Sol and Luna, hopping on an elevator by tail-gating tenants, wandering around upper floors and asking students what they were experiencing. We were willingly invited into apartments to see water damage, plumbing not working, electric switches not working and plenty of other items, all of which should have been in working order before move-in day. Doors didn’t lock to individual rooms. Kids had to share fobs to access the elevator. The top floor swimming pool was green. Nelson was failing every one of the families who had paid for the luxury experience.

So why am I including this as the November item? Because it was in November that Nelson Partners finalized the sale of Sol y Luna to Vespers Holdings. Vespers paid over $205M for the property. Since they took over, I’ve had numerous exchanges with the owner. We’ve met in person, spoken by phone and shared emails. He and his team have addressed the quality of life and safety issues that Nelson left in its wake. They have signaled to me that they’re in this for the long haul and they have already invested beyond the initial purchase price to fix what was broken when they arrived on the scene. And they’ve evicted tenants who we identified as having thrown objects onto the mosque property.

In an odd bit of irony, on the day Vespers’ management team first arrived they were seated in the courtyard on the interior of Sol. During their meeting someone tossed some debris from a balcony above, nearly missing the new owners. With that experience fresh in mind, I didn’t have to work hard to convince them the balconies need to be enclosed. Vespers is the first of the 4 ownership teams I’ve dealt with that has agreed. They’re out getting bids right now. My hope and expectation are that when Sol y Luna opens next fall the issue of bottles being thrown from balconies will be a thing of the past. Time will tell, but my early experiences with the new owner is that he’s no-nonsense and that he understands the liability his company shares if someone is seriously injured as a result of activities happening on his property.

December – Holiday Tree

I wrote about the start of the plastic pilot program in the August section. But on Saturday, December 3rd ByFusion staff came to Tucson and joined a couple hundred of you gathered out in the rain in building our ByBlock holiday tree.

The event and the popularity of the tree is most certainly the December highlight.

Three days after we built the tree some guy arrived at 3:30am and stole the star from the top. In the December 11th newsletter I shared the video of him climbing up the tree and walking away with the star. That video also made its way to Channels 4, 9, 11 and 13 – that grinch was exposed. And yet ‘another’ grinch found some compassion in his heart. A week after the theft that ‘other’ grinch made his way back to the ward office and returned our star. That video is here:

Grinch and Cindy Loo Who save Christmas.mp4

The fun we had at the thief’s expense only goes to show that this program is positive for the community, and guys like him aren’t going to ruin it for the rest of us. The week before Christmas I met with Heidi from ByFusion. We took our original ‘budget’ guesses and started comparing them to what we’ve learned. The city has made roughly 60 trips with the roll-off you’ve been filling. That’s a cost – and it’s many more trips than we had anticipated. We’ve shipped 20 tons of plastic to California. That shipping cost goes away, along with the negative environmental impact as soon as we get ByFusion to Tucson with their Blocker. Those 20 tons of plastic are now sitting in California in the form of about 1,400 blocks. The sale of those blocks will help to offset some of our other costs in running the program. Producing those blocks is a cost ByFusion took on. In January I’ll be meeting with the city manager and ByFusion to talk about how we divide up the costs of the pilot program, and more importantly what the relationships look like moving forward.

I’ve asked for a study session on January 24^th to talk about how we scale up the program, and how we identify roles for each partner. The mayor and council member Dahl have co-signed the agenda item.  The project has evolved – it's no longer a ‘pilot.’ Now it’s ‘find a way’ to keep it going and to expand on it.

ByFusion has been collecting the contact information for people who signed up for updates. Last week they chose a winner of the drawing for a planter (ByBud.) I’ve got a couple in our front entry if you’d like to come by and see them. And they’re online at www.byfusion.com. The winner of the drawing is Pat Hammes. Here she is with her ByBud already sprouting some happiness in her home.

This is the statement she gave to ByFusion when she learned she had been chosen:

"I am very excited to see this pilot program coming to fruition in Tucson as a means of beautifying our neighborhoods and parks with the blocks made from compressed plastics as well as keeping the harmful plastics out of our landfills. The demonstration by City Councilman Steve Kozachik provided us with the opportunity to see and touch the blocks made through this process, blocks which can even be used wherever concrete blocks are used. What a great way to recycle."

Pat, thanks to you and the hundreds of others who are filling the roll-off, the program will continue.

Here’s this week’s program update. It shows 34.69 tons collected. Thanks to all of you we will pass 35 tons before the end of the calendar year.

COVID

I’m going to close out this newsletter with the usual COVID update. During Christmas week there were 109 people in Arizona who lost their lives due to COVID. Thirty-one of them lived in Pima County. The holiday season will be much different for those families than it otherwise could have been.

Case counts dipped a bit in both the county and in the state. Here’s the table I’ve been keeping that shows the decline.

It’ll be great if those infection numbers continue to drop after the holidays. And yet we all see the jammed airports, and many of us took part in large gatherings of one type or another. The flu and RSV are still adding to the respiratory woes in the community. And now medical professionals are warning about a strep infection that has begun to hit youth.

Wear a mask when you’re in close quarters. And please reschedule any meetings you’ve got in the ward 6 office if you have any symptoms of any of those viruses.

Here’s the statewide COVID count map by county that I had in the newsletter on January 3^rd of this year.

Compare it to our current map – I was surprised at how significantly the virus has continued to expand in Tucson, Pima County and throughout Arizona during 2022.

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