The Daily Agenda: Fox Theatre growing, Mt. Lemmon kerfuffle, and much more
Finding a replacement for Kozachik ... School districts take on gun violence, help foster kids ... Conover enters "diversion" agreement.
In this week’s roundup of news nuggets from public meetings, we’re mixing in some school district news alongside the city and county briefs, thanks to our intern Liv Leonard, who checked in on the Sunnyside and Catalina Foothills districts.
The owners of the Fox Tucson Theatre are asking the city to put up $5 million to convert the theatre into a performing arts center. The Rio Nuevo board, which administers a sales tax district downtown, already committed $4.7 million toward the $26.4 million total cost. To pave the way for the project, the theatre owners bought the properties adjacent to the theatre and eliminated the debt on the properties. They’re hoping $5 million from the City of Tucson will “galvanize and motive individuals, businesses, and foundations to continue to deepen their investments in this permanent asset for our community.” The Tucson City Council is set to discuss the request at their meeting Tuesday.
The council is going to look at two big appointments on Tuesday. They’ll consider whether to replace City Manager Mike Ortega, who is resigning after a long tenure, with Deputy City Manager Tim Thomure. They have a lot of discretion on that one. But they have some rules to follow as they consider who will replace City Councilman Steve Kozachik. He announced last week he planned to resign at the end of this month. After they go over the rules on Tuesday, Mayor Regina Romero said she plans to call a special meeting next month for the council to appoint Kozachik’s replacement.
As the city deals with homelessness, officials continue their shift away from having police officers be the point people. Tucson police responses to homeless encampments, which now only come when there are reports of violence or aggression, “continues to be in the single digits monthly now,” Ortega wrote in a memo.
Along those lines, city staff are handling more calls to the 3-1-1 non-emergency call system, and they’re getting faster at responding. The city’s care coordinators handled 341 calls in January and February. The bulk of those calls were for emergency shelter, eviction prevention, utility assistance, and food requests. The average time between a call and connecting the caller to a shelter or rental assistance program dropped from 11 hours last year to two hours so far this year.
In county land-use news, the expansion of the Mt. Lemmon Lodge is ruffling some feathers. The owners of the lodge want permission from the Pima County Board of Supervisors to expand the lodge and parking lot, partly due to the increased customers stopping by the Beyond Bread restaurant in the lodge building. Neighbors and nearby business owners wrote letters to county officials, with quite a few arguing against it. The owners of the Mt. Lemmon General Store, directly across the street from the lodge, said they’ve been struggling to deal with overflow parking from the lodge and Beyond Bread, including hiring an attendant to keep people out of the store’s spots. Other neighbors came to the lodge owners’ defense and said they’ve been a boon to the community.
Over at the Sunnyside Unified School District, officials launched a program to teach middle schoolers about gun violence. In light of the risk to Tucson’s youth, SUSD partnered with the Tucson Police Department, University of Arizona trauma surgeons, and students on the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council. Their weapon prevention and awareness program started with presentations at Apollo Middle School that show facts about gun violence and moderately graphic images. The plan is to expand it to other middle schools this spring, district officials said at the March 5 governing board meeting. Due to the troubling nature of the presentations, parents were notified beforehand and given the chance for their children to opt out of the program.
“It’s not a matter of if you’ve experienced it, it’s a matter of when you will. It’s a really sad, heavy hard truth, and I just don’t know that it’s possible to get through a full career here without experiencing it (gun violence) firsthand,” said Andy Townsend, executive director of SUSD Student Services.
The more we check in on local governments and school districts, the more news nuggets we find. Upgrade to a paid subscription so we can keep digging them up!
Years of summer heat and monsoon rains have taken a toll on the track at the Catalina Foothills High School stadium. Now the district is going to spend $1 million to fix it. The Catalina Foothills Unified School District governing board approved spending the money at their March 12 meeting. The track is used by students, but it’s also widely used by local residents during non-school hours who want to run, walk, or jog on the track recreationally. District officials plan to start work on the track after graduation in May and have it completed by August for the new school year. They estimate the new track won’t need any significant renovations for 20 years.
Amid a statewide shortage of school counselors, a counselor at Esperero Canyon Middle School got creative. The counselor, Britney Griffith, created a student self-referral program, which cut down on wait times for students to see a counselor after class. She also established a “Meeting Minute” to talk to more students and build relationships with them, regardless of whether they scheduled an appointment with her or not. As a result, more of them felt comfortable reaching out when they needed help. Griffith was named Arizona Counselor of the Year and presented with the Catalina Foothills STAR Award at the March 12 meeting.
CFSD officials are taking steps to streamline the enrollment process for foster kids. When foster kids switch schools, the goal of a proposed new policy would be to get them enrolled within two days. As it stands, finding the usual required documents from prior schools can be a difficult task that often falls on foster parents. Under the new policy, district officials would help find those records to help ease the transition for everyone involved. The board discussed the policy change last week and they’re planning to vote on it next month.
Case closed: Pima County Attorney Laura Conover has entered into a “diversion” agreement with the State Bar in response to a former chief deputy’s allegations of misconduct, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith reports. David Berkman, the former PCAO attorney who filed the complaint, says that Conover’s statement that the bar found no misconduct in her behavior is misleading and compared the agreement to a plea agreement. Conover refused the Sentinel’s request for the document outlining the deal with the state’s regulatory body for lawyers without citing any legal basis.
"I have agreed with the State Bar that I will seek advice from experts about communication and perception and will take a seminar. The agreement I have made with the State Bar is not discipline against me as a lawyer," Conover said in her press release.
No vacancy: An affordable housing complex on Tucson’s south side is already full, weeks before its official opening, the Arizona Daily Star’s Gabriela Rico writes. The 77-unit complex has 30 three-bedroom units, 35 two-bedroom units and 12 one-bedroom units with rents ranging from $855 to $1,184 a month. The complex’s developer is already working on another project on the east side, this time for affordable senior housing, with 22 units set aside for formerly homeless seniors and on-site services available.
Speaking of housing: The City of Tucson is bracing for funding cuts in the coming year to one of its housing affordability programs, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. HOME is the city’s second largest source of federal funding for housing assistance, with both the county and city receiving funds from the program to expand affordable housing projects and provide rental assistance to low-income families. But Congress’ Housing and Urban Development budget passed earlier this month cut $250 million, a 17% reduction from last year.
Compassion fatigue: More than half of the country’s nurses report feeling overwhelmed, including plenty who live and work in Tucson, Arizona Sonora News’ Jackson Castillo writes. Arizona ranks among the top five states struggling to address severe nursing shortages, with factors including burnout, retirements and staffing shortages fueling the fire. Castillo interviews several area nurses who entered the workforce in recent years, many of whom talk about how they’ve adapted to learn on the job.
Down to the wire: If you forgot to mail off your ballot or stop at an emergency voting location last week, the Arizona Luminaria’s Becky Pallack has all the details about how to vote in Tuesday’s Presidential Preference Election. The election, sometimes called the presidential primary election, is only for registered Democrats or Republicans. All registered voters, including independents, will be able to vote for president, as well as state and local offices, in the November 5 general election.
Increase incoming: Pima Community College students are looking at a tuition increase in the fall, after the governing board approved a $3 per-credit-hour hike for the 2024-25 academic year, KOLD’s Renee Romo reports. The board last raised tuition $2 per credit hour back in 2022 in order to increase technology and expand scholarships. This time, the increase will help to address faculty shortages and add to the college’s general operating fund to support programs and increase pay for staff, faculty and administrators.
158: The number of responses so far to our reader survey. We’ll stop bugging you about it soon, but in the meantime, why not take a minute or two and fill it out? It’s 10 questions and most of them are multiple-choice.
 | A guest post by
|
Wow! It’s crazy reading your local daily news and see your name! Thank you for writing about my counseling program and covering the local school board meetings.