Tucson Council Splits 4–3 on Water Thresholds; Approves Landmark Community Preference Housing Policy Addressing Historic Displacement

Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Good afternoon everyone. Um, we're starting the study session of September 22nd. For the record, Vice Mayor Santa Cruz will be participating electronically through Microsoft Teams. Item one, time has been set aside for staff to provide an update on Oh, we're not moving. We're not doing item one. Okay. We are changing things around a little bit. Yes. I'm so sorry.

uh because vice mayor really wants to participate in the housing homeless and shelter care code update as well as the community preference policy. We're actually moving those to after the executive sessions if if um there's no objections. All righty. We are going to then start with the executive sessions and those are items three and five. Miss clerk, we can go into that. Well, hold on. She needs to read what they are first.

Um item three, executive session, water resource resources development to alleviate effects of drought in the lower Colorado River Basin. And item five, executive session, discussion of memorandum of understanding between the city of Tucson and the Warbird National for transport transport of treated water to the proposed Warird National Golf Course. All righty. So, we need a motion to go into executive session. Moved. Second. A motion and a second to go into executive session.

Um, if there's no further discussion, then all those in favor of going into executive signify by saying I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Mr. Attorney, we will take what about an hour and a half? Yes. Okay. So, uh for the audience in attendance, we are moving into executive session and we'll uh return in an hour and a half. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Thank you. Heat. Heat. All right. That's Heat. Heat. What do you Heat up here. Hey, hey, hey. down. la. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, hey.

Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Happy. Hey, Hey, hey, hey. I'm a Hey. Heat. Heat. N. down. Hey Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Hey. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. the cruise to join us virtually via teams.

Uh may I have a motion to return to study session, please? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor indicate by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Um, item four is the council's pleasure. What is the council's pleasure for item four, Mr. Attorney?

Your honor, appropriate motion would be to proceed as discussed in executive session to continue to find opportunities to address water shortages for Arizona Colorado River water users through negotiation with federal, state, and local partners. So moved. There's a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please indicate by saying I. I I any against? Motion carries. What is the council's pleasure for item six?

Mayor, I move to proceed to discuss I'm sorry, proceed as discussed in executive session to bring back an updated within 90 days that requires concrete deliverables addressing PAS and environmental remediation necessary infrastructure and acceptable development option for the leased land under discussion. There's a motion. May I have a second? I'll second that motion. Um, any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please indicate by saying I. I. Um, any against? Motion carries.

And because we are uh talking about some water issues, we're going to continue quickly to items seven and then eight because the item eight is cap order and some updates, but we're going to make it into a one minute update and to talk about our cap water order. Uh so item seven, time has been set aside for discussion regarding public private partnership to clean up PAS contamination threatening Tucson central welfard uh Wellfield Warbird National Project. Mr.

Manager, can you set up the the item, please, and then we can start discussion. Thank you, Honorable Mayor. as uh indicated in your motion you just uh passed coming out of executive session, you've given us pretty clear direction on what you would like to see next with regard to this conversation around theou. Um so for purposes of today's study session, we're uh the background was provided in materials. Um we have some pretty clear next steps.

Um but this is also an opportunity if you wanted to voice anything in particular about what we should be considering as we as we take those next steps as directed. Mr. manager. Um I had requested that we include this item both on executive session and on public session uh during study uh to make sure that we had an opportunity to bring this conversation that has been happening for about a year a year and a half.

Um, Warbert National approached the city of Tucson, uh, both the city manager's office as well as council member Lee's office as well as my office, uh, really talking about the possibility of using 500 acre acres of cityowned land leased by the Air Force uh, for a golf course. my interest is not um in terms of having another golf course in Tucson. Um and so the answer has from me at least has always been no, right?

Um but one of the issues that was shared uh by staff to Warberg National was already the only way we would be interested in um a golf course would be if there is a PAS remediation plan in place. Um, I felt that it was um my responsibility to bring it to mayor and council, have an executive session and have a study session so that the public could listen in on this conversation.

For me, um, in my conversations with Colonel Cabrera from DM, um, there is legitimate and genuine interest from the Air Force and DM to extend the lease that they have with the city of Tucson on 500 acres of land that the Air Force leases. Um my request to Colonel Cabrera has always been and will remain um the city of Tucson is not interested in data centers or detention centers.

And uh our number one interest in terms of our partnership with the Air Force and DM is the reme remedi remediation of PAS contamination in our aquifer um and in our water. And so that for me remains my most important interest in any conversation um about the lease of the 500 acres owned by the city of Tucson and leased by the Air Force.

So, I just wanted to make sure that I made it abundantly clear um that uh the the possibility of WBird paying for PAS remediation is a current uh issue that came up maybe about month ago or two months ago that I felt necessary to bring to mayor and counsel and have a public discussion in front of our community. So, um, wanted to open it with that. I know that, um, Councilwoman Lee also has her concerns and her experience. So, I wanted to throw it over to Councilwoman Lee. Thank you, Mayor.

And I'll just be brief. My biggest concern was just the urgency of this request and the timeline and also understanding that the Air Force just opened up a uh RFP process that began on Friday of last week and will run accepting solicit proposals until November 2nd.

So I really wanted to make sure we had more time to evaluate and allow that process to play forward without putting our finger on the scale with any preference toward any other proposal and the integrity of that process and also have more time for us to decide what needs to be in thisou should it gets selected.

So I'm just grateful for the conversation today and the opportunity to keep this option on the table for PAS remediation as well as any infrastructure needs that may need to go in should this proposal be accepted by the air force and potentially move forward. All righty. Any other com comments? Uh, Council Member Dah. Thank you, Mayor, and and thank you, Council Member Lee, for coming up with this um course of action. I do think we need more time.

Many people will think, Kevin, you support a golf course, and um that's would be really unusual for me. Um but I'm very intrigued with the possibility of getting funding at least a decade earlier um to remediate the PAS problem that originated at the Air Force base. And that's why I I think um it's useful for us to take our time to um uh flesh out this proposal um and to give Warird time to, you know, to prove that they um are truly capable of bringing this about.

So that's why I'm glad to support this. Any others? Well, and I think most important is again as I clearly stated to Colonel Cabrera um of DM and the assistant secretary of the air force um secretary borders. There are three interests that I have. Um we do not want a data center in that land. We do not want a detention center in that land. and we are willing to consider any proposal, not just Warbert, that will come up with funds to remediate PAIFAS. So, thank you so much.

I appreciate um you bringing this to our attention and allowing me to have this com conversation publicly and include our colleagues on the council um in this conversation. With that, um, we do not have a motion. The motion was done after executive session. Um, Councilman Lee, can you make sure that you repeat the motion in this item as well that we just decided on and voted on? Absolutely, Mayor.

The motion was that we proceed as discussed in executive session to bring back an updatedou within 90 days that requires concrete deliverables addressing PAS and environmental remediation necessary infrastructure and acceptable development options for the least land under discussion. That was the motion that we just spoke on and we passed unanimously. All righty. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. We will go to item eight very quickly.

Time has been set aside for mayor and councel to review and provide direction on several water related items including Colorado River update 2027 central Arizona project water purchase and city of Tucson's drought preparedness and response plan status. Uh Mr. Kimick, thank you honorable mayor, members of council. Uh this is something that we bring back this time every year.

Uh and the focus of it is to have a is have a motion for staff to proceed with a with the draft cap order for the following calendar year as presented in the materials. So three three things and um I won't spend too much time on it, but the Colorado River, we talk about that a lot. There was a decision by the Bureau of Reclamation last month uh to accept a a two-year operating guidelines as part of the first two years of the next 10-year plan, which they're still going to work on.

How that pertains to our CAP order is this will be the first time u that our contract, our 144,191 acre feet of priority 4 water uh will be reduced because of drought on the Colorado. So our anticipated number on that is roughly 14% uh which is around 20,000 acre feet uh from that total and that all comes uh uh like I said to bear in the in the draft proposal.

The other what the staff also has in the proposal is the bureau is looking for more water to be left in Lake me for compensated system conservation. So our 2027 order will be have a reduction of 50,000 acre feet for that bucket one which is a cash contribution which we've been using for our water resource portfolio whether in developing um our capital project for water resources or acquiring future water resources. That's how that money is directed.

It also has their bucket two obligation which is our pure water Tucson program that we have in the partnership with the bureau and that's another 2800 acre feet related to that. So all in all our order will be around 71,000 acret which is significantly lower than our than what we've done.

But the caveat is the Arizona Water Banking Authority, which has been setting aside excess water for a couple decades now, uh, for drought contingency, will make up and transfer that wet water of the 14% to the city of Tucson's uh, portfolio. So, we're back to in the 90 to 95,000 acre feet area, which what have we been doing when we leave 50,000 acre feet u in the river? And so, our cap order is reflective of that.

Our cap draft order also in the materials is reflective of what we're storing for Phoenix, Poria, Scottsdale, Oral Valley, Vale, Morirana, Pascoyaki tribes as well. That's another 17,900 acre feet coming to the water bank of Tucson um uh next year. Uh and lastly, the drought preparedness and response plan uh which we've been operating under for several years now is uh uh because there's going to be a new design on the next 10-year plan.

The staff is holding it at our tier 2 response, which our tier 2 response in the last several years has been fantastic. Uh our smart meter roll out is helping city departments find leaks and high usage on properties.

Uh we've removed over 165,000 square feet of turf at city parks um and three times our grant goal there as well as we've been doing that at commercial and multif family properties to remove another 9 acres uh and as well as retrofits and affordable and low-income housing saving tens of millions of gallons a year.

So probably in the next year once we have more certainty on what the tenure what the final 10-year plan is going to be with Lake me from the bureau then we'll have to amend our drought preparedness plan and we'll have a discussion at a later date uh about that. Um so with that mayor that's the update on the Colorado our 2027 CAP order and the current status of our drought response plan and uh looking for a a motion to for staff to move forward with the draft cap order for the year 2027.

Do I have a motion? Second. I move. Second. There's a motion and a second. I just have a question. Um, in the order for CAP, um, you say it's going to be about 90 to 95,000 acre feet. It'll our our wet water imported delivery will be around 71,000. Okay. Yeah. But we will get a transfer from the Arizona Water Banking Authority of about 20,000 acre feet of where they've stored water already in the water bank of Tucson. So it'll just be a legal transfer.

So for the year it'll be in that 90 91 92,000. And you feel confident that is sufficient to be able to provide the water services that all of our customers including commercial and um residential industrial all of all of our customers water. Absolutely mayor and that is uh because of the two things. One our customers have been great in conservation for the last 2530 years. So it's given our portfolio a strong water resource um portfolio.

Uh and two uh we've been purchasing excess water in the past ourselves besides the Arizona water bank. So we have uh more than 600,000 acre feet of Colorado River already in our aquifer for the city of Tucson and potentially up to another 400,000 of water bank water that should be targeted to the city of Tucson over time as well. a good place to be. Um, and and droughts and and reductions, the most resilient city in the southwestern United States when it comes to water supply.

Um, and thanks to you, uh, thanks to all of you on the team for the incredible work that you're doing to make sure that our water resources are plentiful and that we continue to um, work on conservation uh, for all of us. So, there's a motion and a second on the floor. Any further discussion? Uh, council member Vakas. Thank you both, John and Chris. Our current ability to conserve water from the Colorado River reflects the strength of our overall water supply.

We have planned with resilience front and center, resilience of our economy, stewardship of our natural resources and desert landscape, livability, and high quality of life. And I know as we face tough questions about how to strengthen our economy, water conservation and remediation will always be at the heart of our decision-making. But we also have abundance and can plan for new econom economic growth as well. So I just want to thank you both for today's conversation. Thank you.

And I too just want to say that uh this is something that I have been requesting as mayor uh to both our city manager and our water director that we I would really like to have Tucson Water uh do informational town halls um and a conversation with our community about water resources. A lot of people, especially with um some headlines, uh really are concerned about the drought and how it affects our water delivery in the city of Tucson.

So I really want to make sure that we create informational town halls where it's not just giving information to the community but also uh getting their input and feedback uh about our water resources but I I I feel that the complete story is not out there and it is our responsibility to share the information that we have with our community about water uh and our future in our water resources now and into the future. So, just wanted to make that public and put it into the record.

Um that that's what I would like to see with that. Um there's a motion in a second. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate your work. Thank you. Okay, with that uh we will move back to items one and two. Want to make sure I have this Yes. All righty. Sorry about that. I was looking for my information, but that gave time for an and Corin to come to the table. Uh, thank you so much. We're moving back to item one.

Um, item one, time has been set aside for staff to provide an update on the housing and homeless emergency declaration issued February 2026, as well as the status of the amendments to the unified development code, building codes to update regulations for shelter care use.

Um, I want to start first uh by thanking Vice Mayor Santa Cruz uh for bringing uh the concept of declaring a housing and homeless emergency and working with me to make sure that we had that homeless piece as well because um um affordability and unsheltered homelessness are among the most critical issues facing working families today. When mayor and council passed our housing affordability strategy for Tucson, when was that?

Back in 2021, it was with the intention of having an organized approach to bringing more housing across the continuum, uh reducing barriers and bringing needed attention to this issue. So, it was our hope that some of our pilots like Star Village would serve as an example of what is possible. Um, we had learned that uh there were some organizations trying to do micro shelters and um, you know, we wanted to make sure that we were able to do it, especially with our land use codes.

And what we learned is that the city of Tucson was the only one that could do um, a project like Star Village. Um, and so we started thinking about how is it that we as mayor and council can change our land use codes uh to make sure that we make housing more available and easier to build, including micro shelters and safe sleeping sites and uh just regular shel shelters.

our regular shelters had a lot of um I would say barriers to uh to build and so um with today's update we will talk about where we are um and I'm looking forward to hearing in terms of where we are if there are any barriers for nonprofit organizations to use our homeless and housing emergency and how we can further coordinate the approach uh to our needs. So, I don't know if you wanted to include something, vice mayor, or hear the presentation first.

I would say hear the presentation first, mayor. Thank you. All righty. Uh Mr. Manager, thank you, honorable mayor and members of the council. Joining us here today, our planning and development services director, Corin Manning, and it's her birthday, and our director of housing and community development, an Chaneka. So, I will turn it over to you both. Thanks. I'm going to kick us off and then I'll turn it over to director Manning. So, thank you, Mayor.

As you mentioned, earlier this year, the Tucson mayor and council declared a housing emergency. This is an update on that emergency. No action is needed at this time, but we really wanted to provide some updates to you all. So, following the housing and emergency declaration earlier this year, housing and housing and community development conducted a scan to identify additional actions we might be able to take in the short term to help address the crisis.

As you all know, HCD had already taken on many new initiatives and projects over the past several years. That said, we did identify a few key high priority projects to move forward faster this year. For example, in order to reduce the number of vacant units we have with the city housing portfolio, we launched a turn team of maintenance technicians and a maintenance technician supervisor to bring units online faster.

So, we launched that initiative in the spring and since then the turn team has completed 75 turns and they're currently working on 16 units now. And so with every turn, that means we can take a family from our weight list and offer an affordable place for them to live. The memo in your materials identifies several other key initiatives that HCD has been working on this year.

As was discussed by the mayor when mayor and mayor and council considered the emergency housing declaration, part of the goal was to allow some flexibility regarding zoning and code requirements. As a reminder on why that is so important, we know via the January point in time count that we have over 1,250 unsheltered individuals on our streets on any given night. We also know the point in time count is likely an underount.

Thanks to the new Tucson Puma collaboration to end homelessness dashboard, you can also see how many available shelter beds there are on a given night. And so while we know there's over 1,200 unsheltered, we also know there's only between 20 and 4040 shelter beds available on a given night.

So, Housing Community Development work closely with planning and development services to develop guidelines for nonprofits and faith-based groups to apply for a temporary use permit to create safe outdoor sleeping areas similar to Star Village. In your materials, there's a two-page summary of that process.

The first page provides information on how to apply and the backside is a summary of the guidelines to really help those organizations throughout the process and staff will also be there to help organizations throughout the process. I want to thank Tamara Prime who is the lead for housing and community development. Um Tamara, myself and PDSD has been doing some outreach to nonprofits about this new process.

Um, as a reminder, Housing and Community Development has some funding to support up to three pilot projects for the safe outdoor sleeping area. Um, but the temporary use permit process is through planning and development services. And so I'll turn it over to Director Manning to speak more on that and what PDSD has been doing related to the emergency declaration. Thank you, an honorable mayor and council members.

Um, so as Ann mentioned, this housing and homelessness emergency declaration was declared in February. So we're about 6 months in. Um, and there was a few components of that emergency declaration. Um, essentially the declaration was intended to provide tools and flexibility to better respond to the diverse housing um, and homelessness needs in our community. Of course, there's many, many tools the city is utilizing to respond to that very complex challenges.

Zoning and codes are one piece of that, but we want to make sure we're doing everything we can in that space to reduce barriers to shelter care. So, as you mentioned, mayor, shelter care use, there is there are a lot of barriers in our code. Our codes make it very difficult to develop more shelter care uses and also doesn't um hasn't really evolved with the new models that we're seeing in shelter care.

So, that's made it very difficult for operators to find shelter care locations that work where they can locate and operate more shelter beds. So the housing and homelessness emergency declaration aimed to address that through three major components. Um one was the temporary uh flexibility for zoning for long-term shelter shelter care that will be there in the long term. The residents may not but it's permanent shelter care in terms of the use staying on site.

And then also more flexibility for temporary shelter sites that might not operate long-term as a shelter. So think of Star Village, the safe outdoor sleeping and safe outdoor parking sites that Anne mentioned. And then third, the direction was to develop amendments to our unified development code and other codes so that we would have this flexibility long-term after the housing and homelessness emergency declaration was um over.

So we've been working on all three of those fronts, all of those aspects. So first, the temporary flexibility for um long-term shelter care. Um the emergency declaration allowed us to use a different special exception process. Right now most of those shelter care sites have to go through a zoning examiner special exception.

The emergency allowed us to expedite that process with a director special exception and also provides flexibility to modify certain zoning standards like minimum lot size, interior setbacks, parking requirements, um separation distance from certain residential zones and other shelter care uses. So we streamlined the process and have flexibility in the standards. We have one project in the pipeline currently utilizing this option.

It's actually a project that was in progress prior to the emergency declaration and now the emergency declaration is allowing them to expand from 10 beds on site to up to 29 residents. That's the homing project in W three and that is in the permitting process right now. It's actually in a public comment period at the moment. Um the second aspect is the temporary use permit for safe outdoor sleeping and safe outdoor parking.

Um and so as an mentioned PDSD and HCD staff have worked to de together to develop standards for those sites minimum site standards infrastructure staffing and operational requirements. Um as an mentioned we've taken that to the Tucson Puma collaboration to end homelessness which includes many local service providers to make them aware of this option. we don't have any applications in progress.

We have gotten a lot of interest, but we're really trying to get the word out so folks know that this is an available option to them. Um, and then third, the permanent code amendments. This is the longer term piece that we're working on to put these fixes in our code so that it is easier over the long term to build more shelter care and allow more diverse shelter care options in our community. So, we are underway with public engagement on these code amendments right now.

We actually um held one event on September 13th, just a couple weekends ago, and we had over 50 attendees, a lot of community interest, and we have a virtual session this week, and then another set of in-person meetings in early October. We also have a community survey open to collect input.

Um, and through all of these different methods, we're trying to gather input from our community on where are the appropriate locations for shelter care use, what are the design and development standards that are appropriate on these sites um so that they can integrate well with our neighborhoods and community. So, we're working right now on that public engagement piece.

Following that will be refining the proposed standards, developing a set of standards that we will propose to planning commission and then that will go through the full public review process with a public hearing with planning commission and then ultimately come to mayor and council for consideration and a public hearing. In addition to the amendments to the unified development code, our zoning standards, we're also working on building code amendments.

Our building code does not define or account for micro cabins or micro shelters which is an emerging model that many providers um wish to offer um for shelter care use. So we are working to define that as a structure in our building code and develop the appropriate standards for those micro cabins. So those amendments are also going through review will be reviewed by our Tucson Pima County joint code committee and then brought to Mayor and Council along with the zoning code amendments.

So, all three of the components of the housing and homelessness emergency declaration, the temporary zoning flexibility, the temporary use permits for outdoor safe outdoor sleeping, and the long-term code amendments are all in progress and underway. Um, and with community engagement actively underway for the code amendments. So, again, we're not requesting any action today. We want to provide this update and get any direction and feedback from mayor and council. Happy to answer any questions.

Well, first and foremost, happy birthday and thank you so much for working on your birthday and waiting for us. Um, but thank you so much. We really appreciate the incredible work um that both of you and your teams have been able to provide in our call at the mayor and council level um to expedite um housing opportunities for everyone. So, uh, thank you. Really appreciate it. And since there is no direction that you need from us, it's only an update.

Does any of the C, uh, council colleagues have any comments or input, feedback? Um, Council Member Cunningham. And then I see some nodding over there at the end of the table. And then, uh, so, Council Member Schubert and then Vice Mayor, Council Member Cunningham. The main um the main piece to me for today is about um the adaptive reuse piece.

Um, as much as I I think that all the things that we're doing are fine, but I think there's some creative solutions, especially when we consider SRO's and pieces of the market that aren't being reached. I'm happy with running into programs that help people that are in emergency um situations, but I also want to have programs that help people avoid having to come to us. Uh that are affordable and alternative solutions if they don't want.

We need to stop operating under the belief that every single person that we offer help to wants help because that's not the case. There's quite a few people that don't want to be involved with the government. That's just truth. So having alternative options that are affordable are really important to the entire continuum of helping us with the housing crisis. Some people just want to find a good deal and allowing adaptive reuse.

We know that offices because of remote working, because of uh changes in technology, we know that we have office space of buildings that are already built. When you consider adaptive reuse, you're saving in multip uh you're saving in engineering and soft costs, you're saving in materials costs, you're saving you're saving in mobilization costs. So, when you have an opportunity to take a building and use adaptive reuse, I think there's opportunities there.

I think we run into the minutia and nuance of those issues. Uh for instance, we had I read in one article that we had a group of tiny homes and under our code we needed to install um sprinkler systems in every single one of them. And I thought, well, gee, that's that's rough, man. I mean, there's new houses don't need sprinkler systems.

So I look at that and I'm thinking all right we've got to stop overdoing the ris I mean look I don't want to take risks either but when we don't need to overdo risk management to the point that things become so unaffordable that we have people having not having a choice on where they can stay um for our working folks they need to be able to have a choice where they can stay and a lot of them don't want to stay in shelter and they don't want to go back to their cousin's house either so we've got to have an al alternative but we don't have anything in our code regarding SRO's, which are single room occupancy options, which I think are really important.

Look, I I'm all about at least requiring a bathroom, but community kitchen and an SRO, which exists in a lot of other cities for people who are kind of clawing their way back, is fine. The other piece I'll take a look at is counterintuitive to the fraud that takes place, which was pretty awful with sober living. There's a lot of folks that prefer sober living if they pay their own way.

Um, the way that sober living structure works is that you've got to have somebody who's kind of the the house mom or dad of the sober living place that's got over a year or two of sobriety. And if they do, then that sober living community can be built. And we've got to have that kind of flexibility.

But we've got to figure out a way to regulate it in a way that we don't have to recount on the state because a couple of these sober living places have been fraudulent and kind of blown up in our faces. So I'm thinking about those options, SRO's, adaptive reuse, and sober living as options for folks that are market based. They're not necessarily ready to go to shelter. They don't really want anything for free.

They do not want to roll enroll in our system, but they definitely want an option that's affordable. And these are options that are affordable for folks that are trying to change their lifestyle on their own and for some folks that are uh uh kind of in the they're in the middle. They're they're not earning enough to pay for their place, but they still want. So, those are those are the things I'm looking for.

I'm really looking at this adaptive reuse stuff where we can be creative specifically with our parking requirements, specifically with fire suppression and exits. Um, I think those are the big pieces to that. Um, and if we're going to require uh if we're going to require uh entire buildings to re be to be replplumbed, um, I think we can I think we can probably adapt it so that the existing repplumbing happens.

Also, if we're running under three stories, I'm not sure if I'm um I'm okay with as long as we've got fire escapes, I'm okay with in multiple exits, I'm okay with uh changing some of those hardcore requirements on the fire suppression. So, that's the type I and I don't know whether their cities are doing it. We've got to look into it, but that's some of the there are other cities uh repurposing commercial um buildings.

So we could potentially learn from the work that other cities are doing to repurpose um commercial buildings, office buildings that you know a lot of people have learned to work from home. Uh companies are um having their teams work from home. So there's a lot of commercial office space in our community that could be repurposed. So noted. Corin, did you have anything to add? Um, sure. Just briefly, mayor.

Um, on the adaptive reuse note, there's several elements in the code Tucson package that we're currently working on that's going through planning commission review right now that um will help with adaptive reuse specifically. So, we'll be presenting that to mayor and council at a f future study session, I think. Um, so yes, more on that soon, Council Member Cunningham.

And then on the sprinklers and fire suppression and all the building safety components, that's what will be part of the building code amendments for shelter care and micro cabins because right now they are not defined. So it's a they're kind of in this gray zone between commercial or residential use and we're trying to really define what that use is. So we have the appropriate fire safety measures, probably not sprinklers, but what is that right balance of fire safety?

We're looking at that right now with our partners in TFD. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Schubert. And then Vice Mayor Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council, and thank you for the presentation today and for the tremendous amount of work that has happened behind the scenes during the first six months of our housing and homelessness emergency declaration. Um, I want to acknowledge the leadership that it took to get us here. We declared an emergency.

We created a faster pathway for shelter care. We developed standards for safe outdoor sleeping areas. We launched the turn team, which has already brought dozens of vacant city-owned units back online. And our affordable housing fasttrack has helped move more than 1,000 units through the development process. That work really matters. And I'm especially encouraged that the W3 micro cabin project is moving forward. Shout out to the homing project.

Years in the making, but six months into an emergency, I think we also need to be candid about the results. We have one shelter care application and zero applications for safe outdoor sleeping areas and that's simply not meeting the scale or urgency of what we're seeing on our streets. We've done a lot of work to remove regulatory barriers. But if we remove barriers and projects still aren't materializing, then we need to ask a different question.

What will actually get these developments up and online? What additional carrots can we put on the table for land owners willing to make property available? Could that mean financial incentives, infrastructure assistance, liability protections, expedited site preparation, temporary leases of underutilized land or partnerships that make participation genu genuinely attractive rather than simply permissible? And I want us looking aggressively at what other communities are doing.

What are safe sleeping sites, micro shelter villages, safe parking programs, navigation centers, and other forms of interim shelter actually getting people moved off the street? What made these programs possible? And what can we borrow or improve upon, particularly from communities in Arizona? Finally, I think this conversation needs to extend beyond our housing and homelessness departments.

Our economic development community regularly tells us that visible street homelessness and extreme poverty affect business recruitment, tourism, downtown vitality and investment. If that is true, then economic development needs to be a part of this solution. Those partners have relationships with developers, property owners, lenders, philanthropies, employers, and people with access to land, capital, construction expertise, and political influence.

I would like to know how we can bring those resources into this emergency response and actively recruit sites and partners rather than waiting for applications to arrive. Permanent housing remains the goal, but people need somewhere safe to be tonight. 6 months into an emergency declaration. I think the next phase has to be about more than making these projects possible. It has to be about making them happen.

And then I just have a couple of follow-up questions and we can also chat outside of the meeting about this. But two questions. Can you share more about barriers that seem to be impacting community organizations or developers from pursuing these projects at a faster pace? Do we have any insight about whether the pace of interest or potential development might shift sometime soon?

My second question, have we identified any other communities, particularly in Arizona, that seem to be seeing momentum in implementing these types of projects or housing emergency proclamations? Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Schubert. Um, so to answer your question about what barriers exist, I will share an experience from housing and community development that I know several other nonprofits are currently experiencing.

So a there were a lot of shelter beds established during the pandemic thanks to American Rescue Plan resources, thanks to CARES Act resources, thanks to state housing trust fund monies. All of those funding sources are currently coming up on a funding cliff the end of this year.

And so while we did launch the process and we have not yet seen anyone take advantage of the safe outdoor sleeping area, I think the timing where a lot of nonprofits and HCD are all struggling to find resources to maintain what's currently in the pipeline given all of these funding cliffs. So I think that is a real challenge. We're all scrambling. We know that a couple nonprofits recently ended up closing some shelter operations because they didn't have the operations to continue.

So, I think that timing is tricky and something that we'll have to figure out. In terms of one Arizona city that I've that I do look to in terms of their safe outdoor area, in terms of their shelters, Phoenix really has brought a lot of shelter beds on to date. However, they have recognized given the operational cost to continue, they are shifting their focus right now to permanent housing. So, I think we're all trying to figure out how do we navigate this space?

How do we navigate the funding uncertainties and address the needs that we know are out there? The other question I think um council member Schubert Schubert asked was um if there are any other cities in Arizona that have declared a homeless and housing emergency. Yeah, I know um the city of Phoenix was the first city in Arizona and they've had a housing emergency declared for quite a while now. I'm not sure on other cities.

Mayor, I believe the other one we looked into was Flagstaff when we were initiating this process. I don't think their housing emergency and Flagstaff though has some of the same um provisions as ours in terms of some of the zoning flexibility, but Flagstaff is the other. Um I know there's a trip to Albuquerque coming up. I think that's not in Arizona, so that wasn't exactly the question, but I know they also um piloted a lot of safe outdoor sleeping.

So, um good thing that some of the council members are going to Albuquerque pretty soon. Uh Vice Mayor Uh, thank you, mayor. I also wanted to say happy birthday to Corin. Um, thank you for all your work on this. I think some of the questions I had um have already been answered um as far as uh the continued barriers. Um, but I was curious if I know we had talked about before having um someformational sessions for nonprofits and faith groups about what the housing emergency does and doesn't do.

And I don't know, just kind of getting some of these stakeholders, you know, in a space to um think creatively of of what we can do in this moment. And I also read, you know, the latest article on the homing project who are trying to take advantage of this and adding more units. Um, but then neighbors being frustrated that they haven't filled the ones that they have right now.

Um, so just trying to figure out how we can um, kind of leverage uh, the different, I guess, tools or resources that we all have and hoping that that can continue to be part of the the dialogue moving forward. Um but but thank you for the update and uh look forward to these ongoing community uh feedback sessions as far as what the how the code needs to change, you know, in a more permanent sense. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor, uh Council Member Dah, and then Council Member Baras.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you both for the presentation and the work you and your teams are doing, and we're so glad you were born. K. Um, the two things I think about a lot are safe sleeping spaces and sleeping in your car. We deal with people and complaints of people sleeping in their RV or their car. And um, let's talk about that first. You're very vulnerable at that point. You're not quite homeless, but all your possessions probably are in your car.

If you park in the wrong place, it gets towed and you can't get it out of hawk. You've lost your house. Um there are people who live in their vehicles, their trucks, their vans, their RVs um by choice and uh they've found ways of doing it. There's places on public lands not far outside of Tucson where people go camp, they can legally do it for two weeks and then they move.

There's um box stores like Walmart that um that are open 247 and have a bathroom and they like people staying there who will come in and buy stuff, buy food and clothes and such. Um it I've thought that churches would be a place for this and it could be part of a ministry really and I've been surprised that no church in Tucson has done it.

Um our former co colleague Steve Kazichic was trying to promote this amongst churches and got a little ways with some some it was the church leadership that would like it but the congregation was nervous and in other cases the congregation wanted it and the church leadership was but um I think they need to be part of this.

um uh at our ward office and maybe at my colleagues, we get calls all the time, hey, there's someone who's parked an RV in our neighborhood for years and we don't know anything about them and blah blah blah. Um we need to have spaces for people in the car. The fact that we don't in Tucson makes me sad. Um I'm so proud of the work we've done with Star Village, thanks to the mayor and vice mayor um proposing it uh and all of us supporting it. Um and I think it's proven that it can be done.

it can be done and be expensive to run at times and maybe there's cheaper ways. Um but I hope that pilot um lands in someone else's lap. I mean I don't want it just to be a W three thing. We we need one in in everybody's wards and we need a lot of them really. Um so those are my thoughts. Um maybe when you come back in six months or if there's a report I I would hope to hear that hey um the uh community has figured out how to do this um because I think we really need it. Thank you.

Council member council member Barakas we're going to have to move on to the next item. Well I'm glad my colleagues had a lot of the questions that I had too. So um but I do have a couple and happy birthday Cory. So, I know that community engagement's actively underway and I just had a question regarding the meeting that just occurred at the 4th Avenue Coalition Space. What was the feedback? What did you all hear? And then, are you all receiving interest for the September 24th virtual session?

I'll start out and then kick it over to Director Manning. Thank you, Council Member Brahas. Um, so I was there at the fourth of Coalition Space in the afternoon. I heard the morning was quite a bit busier. Um but while I was there and throughout the day from my understanding there was a mix in terms of um overall folks being very interested in learning more and then also folks who did want to provide significant feedback.

I thought planning and development services and the University of Arizona through the DOMAN Institute did an incredible job in terms of laying out a lot of really complex information in really easy to digest ways. Um, I know we've had some requests to put that display up online because I think when you're talking about code and details of the code, it's quite complex. So, I will say feedback while I was there, there were some folks who were really excited about offering places for folks to go.

There were other neighborhoods who really wanted to make sure that concerns would be addressed throughout the process. And then I'll turn it over to you in terms of um tomorrow's session. Thursday's session. Thursday. Yes. Thank you, Mayor Council Member Roas. Um you we had over 50 folks come through that event on a Sunday, which we thought was very good turnout. a lot of different perspectives as director mentioned.

Um I think we're expecting similar turnout for the virtual event this weekend uh this Thursday. And then um the meetings, they're not really meetings, it's more of a kind of uh interactive format in early October. We're actually going to be setting up exhibits in the middle of Parkplace Mall.

really hoping just to catch passerbys and folks who are just there for their weekend, you know, shopping or entertainment um at the mall and really share this information, let folks know that this work is underway and get feedback. So, really hoping to engage with a broad cross-section of the community and a lot more folks um through that avenue. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you both and thank you for uh the wonderful update.

We are going to move on to the next item which was originally intended to be item two. Um time has been set aside for discussion and pre uh presentation on a potential community preference policy to address Tucson's unique history of displacement, neighborhood change, and housing inequities.

And before I just throw it back to the amazing team at Housing Community Development, um I want to um thank Vice Mayor Santa Cruz for really being a willing partner uh and bringing really creative solutions um to write historical wrongs and creating more access to affordable housing.

Um it's one thing to think about these things which many of us have been thinking about for a long time but really doing the leg work and um uh the community engagement that's when we see the amazing team at housing community development and then of course uh the University of Arizona at Kappla. Um, I want to thank especially uh Representative Viegas. Uh, Representative Viegas and I worked in Pima County together. She was a housing um reinvestment uh program manager.

I was the neighborhood reinvestment program coordinator, a junior uh to her and supervisor Richard Elias who at the time also worked as a manager for housing reinvestment. I learned everything there is to know about affordable housing from Representative Viegas and Supervisor Elas.

um huge advocates and not only that, they shared the history of the city of Tucson and um really uh the impacts of urban renewal and freeway construction uh and public housing redevelopment and other government sponsored actions that displace generations of Tucson families. At a time the late supervisor Richard Ilas was a historian. That's what he studied at the UVA and that's what he loved and he particularly loved the history of the city of Tucson.

And at the time when previous councils and mayors had perpetrated displace horrific displacement of very specific um Mexican-American families, Chinese-American families, African-American families, indigenous families in and around the downtown area and an area, by the way, that they had lived for generations and that they had operated businesses and created thriving, vibrant neighborhoods.

Um, previous mayors and councils um prioritized building a new freeway and a convention center over people. And our conversations throughout the year always were, how can we write the historic wrongs? And as mayor, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I first ran for council in 2007. And I quickly realized the um that many families, especially in the southside and the west side, those displays from downtown, uh really had um a lot of doubt and they didn't trust the city of Tucson.

And in knowing our history is so wonderful to not commit what that past decisions were right by our mayor and council. It was the displacement. It was racist covenants. um redlinining from banks that really moved uh marginalized families uh from opportunity, displaced from their homes and moved from opportunity. And the areas that we now see 86 87% population of Mexican-American indigenous families live in were the only areas that these families were able to move in.

And these areas still to this day, many of them don't have appropriate parks, are underparked, um don't have sidewalks, don't have the quality of life that every family deserves to have in the city of Tucson. that disruption, shattered families, and we still have elders to this day that remember, and they still uh have that trauma, and they still distrust Tucson. TCE was happening um during, you know, the 80s. Lots of rights we need to wrong.

Um so that's what I've been working on as a council member in my 12 years in service. uh on the council, in my relationship with Representative Beie um and in her encouraging myself and many of you and the vice mayor to really think about affordable housing as a stabilizing force for families. These are the things that we tap into to bring these items to the table. And we talked about, you know, the community preference policy.

In other words, um to be able to give, uh priority for families that had been displaced because of the decisions that previous mayors and councils had made. Um my dear friend Tucson historian Lydiao wrote a book la a vital book uh highlighting the long-term impact of urban renewal and how those decisions shape local politics and urban development. Back when I was a council member at that time I told Livia that Tucson has a long history and we must remember it.

Um, so we never repeat those mistakes. Um, I'm happy that Vice Mayor, Representative Viegas, myself, and now the, as I said, the amazing team of housing community development as well as the University of Arizona Capstone students, we're able to really dig deep and do thorough research and exploration um to the work that is being presented today in the community preference policy. So, my thanks. Um, it's a long way to say this has long this is a long time in coming.

And so, I know Vice Mayor, you had some thoughts. I don't know if you wanted to include those thoughts right now to open up the item or if you wanted to go through the presentation first. Uh, mayor, I'll just I'll just go now. um that way we can get through the presentation and um Rep. Viegas's remarks and then I want to hear from my colleagues.

Um I I do um share the same relationship um with Representative Viegas as a a a mentor when it comes to talking about affordable housing and our historic barios. and as you walk this through, you know, the the history um in within the city of Tucson and a lot of that that grief and that pain that still exists.

So, I really um want to thank, you know, this this collaboration between our offices, um between our housing and community development and the University of Arizona capstone team, you know, for the work that's been done to date. Um I again want to thank Representative Betty Viegas who we've been having these conversations and we were talking about them as a right to return policy early on and that those um conversations have evolved now to uh this preference policy.

Um and I just thank you representative for again your your mentorship and the ways that um you challenge us to to work intentionally um with uh community at the center. So, uh, we asked for for this discussion because, um, we we talk about building housing affordability. We need to center the communities that have directly been impacted by government decisions as the mayor has outlined. Um, right now, Tucson is facing a different set of pressures. We have housing costs that continue to rise.

My office hears from constituents every day about how difficult it is to pay rent or utility bills. Uh this is why um we've been championing, you know, this housing affordability and supporting uh developing uh affordable housing on city- owned land um to to meet this much needed housing need. So I am proud of the five affordable housing projects we have in the planning stages in Ward One.

Um our neighbors support housing but also feel the pressure of change and the pain from the past displacements. Um there are barios in the city where families and communities have lived for generations. Uh these are places with deep cultural ties, family networks, businesses, schools, churches, and a sense of identity and belonging that cannot simply be recreated somewhere else. And uh you know, we recognize that building affordable housing, you know, does bring change into the neighborhood.

Um, and because we're bringing significant investment to some of our historic barios, and we want those investments to not only create an opportunity for more stable housing, um, just for for long-term, uh, better outcomes. And so the the question is very much connected to the work we're doing through the prosperity initiative. Um, that prosperity initiative asks us to recognize that poverty and economic instability are shaped by systems and policy choices.

And if policy choices helped create barriers in the past, then our policies today have to be intentional about removing barriers and expanding uh better better opportunities, better outcomes. So housing is a critical part of that housing stability. Um and we know that that is the cornerstone of addressing generational poverty in our community.

The community preference policy discussion allows us to look at another piece of that of this question of whether there are ways to help residents who have experienced displacement or who are at heightened risk of displacement maintain a connection to the communities that they've called home. So, we're beginning the conversation in a space to learn as we explore how to do better for our communities um than the policies that were instituted in the past.

So, we need to understand what other communities have done, what lessons their experiences offer, what would actually be appropriate and workable in Tucson, and we also need to take seriously the legal and fair housing considerations, uh the potential impacts of any policy and the practical realities of implementation. But just as importantly, we need to hear from uh tuonins tones who have lived this history.

Um because ultimately, this is about more than a preference in affordable housing application. It's about whether we can build a a Tucson where families have again access to not only opportunities but better outcomes and where housing is stable and affordable and where people have a real place in the communities um that they call home. Um so with that I want to kick this off to anka and the students who have done amazing um work in in getting us to this place. Thank you vice mayor.

Hello again, honorable mayor, members of the council. First, I want to thank the mayor and vice mayor for bringing this item forward for a study session discussion today. When I think about the um possibility of a preference policy for Tucson, I think about the countless conversations I've had and feedback I've received doing outreach for many, many city projects. I've been for the past 20 years in Tucson doing community engagement and talking to Tonins.

Regardless of the project, there are often similar themes that emerge when doing outreach. And I think the mayor and vice vice mayor summarize this really well. We hear about the anger from decisions that were made long ago and so understandably generations of tonins still hold some of that anger. We also hear a lot of the times from neighbors who are concerned that those projects, the projects that are being proposed are not going to benefit them.

In addition, as the city's housing director, I think it's important I recognize the role the housing industry has played in perpetuating inequities across the US. They the mayor mentioned the tools such as redlinining, racist covenants, other discriminary practices that have had significant impacts that we still see today. I recognize a preference policy is not going to change or make up for the past. But I do think if it's done well, we can acknowledge the past.

We can support some of the families who were harmed and we can help prevent future displacements. For those reasons, should mayor and council choose to move this forward, HCD is ready to support the implementation of this policy. Preference policies and right to return policies are something I've been following across the country. I've seen it work well in certain cities and organizations. And as the vice mayor mentioned, I've also seen some that are caught in legal challenges.

So it's really important we do our homework and provide information for the policy to be successful. So that is why housing and community development submitted this idea to the college of architecture planning and landscape architecture at the University of Arizona for consideration of a capstone project. Fortunately, a group of four at the time UA master students in the planning program selected this project to work on. You'll hear from two of those students in a moment.

I want to also express a thank you to the student group for their hard work, dedication, and thoughtful recommendations. I'd also like to thank the HCD staff who work closely with the students and develop the draft community engagement plan that is part of your materials today and especially Lena Prell who led that initiative working with the students and the engagement plan.

If mayor and council decide to move this forward, HCD is ready to coordinate community outreach to ensure the policy is rooted in and created with tonins who have suffered prior harms or or who are at risk of displacement. I want to also give a quick thank you to Representative Betty Vieas. Representative Vieas has been talking to me for years about a right to return policy. So for me, it's really important we do it right and we get her input as we go.

And then last but not least, I do want to thank Rory Lusk and Lupe Garcia. In your materials, there's a preliminary analysis from the city attorney's office and in particular Lupe Garcia. Um I mentioned that some preference policies have been subject to lawsuits. And so if this moves forward, it's really important that we work closely with our attorneys to make sure this is something that is defensible and results in the positive outcomes we intend.

And so I'll turn it over to Roy to briefly remark on the leg legal aspects of this item. Uh honorable mayor and council, um I I'll be brief. I I I think we've we've done a a pretty thorough job of of looking at what the legal ramifications of a community preference policy are. I do also want to thank my my colleague in the city attorney's office, Lupe Garcia, who's also here if we have questions. U but uh to to be clear, uh we're talking about two different things, right?

We're so so we're talking about for right now a a policy for LITC projects within the city. Um there there's additional requirements for when we're talking about public housing and and housing choice voucher uh uh uh projects, but for those LITC projects, we're we're really concerned about basically one thing. um and that is what the impact of the policy is.

And and so our office has has reviewed the policies presented and we believe that as long as uh HCD is careful and considerate of uh any disperate impacts by uh conducting a disparate impact uh analysis uh prior to the implementation of the policy as well as ongoing then I think we're comfortable with this this pro this preference policy. Thanks Roy. One clarification at this time we're talking about city city developed LITC projects.

Um but at this time I'd like to introduce Amanda Grant who I'm really grateful is now an HCD employee but she was part of the UVA Capstone team along with her classmate April Putney another of the students who worked on this project. Honorable mayor and members of the council, uh we appreciate the opportunity to speak today and share our master's capstone project titled toward a community preference policy in Tucson.

Uh in addition to our presentation, we have also brought policy briefs uh developed with all of you in mind. Um so I wanted to offer these to you to peruse if you wish. Uh a lot of our maps provide in our uh are in the policy briefs um that can supplement some of the things that we are going to speak on today. So I'm Amanda Grant and this is April Putney. Um today we're providing an a our a bridge recommendations based on our full report which appears in today's supporting documents.

Absent today are the two other members of our team Joy Kulo and Enya Seed. And although they're not here um I wanted to take time to recognize their invaluable contributions to this project. So, the purpose of this slide is to underline just how much work went into our project. I'm mostly going to skip it for time, but I wanted to highlight our communications with fair housing lawyers and our national scan of existing community preference policies.

We reviewed just about every policy that we found and we secured interviews with impleers from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Austin. So, what is a community preference policy? I'm going to begin with an illustration. Uh, let's call this illustration Lisa. So, Lisa is a Tonin who is increasingly worried about having to move out of her neighborhood to find an apartment that she can afford.

Her rent is raised every time she renews her lease, and it takes up an increasing percentage of her budget, leaving less money for groceries, utilities, and other expenses. The city is building a new affordable housing building in Lisa's neighborhood. She's excited to learn that she meets the income requirements. She contacts the project and is added to the wait list for a unit in the building, but the demand is prohibitively high.

Lisa is deeply frustrated that this opportunity to stabilize her living situation is again out of reach. This time because the demand for units at the building is too high. Uh this is especially disappointed disappointing because it is not the first time her family has experienced residential displacement. Applying a community preference policy or CPP to the building in Lisa's neighborhood could make all the difference.

A CPP is an allocation tool that prioritizes affordable units for residents who meet specific criteria. So if a person meets this criteria, they are moved to the front of the weight list. Cities can use these criteria called preferences in our presentation to target residents who have histories of displacement. Preferences can also be projected forward to try and catch residents before they are displaced.

At the start of our work, HCD requested that our team propose a CPP that does both of these things. That the preferences should redress unjust community displacements in Tucson's past and prevent further harms from continued displacement. The benefits of adopting a CPP don't necessarily stop with housing. The public participation for a CPP creates an opportunity to build trust with community members who have been deeply hurt by and are therefore critical of past city action.

In a reading about Portland's CPP, the author noted how their policy's greatest greatest success wasn't necessarily in the housing it provided, but in the way the city was able to work in good faith with some of its loudest critics and begin a new era of buyin and collaboration with those communities. The importance of thorough and thoughtful public engagement processes was a discussion our team had often.

In so many ways, the success of the CPP hinges on the integrity of its community input process. It is paramount. Otherwise, uh this opportunity to build bridges is squandered and implementers come off as disingenuous and self-serving. Okay, let's get to the good stuff. Uh our CPP consists of four preferences. Preference one addresses historic and historic displacement and exclusion. Thank you, Amanda.

So, we begin with our first preference category, arguably the most important one for the repairerative goal, especially considering the historical context provided by honorable mayor and council members. Uh, it is already widely acknowledged that widespread housing displacement was the result of government actions in Tucson's history. These actions displaced families, entire communities even, and wiped out whole neighborhoods.

Preference one provides the city of Tucson an opportunity to begin attempts at repairing harm from housing displacement due to four defined historical events, urban renewal slum clearance for the TCC construction, construction of I 10, public housing demolition, and exclusion from areas in Tucson due to racist covenants. In preference one, applicants can submit documentation to the city of Tucson to show that they or their family were displaced in one of these events.

For Lisa, this means that if her parents or grandparents were displaced, she can earn a preference points in city-owned affordable housing. The city can never allow Lisa or her family to return to neighborhoods that no longer exist, and it can never undo the harm that came from destroying communities. However, it can begin a conversation with an attempt to repair harm by encouraging those affected and their descendants to find stability today through access to affordable housing.

Before you, you can see a map. The oval contains the three sites where government action displaced communities historically in Tucson. And then the pink polygons you see represent areas with recorded racially restrictive covenants where um black and brown people were prevented from living. Preference two. Preference two addresses income qualifying tonins in high risk displacement areas.

In this preference, we try to identify folks who are currently in danger of displacement and prioritize them for affordable units. in this uh in affordable housing developed by the city's nonprofit. So, how do we identify these residents? Diagnosing areas in town as about to gentrify is a challenge. Researchers generally agree on an equation for this prediction. It appears on the slide. Social vulnerability plus market change equals displacement risk.

We decided to use the Tucson Equity Priority Index, also known as TEPY, to identify areas of high social vulnerability. We modeled our market change indicator off of the Puma County Housing Assessment using federal appraisal data to highlight neighborhoods that are seeing a lot of new construction and where homes are selling at prices above their appraised value. We call areas where social vulnerability and market change over overlapped high-risk displacement areas.

We built set indicators into a shape file and mapped them. We call this tool Dr. I, which stands for displacement risk index. We included the shape file as a deliverable within our project. These are the census tracks that Dr. I currently identifies as high-risisk displacement areas. So, if Lisa lived in any of these census tracks, she would qualify for this preference. Preference three is for neighborhood residents who live in close proximity to City of Tucson affordable housing projects.

Uh important. Oh, pardon me. So, this is for neighbors like Lisa who live close enough to the site of an affordable housing project. Uh so, for people like Lisa, this means that if she lived nearby, she could earn a preference point and help her chances to remain within her current neighborhood. This preference addresses the goal to prevent harm from continued housing displacement.

Many Tucson residents like Lisa fear that new development in their area signals gentrification and will lead to rising rents. As private investment often follows public investment, this is a valid concern, but one which can be helped by creating a preference for neighborhood residents who income qualify. Uh, importantly, the neighborhood res resident preference will not apply when an affordable housing project is within an area of low or low to moderate social vulnerability.

According to the existing Tucson Equity Priority Index, because these areas are expected to have higher opportunities for neighborhood residents as it stands, close proximity will need to be defined based on legal analysis and public engagement. We suggest beginning with a radius of 1 to three miles from project sites. The map that you see outlines our suggestion. The epicenter of each circle represents an existing or future city of Tucson affordable housing project.

The smaller circle is one mile radius and the larger dotted circle is 3 miles radius from the site. And the base map that you see uses colors from the Tucson Equity Priority Index to represent social vulnerability. Moving on to preference four. This is for personal housing displacement events. So this uh preference category aims to repair harm to households who experienced housing displacement due to mortgage foreclosure, eviction or a disaster like fire or flood within the last 10 years.

While historical housing displacement happened most often due to government action, contemporary displacement typically occurs due to private action or disasters often enabled by existing laws and regulations. Today's housing displacement can be difficult to detect because le people like Lisa are forced to leave their neighborhoods due to rising costs. This type of displacement leaves no trace, just an absence.

So, preference 4 aims to capture the most dire results of rising costs, foreclosure and eviction. These, along with disasters, represent verifiable instances of contemporary displacement that merit repair when people are displaced due to rising costs. Applicants can provide documentation of their displacement to the city to earn preference point.

For Lisa, this means that though her chances to find new housing have been hurt by a previous foreclosure, eviction, or disaster, she can earn some preference to find housing stability moving forward and recover from adverse events that can be considerably unjust. The four preferences of the CPP come together to create a scorecard. Affordable housing applicants receive points for each preference that they qualify for. Not all preferences are weighted the same.

The point values we've assigned correspond with how difficult it is to access necessary records and how widely used we believe the preference will be. Applicants with the highest scores will be first in line for the units. Our policy recommends that 40% of affordable units go to CPP recipients. Once that 40% are full, the remaining applicants are returned to the general pool and are awarded housing using the existing process.

If there are not enough CP CPP recipients to fill the 40%, those units are given to folks from the general pool. No units should set empty. As we close this presentation, I wanted to be clear that the CPP is not a silver bullet. It is a single tool that should appear in a larger suite of policies to alleviate residential displacement. A goal that is lock step with plan Tucson, the housing affordability strategy for Tucson and the people, communities, and homes investment plan.

It's a step in the right direction. Uh this concludes our presentation. Uh thank you again for the opportunity to speak today and uh happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much. That was an amazing presentation. Thank you so much to the Kappa students for their incredible resour research and bringing this to us today. And uh what's our next steps before we start with questions? Yeah, thanks mayor. Thank you again to the students.

I would say one reminder is I think the students work gives us a great starting point but that housing and community development does recommend it be a starting point. We do community engagement. We do listening sessions. We co-design the policy with the community. Um, I do believe we wanted Representative Betty Vieas to give a brief uh summary of her analysis. Thank Thank you. Thank you, Ann. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for allowing me to be here. This is a really special almost emotional.

I think I first met an when I was working on a paper on gentrification 10 years ago, 11 years ago. And um it's something that during my entire career of housing and working in community, it's it's uh something that I've always uh worked on because people have always been, you know, come to me and have been affected. My own family has been affected. If you're a native of Tucson um and you're Mexican-American or person of color, you've experienced displacement.

And when we first started working on the on gentrification, we realized I realized early on that you can't stop people from moving where they want to live, but you can stop displacement. And that was my main purpose. How can we stop displacement? How can we stop? How can we protect our legacy businesses and our legacy residents that deserve to stay whether there's reinvestment going on?

Um and as an and I I don't someone just said that um public investment uh comes first and then private investment and when the private investment comes is in is when you start seeing gentrification. So we need to be able to stop it at the root, right? When the public investment is coming in, then we that's when we should really start looking at some of these uh ways of stopping the displacement. Um so I'm I just want to congratulate and thank uh the Capstone students.

You did an amazing job to see something like this come forward. And thank you, mayor, and and and uh vice mayor, for for listening and just learning and understanding how important it is for some of us that have lived here for a long time and have experienced um these inequities that happened to us and our families a long time ago. And if we can do something to correct that now, I think it would say a lot, not just for you as a city and council, but us as a city and community.

And um I know I just want to say one thing about the LITC. I know we're looking at only um uh properties that that the city will be uh responsible for and building, but I know that with LITC projects, as long as it's in the QAP um and it's designated in the QAP, um it should be okay for others to use it as well.

I believe that there are ways to expand this to even more than just um city housing and I look forward to the many conversations that will happen um during this um this time of of uh figuring it all out and I have no doubt that this will happen um sooner rather than later. So, thank you very much for allowing this this opportunity.

Thank you, Representative Beie, and thank you so much for being so involved, doing so much in terms of affordable housing, and it's wonderful to have you as a partner at the state legislature. Thank you. H direction. We are ready. If anyone has questions or comments, we're happy to take those. Uh, do you need a motion to proceed with community engagement? We would like direction. Yes, mayor. Righty. Can we start with that and get and then go into questions, vice mayor? Okay.

So, I move to direct housing and community development staff to conduct community engagement on a community preference policy following the engagement plan included in today's material and return to Maring Council in spring of 2027 with the finalized policy recommendation informed by community feedback and uh desperate impact analysis. There is a motion. May I have a second, please? I second that motion. There's a motion and a second. And now it's time for discussion.

And I did see council member Barahas with her hand up. So, go ahead, council member. All right. Thank you, mayor. Well, thank you, HCD, and thank you to Kappla for this project. I really enjoyed reading it and seeing it. Um, and of course, thank you to Mayor and Vice Mayor for your involvement and our state representative, Betty Viegas. I know we've had lots of conversations around this topic. Um I you know I'm I'm really excited for this community engagement aspect.

So please include our office every step of the way especially as you shared mayor. You know, the harms of past city actions have a have a impact on our southside and our westside neighborhoods where people who were displaced by Tucson Convention Center, public housing demolitions and the freeway largely we relocated to both Ward 1 and W 5.

So, additionally, when we meet, I would like to discuss the community preference policy workg group, including potentially additional neighborhoods and community organizations beyond those listed in the draft engagement plan. I'm also interested in discussing ideas for participatory engagement facilitators. And I have a couple one question, two questions. So I notice on preference three on the map largely city of South Tucson is you know in that um that that buffer.

How are we as a city actively engaging with that jurisdiction especially being that that city is 75% renters. So that city is um high alert for for displacement and gentrification. I'll let you answer that one and then I'll go into my last question. Yeah. Thank you, Council Member Brahas. So, I will say we can do more engagement with the city of South Tucson. This right now we are looking at this as for city projects which are currently only in the city jurisdiction.

That said, I am really grateful that the city of South Tucson leadership has participated and been a part of the South Tent discussions for a future affordable housing project that is right on their border. And so given that, I do think we can do more engagement with the city of South Tucson related to this policy. Okay. Thank you. And then lastly, this is something that I know I've mentioned to you all and and actually um st many viegas around family estate planning.

I would like to include some type of component on that in this engagement efforts because a lot of our legacy families are aging and I feel like there hasn't been enough discussions of what's going to happen to that property when they when they're no longer here.

And um looking at the map, a lot of those neighborhoods do have those legacy families and legacy businesses too, which I would like to see if we could include that as well, cuz when gentrification happens around our business corridors, you know, that's kind of the first sign of of displacement and gentrification. So, thank you. Any others, questions, comments? All righty. That's wonderful. Um then there's a motion on the floor. There's a second.

All those in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Thank you all so much. We really appreciate you and your knowledge and looking forward to the continued discussion. Thank you, Representative Viegas, for coming to and speaking with us. Much gracias. All righty. Uh let's see. We are going on to item nine. Let's go see what item nine holds. Yes. All righty. Item nine.

Time has been set aside to provide an update on the regional opioid response and how the city and Puma County are addressing it in Tucson. Um, Mr. Manager, I don't know if you have our team here. Thank you, honorable mayor and members of the council. I believe the team is rapidly approaching us. Um we do have uh the fabulous Lee Hopkins here to um kick things off with us. And then we do have Dr.

Jacobs from the University of Arizona also present to to give you an update on the sobering alternative for recovery center or safer center. So with that, I would like to turn it directly over uh to Lee. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for having us um honorable mayor and members of the council. So I will be brief with my remarks today because I want to leave time for our guests. Um starting off just an overview of some of the points in the memo.

Uh the regional opioid settlement advisory committee has some updates. In July, we received an additional $4 million into the pool of opioid settlement funds, bringing us to a total of 35.5 million received historically. Um, also, uh, in July, at the end of July, ROSAC members approved, um, just under $330,000 contract to fund four months of bridge funding for our Desert Cove um, recovery and re-entry program that the city will be doing with CBI.

And the health department uh with ROSAC's approval also is currently drafting a request for proposal for annual funding for a low barrier recovery and re-entry um addiction treatment program that will be a competitive bid. So, we anticipate that RFP coming out in the next few months and though that project would begin likely around February of 2027 for renewable annual funding.

Um, also the 2026 funded projects that are the grantees of opioid settlement dollars concluded their second quarter of work. I'm happy to share specific details. Um, but in the in the interest of time, I'll just share that whereas quarter one was a lot of planning, quarter two was full implementation. So, we've seen a lot of progress in the projects, the number of youth that have been um reached through the prevention efforts has doubled up to 500 youth.

We also see certain partners working together to create referral processes from one of their programs into the next so that there's a continuum of care being funded by the opioid settlement dollars. Um and all grantees currently because of the nature of year one of funding are under spent. So we have a little buffer of funding. Um, we do anticipate that in year two they will be spending their full budgets, but for this year we did have a little cost savings as well.

Currently, the ROSAC members are doing site visits with all of the grantees. Um, I'm going to one tomorrow at LPKNC and then next week at the Haven and Justice Services, but we're visiting all of them as a group. And so I will be seeking feedback um within the next month from you all about approving year 2 contracts. We'll be meeting on October 21st to vote on whether to continue all of those contracts into year two.

Um and then also specifically for um Community Bridges Incorporated um sobering alternative for recovery safer center. They're on a slightly different track as far as timeline. Um they did just do a six-month evaluation for the initial pilot phase and Dr. Jacobs um and Mr. uh Laurvaser Laaser, sorry I said it with the German pronunciation um are here to talk in more detail about that.

Uh, last but not least, related to our regional work, the health department is um in the process of developing a regional behavioral health plan. That's something they're going to contract out. Um, and that will be they'll incorporate the findings of recent needs assessments, action plans, the work that we've all been doing already. That's all going to be incorporated, but they'll be adding additional scope.

And that plan will be kind of an up-to-date roadmap for us as a community, but also for ROSAC about how to do investment uh decisions. Uh so the next ROSAC meetings will be October 21st and November 18th so that they're on your radar and those can all be uh the information about those can be accessed in the at the website that's in the memo. Um, just talking about the wonderful folks I get to work with day in and day out on the community safety health and wellness team.

We've been approved for an additional year of state opioid response funding which comes through our department of health access. And we also received positive feedback recently from both access at the state level but also SAMA um the um substance abuse and mental health services agency at the federal level for the work that we're doing um because of how we really meet people literally where they're at. Quick update also on TPD's work related to the opioid epidemic.

Uh the most recent August um safe city deployment was uh with ODS Operations Division South along the 22nd Street corridor between I 10 and Kino. Um I invite you to uh ask any questions you have about the data. I will um defer to my colleagues at TPD.

If you do have questions about uh the annual data as well as the August data, um also the TPD um core unit recently had their second training uh for outreach workers uh on f Friday, September 4th, and there were more than a hundred participants from nonprofit organizations and city and county agencies.

and they cover issues that are important for folks working in the field related to mental health and addiction, related to safety, related to legal restrictions on what we should and should not do as far as encampments um and um overdose prevention education. And with that, I am honored to pass the floor to Dr. Jacobs, who is from the RISE team at University of Arizona. They have been doing evaluation of the safer center throughout the initial six-month pilot phase.

And then also seated is Ryan Lauderwaser who is the director of uh crisis services at CBI and oversees the safer project. Good afternoon. I'm here as the lead of the UOVA's RISE evaluation team and we are subcontracted by CBI as the external evaluator for the safer center. Today I want to share highlevel implementation progress and early findings from the safer cent's first six months from our most recent evaluation report which I think you guys got yesterday.

As you know in January the safer center opened as Puma County's first 96-hour sobering center. While it's safer, up to 15 patients at a time, including those with pets, can receive medical monitoring, clinical assessment, medications for opioid use disorder, group counseling, peer support, and/or discharge referrals to continuing care. In terms of who safer is serving, I'm going to start with a fair amount of statistics and data, but then zoom out to some of the bigger picture findings.

So during its first six months, 322 unique patients were admitted to SAFER, averaging 58 patients per month. Most patients were white, non-Hispanic or Latino, male, and between 25 and 54 years old. 81% had title 19 insurance. And most patients arrived at SAFER with extensive social needs. 86% reported having no or unstable housing. 99% were unemployed and 59% reported food insecurity.

Just over half of patients received an opioid use disorder diagnosis through clinical assessment and fentinyl was the dominant substance identified through drug screening. The majority of patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder had a co-occurring substance use disorder as well of which amphetamines was the most common. Buprenorphine, a medication to treat opioid use disorder, had a 42% initiation rate and 47% continuation rate among opioid positive patients.

Our team looked at factors affecting patient length of stay as a way to consider the extent to which patients utilized the available safer services. Older white male patients were more likely to stay longer at safer. In consulting with safer leadership, they suggested this could mean a greater readiness among the subgroup to participate in sobering care or potentially having fewer post-discharge natural supports to return to at this later stage in their substance use journey.

In the analysis, we also saw that patients who had a high school diploma or GED stayed longer at safer than those who didn't. This most likely reflects broader societal social determinance of health that come with more education like more access to income, more familiarity with navigating health and social systems, or fewer competing pressures pulling someone to leave safer early. Patients who'd gone without food or without clothing in the last year tended to leave safer sooner as well.

This was a weak but consistent pattern. Someone who's going without basic necessities may feel more pressure to get back out and handle what's urgent in their life rather than complete their safer stay. None of these associations are causal findings in our early evolving data set. But the through line is that how long someone stays is perhaps shaped more by their broader life circumstances than by anything clinical during their stay.

Which is the reason our report recommends even more tailored discharge planning built around each person's social needs. Among the 53% of patients who were surveyed about their stay at Safer, patient satisfaction was high. patients described feeling cared for, fed, and safe. It's important to note that 47% of patients did not complete a satisfaction survey during the reporting period in part because the survey wasn't introduced until March and so we don't know their feedback on their stay.

This is gap occurred for a variety of reasons that CBI is working to address. Now, I'd like to turn our attention to the 18 pets that came to Safer with their owners, 17 dogs and one cat. We know the unique importance of pet care at Safer. Early challenges in providing such care detailed in our first report from April have seen improvements related to pet friendly facility operations, policies, and partnerships to better serve these guests and their owners.

One of the most important questions that has been asked about the value of safer is whether it decreases burden on our law enforcement system. What we know from the data is that criminal justice referrals made up just 2% of documented safer intakes during the January through June period. But that number almost certainly understates what's really happening. Most patients, 73% actually arrived to CBI's safer unit after being internally transferred from CBI's 23-hour crisis unit.

This creates some challenges in the data as to the source of these patients original referral to safer, even if they first went to the 23-hour crisis unit. We sat down with TPD's core unit in June and they told us that their own count of safer referrals ran higher than CBI's data. Officers and outreach teams often work together, so it's not always clear whose referral to safer it technically was. Or officers may drop a patient off at the door, so their referral may not get logged.

And CBI also offers officers a survey to complete at the time of drop off to indicate whether the patient would otherwise have been taken to jail, but only three surveys were completed during the six months. So we don't yet have a reliable number for how many jail bookings SAFER is preventing. We know officers value it.

We know it is functioning as a diversion point in practice, but fixing the tracking systems to understand the scale of that impact is needed and is a key recommendation in the report. It's also something that CBI and TPD are actively working on at this time. Now, I'd like to turn to SAFER's discharge and referral findings. 70% of patients had a complete discharge from SAFER and the majority received a treatment referral to CBI's other clinics.

One of the reports recommendations is for more discharge options in addition to CBI's internal network, particularly for patients with pets or those without housing. CBI has formed a communications working group to continue to explore such partnerships. Over the six months, referrals to other medical and behavioral health partners, especially Safer subcontractor Kodak grew steadily, and Kodak's patient navigator at SAFER, became a bridge for 19 people to continue their care at Kodak.

Of those, the four who started medication for opioid use disorder or at Kodak were still doing so at 30 days after their safer stay. These are small numbers and we hope to build upon them in the coming months. That said, very few treatment programs or shelters in this region accept pets. So, a stay at Safer can still end without a pet friendly treatment or shelter bed for them to go next.

Should there be an additional pet friendly treatment option in the future, it would help fill this gap and potentially provide another avenue for us to evaluate longerterm outcomes among safer patients who are discharged to such a facility. I've mentioned several data gaps that inhibit our ability to provide complete findings around the safer center, including cleaner data on law enforcement referrals. Again, something CBI is working on.

Several other key data metrics are also in need of further reporting enhancements. Triage time was documented for only 11% of patients and required nlloxxone education and distribution had zero patients recorded as receiving it, which is very likely a documentation gap. ML initiation and continuation documentation would benefit from further clarity. And for 18% of all discharges, patients who did not have a verified treatment referral had friends or family listed as their treatment referral.

CBI is working to address these issues. In summary, since January, SAFER has moved from an accelerated launch to a program with a cleaner operational rhythm and better documentation processes. Safer is still resolving data collection and reporting barriers, as well as filling remaining staffing positions, including a dedicated SAFER program manager.

This next year will allow SAFER to continue building towards its key goals and address identified gaps while remaining an important low barrier resource for substance use care in the county. I'm also hopeful that we'll be able to demonstrate several key outcomes particularly related to deflections and their longerterm outcomes for patients after they leave safer.

I'm happy to answer evaluation questions, but more importantly, Ryan Lauderer from CBI is here to answer your implementation and operational questions. Hi, I'm Ryan Lawaser from CBI, the director of crisis services. There are a few things I just like to comment on that Dr. Jacobs touched upon. One is the TPD referral. So, one of the things we know about SAFER is that we want to see if it is a diversion program, something we can do. We have started a safer committee meeting that meets monthly.

I know Lieutenant Jimenez, who's right behind me, was great to see him walk in the door. He's been a part of that meeting. We're working on those relationships. Captain Pickroll has also been there as well. I'm really working on the surveys, making sure that we're make um touching base with TPD when they show up to the safer program, getting them those surveys and building those relationships.

We have a meeting set up with the data analytics team with TPD as well with from CBI so that we can continue to partner on data collection and make sure that there's alignment in the data that we have and the data that TPD has. So we really are trying to be good stewards of those funds and making sure that we're doing things we need to to report out. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Dr. um Jacobs.

This is such valuable information and and I just want to thank um CBI and um the regional opioid settlement committee um and as well as Pima County uh and Puma County Health Department for their incredible work in following on making sure that this particular pilot program safer um was moving and that we were collecting the data necessary And I just want to emphasize how safer is a pilot program and now that we have another year of funding thanks to uh ROSAC committee um we can move it from a pilot into a much more um hopefully permanent um program that we can do in partnership between the city of Tucson Pima County and uh ROSAC as well as CBI and hopefully the UVA continues to you know guide the work that we're doing in this in this program.

Uh, safer is a dream that our team here in the city of Tucson, both community safety, health and wellness, as well as mayor and council really pushed on um because one of the things that we have learned in um our direct dealing with unsheltered homelessness is that it is one very complex and many people um and it does they don't have to be necessarily unsheltered but many people that are unsheltered had substance use disorders as well as um mental behavioral health issues.

And so we had very clear gaps in services and funding uh for the necessary treatment to offer the resources necessary for um for um residents in Tucson whether they were unsheltered or not. So creating safer was something that I was very adamantly um supportive about. And so when we saw ROSAC um investing in it, we were really really happy. I also want to thank uh CBI's coordination with TPD.

I know for a fact that uh via our safe city deployments, we work with Pima County Health Department as well as uh nonprofit organizations and TPD um to be able to connect individuals that need it to safer. I'm not sure if the survey is a long one. Uh, but I think we need to figure out how we um make sure that those numbers reflect each other, the numbers that TPD has as well as CBI has.

and really appreciate the further recommendations by RISE and I'm looking forward to um making sure that we continue in uh fig figuring out uh the kinks in the process so that um we all have this data information this data that's valuable. Um because from this right from the work that we have all been doing together came the realization that from safer right from the what is it the 96 hours that individuals have that there was a disconnect from those 96 hours to a longer term recovery facility.

I know that on our end uh we're in partnership as as well with CBI, but I know that there is a connection from Safer to our Desert Cove um recovery center uh which we are advocating for funding and we receive that funding for the next four months uh from the regional opioid settlement committee. But I really want to make sure that we we look at those numbers and that we continue exploring what are the gaps to make sure that we are not losing people through the cracks, right?

Um people leave safer, where do they go and what are the percentages and what's the data um to make sure that those individuals are headed somewhere and not the street anymore. So, with that, I just wanted to make sure that I open it up for questions and comments from our colleagues. Council member Cunningham, a few things. Um, can we get a copy of the study?

I mean, you had a lot of numbers and there were there it's probably really valuable data, but I've got to be able to read it myself in order to get it. So, that's my first piece. It probably would have been helpful to have in the materials so we could at least prep some of the the questions I have.

Um, like part of my some of my questions you might have covered, but it was hard to follow everything like the total number of referrals to safer, how many people stayed the full 96 hours, how many direct um referrals went to detox or to went to further detox or went to ultimate ultimately went to treatment. I'm pretty concerned that we only have 37 referrals and safe uh in safe deployments over eight months that went to shelter. And that doesn't mean that what we're doing isn't wrong.

What it means is is that we've got a lot of people refusing services. That's pretty obvious. They're kind of saying, "Hey, I want to come with you. Let's talk about it." And then a couple hours later, they they might change their mind. Or we have people who we engage on the street, we have a really good positive discussion with them and then they say, you know, that's great and I'll be back tomorrow and that's what I think's happening on the field in the field.

I mean, that's my suspicion, but I really would like to have that data. It's okay that folks aren't ready. We can't just We just got to be realistic about it. All right, that plan may not be working perfectly. And so it's okay if folks aren't ready, but we want to be sure they're safe. We want to be sure that they uh have emergency services available to them, and we want to be sure that um they aren't disrupting the quality of life of their neighbors. And that's the bottom line.

And it's that's not an easy balance. It's also not an easy balance to make those engagements. I think uh I think the safer operations are doing a good job and that yeah we've got 249 contacts and that's really good. I mean if we're making 249 contacts some probably I'd love to dismbiguate that a little bit and see of those 249 contacts we made in the safer in the safe operations how many of them were repeat contacts. I think that would be really helpful.

Um, we executed I think 11 referrals and this is the data that I had to study that we actually had that was able to study. Um, we executed those I think 11 misdemeanor referrals and four felony referrals. So that there's a misconception out there that everybody out there's got is got a warrant pending. It doesn't sound like it. So we probably need to dispel that. And so there's some data out here that I think is useful.

your data would really be helpful to kind of we could take the safe data and the safer data and take a look at kind of where we're missing. But the bottom line is is that one of the one of the goals we set forth a year ago, even two years ago, was that anybody who wants detox should be able to get it. And that's kind of what Safer was set up for. But 4 days ain't going to do it.

And we've got to be able to have an exit plan uh for 30-day or for six more days of detox and then 30-day, 28 day, doesn't matter. Access is only only going to pick up the bill of so much of that. And then the next piece is how they transition into sober living. I'm willing to figure out a way to put that 1,500 bucks up per person and pay for two months of sober living as long as they're working their their daily as long as they're working their daily meeting.

That's a that's a low impact investment. If somebody has completed rehab and is willing to go to a daily meeting, that's not up to ask. It's right in there with detox. That's stuff we can control. What we can't control is how much time we have for the folks in the field to engage every day. But think of it this way. If we were able to put two people a day in detox for a year and it translated to rehab, that's 700 people in one year that we'd help.

And I don't think right now we're going to make those numbers. So that's kind of what I'm I'm the challenge I'm laying down to but to to CBI to safer to safe to law enforcement to cashew to our navigators is can we put two people a day into treat into residential treatment. Can we really do that? And I think we have to find a pathway to do that. And if we can, great.

I also think that we've got some things in the community that are available that we're kind of missing the opportunity on where we're engaging folks um and where we're where we're meeting where they are. I think there's still some opportunity on engaging folks through the transit system that can help us get them to where we want to be. So, those are my thoughts.

Council member, I'm going to give others the opportunity, but just to make sure in the past 6 months, um, Safer has served 322 patients, right? That is that correct number? Yeah. And 70% of those received a complete discharge, which means that they received referrals to continuing care. Um, I don't want to get lost in the weeds of the data, but I do want to just mention there's two sets of data here that are reported.

One is the individual's treatment referral if they did get referred for treatment services. So that's where they're going to get that recovery support if they so choose or if that's part of their care plan. And the other data in there is their placement referral and that's where somebody goes and lays their head their first night after they leave safer which may or may not be where they're going for treatment.

They may be referred for outpatient services and so their placement referral is with a friend or a family member. just a one small nuance to think about in terms of that those patients recovery journey or just care journey after they leave safer. So I if if we keep on track from the first 6 months of safer serving 322 patients that would be uh 644 almost the 400 that you're talking about that's uh pretty much the numbers that you're looking for a council member.

Um I think placement and connection to services the 70% um is an important number. Uh I really want to know the data in terms of where they're going and what type of services from that point are helping them because we've got to make sure that you know we're not it's an investment right?

what we're doing is an investment in an individual to get them to a sober space and so what happens then I I really want to know what after that what's the data and I think that's why one of the biggest gaps that we felt was there is the longer term recovery center which is why we advocated for Desert Cove which is also managed by CBI any other questions comments on this item.

Council member Schubert, I'll keep it quick because the other questions that I had were already pretty much asked except um you were talking about um you know I think that it's pretty striking that um so many people who are interacting with the safer services have other needs have things like housing and stability.

Um, can you share a bit more about what we're doing to foster collaboration and referrals to a wide range of community resources, particularly those that offer more stability during times of transition? Um, and I'm really interested. Um, I know that you mentioned the working group that was also talking about that. The pets are definitely on my mind, too. Yeah, pets are on our pets are on our mind, too.

That that's a that's one of the largest barriers for some of the members to receive care is they don't want to be separated from their pet.

We do have the safer committee meeting that happens monthly where it is a meeting that is engaged for community partners that the purpose of that is to bring in people in the community that are referring to safer so we can build those relationships look for resources and make sure that as a CBI team that we're are meeting the needs of the people who one are referring into safer and that we are connecting the people they're referring to us appropriately for ongoing follow-up care.

So the discussion we had just this last week in our safer committee meeting was that we need to open up this meeting to other community members and and really identify who are the people that need to be sitting in this committee and at the table so that we are developing the partnerships that we need to. So the next meeting we have coming up in October part of our plan is to sit down and talk about what are the strategies.

Um for example Tucson Medical Center has started referring quite a few patients to safer just within the last couple weeks. We've been doing a lot of outreach to them. They're not sitting at the table.

I'd love to have them at the table so that we can continue to partner with them and look at what is their experience when people come in for medical detox in the hospital and where do they typically send them and how can we partner with those facilities and those organizations in the community so that we can really make sure that there's a seamless process for members when they come in for care and they come in for treatment so we can build those relationships.

What I really see about the safer program is it is relationally driven and we're only the Desert Cove is a great example um that that whole program for Desert Cove has been a great resource for us especially in terms of people with pets because they receive pets there and they've been able to do IOP with housing housing at Desert Cove getting into treatment and making sure that they aren't separated.

I'd love to see ideally some more grant funding for boarding for pets so we could do that and there's some people in the community that would really like to support safer in that way. So that's a pathway that we'll continue to work on. Um and I and I also about developing relationships with some of the shelters in the community.

There's several members of our staff on safer that have developed personal relationships with Prima Vera and um they they're saying hey whenever we need a bed we're going to call them up and they're willing to set a bed aside and help us out and do that. So, but again, it's all about relationship, right? So, a big part of the work that we're doing is building those connections and relationship in the community.

So, we have pathways, we have connections for people to make sure we can get them to some sort of stable housing upon discharge. Taylor, I have a couple of questions. One, um, 81% of patients according to your report had access to access. Um, are there any aspects of safer that would be build through insurance while while still making treatment available for those without insurance? Are we billing? In other words, is CBI billing access for services at safer? We do.

So when when people are meeting the criteria for services, we do bill for services. Um, there are a number of patients who come through that don't have access or access is paused, right? So the transition center, we might take someone who's transitioning out of jail and they come and access has been paused and so we will help them try to get that started again.

There have been a number of occasions where a member's access has turned on while in the safer program which is great because that op that opens up all sorts of discharge referral options for them that previously were not available earlier in their stay. So those are things that we're tracking as well. Uh so and it's uh having insurance is great having access because it provides different opportunities.

Um and we for every person who comes in that isn't insured we also get them started with access filling out an application getting them started on the process so that maybe you know Dr. Jacobs talked about unique referrals but the number of referrals when members come back to receive care again at CBI if their access is turned on by that point that gives them a whole another pathway that wasn't available the first time. So those are definitely things that we work on.

I would love to see the the data on how many individuals are using access at safer versus our opioid settlement funds to be able to provide those that don't have insurance and then hopefully also have the resources uh to be able to connect them to access if necessary. Um, you talked a little bit about this, but I would love to know how um, CBI and SAFER are working with other behavioral health agencies in terms of referral.

For me, it's important to be able to have referral coming from our officers at TPD because one of the things that we wanted to make easy for our officers is to be able to have a connection for them to drop off individuals at Safer without it taking four hours. Right? The only other option before we created this was them taking them to a emergency room where they our officers had to sit for 6 hours. If anyone has been to an emergency room, it takes four to six hours to get in.

So, um, in order for us to for our officers to have an easy connection, um, we wanted to make sure that safer was a possibility for them. Um, besides this availability to our police officers, are there any other behavioral health agencies that can connect with SAFER and CBI? Yes, any behavioral health agency can connect with SAFER. So, the the commitment we first the commitment we have to TPD is that they won't be there for more than five minutes.

So we we have a safer drop when they come in that we will commit to making sure that that process for them as they're there they drop somebody off and within five minute that they're out the door and back on on the road right so we don't want to tie up their time in terms of other behavioral health agencies we do a lot of work with Lafronta with via Maria with AMD that that we definitely want to make sure that those pathways are open with Kodak of course we do you know they're our partner with with safer um but even in terms of just to any other behavioral health agency that says I want to make sure that my member can receive detox services.

We will receive that. We have a email address [email protected]. We'll receive referrals through there. If people email us and do that, we have a safer phone number as well that people can call to try to connect and just let us know like, hey, I want to I want to refer my member over to you guys. We will definitely work with them. When safer first started, it was my understanding that it was a warm handoff. Somebody had to present with the member to Safer in order to do this warm handoff.

We have evolved from there so that we have created other pathways like the phone number like the email address where me where organizations can now email say hey I'm sending this person your way and we will receive people without that it it was somewhat of a barrier for someone to have to come with them all the time.

So we've reduced that barrier and allowed the member just to come without that warm handoff knowing that we're still communicating with their outpatient clinic or behavioral health agency through other means when they arrive. Thank you so much. I don't know Mr. Mr. Tamir, if you had a question or comment. Thank you, honorable mayor. Just one quick update comment. Uh the data uh report that you requested, Council Member Cunningham, was actually sent yesterday.

Um it's not part of the regular materials. It was received and and then transmitted yesterday. So, that additional data is in your inbox um at your convenience. Thank you. Thank you. And I just wanted uh to thank all of you, our very own Lee Hopkins and uh Dr. Jacobs, thank you so much to CBI and the entire team at our safer center. Really appreciate our own TPD team. Is it captain or lieutenant? Hey, menace. Lieutenant. Lieutenant, I was going to give you a raise.

Captain, just to let the chief know. Uh, but thank you so much for uh your incredible work in partnership with all of us. So, thank you and uh hopefully we'll see you soon so that we can continue this work especially I'm very excited what we can do with uh Desert Cove as well. Thank you. Thank you. Righty. So, we now move uh to item 10.

Um, item 10 has been set aside for mayor and council to decide and provide direction regarding establishing a one-year pilot program to provide financial and technical support to businesses located in city of Tucson capital construction project work zones. Mr. Manager, thank you honorable mayor and members of the council. We've been talking about this item for a bit um and the challenges that some of our businesses have when major construction projects are happening along that corridor.

And so um our folks at Department of Transportation Mobility working with business services and our small business group have put together a pilot program uh to deploy some one-time dollars that came from the um ARPA framework as established by mayor and council. Um but there is an ongoing revenue stream that um would be able to contribute to this as an ongoing program should it prove successful.

Uh with that we have our director of transportation mobility uh Sam Credo and deputy director June uh Jennifer Toothaker. Sorry uh not June not June. All right you left June. Okay you're up Sam. All right. Thank you so much Mr. Manager and good afternoon madame mayor members of the council. Happy fall. We're very happy to be here today and excited to talk about this program.

Um, as you know, in May of this year, um, while we were going through the fee discussions, there were two fees that were created that were new to the Department of Transportation and Mobility that you all approved. That includes the loss of use fee and the loss of value fee. During those discussions, we committed to returning to you with a program that would highlight uh the support that we can provide to small businesses that are being impacted by city of Tucson construction projects.

So, today we are excited and proud to present to you for the first time, Ready, Steady, Open, our program that uh has two elements to it, a pilot grants program, which I'll talk about here in just a moment, and enhanced communication for small businesses. um experiencing construction. As the manager mentioned, there's been $345,000 that were set aside from ARPA framework dollars to serve as seed money to kick off this pilot grants program.

Um we've done a lot of research in in across the country that have very similar programs and uh what we found is that those programs not only have various grant types but also select project corridors and so as part of ready steady open uh we are going to provide three grant types. Uh the first is a readiness grant which provides up to $500 to small businesses to get ready for construction.

That could be creating a new banner, creating maps, maybe hiring somebody to help with their social media campaign. The selected project corridors include the Proposition 101 downtown paving package, Hton Road, 22nd to Irvington, Silverbell Goray to El Camino delsero, and there's uh one addition that was an omission in your material, which is 22nd Street from Camino Seiko to Hton, and thank you to council member Cunningham award 2 for pointing that out.

We also will be uh none of those which have started construction yet and we'll will start construction next year. The next grant type is our stabilization grant and this is our largest grant award up to $10,000 which is to be provided to businesses and help them stabilize and keep their doors open during construction. And the four projects that we've selected are Fifth Street Country Club to Wilmont, 22nd Street Bridge Replacement Corridor, Grant Road, Sparkman to Swan, and Park Avenue 18 to 36.

again, all of which are under construction right now. And then lastly is our recovery grant and this is to help the small local businesses recover after construction, keep their doors open. And the two projects selected for that were South 12th uh Irvington to Drexel and Valencia cold to Hen. Uh both of which are either complete or wrapping up. In your material in attachment A, we have this summary there and you'll see that there are projects that are bolded.

The bolded projects are RTA projects. And it's important to note that because for 20 years, the RTA has had a business support program that has provided not only consulting hours, but also technical assistance. And so we do see that there's an opportunity to partner with the RTA, develop synergy, and work collaboratively to roll out this program. Uh hopefully strengthening both of our programs. And I know that uh members from the RTA are in the audience if if there's any questions about that.

There is an eligibility component to this. We want these businesses to have been on the corridor at least 6 months prior to construction, having a current city of Tucson business license, fewer than 25 full-time employees, less than $2 million of revenue. We did provide for exclusions such as liquor store, smoke stops, adult industry, cash checking places. Um, there are some documentation requirements that'll be done through an application process.

We're working very closely with Aaron Williams and utilizing the Zoom grants platform which is what we use to to deploy the ARPA grant dollars. Uh the program is userfriendly and we're going to make the application as simple as possible. There will be some documentation that'll be required as part of that application process including financial documents and also signing a waiver agreeing not to file a claim against the city of Tucson further down the road.

With your direction and approval today, we are ready to launch this grant program October 1st and open the window to accept grants for the month of October. Uh we plan to close the grant window at the end of October and use the first part of November to review the applications we receive, make selection, and get grant awards in small business's hands uh in time for the holidays. There's also a reporting requirement as part of this. We want to know how these funds are impacting small businesses.

So, we're asking that they uh participate in required check-ins at 3, six, and 12 months so that we can understand did they keep their doors open, did they expand their business, did they contract. We also are committing to you that we are going to return in 12 months and tell you how this pilot program worked and share with you the results. And so, we'd like to have that that data. The second component of this is the enhanced communication piece.

As I mentioned, we did research across the country of these similar programs and many of the cities across the United States have dedicated staff that work with the businesses. They call them a capital projects liaison. We're currently filling that role but with different people across the city. In this interim and pilot phase, we're going to align our resources to make sure that we're make that we're filling that gap. That's again where the RTA comes into play as well.

We'll be working with them on the RTA projects to make sure that we're providing that enhanced level of communication. We'll be working together to create a construction readiness checklist that'll be available online on the project website once it launches that really any business can can access, small and large businesses and working towards being able to provide technical assistance, enhanced marketing.

We will be working very closely with the office of community and economic impact because their team already has established relationships with many of these small businesses and that's how we're going to make sure that they can connect the small businesses to this to the grant program as well as the enhanced communications uh and outreach piece. I already mentioned the work that we'll be doing with the RTA.

Again, we feel that with this program, we can strengthen the work that we do to support small businesses on these um city-owned uh cityrun construction projects. Uh Deputy Director Toother is joining me today. She's largely been working behind the scenes to help build this program from the ground up. And with that, Mayor, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Um Sam, do you need any direction um to move this forward? Mayor, yes, if we could receive direction, that would be great.

Thank you. So, an appropriate motion. There's a motion and a second. And the motion is to uh move direct staff to implement a one-year pilot grant program to use remaining AARPA framework funds in the amount of 345,000. The program will provide grants to small local businesses along select corridors that have been impacted by city of Tucson capital construction projects. So, that's the motion. That's the direction we're giving. There's a motion and a second. Now it's time for discussion. Mr.

Tamir, and I know that Vice Mayor has um comments. Did you want to say something, Mr. Timmy? I was just noting that. Ah, okay. Vice Mayor. All right. Thank you. Um I just really wanted to thank um Director Credio and and the team for your work on this pilot. Um these are the types of initiatives that we need to keep rolling out and not be afraid, you know, to try something different in support of our community.

Um really uh happy that our small and local businesses on Lados South 12th Avenue are going to be eligible for the recovery grants post construction. I know that a lot of our small businesses are feeling the strain both from this summer um from increase in operational costs uh food etc. And um you know these are all decisions being made at the federal level um by this current administration uh coming down you know into our our small businesses and really kind of feeling um that that strain.

And so um giving them a little relief I think will go a long way. Um and just two things I know that we when we were getting brief we had mentioned I just want to make sure to say it at the table that the elig eligibility applying to food trucks with the permanent location address also be taken into consideration.

Um, we have a lot of food trucks um that are made up from our Latino small business community who um can't afford a brick and mortar but have been at their locations for a long time and have also um been impacted by by construction. And then the other piece was the boundaries extending past the immediate construction boundaries uh due to the impacts hitting those that are within a mile or so buffer in some cases.

Um so for example um we have Cokeia La Palma which is a food truck on 22nd Street just uh east of South 6th Avenue has contacted our office also expressing how um the 22nd Street Bridge construction um has also reached them um even though it's uh further further west from where the construction is at. So if those are just kind of things that we can take into consideration I think it would be really helpful. That's that's all. Mayor, thank you. Thank you. All righty.

Uh, Council Member Councilwoman Lee and then Council Member Vakas. Just a quick one. Amazing work to the team. I love this program. And as you guys get ready to roll this out for the window of October 1st through the end of the month, please engage with our offices because I think I know for our team, we would love to be involved in connecting with businesses and helping to pass around the exciting news. So, thank you. Absolutely, Council Member Maras. Thank you, Mayor.

Well, I appreciate you both so much because um this is particularly relevant here in uh Ward 5 given the long-term impacts businesses along South 12th Avenue, South Park Avenue, and the 22nd Street Bridge project are facing. So, this pilot offers an opportunity to adopt a more proactive approach to supporting businesses before, during, and after construction.

I know uh for the past six months in Ward 5, we've seen firsthand with our lunch meetups how extended road projects can affect customer access, visibility, parking, and overall business operations. So, I'm glad that this proposal includes not only financial assistance, but also dedicated uh city leazison to help businesses prepare for construction to stay informed and to remain open.

I just want to make sure that the program is going to be accessible to the small businesses that truly need it the most and that we learn from this pilot, right, to improve and support future projects. Some of the small businesses our office has worked with um do not have active websites or social media. And often these business owners do not uh fully grasp how to complete online forms or you know have experience applying for programs like this.

So how will the city make sure that small businesses are aware of these grants? And as we look ahead to future construction projects, can the city use what we learned from this pilot to provide support earlier before businesses experience major impacts? Thank you. Thank you, Madame Mayor, Council Member Brahas. Those are excellent questions and we have been talking a lot about the outreach component. Uh, you know, we are going to launch a website, but it's going to be more than that.

We are going to do mailers along the project corridors, both in English and Spanish. We are I appreciate the comments, Councilwoman Lee, about engaging the ward offices. We're going to make sure that you're armed with that material as well. So, as people come in your office, you can hand them a flyer or make sure that they have the ability to contact us and uh make sure that the businesses that really do need the help that that they're getting this information.

The other piece that I'll mention is we've been talking as a as a as a team that Aaron Williams uh will be providing some office hours during the open grant period so that people if they've got questions on how to fill out the application, he will be available and we've uh chatted with Lane Mandel as well about having some of her staff available so that we can provide those office hours both in English and Spanish. Thank you and thank you Jen for attending our lunch meetups.

I know the business owners are very thankful when you're there. Any others? I just wanted to thank uh DTM um for bringing this pilot program forward. I am super excited about Ready Set Open and um looking forward to also um distributing the information to those businesses that have been affected, many of them for many months and months and months. And so I'm I'm concerned and I'm happy that you have been very responsive to the needs of our small business community.

Council member, I had one quick thing. It's not a big deal. I want to leave it off for this item because I don't want to mess anything up, but I know we're doing Ritstown next year. If there's a situation I there's not a lot of businesses on the route, but if there's a situation that arises, we'll bring it back. That's all. Nothing big. Thank you so much. So, we have a a motion, a second on the floor. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any against? Motion carries.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Uh both of you for this awesome work. So, we are moving to item 11. Uh all righty. Item 11. Time has been set aside for continued discussion and direction on items related to Puma Association of Governments and the Regional Transportation Authority. Mr. Manager, thank you honorable mayor. Uh Sam Credio will be continuing into this item and we are also um very happy to welcome the executive director of the RT, Mr.

Michael Ortega is also present to give a brief presentation. But uh I believe we're starting with Sam. Thank you, Mr. manager. And good afternoon again, honorable mayor, members of the council. This is our regular update on all things related to PAG and RTA. Uh I'll be briefing my remarks and then I'll turn it over to the executive director. On September 9th, the RTA technical management committee met, talked about several things.

Um but there's a couple that I want to make sure that I highlight for you and then I'll also provide a few project updates. Um particularly the actions that the technical management committee took were first the recommendation for approval of the master IGAS uh for both the program delivery as well as the uh transit service delivery.

Those are recommended for approval by the RTA board and also I want to note that for our jurisdiction those are placed on the consent agenda this evening as well for approval by the mayor and councel. Also during the RTA quarterly report, there were a few actions that were taken by the TMC that are worth noting. The first is there was quite a bit of conversation about the impacts that coordinating with the Union Pacific Railroad has on project delivery.

And at the end of that conversation, there was a recommendation that the RTA board uh signed on to a joint letter to the Union Pacific outlining those concerns and seeking some remedy on how we coordinate with the railroad during projects. um particularly noting that they are delaying our projects and and I'll talk about that in just a moment.

Um there was also a review and discussion on the 30% plans for uh the city's first avenue project and that was unanimously recommended for approval by the RTA board. And lastly, there was a recommendation for approval by the board for the RTA to serve as the entity responsible for delivery of two city of Tucson projects. 1st Avenue from River to Grant as well as Hton Road from Tankerie to Broadway.

I'll also just mention that later that day there was a presentation and update to the cart and the first avenue project was also discussed there and the 30% plans were recommended for approval by the cart. And then last week the first avenue citizen task force also met and recommended approval of the 30% uh plans.

Uh as it relates to project updates, I do want to give a few um very briefly is over the next four to six months, we are going to celebrate the completion of four major RTA projects beginning uh with October 9th will be Valencia cold to Houtton and I I hope that you can make it out there and join us for that celebration. Um we also are going to be kicking off two projects within the next uh year or so including Silverbell which is currently out to bid.

This is from Gore to El Camino delsero and then uh Hton Road from 22nd to Irvington. Um I do want to mention just one note on the 22nd Street Bridge project. I mentioned challenges working with Union Pacific. Um we are you know I'm just waving the yellow caution flag that we are having some challenging discussions with the railroad. I was out there myself last week and saw that it is slowgoing the demolition.

Um, we are making some headway with the boots on the ground folks from Union Pacific, but we are just seeing those overall challenges on on being able to work within the railroad rightway. And so that's why we flag that for the U TMC and the RTA board. But we're making progress and I'll be able to provide more updates as that project progresses.

Lastly, I just want to note that as it relates to the arterial and collector roadway rehabilitation element, we did kick off on August 14th the Irvington Road repaving. We're actually well on our way of of getting that job completed. Councilwoman Lee has a very big smile on her face. And uh so that I'm excited to see that project be completed. And the next one in the pipeline is Silverbell Road from Grant Road to St. Mary's. Another happy face at the end of the table there. Thank you, mayor.

And with that, that concludes my remarks. I do now want to turn it over to the executive director of PAG RTA, Mr. Mike Ortega, for a brief presentation. Before we go, we welcome you. Come up. come up if you feel like before we welcome um executive director Ortega to the microphone. Sam, if you need any help in terms of Union Pacific with our congressional delegation, um I know it takes an act of Congress sometimes to move Union Pacific into letting us do the work that we need to do.

please let us know because um it's important that Union Pacific at least understand that our congressional delegation is paying attention to their lack of forward movement. Thank you, mayor. Appreciate that. Thank you, mayor, and the members of the council. Um it's a pleasure being here and mayor, I don't mind telling you every time you said Mr. Manager, I I sort of jumped a little bit. So, old habit. Um, I did bring someone with me uh today, Mr.

Greg Buyers, and I wanted to introduce him or have him introduce himself. Greg, if you don't mind coming up. Greg will be the point person. He is the deputy director of the executive of the U, uh, PAG RTA. Uh, he's the deputy director and he'll be the point person on North First Avenue and on Hatton Road. And so, I want to make sure that you all know who he is. So, Greg, if you don't mind introducing yourself. Thank you very much, uh, mayor and members.

Um so I've been with uh RTA now for in PAG uh since since May so four months about uh I came from ADOT where I was the uh state engineer as well as the deputy director. Uh I ran all the construction and maintenance uh for the entire state system. Uh I was doing did that for uh five years. I was with AOT for 11 years uh altogether. Uh prior to that I was had my own engineering firm in New Mexico. I sold it, moved here to Arizona.

Uh actually worked for the city for a very short period of time before going to work for AOT. So uh glad to be here and and working on your projects. So thank you. Thank you, Greg. Uh, Mayor, your uh your comments and and Sam's comments were spot on on a variety of fronts, and I wanted to just quickly touch on them. I know it's late in the day. Um, so first of all, we're we're we're going and blowing, really getting things moving across the entirety of the program, which are all the elements.

Um, and as you see from the materials we provided there, uh, one of the biggest messages that I'm trying to get through to everyone is the magnitude of what we have in front of us. uh when you look at uh almost uh $3.4 billion dollar when you take all the leveraged money that we're expending over 20 years uh that's in excess of $200 million a year. Very significant. Our usual expenditure rate has been between 50 and 70 million.

So we have very very uh tall order in front of us uh to make sure that we we get these uh projects and these programs uh out the door and delivered as the voters uh have have entrusted with us. Just very quickly, uh, we have embarked on pre-authorization. So, if, uh, jurisdiction and the city of Tucson has has done that, jumped on a few projects, gave them pre-authorization so that we don't hold them up. Uh, the old days, you know, we talked about the or as I mentioned, the master IGAs.

In the old days, every step had an IG or an IG amendment that would require approvals and the bureaucracies of both organizations. And so the idea is to really shortcut a lot of that uh and get the master IGAs and the project charters. I'll talk about that in a minute. Streamlining committees, making sure that their uh focus is based on the policy direction from the RTA board or the regional council.

Extremely important that they have direction uh so that they can vet issues or vet conversations amongst themselves and provide feedback directly back to the board without filtering. And I'll talk about that here in a minute as well. So you mentioned um in in the remarks earlier uh director mentioned the 22nd Street Bridge um and that's a role that we traditionally had not played but today and mayor thank you for the offer on the congressional delegation. That's step two.

Uh step one is a joint letter of the RTA board to Union Pacific asking them for an in-person meeting and expressing concerns about the projects. And there was two that we put on the list, although there's a whole, you know, big list. Uh, one was the 22nd Street Bridge. The other one was Tangerine Road. Imagine when the project is basically complete and we're waiting almost three years for a design on the railroad.

I mean, that's just uh and and by the way, that's an atgrade crossing, which means there's equal exposure for the railroad as well as for for the the motoring public. So, I mentioned uh we have been asked by by your team, by by Tim and and by Sam to help out with North First Avenue and Hton Road. Excited to do that. Uh but keep in mind, even though we're quote the lead agency, doesn't mean we're doing it in a vacuum. Uh we are tight at the hip.

We meet weekly with the with the team with the staff, talk about issues, talk about things that are going on out there that we might be able to work together and and and solve jointly. So, this is what the first period looks like. first period is five years. Um 17 projects are already either in preliminary planning, design, andor construction. Uh I'm glad to report or hear that Sam reported the ribbon cutings that are coming up, but also groundbreings.

Uh so there are a variety of projects that are either they're in any stage of the of the development process. And because of the way that the ballot was worded and and and uh outlined, those first seven projects, I believe five of those are in the city of Tucson. And so those are right out of the chute, which I know many many times at this table was discussed.

But it's important that we are all a welloiled machine to get those out the door and make sure that we have uh ultimately those those projects uh delivered. So, keeping in mind that the RTA board is responsible for the delivery, but it's the delivery of the program and this slide really outlines all of the elements. So, we spent a lot of time talking about roads uh because that's a big chunk of the money.

It's about $1.4 billion, but there are other components that are equally important and equal impactful, if you will, within the entirety of the community. All of those are on our radar, and we're making sure that we're making progress on those accountability to the voters. I think uh you heard me say this once before when I came uh and chatted with you all. Uh extremely important that we recognize those quarterly analyses, those quarterly reports will be open, but they also hold us accountable.

They hold us accountable as a region. So, it's not intended to be, you know, put someone in a bad light. It's truly intended to say like on 22nd Street, what's the problem? What can we do to help? How do we uh gather around you? and support you in delivering that program because it's extremely important. I want to draw your attention over to the right there, that that uh little org chart there.

I put that up there because it's important that you know and recognize in the good old days there was actually the executive director right below for right below the RTA board and so the committees would funnel through the executive director. We've changed that and now the committees go directly to the board with no filtering. And that's important because ultimately the board needs to hear from not only the technical experts but also the citizens as well. They have issues or concerns.

It gives them a direct line to the the board. All of the agendas going forward will have a report out from the committees. So there'll be an item that says, you know, if you want to report out to the the board, here's the opportunities.

basically like what Sam did September 9th here's here was the action that was taken but it's an opportunity for the board to hear directly from from the the committees the other thing u I want to just point out and uh Sam mentioned it during his presentation on the small business by the way hats off to you on that program I think it's awesome can't wait to partner uh we've already got strategies on how we can work together it needs to be seamless well that communication also can be outward as far as the status of projects.

So, one of the frustrations that we hear over and over and over again is people don't know what's going on with the project or with the program. And so, we've got a new uh website, totally revamped, got a new logo on it. It's great.

It's wonderful, but we're going to expand it so that we've got links to DTM's project status reports so that when they do their flyovers with a really cool drone and they show all these really cool videos, we can link those and so people that want to know what's going on with Grant Road or First Avenue or H Road or 22nd Street, they can click on that and we'll have a link directly to your information.

Again, really important to keep people up to date on on where we're headed and what we're doing. So, mayor, members of council, I wanted to be brief, just a high level uh synopsis of where we are. Uh, happy to get into as much detail on any aspect that that you'd like, but I didn't want to take too much of your time. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Ortega. I really appreciate uh you joining us today.

I'm looking forward um to our continued work together, making it as easy as possible to uh progress with uh our projects. Um, as we are transitioning to RTA next and the projects that are coming online, I'm excited to hear about all of the plans that you are bringing into uh the RTA next. So, with that, I want to make sure that I give some time to my colleagues on the council, see if they have any questions or comments. Council member D., thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Mike.

It's It's such a new day. And thank you to you. I I assume you're both for the speedy work at the intersection of Interstate uh 10 and uh um Grant Road. Oh my gosh. And the signage was great. I go that way all the time. And I learned how to Only once did I oh darn get stuck. But it wasn't wasn't a bad thing. That that was incredible and I look forward to more of that. Thank you for introducing your um deputy director. My one question for you was who's the point person on on First Avenue?

And you got it. So, we'll be working closely. My office and my staff member is going to get your contact information, too. Um and I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Any others? Any comments, questions? Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. I was just going to be silly and be like city manager Mike Ortega aka executive director. No, it's always great to see you and love seeing you, you know, in your engineering hat.

Um I I just feel like we need to continue making um friends with our Union Pacific entities and anything we can do um to support that because I know that's been such a challenge in so many projects. I know in Ward one um even with downtown links. So um uh thank you for you know bringing attention to that and and again anything we can do to support it. Um thank you. Any others? Uh Councilman Lee, nice to meet you Greg. I will be bothering you about Hton. So thank you for being here today.

And to Mike, thank you so much. It's not minimal to reduce a layer between the citizens voice and the technical advisory committee directly to the board. So I just want to acknowledge that. That was very significant. So thank you for doing that. Any others? Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it Sam for the update. Um thank you Mr. Orteas. Nice meeting you Greg and looking forward to our continued work together. Our next item is item 12.

Time has been set aside for discussion and updates on the fiscal year 27 compensation plan. Mr. Manager, thank you, honorable mayor and members of the council. This item can also be quite brief. Um, you've already adopted a classification and comp plan for this fiscal year. Um, but we wanted to bring two things to you before we did the October deployment of the market adjustments. You know, as you know, we were phasing things in.

We have market adjustments and 4,900 adjustments, pay placement adjustments coming up in in a couple weeks. And as we continue to do our ongoing work, we identified two areas that we wanted to uh seek your approval so that we could roll that into that same process. You will not be asked to act on this today. You'll be asked to vote on the consent agenda on 106. Um but your comments today will be helpful to us.

Uh, one of them is there's an additional job title that we are recommending we move up an additional grade. This is the engineering project manager J2015. It's currently a G110. What does that mean? I don't know either, but we want to make it a G11, which is essentially one grade up, which means the salary structure for that job moves upward.

And when we talk about uh the f who these folks are, they're uh largely the city project managers for projects like these RTA projects for major roadway corridors. Um so um we found that we we had them a little bit short on the market. Um and so we would like to move them up without waiting uh any additional time for that. Um there are five employees that would be impacted by that.

um including I might say the project manager for the grant and I 10 uh magic show that you already just commented on. So um having said that um also within our water department we have utility technicians which are our maintenance folks who do a number of different work uh products on our system to keep it running and functioning and address leaks. These are these utility technicians are part of a skill-based pay program which means that as they acquire and test for skills their pay goes up.

The current program allows them to gain up to four new skills per year maximum. And right now they have two opportunities per year to do that. We would like to make it so that they can get those skills even sooner. So we'd like to move it to be four times a year they could test. Still the same maximum number of skills per year and still the same uh pay structure, but they can get their skills a little bit faster. Those are the two um things that we're recommending that you adopt.

um coming up on the October 6th consent agenda. I am available if you have any questions. Council member Cunningham, we I we talked offline about it. I'm not sure. I I'm under the impression. I'm not sure if it's I just asked for some research on it. Um it sounded like we had some discrepancy on a reduction in pay inadvertently with ES supervisors. I don't know if that's correct or not, but I know that they they were concerned that they were going to actually take a pay reduction.

If that's the case, I want to make sure we're we delay. I don't want to take anything away. So, I just wanted to Yep. Honorable mayor, Council Member Cunningham, the ES supervisors have had a concern that they would have a potential reduction in pay uh when the class and comp plan goes into full effect. That was um not correct. We have verified that they would not be receiving that reduction in pay. Uh although I can see why they might have thought so.

So the these particular supervisors supervise our solid waste equipment operators. These are the folks that do the garbage and recycling collection. The solid waste equipment operators were on a tier-based pay system. We are eliminating the tierbased pay system and they're actually going up three grades in their pay. So they're getting no tier pay. they're getting straight pay and they're all um quite happy with that outcome.

The folks that supervised them were concerned that a 5% that some of them have would be going away because tier program was going away, but that is not the case. The 5% was never intended to go away. There's no action to take it away. So that that'll be communicated back to them as well. Yeah. Can you make sure you get with those guys so they know what's going on and it's broken down to them very very um directly? We will circle back with them again. Any other questions? Council member Varakas.

Thank you, ma'am. Yeah, I too want to piggy back on that. As council member uh Cunningham shared, you know, I I too met with the supervisors and they did indicate that they have not received ex explanations on their compensation level.

So I think at a minimum another conversation with the group would be extremely valuable and I'm concerned that their work is not valued in the way other supervisor works um in other departments is valued and environmental services is perhaps our most constituentf facing department and their work also involves risks that are different from other roles. While I'm not certain what a final outcome should be, a warm conversation should be a good place to start and I'm here to support that. Thank you.

Any others? Uh, Council Member Schubert, just want to say that I met with those supervisors, too. So, I support efforts to clear up any miscommunications that have happened. Um, they specifically mentioned um some operators or some supervisors moving from G107 from 109 and wanting to stay at 109 in addition to the 5% thing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Roas. I do have one question.

What other jurisdictions were used for market comparisons and was this the same across the board for all roles across the city? Honorable mayor, members of the council, I will bring director train up to the microphone so that I don't get the five jurisdictions incorrect. We do have five jurisdictions that we have used as our comparators consistently for the last three years. That is true for all positions except for in police and fire.

and police and fire they have memorandums of understanding with the unions where a specific sets of jurisdictions are the comparators. So where we have anou that specifies it we follow theou in all of the cases it is the five jurisdictions that are about to be stated by Dr. train. I get the fun question. Thank you very much, honorable mayor and members of the council. Uh, historically, what has been used is uh Mesa, Chandler, town of Morirana, Pima County, Oro Valley.

Those are the ones that uh we have looked at on a regular basis and we do share that information on a regular basis in terms of conversation as it comes up. Comparators are uh a routine type of question. So thank you Dr. TR. Sure. So I guess my question is Morirana Oro Valley Pima County do not provide environmental services and nor have operators. What happens when that is the case? in the case.

So it is true, honorable mayor, members of the council, that not all five of those jurisdictions have complete overlap with all the services we provide. Where we can find a good comparator, we use it. If they if some of those five don't have that particular job title, then it might rely on only the two or three that do. This has been our process for the last three years.

While we are also doing our work for FY27, looking ahead to next year, we will also be reviewing the those five comparators to see if they are still valid comparators for our city. But that that has been our policy for three years running and we we it is a challenge to match job titles across cities to J to match job duties. So, Dr.

Train is also launching in this fiscal year a job descriptions um process where they'll be doing um deep dives with uh the workforce and of verifying that the job descriptions that we have and the job titles that we have. Um so we're we're in the you know year three of doing a full revamp and overhaul of all of our systems in class and comp. Um so certainly challenging and revisiting those comparator cities is is something we'll do in this coming year as well. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So, you don't need any action from us. That's correct, mayor. It'll be on consent at the 10:6 meeting. Okay. Any other questions from the colleagues? I don't see any. We move on to item 13. Time has been set aside for discussion and direction relating to matters pending in front of the Puma County Board of Supervisors and other regional jurisdictions. Mr.

your um manager, honorable mayor, uh Stephanie Zamora, who is our um interim director of intergovernmental relations, is probably on a jury right now. She has jury duty today. And if I didn't see her, that means she's not the one on trial, to be clear. So, on the regional item, just a couple of quick updates.

Um, Pima County recently approved several items that are connected to Tucson, uh, including, uh, nearly $3 million in city county housing agreements, an update updated economic development due diligence standards that follow Tucson's threshold for large water users, at least our current threshold, and the creation of the Arizona Taiwan talent and innovation hub downtown, which the mayor's work has been closely involved with.

Um, and also in other news, Pimac County has recently u brought Matt Copek on board as a new intergovernmental affairs manager. We look forward to working with him in that capacity and I think that's the first time in a long time that they've actually had somebody in that particular role. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. I really appreciate the update and excited um to be able to be working on the next joint meeting with the Puma County Board of Supervisors hopefully in November.

Uh our clerk is working on possible dates and hopefully, you know, uh talking with you and your staffs about a good date for a joint meeting. Uh, according to our city manager and county administrator, what they heard in the last joint meeting was an emphasis um, of course an emphasis on our prosperity initiative, but an emphasis on economic development and on youth prevention, intervention, employment, etc. So, um, hopefully that is the focus of the following joint board of supervisors meeting.

So, please take a look at your calendar and hopefully we can find a date before the Thanksgiving holiday uh that we can meet together with the board of supervisors. Anything else? Any questions? Hearing none, we're now turned to agenda item 14. Time has been set aside for mayor and council to receive an an update on state and national legislation and regional committees, executive orders, and direction to any associated litigation. Mr. Manager, thank you.

Uh, still receiving the report from me today. And of course, there's materials in your in your uh agenda materials. Uh, Congress on the federal level has a limited schedule before the pre-election recess. Uh the government is funded under continuing resolution through December 11th.

Of particular importance to Tucson, the house passed the word bill or the water resources development act with expanded authorization for the Southlands recycled water loop which would support extending the system reclaim system to the loss realis sustainability campus and position the city to pursue future federal funding for the flow project. So authorization does not equal appropriation, but you got to have one to get the other.

Additionally, we are grateful to representatives Grihalva and Ciscomani and senators Kelly and Ggo for their support of this important project. Negotiations must continue and we're excited that the expanded authorization remains in play and could allow Tucson to pursue future federal funding for the entire project.

And then at the state level, there continues to be discussion of a potential special legislative session on Colorado River water issues as new federal operating guidelines take effect on October 1st. And then looking ahead to the 2027 session, 911 funding remains a major priority following a $4 million statewide funding gap this year along with any stakeholder discussions around housing, tenant rights, and eviction protections.

We will be visiting with you to develop that state legislative agenda with a goal of bringing that to you in November for consideration. And of course, um we look forward to uh what the midterms hold as far as um the state of Arizona's um House and Senate. And so we'll go go forward from there. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Manager.

I'm I'm also very thankful to our um congressional delegation for their continued support for our Southlands recycled water loop, which is basically our extending our recycled water system from Mission Manor Park all the way over to L'Oreales Sustainability Campus and into uh the southeast of our community so that we can use uh continue to use uh recycled water um for all of the nec necessary services that we provide with it. Um, any questions, comments on this particular item?

Council member Barahas. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to bring up something uh regarding the census bureau. There was it was released uh a release proposal rule on September 10th, 2026 regarding residents criteria and regulations on demographic questions as they pertain to the dennial census for 2030. Comments on the proposed rule are due by October 13, 2026. This proposed rule is very concerning as it could install fear in the community for being counted by the census.

This would prevent immigrants without green cards from being included in the census and would eliminate questions about race and ethnicity. This is extremely concerning as we rely on this data not only for our elected representation in Congress and at every level of government and would result in significant undercount of our population. In excluding race and ethnicity data would be a huge loss for understanding our community needs.

So, I would like to direct staff to find out if there are responses we as a city of Tucson could attach ourselves to and if staff can draft a response mayor to mayor council so we could sign on to to let the record show our opposition to these proposed rule changes. Thank you, Council Member Baras. We're going to keep an eye make sure that we are working with our congressional delegation again to see what we can do.

We're hopeful um that we will have friendly um Congress people to help us through this um census work that we're doing. But I hear you. It's never too early to um get our prepare ourselves for what's coming. Anything else? Anything else? Okay. So, does anyone have any items to remove from the consent agenda for today's regular meeting? This is item 15. Seeing none, item 16. Does anyone have any items for future agendas? All righty. Seeing none, study session is adjourned.

The next regularly scheduled meeting is on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. Thank you all. I'll see you at Let's see. Oh, I'll see you at 5:40 here in the chambers for a regular meeting. I know you're Oh, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat up Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey everybody. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Baby, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, hey. down. Heat. Hey. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. me. Baby, baby. Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. N. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat up here. Hey, hey, hey. the meeting, the regular meeting of mayor and council of Tuesday, September 22nd. Really appreciate all of your presence.

Uh for the record, Vice Mayor Santa Cruz will be participating electronically through Microsoft Teams. Standle uh council will stand in session and we do need to go to roll call. Council member Cunningham here. Council member Dah here. Councilwoman Lee here. Council member Braos here. Council member Schubert here. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz here. Mayor Romero here. Before we move to item two, the city attorney will go over the rules of decorum for mayor and council meetings. Mr. Attorney.

Thank you, honorable mayor and members of council. Arizona's open meeting laws provide that members of the public may attend and listen to the proceedings during tonight's public meeting of the mayor and council. Arizona law also allows the mayor and council to enforce rules and procedures for public attendance of the meeting to ensure orderly behavior and to prevent unnecessary interference with the public meeting. Here are the rules that apply.

the rules required to quorum and orderly conduct by the members of the audience. No person attending the meeting shall engage in conduct that disrupts or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the meeting, including any statements or conduct that interrupts the persons who might be addressing the American council or that disrupts the discussions of the mayor and council. The mayor has the authority to ensure compliance with the rules of orderly conduct.

If disorderly or disruptive conduct continues after a warning and this is that first warning, the mayor may direct the removal of persons from the chambers and or recess the meeting itself. If disruptive behavior makes it necessary to clear the chambers, the persons who disrupted the meeting will not be allowed to return to the chambers for the remainder of tonight's meeting.

As a final note, please be aware that interfering with or preventing this lawful public meeting from being carried out in an orderly manner not not only violates the rules of participation but also violates title 13 of the Arizona Revised Statutes. Thank you, Mr. Attorney. Item two, invocation pledge of allegiance and appointments to boards, committees, and commissions. We will first start with a land acknowledgement. Let us begin by grounding ourselves in acknowledging these lands.

The city of Tucson is on the lands that have been stewarded by the tono otam since time immemorial and the Pasquayaki people who have lived in the Sonoran desert for thousands of years. Please ride for rise for the pledge of allegiance. to the stands one indivisible and justice for all. Item 2 C. We have two presentations today. Uh, one is for um, falls prevention month and let me see if we have a special guest today. We have Mary Odonahu, executive director at Southern Arizona Senior Pride.

We have Abdul and Lee, co-chairs of the Southern chapter of the Arizona Falls Prevention Coalition and any others that want to join us up at front. And and then we have a second proclamation. I'm really honored to present a proclamation in recognition of the Pasco tribe. Uh they just recently celebrated their 48th annual federal tribal recognition day which was September 18th.

48 years um since marking the anniversary of receiving the federal recognition by an act of Congress on September 18th, 1978. So, we will first do false prevention awareness. And as always, my colleagues on the council are always welcome to join me up front uh with our special guest. We have a prayer. We have that Yes, you can you can take all the front please. Thank you. Thank you so much. This uh false prevention awareness month is important to all of us.

Um you know we all have loved ones that are at risk of falling. I have a 94 year old mom that unfortunately no longer walks because of falls uh and osteoporosis. But um you know it's something that we have to make uh uh the community aware of that it can happen to any of us. Um it's not just age but also uh you know aging. So uh thank you all so much for coming.

We really appreciate it and um I'm so happy that you're all here and then hopefully some of you are prepared to say a couple of words about this. All righty.

So on behalf of the city of Tucson and the office of the mayor, whereas since 2015, the southern chapter of the Arizona Falls Prevention Coalition has helped reduce incidents of falls and fall related injuries among people 60 years of age and older living in Tucson and southern Arizona through community collaboration, education, outreach, and advocacy. And whereas slips and falls are the leading cause of injury related deaths among people 60 years of age and older.

Whereas in 2025, Puma County experienced 304 deaths amongst people 60 years and older with the total cost of unintentional f falls excluding those for physician care, EMS services, rehabilitation, and long-term disability exceeding $3 billion a year. And whereas falling is not an inevitable effect of aging, yet non-fatal falls can lead to a loss of mobility, fear, isolation, and loss of functional independence.

And whereas older adults at risk of falling notably benefit from fall prevention programs that can teach them specific strategies they can use daily to improve mobility and stability and therefore reduce fall risks. And whereas we encourage health care professionals, family, friends, and neighbors to treat people with mobility challenges with patience, compassion, and respect while offering understanding, assistance, and support that promotes dignity, safety, and independence.

Whereas the southern chapter of the Arizona Falls Prevention Coalition urges older adults, family members, caregivers, health care professionals, regional medical centers, fire safety personnel and first responders, law enforcement officers, and community partners to join SCA, FPC, and and routinely assess older adults, including our veterans and those with disabilities, for fall risk. while implementing strategies that improve quality of life, mobility, and stability to reduce falls.

Now, therefore, I, Raa Romero, mayor of the city of Tucson, Arizona, do hereby proclaim September 2026 to be falls prevention awareness month uh in this community and ask everyone to join us in uh promoting falls prevention awareness month. In witness whereof, I have here unto set my hand and cost the seal of the city of Tucson, Arizona to be affixed this 22nd day of September, 2026. Thank you all so much and congratulations. Thank you for your work. Thank you.

Uh so Mayor Romero, members of the council, colleagues, uh community partners, thank you for this important recognition. Uh on behalf of the southern chapter of Arizona False Prevention Coalition, I want to thank the city of Tucson for proclaiming September as false prevention awareness month. Our message is simple. Falls are not an inevitable part of aging and many falls can be prevented.

Since 2015, our coalition has brought together healthc care providers, public health specialists, first responders, community organizations, educators, and many others around one shared goal, helping older adults remain safe, active, and independent in their communities. False prevention cannot be accomplished by one organization. It takes all of us, older adults and families, healthc care providers, first responders, community organizations, and local government.

The Southern Chapter members collectively work with partners to enhance older adult services throughout the year. And we would like to invite everyone to join us on October 16 for our sixth annual falls prevention fair where adults, families, and community members can learn practical ways to prevent falls and connect with local resources.

Thank you, Mayor Romero, the city council, uh, and all of the community members and partners for standing with us and helping us build to some where older adults can live safely, actively, independently. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madame Mayor and members of the council. Thank you for proclaiming September 26, 2026 as falls prevention awareness month and for recognizing the important work of the uh of the cha southern southern chapter of Arizona Falls Prevention Coalition.

As the executive director of Southern Arizona Senior Pride, I am proud that our organization provides supportive services and healthy aging programs for older LGBTQ adults. Through our free Move with Purpose classes, our community members have a direct opportunity to reduce their risk of falls. Senior Pride classes support more than physical health. Group exercise helps reduce loneliness, builds accountability, and creates meaningful routines and friendships.

Our participants have a safe, welcoming space to discuss concerns and falls and support one another. This proclamation highlights the city of Tucson's commitment to the safety, dignity, independence, and healthy outcomes of older adults. We are grateful for the city's partnership and for the recognition of organizations and programs such as ours working every day to help our older community members remain active, connected, and well. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

All righty. We have one more proclamation and if we could have our honored guests join us over here. Um, Pascoyaki Chairman Ernnandez, Pascoyaki Council members Flores and Gonzalez, Secretary Rosi Sto Alvarez, Attorney General OJ Flores, Casino Soul Interim Director uh, Amanda Lazva, if I pronounce it right. Amanda L. Yes. Casino El Soul General Manor Manager Lesa Cesma. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate your presence. Thank you so much for coming.

Um I'm really happy to be able to do this proclamation and appreciate you all. Um really thinking about how we celebrated this 48 years together. So, um the proclamation says a lot, but it is important to be said. And so, um let us begin. On behalf of the city of Tucson and the office of the mayor, uh we would like to proclaim um uh September 18, 2026 to be the Pasquayaki tribe 48th annual federal tribal recognition day in this community.

Um whereas the city of Tucson respectfully acknowledges that we gather on lands originally and still inhabited, cared for, and culturally connected to indigenous peoples. We honor the ancestral homelands of the Pasuayaki tribe and Otam and recognize the multi-millennial presence, history, and stewardship of the Pasuayaki people throughout this region.

We honor their elders and descendants, past and present and future, and recognize the history, heritage, language, traditions, arts, ceremonies, and culture of the Pasuayaki people are deeply woven into the identity of Tucson and southern Arizona and across the region of the Southwest. The city of Tucson reaffirms its commitment to reciprocal, respectful, and let me see if I can Okay. An enduring government-togovernment relationships with sovereign tribal nations.

And whereas the Pascoayaki are of an ancient and enduring people indigenous to this land since time in memorial. The tribe recognizes cultural affiliation with the ancestral sonoran desert people and with our historic and cultural communities throughout the greater southwest region including the areas that now make up the United States in the southwest and northwest Mexico.

Evidence of the affiliation among Yaki ancestors and those of other contemporary cultural communities in the region can be found in cultural, ritual, cosmological, linguistic, and other threads of continuity in ancestral places and within our communities today.

And whereas the history and homeland of the Yaki people extend beyond modern international boundaries and Yaki people have maintained longstanding cultural, familial, ceremonial, and historical connections throughout what is today northern Mexico and the American Southwest, including southern Arizona. And whereas holders of Yaki, Yaki cultural knowledge tell of an ancient Yaki settlements along the river now known as the Santa Cruz and of trade between Yaki ancestors and their neighbors.

Material evidence of this interaction among the people of the region, including Yaki ancestors, can be found in the immediate vicinity of Old Basa village and in other locations throughout the city of Tucson. And whereas Yaki communities developed and maintained their language, social institutions, spiritual practices, ceremonies, governmental traditions, and relationships with their lands and waters over countless generations and continue to do so.

And whereas Pasuayaki communities throughout Arizona are places of profound historical and cultural importance where generations of Yaki families have maintained ceremonial traditions, including the sacred Lenton and Easter ceremonies that remain a cornerstone of Yaki religious and cultural life.

And whereas the Yaki people persevered for generations in their effort to have their political identity and governmental status recognized by the United States while continuing to strengthen their communities and preserve their unique culture, traditions, and way of life.

And whereas on September 18th, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed public law 95-375 as amended and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, formally recognizing the Pasqua Yaki Indian people and making the tribe and its members eligible for federal services and assistance afforded to federally recognized Indian tribes. making a historic achievement for the Pascoyaki people and establishing September 18th as a defining date in the modern history of the Pasa Pasuayaki tribe.

And whereas federal recognition of the Pasuayaki tribe started with a small 202 acre reservation which we were sitting at on Friday.

um established for the use and benefit of the trib's now over 22,000 members and in public law 103-357 Congress explicitly acknowledged the Pascoyaki tribe as a historic Indian tribe with inherent sovereignty and whereas on September 18th of each year the Pasuayaki people celebrate and honor their sovereignty and the federal government's recognition of the tribe on recognition day.

And whereas September 18th provides the people of the city of Tucson and the entire region the opportunity not only to commemorate the Pascoyaki tribes federal recognition, but also to recognize the much longer history of the Yaki people, their resilience and survival, their enduring presence in this region, their contributions to Tucson, and their continuing role as a sovereign government partner in the future of southern Arizona and the entire region.

Therefore, the city of Tucson hereby proudly declares September 18th as Pasuayaki recognition day in honor of the Pasuayaki tribe, the Yaki people, and the shared history, partnership, and contributions to the city of Tucson and the greater Tucson region. and witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the city of Tucson, Arizona to be affixed this 22nd day of September, 2026. Thank you all so much. Congratulations.

Good evening, uh, Mayor Romero and council members and all guests that are here today. I am Julian Hernandez, chairman of the Pascoyaki tribe. I want to express my gr gratitude for recognizing September 18 as the Pascoyaki recognition day. This proclamation honors and the strength of our history, contributions of our people.

It values our strong relationship with the city of Tucson and looks forward to building brighter future together and helping each other out and continuing to support each other. Thank you. Anyone else gonna say a word? No. Thank you. But but in the process Oh, go ahead. Just continue. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for you to to do this on um this proclamation on behalf of the city of Tucson.

Obviously, we've been partners for a long time, but for you to be able to spend time with us in our community, uh wanting to have quarterly meetings uh truly does uh does mean a lot to us and those relationships are truly valued. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Token of appreciation, embroidery of our tradition for honoring this to the council members and yourself. So, thank you so much. This is huge. Yes. Thank you. I'm done. Yeah. Thanks. Congratulations.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate um both groups for um joining us and and for the work that you do uh for your missions. Uh we have item 2D which is the city manager's communication number 268 dated September 22 is received into and made part of the record. Uh did you need to call in? Okay. Are there any we don't have any appointments um in this meeting but are there any personal appointments to be made at this time? Okay. If not we move on to item three.

Mayor and council report summary of current events. City Manager's communication number 269 dated September 22 is received into and made part of the record. This time has been scheduled to allow members of the mayor and council to report on current events. These are to be current events of activities within the community, not position statements on policy issues. Does any council member have anything to report at this time? All of you? Okay.

Um we're going to start here and then go down the pike and finish with the vice mayor. I don't know if she has any um summary of current events. Council member Schubert. Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council, and everybody who's here tonight. I'm going to open my current event report with an update about traffic violence that has occurred since our last Marin Council meeting just in an effort to keep this at the forefront of our minds. Um, okay.

So, on September 17th, there was a hit and run with injuries. On September 18th, there were two separate incidents. The first one was a two vehicle collision with one person in critical condition. That morning, a pedestrian was also hospitalized after being hit by a car. That was on the 18th. On the 20th, uh early in the morning, a 25-year-old driver hit a 71-year-old bicyclist who was pronounced dead at the scene.

That was the fifth bicycle death this year, compared to two two at this time last year. So, um kind of a big jump there. Um, and then also on September 20th in a totally different part of town on the same morning, a bicyclist was badly injured in a crash. All right, moving on to upcoming current events.

Wick staff are excited to attend a two-day Arizona science policy communication dialogue at the UOVA around POS contamination and related policies and regulatory measures on September 23rd and 24th. So, uh, encourage you to subscribe to our W 6 newsletter if you haven't already. Um, we'll probably include an update in the following edition and um, our newsletters come out every Friday.

Um, I also wanted to make sure you all were aware about the public input sessions that are happening around the updated zoning regulations for shelter care. They're calling it Gimme Shelter. Um, so this is the city of Tucson Planning and Development Services in collaboration with the DMAN Institute at the UOVA and they want to hear from you about their changes to regulations for shelter care. They're having a virtual session on Thursday, September 24th from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.

Um, and if you're not going to that, then maybe you'll attend the traffic calming session that we're hosting on the same night at the W 6 office. Um, so this session will include a brief presentations from the city of Tucson Department of Transportation and Mobility about existing programs, processes, and opportunities related to neighborhood traffic calming features, including the neighborhood traffic management program and the safe streets miniig grants.

And we'll also have a few W 6 residents on hand to share their experiences navigating that system. So again, W 6 info session about traffic calming happening this Thursday, September 24th, 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. It's hybrid. you can call in on Zoom or come visit us at the W 6 office. Um and then finally on Saturday, September 26 at the W 6 office from 11 to 1, we're going to have our summer stampede celebration.

So all summer we've had um a scavenger hunt for stamps that are in different parts of W 6 with little booklets where participants can collect those stamps. Each stamp is an entry into our raffle um prize drawing. So again, this Saturday, September 26, 11 to 1, come out for ice cream, raffles, for special swag, gift certificates, stickers, and more. Um, and we hope to see you there.

And then just a final update from the W 6 chill space, which is the cooling center that we've been running out of the W 6 office. Um, it's closing on September 30th. We've been open since the um last week of May. So, since the last week of May, we've had almost 2,000 visits. We've given out 771 showers. We have a shower at the W 6 office because we used to be a police station, fire station before that.

Um, and then we've had 290 unique visitors, so that's unduplicated headcount that have come to the W 6 office to use our chill space. The most frequently utilized services are the city of Tucson Housing Outreach. Thank you so much to staff for adding adding the chill space to their rotation. Um and also El Rio is very heavily utilized by our attendees. And then my final update um just a little plug for October 1st through 8th as a week without driving.

It's called a week without driving, but you can also reduce your driving for that week. It's a challenge and it's a challenge that's led by a diverse coalition of local organizations, advocates, government agencies, and elected leaders across the US.

The Week Without Driving was started in 2021 when Anna Zverz at Disability Rights Washington launched it so that policymakers, elected leaders, and transportation professionals could begin to understand what the barriers are for non-drivers experiencing access in their communities. Like, it's really hard to exist without a car. So, after 2 years, pedestrian advocacy organization America Walks joined the effort, made it into a national week without driving. um and it's continuing to grow.

So, I just I'm hoping that we can see some participation in Tucson this year. And I want to hereby challenge my colleagues on the mayor and council to participate by either reducing or illuminating your driving for the week of October 1st through 8th. And um we'll be sharing our experiences in the W 6 office as well. And that includes my current event report. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member Vahas. Thank you, Mayor. A few updates here in W 5.

This week is Gives week as the Sunnyside Foundation celebrates 30 years of investing in education, community support, and our Southside families. I invite everyone to participate and help them reach their 130,000 fundraising goal. This Thursday is Sunnyside Foundation's block party from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. at American Eat Company. Last Friday, our office hosted another successful community lunch meet up at Mr. K's original barbecue.

Thank you to all our neighborhood leaders, residents, and city departments for continuing to join us. Our next lunch meetup will be Friday, October 30th at Sunny Days Cafe located on Campbone Irvington from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. Saturday was a busy day in Ward 5. I joined mountain mamas and Rainas who hike uh to celebrate Latino Conservation Week at Bowen Stonehouse Trail. It was great meeting new hikers who were experiencing the trail and hiking for the first time.

I also enjoyed hiking alongside you over here, Vice Mayor and Kristen from Ward One and her son. It was a beautiful trail. It was hot, but I highly recommend you all experience at least once. That same evening, we kicked off our first movies in the park at Silver Lake Park with the movie Goat. Thank you to Parks and Recreation, TPD, 311, 911, Mini Ponderosas, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and TE for sponsoring this three-part series.

Thank you to all the food trucks and everyone who attended. Investing in our parks is especially important in W 5. Our area experiences some of the hottest temperatures in the city. While our green spaces are more limited than other parts of of town. Parks give our families and kids places to gather, play, exercise, and enjoy the outdoors. Our next movies will be October 3rd at Santaita Park and October 24th at Gani Baderas Park right next to Sunnyside High School.

Movies begin after dusk and families are welcome to bring their blankets or lawn chairs, some snacks, but we're also going to have some food trucks available and we're asking you all to bring at least two cans of non-p perishable food items to support the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona for our neighbors during this holiday season. I would also like to invite you all in a couple weeks to join us for the Santaita Park reopening celebration on Friday, October 2nd, starting at 5:00 p.m.

Bring your families, your neighbors. We'll have food, entertainment, speakers, lots of activities, and lots of surprises. Mayor, I want to wish you a very happy belated birthday. I know you received a lot of happy birthday wishes, but I hope you had a wonderful celebration. I would also like to wish Korn Manning, planning and development services director, a happy birthday as well. Her birthday's today.

And finally, if Officer Jimmy Martinez is here, can you please come out if somebody can get him? Uh, I would like to congratulate Officer Jimmy Martinez after 32 years of dedicated service. Jimmy, give everybody a round. Give him a round of applause. Officer Jimmy Martinez. After 32 years of dedicated service, he's going to be retiring on October 28th. Coming up, today marks his last city council meeting, bringing an end to an incredible chapter of service to our community.

Officer Martinez began working mayor and council meetings since and has been a familiar and dedicated presence here in city hall ever since. Thank you, Officer Martinez, for your years of hard work, commitment, and service. We wish you all the best in your retirement, and hope you stay retired, and I hope you enjoy every minute in your next chapter. Congratulations again, and thank you for 32 years of service. Councilwoman Lee, no announcements.

Mayor, Council Member Dah, no announcements, but there's a lot of stuff going on in W 3. You can read about it in our newsletter or on our website. Council member Cunningham, just one um kind of a foreshadowing announcement. For the fifth year in a row, we're hosting the disability pride day. Uh my office has organized it every single year. It's become an internationally recognized event. Uh it'll be December 5th this year and it'll be at the El Rio Neighborhood Center. This is our first time.

It's going to be there. Uh the day will feature performances and music by disabled artists, uh disability information and discussions, food trucks and vendors, and a resource fair for for other folks. We'll also have multiple adaptive sports sessions, um which was um which has really been something special here in Tucson. We've really upped our adaptive sports game.

We hosted several national um national championship tournaments for adaptive sports and the University of Arizona is recognized as one of the uh number one adaptive sports programs in the country. Uh that's done with a lot of our community sponsors. We also have u Southern Arizona adaptive sports which is a model for the rest of the country. Uh and we we've really got a really inclusive and and outstanding program that they run. The festivities will start around 11:00 a.m.

But here's the most important part of this announcement. If you want to participate or be part of this, please contact my office uh 791-4687 520-791-4687 or email us at w2 at tucsonac.gov. We're always looking to take on new partners for this event and it's been something uh it's been one of the best ones I've ever done and I think this will be my last one this year. So, this will be my last one uh as the war I council member. So, I can't wait to host this event and make it something special.

Thank you. Thank you, council member. Vice Mayor. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I also want wanted to extend a happy birthday week to you. Um, thank you so much for all the work and your dedication to our Tucson community and all of your decades of service. Also, I know it's a sacrifice for your family to be in this position. So, I also want to extend, you know, my love and appreciation um for your family and everybody that surrounds you um that allows you to show up for us every day.

So, happy birthday. Um I also wanted um to uh reiterate what council member Baraha said about Latino Conservation Week and the Hike with Mountain Mamas and Reas who hike on Saturday. it. I I was so moved to be around so many amazing women, a lot of them moms, um hiking for the first time, talking about what the outdoors means to them. Um the impact it has on their mental health and just trying to find community. And so it was a very moving event and even though it was hot, we got through it.

And so I just want to thank, you know, the work of all these beautiful women for how they show up for our community. And I know council member Barahas, you know, was instrumental in in making those spaces. So, so thank you for that and extending the invitation for us to participate. Um, we also had the opportunity to be a part of the Sunnyside Foundation Burrito run as part of their gives week this past Sunday. Um, celebrating their their 30-year anniversary. I'm a Sunnyside School alumni.

I graduated from Desert View High School and it was beautiful to see all our high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, all the families out there coming together and uh like council member has also said, you know, they have a goal to raise $130,000 by Thursday and so invite um the community to come out um and celebrate, help donate, contribute, and also be in community at American Eco on Thursday.

And then for some of our upcoming events, we have the Fiesta de May, which is the an annual fiesta that takes place on Saturday, September 26 from 3:00 p.m. to 900 p.m. at Kennedy Park Fiesta Area, 3357 South Lato Choya Boulevard. Uh the festival uh runs from September 24th to the 27th and it highlights Tucson's designation as a UNESCO city of gastronomy and celebrates the cultural, historical and culinary significance of corn in the sonor and desert.

Um so invite you know folks would love to see not only my colleagues but the community to come um and partake in the celebration. And then um the other event we have is um join us in the closing ceremony of the 10th annual Tucson Deaf Awareness Week this Sunday, September 27th at Hain Muretta Park from 2 to 6:00 p.m. Bring your friends, family, a chair, food, and a smile. We will have they will have booths and fun activities for adults and children.

I'm just bringing awareness to this very important event. And then finally, I know Council Member Schubert um mentioned this in her traffic violence updates, but I wanted to send my condolences to the family and loved ones of Thomas Phip Rusei, a 71-year-old cyclist who was hit and killed by a car last Sunday at 6:00 a.m. at the intersection of North Greewood and West Ironwood Hill Drive.

Um this is really heartbreaking collision for us um because the Department of Transportation and Mobility had just installed um a protected bike lane leading up to that intersection. And so I want to continue working with neighbors of how we make that intersection safer um for folks um walking or biking across that intersection. So that is all my announcements. Mayor, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for the sweet words.

I'm the type of person that celebrates my birthday for about 3 4 weeks. Um, and I just, you know, love to celebrate the life that I was given by my mother and father. Um, and in the words of my mother, she made me alone. It was just her. Um, but I received a lot of beautiful notes and love from family and friends and many of you that send me texts and presents and cards and so um really appreciate it. I love what I do u vice mayor.

I love showing up every day um to make a difference in our community. So um thank you for your kind words. I would like to invite the community to check your registration to vote. Um the last day to register to vote for this year's general elections is Monday, October 5th. Uh early voting starts October 7th. I would highly encourage tonins to educate themselves uh about the items on our ballot. Um lots of initiatives on the ballot this year. um for both state and city.

Uh cast your vote as quickly as possible and make sure uh that you are registered and that they have your correct name and address etc. I like to make a point of voting every single election. I'm eligible eligible to vote in. I hope that you do as well. Uh remember to exercise your civic duty for our local elections coming up this November 2026. Please visit recorder.puma.gov to register to vote or to check and update your status of your registration as well. So, thank you all so much.

Please pay attention and register to vote. Um, with that, we're moving on to item four, city manager report, summary of current events. City manager communication number 270 dated September 22nd is received into and made part of the record. This time has been scheduled to allow the city manager to report on current current events. Mr. Manager. Thank you, honorable mayor.

Uh, one thing for tonight, um, just, uh, for the public that, uh, to remind you that you can apply to be a part of the 32nd annual downtown Parade of Lights. The downtown parade of lights and festival returns with festivities at downtown's Hakime Plaza on Saturday, December 5th at 6:30 p.m. with a new route through the Elpresidio neighborhood and plenty of holiday fun along the way. Parade applications are open now for businesses, organizations, and community groups that want to participate.

And these applications are due by Friday, November 20th. and there is a cap on the number of entries accepted because of the parade route and limitations there. So if you want to participate this year, the time is now. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Item five, liquor license applications. City manager's communication number 271 dated September 22 is received into and made part of the record. Madame Clerk, please read the liquor license agenda.

Your honor, on the evening's agenda, we have one application for a new license, three persons and locations of transfers, 13 applications for a special event, and one application for an agent change acquisition of control. All applications are in compliance with city requirements. An appropriate motion will be to forward items 5B 1-4, 5C 1-13, and 5D1 to the state liquor board with a recommendation of approval. So moved, your honor. Second. There's a motion and a second.

Any further discussion on this item? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any against? Motion carries. Item six. Call to the audience. Madame clerk, please read the announcement. At this time, any member of the public is allowed to address the mayor and council on any issue except for items scheduled for a public hearing at the meeting. Call the audience will last for 30 minutes and speakers are limited to three minute presentations.

The green light will turn on when you're called to speak. It will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds remaining. and then it will turn red and beep when your time is up. At that time, please conclude your comments. All righty. Um, can we make sure that we assign the time and when I do call you, please make sure that you come to the tall mic and speak into uh the mic. Our first speaker is Josh Kerman. Good evening, uh, mayor and council. Uh, my name is Josh Kermanerman.

Uh, I am a Tucson Ward One resident. Um, and I am also a transmission planning engineer and a retained speaker with Tucson Electric Power. Um, I have been in my role with TP as a transmission planning engineer uh, for four and a half years now. Um in my role uh my my responsibilities include uh performing essential planning studies and analyses needed to ensure the reliability of the electric transmission grid in Tucson and southern Arizona.

Uh as well as uh maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements um that pertain to electric utilities. Um being a trusted engineer uh energy partner is vital and extremely meaningful because TP service territory covers the majority of Tucson. As you all know, having a strong relationship with the city of Tucson is essential for our customers and for the public. Uh TP provides a critical service to our community and we take that responsibility uh very seriously.

Uh, I have a deep sense of pride working for T knowing that we provide reliable electricity and service to the residents of this community, especially during the hot summer months when our customers are counting on us to keep the lights on and keep the AC's running. Uh, it is an opportunity uh to serve the public and plan in my current role uh for the needs to support a reliable energy future for Tucson.

uh every day I take pride in helping deliver a service that supports the members of our community. Um and I take great pride in that. Uh so just wanted to provide that statement to you all this evening. Uh appreciate the opportunity uh mayor and council uh to be able to express why I value um the opportunity that I have with Tucson Electric Power and the privilege to be a part of a trusted energy provider that serves the city of Tucson. Thank you. Thank you, Brenley Caro.

Hello, Mayor and Council. My name is Brinley Caro and I'm a resident of Tucson and an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. I'm here to speak on Prop 421, which if passed would enshrine an unfair and unaffordable 25-year contract while simultaneously raising our rates by 14%. In the 25 years of this franchise agreement, TE will steal $71 million from us, the rateayers. Think about that for a moment.

While working families are struggling to pay their monthly bills, TP is looking to lock in decades of profits at our expense. T has invested millions of their rateayers dollars into convincing us that Prop 421 is a good deal for Tucson uh for Tucson. They have even had their employees come here tonight and I'm sure on company time. Uh, see, none of these benefits um are appealing to the customer. They like to boast that with a measly $2 million they can plant so many trees.

But what is the real cost of the franchise agreement to us, the working people of Tucson? This will be a terrible deal for Tucson residents and will have devastating effects. The $200 a year increase that will come if we allow this franchise agreement to go may not seem like a lot to the billion billionaire shareholders of Fortis, the Canadian company that owns our power and profits off of our rates.

But for us two sonins who are already struggling to afford groceries and choosing between food, medicine, housing, or paying our electric bill, we don't need this franchise agreement. We don't need a rate hike and we don't need another large-scale data center stealing our water. We don't need an elected body that can't even bother to hear our concerns over uh concerns over the wants of TEP's billionaire owners. What we truly need is a public utility for our electricity.

The same type of public utility that helps helps us defeat the initial proposal of Project Blue where the community rejected the siphoning of our water. I also want to mention another thing. the email that you had sent um that you all approved to be sent to all of your city employees with a link to the TE website highly encouraging city employees to vote for this proposition.

I not only think that this is sneaky and deceptive, but a betrayal of both the city employees of Tucson and all Tucson residents. TE has put millions from us paying our um has put millions from us paying our rates to them funding misleading commercials riddled with misinformation and lacks of death depth of explanation of the reality of this agreement.

Not only do I encourage everyone here to vote no on Prop 421 and to register to vote, but we also demand a public power utility of for all of Tucson and an end to TE, an end to wallet breaking electricity bills and the beginning of a publicowned utility. Imagine how much more money we will have in our pockets if we weren't paying outrageous rates and lining shareholders pockets with billions each year. What could we do with that money?

Fund our schools, fund our roads, our education, our healthcare, you name it. We deserve this and we don't deserve the city of Tucson betraying us by selling us the false narrative that TE of maintaining infrastructure and restoring power and quicker trees when we know two $2 million a year is negligent compared to the profits our back. Thank you. Um so I just wanted to make sure Mr.

Tamir for I think the community needs an explanation in terms of that email sent to city employees and uh what it connected to. Honorable mayor, mayor, Mr. Council, I just want to be clear the initial link um was placed by staff to the the page which was linked to the two documents that were um under consideration, the franchise agreement and the ECA. those links uh those original links to that original page did not include all the information that's included there.

Now, in addition, it was never intended to advocate for or against the Prop 421. In fact, the language used for the link was to read the uh franchise agreement in the ECA. Uh therefore I don't f my office has reviewed it and don't find any violation of the um uh law or or concern about where how it was linked. Out of an abundance caution that link has been taken down is now u pointing to the appropriate documents. I appreciate that.

I I just have to push back on the um an email directing our employees to take a look at something that's on the ballot. And I know that I mean I've been on the council for 18 years. Um and our city attorney has always been very, including yourself, um has told mayor and council to be very careful with what we're posting, right?

And so I would say the same thing uh to our city manager or city attorney um to avoid even the perception of um of the city of Tucson uh encouraging any type of one particular initiative um to avoid that alto together. Understood. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Attorney. Our next speaker is J. D Wallace. Hello, Mayor and Council. My name is J. D. Wallace. I'm a Tucson Ward 6 resident and retained speaker for Tucson Electric Power at 880 East Broadway.

Here to talk about what we're doing to remain a trusted energy partner. Last week's storms on Monday evening caused outages for up to 26,000 customers. Most outages were brief, and by the following morning, less than 100 remained without service. Damage on Broadway between Pantano and Prudence included eight broken poles, two broken crossarms, and a downed wire. More than 2600 customers were affected by that damage, including the W 2 offices.

Four customers remained out the following day, including the Hilton Hotel, and we used emergency cable to restore power there as our crews repaired the damage. We appreciate everyone's patience, including the drivers who used that route as Broadway was closed multiple days so employees could more safely perform the necessary repairs.

Over the last month, we met with seven education foundations across the area to present them, each with a $10,000 donation to support classroom grants to TUSD's Educational Enrichment Foundation. uh the Ampi Foundation, Flowing Wells Educational Foundation and Sunnyside Foundation are the ones that are within city limits as well as Vale Morirana and Serorita. And each of these foundations say this helps their teachers take the curriculum to the next level.

Whether it's a grant they apply for in some foundations or a debit card that they can use to get critical supplies, these help teachers avoid paying out of their own pocket for the classroom, which can often happen. And as with all our philanthropic donations, these funds come from corporate resources and do not impact t uh rate, excuse me, do not impact customer rates. Power a statewide fund providing bill relief, has reached its limit for the year.

As of last Friday, 1875 TE customers received a total of 1,18,671.35. And one recipient, a single mother who is a ride share driver, says that assistance from the Department of Economic Security, combined with additional relief, helped her to not only pay her outstanding balance, but also to cover her next bill.

Other assistance programs remain available, such as the lowincome home energy assistance program that is administered through the Arizona Department of Economic Security, as well as our own lifeline program. Thank you for your time and please direct constituents who seek assistance to our customer service representatives who can help connect them to those programs or additional community assistance programs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Um, our next speaker is Amy Zahki, I believe.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's really light pencil, so it's really hard to read. Yeah. Um, go ahead. So, um, hi, my name is Amy Zavastowski and I moved to Tucson from upstate New York nine months ago. While I haven't been a TE rateayer for long, I do have experience with another utility company, Central Hudson, that Fortis, TEP's parent company, also owns. I want to put on the record a history of Foris and by association TEP, as being an untrustworthy company.

I was on the board for a nonprofit that owned a 2500 square foot community center and our utility provider was Central Hudson which was acquired by Foris in 2014. In 2022, we were hit with a bill of over $14,000 in back charges and updated readings. We had a budget billing plan, so this was in addition to the amount we had already been paying. Here are some highlights of the mismanagement by c Central Hudson and Fordis.

Over 8,000 residential accounts were heavily overcharged due to erroneous software calculations. Accounts were mistakenly hit with bills totaling thousands of dollars or showing energy usage levels typically of a midsize business. Between late 2021 and mid 2022, more than 30,000 customers had multiple months worth of delayed bills automatically drained from their checking accounts simultaneously. Central Hudson auto withdrew over $16 million during this period without proper warning.

In one instance, pulling up $28,000 from a single customer's account. The system failed to generate bills on time, leaving thousands of households with no utility statements for months, only to later receive massive compounded bills. Luckily, the New York State Public Service Commission launched an extensive investigation, a landmark $64 million settlement required for Central Hudson shareholders to absorb the cost of repairing the system. Let's see.

This resulted in Central Hudson's board of directors to remove the company's CEO. How is this related to TE and the 25-year franchise agreement? The billing mismanagement scandal shows us here in Tucson that unless the state steps in, Fordis will mistreat its customers. Fordis prioritizes corporate profits, reporting well over a billion dollars annually while failing to protect local consumers from catastrophic management errors.

How can Tucson rateayers see what happened with Central Hudson and not have increased distrust of TEP and Foris? Giving a company with a proven track record of causing extreme harm to its customers unrestricted access to our infrastructure for 25 years is a recipe for disaster. Sorry, I just lost my spot. Um, yes. Uh, recipe. Yeah. Reparations and system corrections were only made upon force of the government. Thank you, ma'am. So, thank thank you, ma'am. Aora Ramirez.

Sounds like the people want a public power option. Uh, so as you can tell, I'm here to express my opposition to Proposition 421 and to ask city council to truly explore a public power utility option. Council members, over the last month, I've been talking to my neighbors, my co-workers, my friends, my family, the baristas at my favorite local cafe, servers at restaurants that you all probably go to, and every single one of them opposes TP's greed.

I am a social worker and so every day I hear stories of how difficult it is for people to pay their electric bills. Many people have to choose between paying their rent or paying their electricity. One specific person that I'm working with is about to be evicted because she had to choose between her rent and keeping her insulin refrigerated. Here in Tucson, we know that the summers are hot. I'm curious if any of you have ever had to decide between paying your electric bill or paying your rent.

AC here is truly a life or death matter and we need electricity for that. Last summer 97 there were 97 heat related deaths in Pima County and 40% of those were indoors. That means those were people that did not have air conditioning. TP stood up here and said that they care. It's such a responsibility for them to take care of the people but they shut off the electricity to that elderly woman who needs to refrigerate her insulin. Do they really care about our community? No, they don't.

It's also interesting to me that um TP has representatives here. I actually just learned from some of them that they actually don't even get a discount on their electricity. Talk about corporate greed. They don't even care about their own employees and we want to give them 25 years to monopolize our public grid. That's crazy. Um a couple weeks ago, the power was out at my house for 6 hours. my entire neighborhood, the neighborhood across from me and the shopping center that is across from me.

I couldn't cook dinner because surprise surprise, I have an electric stove. I couldn't go to the grocery to buy food because the employees were sent home. There was no electricity. It took them six hours to fix that. And it was because the wind from the monsoon had knocked over two power posts. How long have we been having monsoons in Tucson? And TP hasn't figured out how to not let that happen every summer. They do. They know what the solution is, which is underground power lines.

But that's not profitable for them. Right. Right. Um I kind of digressed from what I wanted to say, but um basically this proposition is a bribe. It is a $2 million bribe. As we heard, Ford is a Canadian company, meaning that profit does not stay in Tucson. That company made over a billion dollars just last year. $425 million of those dollars came from TE. They're trying to give us $2 million. That is a pathetic bribe.

And if the city council is going to accept that, you're going to let them monopolize our electricity for the next 25 years for $2 million. If we weren't making profit for TE, we could plant those trees. We could provide those services that T comes up here and says that they give us. So, I urge everyone at home to vote no on Prop 421. Thank you, Miss Ramirez. James King. Good uh good evening uh mayor and um all the council members. I just came up to say thank you for listening to us.

Thank you Falcon Barakas Sherbert Nikki. I did talk to your your assistant and I did talk to your assistant Mr. D. I really do. You guys appreciate. We still want to sit down and talk with you guys. We want to get to know you guys more, have more open communications for whatever we can do for you. Mr. City Manager, we will we're waiting to sit down and talk with you about this situation.

There is you guys, don't get me wrong, you got you you me and you have done business when I was an Aphne uh union member. Mrs. uh Swallow, looking forward to meeting with you. Looking forward to having this good discussions with you. I've always kept my my mind open and talked with you guys. Mayor, thank you for everything that you guys done for us and everything. I just want to say sorry, we can't stop the driving. We got to pick up garbage.

We I'm looking forward to October 2nd to go see with with my grandson. And I do wish you guys can't wait for you guys to come and see with us because the compression between the operators which you guys did really good for them and I'm not pushing it because I was an operator for over 20 years and my fellow peers here have been over here for 20 years also. We're just looking for something that is going to help us because of the compression between 106 to 107. It just doesn't cut it.

And I'm sorry. We just think we just feel that we need to be heard. And I just want to thank you guys for this time and I really really thank all of the council members. We're still looking forward to seeing you, Mrs. Mayor, to come and have a sit down with us and so we can discuss more stuff. Thank you. You guys have a good Thank you, Mr. King. And we did give direction during study session to make sure that they pay special attention to. I did see that and I did and I appreciate everything Mr.

Cunningham Barakas, you even yourself, Mrs. Mayor, where you Thank you. did address the the towns that we were compared to. Thank you. And there are towns, not cities. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. King. Really appreciate you guys. Ethan Riel. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Ethan Regal. I am a resident of W 2. I'm here tonight because I believe that Tucson should reject Prop 421.

We need to ask ourselves, why are we continuing to pay a private for-profit monopoly to provide a service that our city's own study says that we can provide ourselves? Our own feasibility study found that a public utility could cover the purchase of TE's assets needed to serve Tucson while charging rates equal to or lower than T's rates. I'm also concerned about the ECA tied to Prop 421.

Um the city's own commission on climate, energy, and sustainability raised concern that it could disincentivize public power. While $2 million a year sounds good on paper, it's less than 1% of TEP's hundreds of millions of dollars in net income that they reported last year. And we've probably all already seen their ads. Um, they're spending millions of dollars to persuade us in money that would be far better spent investing into our community.

I'm not asking the city to municipalize our electric system tomorrow. I am saying that we seriously need to pursue public power in order to give Tonins the best deal possible. With public power, we can deliver lower rates, cleaner energy, and with TE, our rates are designed not only to cover the utilities costs, but to provide a return to shareholders, which I don't think Tucson needs. Let's reject Prop 421 and let's seriously pursue public power. Thank you, Lee. Zish Lee.

Hi, my name is Lee Zishi. I'm a Ward One resident and I'm an organizer with Tucson DSA and Public Power for Tucson and the No Desert Data Center Coalition. And I'm one of over 200 people who have signed a pledge to vote no on Prop 421 like many of the people in the room tonight and urging you to put a public power utility on the ballot instead. That's what the people of Tucson want to vote on. There are several reasons I oppose 421.

25 years is far too long and honestly it's a really bad franchise deal. Other si other cities have gotten utilities to actually reduce fossil fuel use while TE is investing more in fossil fuels and actually have gotten lower bills while ours will go up with a new rate hike. Um, and all Tucson is getting is a $2 million a year bribe while TE's business model contributes to climate change and leaves thousands of people struggling to pay their bills.

It was interesting to hear JD talk about a single mom who got assistance from them because just last year I talked to a single mom who her entire December paycheck went to her TE bill so she couldn't buy gifts for her kids including one of her daughters who's on disability and needs electricity to survive. So those are not the stories I'm hearing talking to hundreds of tonins. And 10 years ago, I was at Standing Rock.

Um, and as the climate crisis work worsens, TEP is supporting a nearly 6 billion dollar pipeline to bring fracked gas from Texas to Arizona. Guess who's building that pipeline? Energy Transfer Partners, the same company that brutalized indigenous people at Standing Rock. That's who TE partners with. And what are they building bringing that gas for? To power data centers. I mean, it's just insane that this is happening.

We just saw thousands of people, hundreds of people die in Nepal because of the climate crisis, and this is what we're getting. Um, and so I really do thank you so much for doing the feasibility study, for rejecting Project Blue. I'm glad you addressed these emails because it was very disappointing to see that, especially since TEP's website clearly puts Prop 421 in the positive light and encourages people to vote against it.

And so what I'm really asking you to do is to believe in the power of Tucson. Um, Central Hudson actually has an amazing public power fight. It's being led right now by a DSA assembly member named Sarah Honesta. And when she ran for office, her tagline was the future must be beautiful. And I will also let you know she ran against a 23 incumbent on public power because he did not support it and she beat him.

So from New York to here in Tucson, we are taking on these utilities who are making bills too high that are funding the climate crisis and just asking you to stand with the people of Tucson. And I encourage everybody to vote no on 421. Thank you, Norma. Thank you very much, Mayor and Council, for listening to us. We have very important information for you.

As you can see, when I was a little girl, my father said to me, "Do you know, honey, that the water on planet Earth has been here since planet Earth began. And that water is still here right now. And it's sacred. And 70% at least of everybody in this room and all over the planet consists of that water. So we have a unity everybody. It's sacred. It's life. We don't need to rush into this as this contract doesn't really expire until and the electorate has not agreed to it yet.

And I've pledged already to vote against Prop 21, which I encourage everyone to do. It's a horrible deal for our citizens. We want a public p power utility and we insist, we hope that the mayor and council will put it before the voters sooner than later. TE is already one of the largest water users here and they pay very little for the water they use.

Meanwhile, we're going to be paying 14 million a year on our monthly bill for the franchise fee, but TEP will only give 2 million a year for the energy collaboration agreement. We're not stupid. Everybody's been talking about it here. So, those commercials that are acting as if we're going to get a big deal, obviously, we know what the story is.

So I would hope that the council and now thank you for clarifying mayor that the council is not promoting TE's position position but I would hope that that be clarified more fully to the population of Tucson because everybody is getting the wrong idea that this is a political gambit of some sort between the city and TE. So that's not a good sign. Please. Do you think it's wise to put corporate profits over the health and the vibrancy and the longevity of this community? I don't think so.

Vote no on PR 421. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Esther Garcia Romero. Esther Garcia Romero. Oh, it's not too too tall. So, my topic today is a little bit different than when you guys are used to. There's a lot of tension going on in here. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Is that better? Okay. Sorry. So, my topic is a little bit different. Hopefully, in a positive direction. I know we have a lot to think of and there's a lot going on right now. So, um I had an idea.

I wanted to bring it to you guys' attention. Um my topic is called innovative revenue strategy. It's a donor advised uh fund something that Tucson is not participating in unlike other thousands of municipalities. So, it's known as DAFFs. And I'm sure that you guys some of you might be aware what a DAFF is. Um do I still need to speak up? Sorry. Okay. Is that better? Oh, sorry. Okay. So, let me just kind of play catchup here.

Allow me one moment because this is my first time speaking and I don't want to screw anything up. We have 3 minutes, right? Okay. You're down to 154. I'll make it quick. I'll keep it to two. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, mayor, city manager, council members. My name is Esther Garcia Romero. I am I am a city um resident here in Tucson.

I'm here to share a zerocost revenue strategy that could help fund our city's critical infrastructure right now during this tight 2025 and 2026 fiscal cycle. Right now, Tucson is leaving money on the table by missing out on a massive $326 billion national pull of individual individual uh philanthropic I don't know how to pronounce that capital known as donor advice funds. DAFFS is another name for it.

Under IRS rules, donors can legally grant these funds directly to municipalities uh for exclusive public purposes. This is incredibly urgent for Tucson due to our current budget cont uh contractions paired with a massive wave of donors holding preunded 2025 uh DAFF balances who are actively looking to deploy millions into local communities before federal tax laws shift in 2026. in Tucson.

If Tucson builds a friction free intake framework with our finance teams can set up as they can set that up in little as two to four weeks capturing just 2% of the re regional DAFF volume brings in about 40 million a year. We can immediately use that private money as our local cash match for federal infrastructure grants, unlocking an additional 16 million federal funds, turning a $4 million gift into a $20 million impact. These funds can instantly pave roads.

Uh you can use it for fire, housing, jail prevention, whatever you guys need for community foundations. Uh you can also work with community foundation for southern Arizona which has handled 219 million of these local assets. I've already emailed all of you guys a full copy of that proposal. Please keep an eye on your email for it. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Garcia Romero. JP Salvadier. I was late. Madame Mayor, Councilman JP Salveter, Tucson native, real estate broker. Prop 421.

A no vote will not change current service rendered by TEP Foris. Use of TE City of Tucson rightways will still need prudent pre-authorization to proceed. Please note that the utility will have its contract in place until August 2027. I will vote no on Prop 421.

25 years of franchise contract because it prevents wider discretion by the mayor and council and other municipal entities to freely and cooperatively engage statewide commonwealth utility propagation options without first litigating TE for profiteering setbacks. the bundled rightway, including fiber optics.

Okay, that's a that's a huge monopoly you're giving away to them along with other covenants and provider rights will qualify them to claim any and all future projected loss of revenue for the entire 25-year ending future franchise contract along with continual megapole tornatic cost increases. the longer we delay undergrounding. Hello, and assuming public long-term benefit versus foreign proxy stakeholders annual gouging rate increases. Let's do some simple math. times 1.6 billion. What is that?

Oh, $2 million. Hey, they're giving us 1/8 of a penny and they're taking the lion share. Hello, TEP. Are you here? You still here? What a gouging. What a joke. I'm sorry. We're not ignorant. The facts are there to be observed. slow infrastructure growth and increased uh low KV capacity with 128 KV to facilitate data centers first at our expense. If you refuse to remove TE's foreign proxy utility takeover of our public easement. Thank you JP. Step down. We can't we appreciate it.

We have other speakers. Thank you JP. Lilana Salmon. Lilana. Good evening Mayor and members of the Tucson City Council. My name is Lilana Sman and I am a resident of Plaza del Soul Mobile Home Park here in Tucson. I am here today because my family received a water bill of approximately $2,000 for just 31 days of service. I live in a single family home. Our previous water bills were approximately $50 to $60 a month. Then suddenly we received a bill for more than $2,000.

How does a family go from paying approximately $50 a month to 2,000? and you say, "I do not have an irrigation system. I do not have a pool to explain such an enormous increase. I have been trying to get answers. I have been requesting information, reviewing the billing records, documented the water meter myself, but I still do not have an explanation for how this amount was calculated for my family. I understand the plumbing problems can occur.

I also believe that when a family receives a bill extraordinary, there should be a thorough investigation before the family is expected to pay thousands of dollars. This situation is especially concerning because Blasa del Soloul has experienced water leaks within the community. I am asking whether the meter readings were accurate, whether there could be a billing error and any other water loss outside my home could have affected the amount charged to my household.

I am asking who is responsible for ensuring the residents of the mobile home parks are built accurately and fairly for their water usage. My family is already facing financial hardship and an enormous unexplained $2,000 water charge adds an enormous burden to any to in an already difficult situation. I am not standing here to excuse the water that my household legitimately used. I am asking for transparency, accountability, and fair investigation.

I respectfully asked the city council to help determine which city department or regulatory authority can investigate the water billing practices at Plasa del sorry review the um uh sorry protection. I also asked the city consider what protections are available to the families who are facing eviction while disputing extraordinary utility charges. No family should have chosen between paying a water bill, a keeping roof over the heads of the children. I am here because I want answers.

I do not get them from Plato del Soul. My lawyer has been in contact with Zon-in-Law that represents them. No answer at all either. Thank you, Miss Salmon. Um, I just have a question. Did the the mobile home park charge you or did you receive a city of Tucson water? No, it's the mobile home charges. Yes, there there's there's many mobile home parks that are abusive.

Um and so what what I would like for you to do if it if at all possible, can you we're going to keep your number and um my office will will call you so that we can connect you with um the AG's office, the attorney general's office, okay? um and any type of help that we can because if you receive the bill from the mobile home park itself then then it is um it could possibly be predatory. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We're we're we'll keep your number. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. All righty.

And we're going to have two um remaining speakers. We've gone over 45 minutes and so we will finish with Nicholas Kota and then Kimiko Washington. Nicholas. Good evening. Can everyone can hear me? Okay. All right. For more than 40 years, Davis Mton Air Force Base has allowed toxic chemicals to enter our water. They did this knowing the dangers these chemicals posed. And yet, for decades, they did nothing.

Only when exposed did they partially acknowledge their culpability, and that's about all they've done. Tens of millions of dollars of our hard-earned money has been spent dealing with and cleaning up their mess. That's to say nothing on the impact of the health and well-being of our loved ones. Officials say this problem doesn't currently pose an imminent threat to public drinking water. I'm very sorry if I don't trust that in the slightest.

It's been reported that it will cost the Pentagon almost $22 billion to adjust to address this problem nationally. Almost twice that, nearly $4 billion was spent in the first 100 days uh in the war of aggression with Iran alone. Now, former members of the same wasteful, imperialistic, and shameful military with benevolent laress are offering to leverage the government to remove these chemicals faster than planned. What's the catch?

Well, this great group of guys just really want to build a really cool golf course in the middle of the desert in the middle of a drought. We just need to hand over some land on which to build it. And by the way, any cleaned and treated water is to be used exclusively for the golf course, not for any actual beneficial use, just to add a little insult to injury.

These guys want to step in, cash in on their old boys club connections uh to do them a favor, exploiting this fiasco so they can bask in the successes of their service to American wararmongering. And there's the mayor, city council, and city manager lapping up a pathetic step towards long overdue accountability, smiling and also grateful. What an incredible opportunity.

If we say no to this proposal, we're told we must resign ourselves to year after year of more feet dragging, more taxpayer dollars wasted to do the government's job for it, and contaminated water as a fact of life. Yet only through the expression of our collective power can we hold government truly accountable. Our society is structured so that this does so that this does this does not come naturally. So the people's power must be built and strengthened in moments like this.

Yes, we may perhaps materially benefit from this rotten deal in the short term if we're lucky, but we would forfeit more than just our precious land and water. We would prove true the fear many have that we don't have power or control or a say in the quality of our lives and how our communities are shaped. This choice between the status quo and a quidd proquo is a false one. So, I encourage everyone to express their disapproval and opposition.

And to the city council, this deal and any deal like it must be treated as the insult is and be strongly rejected with conviction and maybe a little spine for once. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kota. And our last speaker is Kimo Washington. Hello. Thank you, mayor, for this last moment. Um, my name is Kamika Washington.

I've stood before you multiple times um advocating for the naming of the new aquatic center at Mission Manor uh to be named after my son Ocean Washington who was killed by driveby shooters and fell to the ground and took his last breaths right where the entrance to that aquatic center is. And um I I submitted this proposal in March and I've proposed a gun memorial to be established. Um I have not yet received a response from any of my um emails.

I have um I have gotten, you know, you guys have gotten my contact info. I've attended these um these meetings pretty regularly and and in these meetings I'm learning. I'm learning a lot. Um I was here last month or last earlier this month. Um and I'm aware of the moratorum uh put on naming parks and I also understand um that the naming of the Stacy Rodondo fields at Kennedy Park still went through and vice mayor stated that it was not a renaming but a naming on a new softball complex.

Uh similarly to the aquatic center, it's not a park, it's an amenity. So I still come before you learning and asking how I can get ocean's name remembered in this spot that holds so much pain and grief and also fun and water exploration for our community including Ocean's daughter who just turned seven today. I also come before you because of the ongoing gun violence in Tucson. Um, I came to you in June right before uh the proclamation of gun violence awareness day and I appreciate that.

Um, and when we had the uh mass shooting downtown, you know, we we all came together as a community and I was there at that emergency meeting as well uh pleading for solutions to lessen the violence in Tucson because when a single incident of gun violence occurs, it doesn't just affect one person. It it shatters entire lives. the mother, the father, the siblings, the cousins, the friends, and the lost future of that individual.

Now we have yet another public space where two of our citizens were killed by guns. And our community is mourning and we remember the exact space where it happened, the time it happened, and the closeness of the community who was broken by the tragedies. So, I'm here today to ask the council for real action. What are the next steps for naming the aquatic center and what is the city doing to prevent the next family from standing here at this podium? Thank you. Thank you, Miss Washington.

That uh is the conclusion of our call to the audience. Thank you everyone so much. I appreciate your presence and your feedback and input to mayor and council. Item seven, consent agenda. Uh reports from the city manager on the consent agenda are received into and made part of the record. Madame clerk, you are requested to read the consent agenda. Item 7 A, approval of minutes.

7B, intergovernmental agreement with Puma County Recorders Office to provide election related services for the city of Tucson elections. Item 7 C approving expenditure of budget mayor and ward office funds for various programs and projects. Item 7 D approval of involuntary tort judgments for fiscal year 2526. Item 7E, intergovernmental agreement between the city of Tucson and Regional Transportation Authority of Pima County for delivery of non-transit RTA plan elements.

Item 7F, intergovernmental agreement between the city of Tucson and Regional Transportation Authority of Puma County to fund, implement, and deliver RTA plan transit services and operations. Item 7G, amendment number one to the 5-year agreement to USGS to monitor stream flows and substance uh in the Tucson area. Item 7H, notice of intent to enter into a sight specific sales tax development agreement with Tucson in LLC. That's it. All righty. May I have a motion, please? Your honor. So moved.

Second. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on this hearing? None. We do need to go to roll call. Councilman Lee. Hi. Council member Cunningham. Hi. Council member Schubert. Hi. Council member Dah. I. Council member Barahus. I. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. I. Mayor Romero. I. The items on the consent agenda are approved by a vote of 70. Item eight. Public hearing ordinance amending chapter 7 of the Tucson code sections 27 through 20 and 27 through 21.

2720 and 2721 staff recommended revisions to the large quantity water user ordinance. Ordinance number 12188 following ad hoc committee review. City manager communication number 275 dated September 22nd is received into part of the record. This is the time and place legally advertised for a public hearing uh to obtain approval. Uh hold on. I don't know if this is the correct language. Um, yep. Yep. No, it's not. It's a wrong hearing. Do you have the language? Okay.

Sorry, we had the wrong language. Just going to make sure Okay. So, maybe the public hearing ordinance amending chapter 27 of Tucson code section 27-20 and 27-21. Um staff recommended revisions to the large quantity water user ordinance. Ordinance number 12188 following ADHD committee review communication um September 22-26-27275. Is that what it is? Yes, that's title. All righty. Um, this is a public hearing scheduled to last for no more than one hour.

Speakers are limited to five minute presentations. Please come forward when I call your name and make your presentation. State your name, whether you live inside the city of Tucson or not, whom you are representing, and whether or not you are a paid speaker. Uh, do we have any cards from the audience to speak? All righty. So we are scheduled for no more than an hour. All righty. Our first speaker is Catlo Chepic. Good evening. My name is Catlo Shipek. I live in Ward 3.

I am here representing Watershed Management Group. Excuse me. We are we as residents are asked to be desert dwellers. To quote Tucson Water, Tucson's heritage of conservation has established our community as one of the most water resilient cities in the southwest. And we are thanks to past and present leadership. However, to be resilient, we cannot pause to rest during critical moments.

We find ourselves here today at a crossroads where we can choose to improve how we engage large quantity water using businesses and ensure they too are desert dwellers or we can let them continue to do business as usual regardless of our uncertain water future. The proposed revisions by Tucson Water to the large quantity water user ordinance do little to ensure we do not have the opportunity to engage large water users and provide performance measures on their water use and stewardship.

The ordinance with currently proposed revisions allow these new large water users to continue with business as usual. We must ask new large water users to also be desert dwellers. This includes how to care and respect all waters, give back more than one takes, and be aligned with and supporting our community values and stewardship of our water, our rivers, and our wershed. This is why we are asking for one, a 2:1 water demand offset for the consumptive use portion by the business.

Why are we asking for a 2:1 offset? A case study report recommends a 2:1 ratio to protect or restore water resources in areas of existing depletion. Our regional aquifer two, we are asking for a lowering of the threshold to 2500 ccfs per month, which calculates to 72 acre feet per year to ensure we can have an open and transparent conversation with more large water users.

Currently, only 56 existing users are at or over 2500 CCFs per month, and only an additional 15 existing users are over 10,000 CCFs per month. This past year, we have had zero applications at 10,000 CCFs per month. Let's ensure we can have a productive conversation with new large users and not miss that opportunity.

Three, we are asking for a pause during periods of drought to allow us to protect existing water users and safeguard our supplies to ensure we can sustain our waters for generations to come. We may have 10 years of water banked in the aquifer, but we need to be looking well beyond seven generations out. We are facing continued uncertainty with the Colorado River.

We have already learned that the more we can support the Colorado River and other communities, the more we can benefit in investing in our own resilience. Let's demonstrate regional leadership in water and community resilience and make these changes to this ordinance.

We are grateful for our Tucson community and those here today and in the past who have shared their concerns and called for action to continue progress on the replenishment of our aquifer and renewal of our rivers to sustain our community. Thank you, Mayor Romero and city council members for your leadership on this issue. Thank you, Marggo it. Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Marggo IUi. I'm a resident of Tucson. I'm here representing myself and I'm not paid.

We are facing severe challenges to our groundwater supply. Not only by population growth, but by compounding depletion through agriculture, industrial mining, chip manufacturing, and data centers. The conflict between economic survival and environmental reality must be faced and dealt with if we are to survive. Now is the time to plan for the future instead of reckless and short-sighted policies that naively hand over more of our precious shrinking resource.

It is imperative that the large quantity water user ordinance be strengthened to specifically protect our local water supplies, especially in light of the extreme drought and pending Colorado River water allocation cuts. While budgetary planning is of course necessary, the main concern cannot be solely economic development with little to no regard for our unique desert environment. The lack of planning for a sustainable future is confounding.

If we continue on this path, we will surely render our environment uninhabitable. I don't think any of us want to look in the mirror and see ourselves as an endangered species. We support the following revisions as priority recommendations proposed by the watershed management group. One, a public review process for large quantity water user ordinance for all future revisions to the ordinance. Two, a requirement that all large water users have a net zero conservation plan uh a ratio of 2:1.

Three, ensure that all toxins, contaminants, PAS, etc. are eliminated from recharged, leaked, or released water with consequences for failing to meet this requirement. Four, in the event of diesel spills that contaminate Tucson water, the user must be 100% responsible for emergency cleanup. This just happened in New Jersey, by the way. Five, lower the threshold from 10,000 CCF to 2500 CCF to reflect the limited water resources of our desert city.

Six, suspend any new requests for water while we are in extreme drought and facing cuts to our water allocation. Seven, include language that ensures water user does not diminish the surface waters of the Santa Cruz River, Priito River, Tank Verde Creek, or Sabino Creek. Eight, ensure large water user does not reduce the Tucson water service area groundwater aquifers. Watershed management has worked tirelessly toward a goal of achieving a proactive hydrolo water future.

That is restoring our desert rivers, cooling our cities, and ensuring we honor the sacred value of water. It would be reprehensible to dismantle their accomplishments. allowing the pace of of resource extraction to satisfy the ravenous appetites of corporate greed would do just that. If we don't draw the line to protect our finite water resources now, we will be complicit in having destroyed our beloved Sonor and Desert. Water depletion is not inevitable if we act together now.

We can't wait until we're faced with a water emergency crisis because then it will be too late. Thank you. Nick Maya. Nick Maya. Nick Maya. Ivy Schwarz. Oh, Nick. There. There he is. Thank you. My mom always told me to take the hat off at the dinner table, so I suspect she also probably would mean the deis as well. Um, good evening, mayor and council. My name is Nick Maya. I'm here on behalf of the Coalition for Sonor and Desert Protection where I'm the current program manager.

I'm also a recent W 6 resident. Just want to say that we echo the comments from Catlo and WMG that you just heard before me or two people before me. Hope you had the chance to read the letter we submitted ahead of tonight's meeting. The proposed revisions improve enforcement and transparency, but they would still allow facilities to use substantial amounts of water without being reviewed as a large user.

Given the ongoing drought, uncertainty about Colorado River reductions, and growing interest from water intensive industries, we believe the city should adopt a more precautionary approach. New large developments should demonstrate that they will not shift water related costs and risks onto residents, groundwater resources, or the environment. They should also meaningfully contribute to replenishing the water they consume.

We're particularly concerned about protecting the Santa Cruz River's flow. Reclaimed water is not unlimited, and decisions about its use can directly affect the river and the wildlife habitat it supports. The ordinance offers Tucson the opportunity to set clear expectations before the next major water user applies. We respectfully encourage you to adopt stronger safeguards now while the city still has the opportunity to plan uh proactively. Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Ivy Schwarz.

Good evening, Madame Mayor, members of the council, staff, Mr. Tumour. Nice to see you again. It's been a while. Thank you. Thanks for this opportunity to speak. Uh, first of all, I'd like to thank you for the ordinance you passed in August of 25 related to large water users. That was a really important thing to do and I appreciate that.

Um, the watershed management group and others in this community, Coalition for Sonor and Desert Protection, others, I I totally um e echo what they've said and I really thank them for their work and for being here. and for the other folks that are here who are concerned about this issue as well.

Um, I read something recently that just totally blew me away, which was that the average household in this community uses 126 gallons of water per day, which works out to just under 3,800 gallons per month. And that it would take over 160 years, 160 years for that average household to use up the amount of water that would be used up as a monthly threshold by large water users. I mean, I can't even conceive of those numbers to tell you the truth. I mean, it just totally blew me away.

And I think we need to keep that in the front of our minds when we think about this issue because the large water user ordinance is really about data centers. I mean we know that right and this discussion is actually about values. We know that too. I mean isn't that true? This is about values. Values that we hold dear in this community. We want to protect this land. We want to protect the desert. We want to protect the water here.

and we want to make have this be continue to be a viable place to live. So what I'd like to communicate today and I guess I should have said I'm speaking for myself. I live in word one. I forgot to say that I'm not being paid by anybody to do this. Um, my personal feeling about all of this is that we need to have net zero water use here. We need to use reclaimed water here, not portable water. We need to have net zero energy use, certainly sustainable energy use here.

If there's a large uh company or corporation that wants to build here and they're going to use a lot of energy, they need to be using solar for that energy. They shouldn't be using uh coal or natural uh natural uh liquid gas, which is actually methane, which is even worse than carbon dioxide for the environment. Um we need to stop repeating Republicans talking points about being unfriendly to business.

If we we can bring businesses here that build solar panels, that build parts for windmills, that can do all kinds of things that will be beneficial rather than destructive. People are upset about data centers. Over 70% of people in this country are opposed to data centers now. I mean, that that's really unbelievable when you think about it, right? They don't trust big corporations. They don't trust billionaires. They want local control. They want to protect the desert.

And all these things are the majority viewpoint now. They are the majority viewpoint. They are not um socialist necessarily. They're not extremist. They're not any of those boogie word kinds of words that we hear or name calling. This is what people believe now. And we really are at a pivotal moment in this country and in this city and in this state and I think we can move forward in positive ways not negative ways. So basically I'm urging you folks and I've known a lot of you for a long time.

I am urging you to make the decision which is not super scary. It's happening all over the country now in lots of states and lots of municipalities to have a moratorum on data centers to have a pause here because it's time to rethink all of this and do things that are good for our community and good for our planet. Thank you so very much. Florence Johnson. Florence Johnson. Um, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Can you hear me? Okay. Um, I'm representing myself. I'm a resident of Ward 6.

Um, I want to state that Tucson's large quantity water user ordinance does not go far enough. Tucson's large quantity water user ordinance must operate according to hydroloal water budget. For details on the composition of a hydroloal water budget, consider all of the following in the budget. Groundwater, rainwater, cap water, and recycled wastewater. For more detailed guidelines, please consult with Tucson's watershed management group. We are in a tier 2 drought.

A Tucson large quantity water user ordinance must operate within our region's hydro local water budget. It must operate with a 2:1 water demand offset that will require a large water user to replace every 100 acre feet of water used with 200 acre feet of local water. a paper water credit from a watershed outside of our region such as Nevada like has been suggested in the past by our city managers. Um explanation of the benefits of project blue.

This will not resupply losses to our local water supply from a large quantity water user. A hydrolo water budget requires adhering to the following equitable and environmentally sound principles. Require recharging more groundwater than is used. Restore heritage wetlands and river flow. Reduce water demand to be in line with local water supplies. Prioritize community values to ensure local indigenous tribes have water sovereignty. Limit and report on evaporative loss.

reduce and limit off-site water use. For example, limit redirecting water store uh redirecting water use or storage of water to ancillary operations that are not directly related to the large water users primary permitted operation. Prohibit use of reclaimed, recycled, or stored water as an offset for large water users. Restore water tables to regrow Tucson's lost urban forests to help cool and clean the air we breathe.

Lower the large water user offset to be comparable to Avonale's 28 acre feet per year. Revise this down from Tucson's current ordinance of 276 acre feet per year. require public reporting of large quantity water use volumes by quantity used and recovered or recycled with separate annual accountings for wastewater volumes and analysis of wastewater composition. Require a public review process for any new or revised large quantity water user operation.

A large um quantity water user ordinance must have clear and meaningful performance offsets that can be measured and applied locally. The ordinance must value reclaimed reclaiming waste water as highly as any other water source. The ordinance must account for and restore the water loss during wastewater treatment and from evaporation during any form of large water use.

Tonians demand an amended large water user ordinance that protects all local water users and increases transparency by providing meaningful reporting and public participation in the permitting of large water users. Tsonians simply can't afford the permitting of any more industrialsized operations that require high levels of water and electric power use. Large quantity water users must be required to do more than use water responsibly.

They must be required to report their water usage and wastewater volumes and quality. They must their operations must make meaningful contribution to employing full-time workers for a livable wage with pathways to advancement. In addition, there must be enforcable financially significant consequences for violations of Tucson's large water user ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Johnson. Elena Ortiz. Elena Ortiz. Hi, good evening. My name is Elena Ortiz.

Um, I am a resident of Tucson and of W five. Um, and I'm here to urge you to continue working together um, and with the Tucson community to strengthen the large water user ordinance. I grew up here and I have to say like I'm truly afraid about my my future here and being able to stay here and that's what really motivates me to be here.

Um, as we know, the city rushed to pass this ordinance last year in the wake of Project Blue, and I'm grateful that you all worked so quickly um in that moment to fill a really important policy gap. Um, however, we need your leadership to make this policy stronger by creating opportunity for meaningful community input and to protect our precious water resources into the future.

Last month, we learned that Arizona is going to see significant cuts to the amount of water that we rece receive from the Colorado River given ongoing drought, um overuse of the river's resources over many, many decades and generations. Um and climate change, uh as much as a third of our current water allocations. Um and it's also likely that cuts could increase in the coming years. So there's a lot of uncertainty, right?

Um, so serious water shortage scenarios aren't part of this like far-flung future that we talk about, right? They're in fact here today. Um, and they really compel us to do what we can to protect our water resources for the community and ecological well-being into the future. Um, so I'd like would love to see mayor and council strengthen the large water unit or user ordinance in the following ways.

Um, first I think we need a more robust and meaningful public engagement process with more public forums like town halls to discuss and meaningfully give input as a community to improve this ordinance and ensure it reflects our values. Someone was talking about this being a value um conversation and I totally agree. Um, as the memo from last year's ad hoc committee um reflects, public input process then was was rushed. it was around the holidays saw pretty low participation.

Um there wasn't really time to meaningfully engage our neighboring tribal governments and that's a huge oversight. Um I want to uplift uh uh the recommendations that others in the room have um up have shared um and support um lowering the threshold for the definition of a large water user um to reflect our limited water resources. Um, so down from 10,000 CCFs to 2500 CCFs and would really support the city exploring a ceiling.

Um, the city of Aurora, Colorado, um, has an interesting tiered, um, policy that may be worth looking into. Um, would like to see that the, um, conservation plan, um, be required to be net zero and include binding commitments from the water user to implement water conservation, recharge, and reuse strategies. um and I'm supportive of the 2:1 ratio others have spoken about.

Um I think I say this a lot when I come to these meetings, but I really want to see regular and independent monitoring um and reporting um as part of the the ordinance to verify the actual water use that large water users um to ensure that they're meeting the conservation plan commitments um and require that they disclose water they're getting from other sources such as groundwater.

Um, this information should be accessible and public and the costs associated with any kind of reporting should be paid by the water user. Um, I'd also like to see suspensions um included um uh like higher up in the process of of the violation process to really hold water users accountable. Um we should suspend their water if they're not meeting the terms of their plan.

Um, and I support uh what others have spoken about um a moratorum on new large water user application during periods of extreme drought um and until we know more about what these final Colorado River water allocations will be. Um and I'd love to see exploring applying the terms of this ordinance to existing water users.

Um, so these measures can better reflect, I think, our community values and protect our limited water resources to support thriving human and non-human and ecological communities and our waterways into the future. Um, thank you in advance for your time and your thoughtful consideration of these recommendations um, and other ways to strengthen this ordinance. Thanks. Thank you, Mortis. And our last speaker is Carl Freeman. Carl Freeman. Hello. Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

Um, around water, I guess I'm going to be a little different than most people. Um, the exhaust pipes from our cars, that's approximately 500,000 exhaust hours per day, which results in about 90 million BTUs. And to put that in a visual perspective, that much heat is evaporating an Olympic size swimming pool every second for 24 hours a day on average. That's a lot of water that's lost out of the city.

And if we really wanted to stop that, we could press forward aggressively with a lot of solar panels to power so electric cars because they don't do that. Um, and in the bigger sense, uh, I try to offer solutions. Uh, everyone thinks that a cooperative would be a great idea for Tucson, but Fortis would fight that legally and only the lawyers would win.

Uh, a way around that is if legally, I don't know if we can, but legally if we made each neighborhood its own energyindependent entity, we could be Tucson could be energy independent in a month or sorry, sorry, in a decade easily. Um, but all those exhaust pipes not only are evaporating water, but we don't get the monsoons. You'll see the the weather maps when the they come through in that heat dome of all, you know, global climate change, yes, but specifically heating up our own frying pan.

That's taking away a lot of water from what's not coming. That's a cumulative effect. So, uh, are we doing things to cover our washes? a wash. I explained to people from back home that's where a river used to be covering it with solar panels. Are people around the world doing this and recovering making washes back into rivers? Uh agrovtaics, they're using them around rivers to grow and anyway the there's so much we can do on this.

Um if ne again if neighborhoods could be energyindependent entities we can kind of endun the whole thing of fortis because every I I'm an installer right now solar panels are so good batteries are so good it's 2 cents a kilowatt hour that's not and that would go down by the time you built it probably be a penny these are the directions we have to go in the legal entanglements won't let us get there I would love to see us rise above the whole situation and not insult to t workers that are just trying to do their job and look at the real solutions we need.

And I I sent something during co to you about an app to link people together to for these kind of meetings uh and early adopters to solar. Uh anyway, uh uh uh I don't have much more to say other than Oh, yes. Um per perhaps I mean water is becoming more expensive every day. If we had a tax credit for any entity that come forward with a way to save it, giving them a tax credit for every gallon they save. A small tribute but definitely worth looking at. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Freeman.

All righty. So, that was my last card submitted, but um I do like to ask if there's anyone in the audience that would uh is wishing to be heard. Why did I I know that it was going to be you, JP. Come on up. Any others? Thank you, Madame Mayor. My name is Jonathan Salvatra. I'm a native to Sonan. I'm not a retained speaker.

I'm speaking for myself and I've spent uh a number of years uh over 34 years with the railroad and I I know a lot about the industrial developments that are in the outlying areas. Uh, and there are so many things we could we could be creating that will enhance the benefits to everyone. Um, the indigenous community has farmed in this area for over 4,000 years. That's huge.

Now, uh, Farmer's Insurance has a pecan orchards, the gardens there at Sarita, and we don't have running water anymore in the Santa Cruz. Um, speaking of large water users, back again. What happened to American battery? They just got in under the wire before we created provisions for those kind of heavy large users. Are they honoring some guideline that we're trying to create to, you know, maintain, you know, this more reasonable use of our water and our resources.

Um, few months ago I spoke to Sharon Magdal. um she's the uh UVA water resources WRRC director and she mentioned that California is is uh creating areas where the flash flooding can be retained. Uh there are so many different things we can do. We we we're talking about desalinization with California and then with Mexico and sharing, you know, some reciprocal agreement so that we give them more uh of these resources. Same thing's going on.

Um the practicality of it is now we really need something like a 10-year moratorum that I mentioned in the last meeting. If we don't get sufficient rainfall that allows the Colorado mountain range to supply water through its uh continuity, uh then no large user commercial activity should maintain itself against our best uh interests. Um, Rosemont Mine, now Copper World.

Uh, they have direct access to our, uh, Sanorita watershed, our regional aquifer that comes down through that break in the mountains from Sierra Vista area and and along I 10. Um, and it replenishes our aquifers. um they plan to take more water out than they can ever recharge back in. Even uh I I noticed uh John Kemick is here.

he can verify that um they only have the potential of getting 3% of the water that they take out of that watershed in the Sanoritas with water they provide through the Colorado River project to the the PAS and the desalinization and the non-pottable water uh treatment that's going on there that he's been championing for so long. Um, so what about the other 97% that they're going to take out of the Sanoritas and drain our backup regional aquifer?

It's not going to come back for 100 years, maybe more. So these are all really critical issues. Now why am I disappointed at times with the council? Okay. So, you immediately uh have uh these non-disclosure agreements, you know, that you're talking to other entities about. And here in the paper, the Star, we just found out about Warbird. Oh, well, the mayor has been talking to him for a year and a half. I don't know. What's going on? This is uh very disappointing.

You got five minutes just like everyone else. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any others wishing to be heard on this? I'm sorry, sir. You already had your five minutes on this item. I'm sorry. Thank you. All righty. Any anyone else that hasn't spoken on this issue and wants to be heard? Okay. With that, uh, we have no others, then I'd like to, um, request that we have a motion to close the public hearing. I move we close the public hearing. And there's a motion in a second.

Um any other discussions hearing? None. Um all those in favor of closing the public hearing signify by saying I. I. Any against? Motion carries. All right. Madame clerk, you are requested to read ordinance 12272 by number and title only.

Ordinance number 12272 relating to Tucson water authorizing adding new provisions to the Tucson code specifically chapter 27 water article 1 general section 2720 and 2721 large water quantity water users and additional remedies declaring an emergency and setting an effective date. What is the council's pleasure? Madame Mayor uh council member do I I would like to move that resolution uh with two additions. One, I would like to lower the ordinance the ordinance. Thank you. Thank you.

Um I'd like to lower the amount from 10,000 to 5,000 and I would like to direct the city attorney to develop a line item uh amendment. Um and I'll explain it um what I'm looking for. Um, and then I would like the city attorney to come back and perhaps in a consent agenda in a future to just do that that correction. I was speaking with director John Kami about what happens if a um large water user is going over and there's a 120% and then get the director gets to to take some action.

I wanted to make sure that it would come to mayor and counsel and he said of course I would do that. So, I don't think he disagrees with it coming to mayor and counsel, but I would like that in the ordinance some way or another. Um, does that make sense, city attorney? Go ahead, Mr. Lisk. I I think I understand. Uh, council member D, honorable mayor, I I just want to make sure. Are you talking about if somebody violates the ordinance, it would come back as part of the process? Yes. Okay.

Thank you. That's my motion. And I have some words afterwards. Yeah. That's there's a motion. May I have a second? Uh, I'd like to second for the sake of discussion. Okay. So, there's a motion and a second. Further discussion. Madame Mayor, um, we did this incredible good ordinance in response to Project Blue. And that was good. And we thought and we said we will come back in a year and see if we need to tweak it after going through a process that involved stakeholders.

It wasn't public engagement. We were trying to get expert people from different parts of the community, Catlo, um people who were developers, people who had thoughts about water. And what's come to us is their consensus. And I that's great. All all the consensus stuff is great. But what really concerns me is we've had a year where this ordinance hasn't been tested. Partially that's great because no big data center has dared try to build in Tucson and they better not.

But there's other industries that we might be concerned about using too much water for too few benefits. And that's what's great about this ordinance. So that's why I believe that 10,000 is too high. I heard a lot of suggestions for 2,500. And that's not bad. But let's split the difference. Um I think the mayor said it one time, and I hope you said this publicly, this is a living document. As as we go through it, we can change it, but we actually need to test it.

We need to have some people trying it out. I agree that this is not an anti-b businessiness. This is a water conservation. This is Tucson's values. Tonins have been great water conservationists. And by the way, Tucson Water has done a great job of stewarding our water. If anything speaks to why we should have public power, it's because we do water really good. Yeah. Um but but let's bring it down a little bit.

I was looking at uh my colleagueuh council member uh Schubert asked some excellent questions and we got some answers and I was looking at the chart of current big users and we're not likely to get very many at 10,000. So, we need to bring it down and um I think 5,000 is great. If in a year we've only gotten one or gotten zero, well then we reconsider it. Some of the other suggestions are great. I've put put forth net zero water for years. The staff has done a report back to us about it.

I'm not sure that it's time for that, but I hope someday it will be time so that any large water would pay the inloo fees to do conservation and pay for areas where we don't have money to to put good appliances in low-inccome homes, for instance, and other water conservation measures. Um, water is sacred. Water is life. I love that it um Marco, you you bringing that up very early in this meeting.

Um and we need to be good stewards and um I think we're on the right track and I hope you'll support my um motion. Thank you, Council Member Cunningham. And I also wanted to ask Mr. Manager if there was any presentation. I forgot to do this. if there was any presentation by our Tucson Water team or yourself.

Honorable mayor, uh, members of the council, there was no presentation planned and all of the key points have been brought out actually by members of the audience, the ad hoc task force and the consensus recommendations. Okay. All righty. Council member Cunningham, I got a couple things. And again, this is I want to pass this. Um, I I don't care how low we go.

actually we can go to 2500 or 5,000 um because as long as it looks like there's some discretion for the director and the council to intervene some of the folks who came in and by the way Ivy it's really nice to see you um we talked about these users that we can't imagine well one of them is a hospital and that's like this weird nuance in this ordinance and where if so I have three hospitals that operate in W 2 and one of the pieces is they're constantly expanding or changing and if they go to more than a certain even because their meters are all connected under one company they'd still count as a high user.

Well, I don't want people's healthc care or hospital state money going up because we we're gouging them on their water bill. So, that's like the one piece of this that I'm is floating out there. But like I said, there's some discretion for the director and the council on this ordinance. So, I think that's an important piece to it that allows us. The one thing that does worry me about the discretion in this ordinance is actually on the other side, and that's the enforcement piece.

Um, as written, the 120% cap doesn't have like an automatic consequence. Uh, so there really isn't like a true hard cap where the director can say, you know what, you're cut off or your flow restriction is down. And I think probably we're going to need that. I want the director to have that teeth and I want him to be able to say or her be able to say whatever. And if they want to appeal it, they should have to come before the body. So I like the idea of triggering a hard cap.

Now we can wait and amend it later. I want to pass what we have tonight because I think partly is time of is of the essence. But for me, I want that flexibility for hospitals or flexibility for a larger user that comes in that really does serve a purpose. There may be a situation where they're a large user, but they're working a recharge project. That could actually happen. Counterintuitive to what we believe.

Now, I'm sure there's some water credit uses that we'd have there, but still that's these are these scenarios that you don't think about. The other the other scenario is of course is triggering that hard cap. I want to make sure that we're enforcing this if we have a user go over. In the meantime, Project Gravel has now filed to build a a data center in Serita and the board of supervisors will take up their 120-day moratorum on Tuesday. And so again, this discussion is evolving constantly.

Um, for me, I have no issues limiting high water users. I have no issues with any of that stuff. I just want to make sure we're responsible in those scenarios where we have a hotel, where we have a a large hospital that has that many patients and that many people. I mean, if there's 9,000 people using the water, that makes a little bit more sense than if we have a giant machine using the water. So, those are my thoughts on it. Again, take it for what it's worth.

I don't think that we need to make those changes today. I think as we have this living document, we'll be able to make tweaks. Uh, thank you, Council Member Cunningham. Um, I have a lot of thoughts.

Um especially because I feel as though um the facts about our water resources are not complete in in terms of our community and um I have been asking and I formally requested at today's study session that we have informational town halls and community engagement events about our water resources, including the large uh water user ordinance. Um because I I do believe uh council member Dah that these types of ordinances are living documents, right?

We're not um I feel as though we're not going to leave it um as it is written today for the next 25 years. that we are going to um allow for ourselves and and and future mayor and councils to adjust hopefully for the better um so that we can have the best outcomes in terms of our water resources. Um you know I um and you know uh Dr. Short said it herself. I, you know, you've known me for a long, long time since before I ran for city council.

And it is about ethic and it it is about working with our community and their needs and learning from Tonins. Um, Tonins have a water conservation ethic. We value open spaces and wildlands. We value um our beautiful biologically diverse desert. We fight to protect it. And that is what I come from, you know, and um I believe that the mayor and council have been responsible stewards of our water resources. And I can't just take that credit ourselves, right?

This mayor and council, it goes back a few generations of mayors and councils and city managers and Tucson water directors that have that set the tone um about water conservation. I wish that 125 years ago when we created Tucson Water, the mayor and council at the time would have said, "We're also taking electricity." I wish we would have done that.

Um because of the stewardship that having a mayor and council that is elected by the public uh for our water is has made the difference and um how we handle the quality of the water PAS remediation at 14 dioxine most currently. Have there been concerns, especially um environmental justice issues with TCE in our water and Tucson water delaying remediation. Um not that we caused right but delaying remediation and that has changed.

Um, so I feel that there is no evidence that show a lack of responsible water stewardship by this particular mayor and council. Um, we said no to project blue. We heard our community. Unfortunately, some on the board of supervisors didn't. And now the water being used for that project is coming from our aquifer. Um we changed our zoning codes, our land use codes as an additional measure. We passed in as in an emergency basis the large quantity water users ordinance.

We passed water uh protection. Going out back even further, um we passed and implemented our climate action plan created uh back in 2008 uh the water um service policy in terms of serving and I was there um I was one of the ones that put that forward to deliver only water um inside the city of Tucson. on the annexation for water policy. We passed uh we passed an ordinance to ban nonfunctional turf in commercial zones. Uh created the residential conservation fee.

Um we created our green storm water infrastructure fund. Um, not to mention that we have successfully banked so much of our excess Colorado River allocations into our aquifer that we have more than 50 years worth of water banked. Um, we also moved fast and furiously to work with the Biden administration to leave behind water and lake me to be responsible stewards for the entire state.

And off of that work, we received federal funds to create our uh pure water advanced water purification project, which by the way, I'm going to San Diego to visit theirs tomorrow um because they have been doing um pure water purification for the last 10 years.

So, I really want our citizens to understand that Tucson and your mayor and council have continuously we I think we challenge ourselves as mayor and council to go further and further and further and further uh into um water conservation and making sure that we're serving um as clean water as we possibly can deliver, getting ahead of the PAS issues uh that our um Air National Guard and our Air Force have uh put into our system.

So all this to say that as mayor I also have the responsibility to think about other issues in the city of Tucson. Right. I I feel very confident and and that's why I I need to we need to have a community engagement and conversation on water and the resources we have and what are our plans as we move to the future in terms of the uses that we can give to our water.

But I also have a responsibility as mayor to work on an issue that Tucson and Puma County have um been going through for at least four decades and that is poverty. Poverty in our community has been prevailent and it's not just Tucson, it's also Pima County. We have abnormal percentages of poverty in our community. Abnormal. When I first started as a council member in 2007, it was 24% people living in Tucson living in poverty. And um we have been able to see those numbers drop.

I mean that was one in four children living in poverty. and we have been able to drop those numbers to 18%. But that is still very high. That's abnormally high over what the state poverty levels are. And so we passed a prosperity initiative in the city of Tucson to tackle that humongous uh societal issue that we have in Pima County and the city of Tucson. And I bring that up because we also have to think about what is it that we want to say yes to. We said no to data centers.

We have been very good as a mayor and council to say no to mines and to other extractive industry in our community. But we need to be able to find an industries that we say yes to. So when people talk about this water policy as if this is an opportunity or an open door for um data centers, data centers use 32,000 CCFs per month. Our 10,000 CCF per month threshold would never allow a data center to go through the cracks. Never mind that we passed land use codes that protect from that.

Um, by having even a conversation about the possibility of ever allowing a data center in the city of Tucson, they would have to come to us, which means you all will have a voice in that. And so I believe that we need to pass the policy that we have today. I would agree that we could bring it down to 8,500 CCFs uh per month. Uh but and I agree and I actually love the idea of having a conservation plan required at a lower threshold.

I I believe that the conservation plan should be established at a 5,000ccf threshold. Um because I I agree with a council member Cunningham. He said, you know, there's hospitals that use uh 50 to uh 100 CCFs per um per month. There are community colleges, schools, parks, um, recreation centers that use 8,000 CCFs, hospitals, colleges that use 7,200 CCFs. And we really have to make sure that we are paying attention to we cannot do an automatic shut off to a school.

We cannot do an automatic shut off to a hospital or a college or a recreation center. And so the water policy as um edited by the stakeholder group is an additional step that we move forward with. And I do demand that we have additional community engagement conversations about our water resources and what we've done to protect our water resources to remediate PAS and 14day accent and TCE from our delivery to our community.

Um, but I want to make sure that we are not tying our own hands when it comes to creating long-term highwage jobs in our city that we need to be able to create to provide economic mobility to our residents. So, I as the mayor have to balance the needs of how we proceed in our community and continue monitoring uh the ordinances and policies that we pass for the betterment of our community. So, I I just had to lay it all out in terms of what I believe in terms of how we proceed.

Councilwoman Lee, I'm sorry. I I jumped in because I I just I was feeling it. You are the mayor. You are allowed to jump in when you're feeling it. Mayor, um no, just I really appreciate the conversation. I really appreciate all of the the feedback and the wisdom that is coming from the group. Um I feel like fundamentally we're all aligned. You know, I brought this item forward over the summer. We unanimously approved it to get something in place to address the vulnerability that existed.

Um so I think we're all very much focused on protecting and securing our water future for our our community. Um, I do want to be very intentional and and mayor, I really appreciate you kind of putting all of your thoughts out there about the economic impact of this choice. And Ivy, I want to put a little bit of a nuance to to your point about prioritizing business over water.

Because similar to the mayor to me it's about finding the balance between protecting the water as the primary focus but also not the business as much as creating the opportunity for tonins because we were the only um city within our peer cities to have a negative job growth last year. We actually lost jobs compared to every other community uh like ours.

So, how do we find opportunity and create jobs and bring industry here that ma matches our values and is in alignment with what we want to see as a community and not having um anything that might impede on that ability to find the right opportunities for tonins. Um so, Phoenix currently I think we we modeled ours and talked to a lot of our peer jurisdictions. I think they're at 2,000 ccf. So, even this I'm sorry, 20,000 ccf. So even this one is half of that.

Um I too mayor would feel comfortable um moving forward the the recommendations from the committee at 8500 CCF. I do feel like that's a move down in the the direction that we're heading.

Um, I I agree the conservation plans potentially exploring that opportunity for 5,000 CCF and using some time to understand who the users are that are between that 2500 mark and up to 10,000 like you said so we can really understand the impact of lowering it beyond 8,500 and what that would actually look like in terms of implementation. Um, I think that would be a very productive use of our time.

I also love um council member Dah your idea of making sure the mayor and council would get notified if a large water user goes over their allowance so that that would that would be made visible to us. So I would actually like to offer a substitute motion if I could.

I want to move to approve the staff recommendation resulting from collaboration with the large quantity water users ad hoc committee and direct staff to bring this item back in 120 days for mayor and council to consider requiring a water conservation plan for large users that meets a specific threshold at 8,500 CCF.

The future presentation should include analysis on thresholds used by comparable cities with similar needs, anticipated water use by different types of development, and recommendations for thresholds that protect Tucson's water future while supporting the types of businesses and opportunities we want to attract for Tonins. There's a motion. I second that motion. There's a motion and a second and a point of clarification. A substit substitute motion. Yes. Point of clarification.

Does that include um coming back in 120 days with the stuff about the city council and to notify mayor and council should a large water user go over their threshold. All righty. If you accept my substitute addition that is second. So um typically you would have discussion now and you can decide which motion you would like to vote for to vote as the actual motion. Okay. after discussion. Can I have a point of information?

Um, I was wondering if staff can walk us through um what exactly happens under the proposed revisions if the threshold is crossed and a conservation plan is required like what does a conservation plan look like? I'm hearing a lot of concern from my colleagues about the competitive competitiveness of anybody having to do this. Members of the mayor and council. Um, honorable mayor, my name is Chris Avery. I work as a principal assistant city attorney and help draft the original ordinance.

The approach that we took in drafting the original ordinance was that above the threshold all applications do are required to have a conservation plan. They are required to show maximum efficiency of water. And then the director essentially plays a gatekeeping role in ensuring that the application is complete. and then the application is forwarded to the mayor and council for approval.

We did not propose uh the method that's used in the city of Phoenix where lower threshold water users in the Phoenix case 10,000 CCF upper threshold water users in Phoenix are 20,000 ccf. It's a number different number because Phoenix uses gallons but we thought that the mayor and council would want to review every application.

What I'm hearing in the substitute motion is sort of a Phoenix-like approach between for water users between 5,000 CCF and 8,500 CCF, which would be consistent with our approach here. The water conservation plan would be submitted to the director for approval. Upon director approval, between 5,000 and 8,500, we would proceed above 8,500 would go to mayor council for approval. that that model is used by the city of Phoenix. It was roughly approximate to what we would be proposing here.

Um that those thresholds are approximately equal to um the the 8500 threshold is approximately equal to the lower threshold in Phoenix and the thresholds in Tempe and Mesa. Um so we would kind of be operating in the same space when we're competing for um applications from the Arizona Commerce Authority, etc. And then this discretionary model of approval would be similar to the way the ordinance works in some other cities including Phoenix for lower threshold applications.

So that I think that I hope that explains um the question and how it might work under this new model. Under the current model, all applications go to the mayor and council for approve for approval above the threshold above the 10,000 CCFs. Yes. Are you um are you able to share a little bit more about like is this conservation plan really long? Is it complicated? Well, the the conservation plan is a component of an existing application.

And so essentially the conservation plan as I read as I heard the ordinance would be very similar to what's in the ordinance today. So you have to show your conservation efforts, you have to show your efficiency and your you have to show conservation efforts. have show efficiency in the way that you use water.

A hospital might have different forms of efficiency than a manufacturer and may want to use different kinds of water than a manufacturer, but in each case that information would be furnished to the director and the director would work with the applicant to make sure that the information is complete. so that um either the public has knowledge of a director approved plan or the mayor and council has the ability to review a complete plan under the higher threshold.

Am I hearing that you want to different examples of conservation efforts? Is that what I'm hearing? No, I just wanted more of a general idea and then just a follow-up question about that. If a new potential large water user applied under this ordinance and was a key industry or public service like health care, um education or environmental stewardship, how would that be taken into account um when a plan is evaluated?

So, one of the consensus items that did come out of this stakeholder committee was to give some leniency toward um those public benefit large quantity water users. And I I kind of hear that being incorporated in this new motion as well. Ultimately, the way this particular system works, the mayor and council approves an application and can set conditions as appropriate to the industry. And so, you do have quite a bit of flexibility under the current version of the ordinance above 10,000 CCF.

This would give you a little bit perhaps more applications to review at 8,500. and then the director using that same discretion and authority to analyze applications between 5,000 and 8,500. Thank you. And then one final question. Are you able to talk us through what kinds of industries use between 2500 and 5,000 ccfs of water a month? I I think I'll turn that over to John. Council member Schubert. mayor and council.

I think I think it's going to end up being a variety and that's why the flexibility on the conservation plan is important because an industry can come in at any size, at any scale, at any type of use of water. Um, some of the industries we do see right now that are in that range do or some of that were brought up. It could be community schools, it could be a hospital, it could be a healthcare facility, um, or a park, even a city park, you know, are getting are near those ranges as well.

But uh that's why I think we wanted the flexibility on the conservation plan is because the variability of the economy that could come to Tucson. Thank you. Any others? Madam Mayor, Council Member D. I'm going to be the loyal opposition to this um substitute motion. I think it's going to delay for three months. We're not going to get any because it's still above 10,000.

And I think it's important for us to start engaging with businesses that want to come here and talking about water conservation plans. I don't think it's bad to even go down to 2500 like many of our um environmental conservation experts um uh in Tucson have suggested. So, um I I'm going to work with you all and I I know it's going to pass. I No, I I love and I I hate to jump.

I really like the idea of having conservation plans at 5,000 CCFs and over and and if the the flexibility of what the conservation plan means even schools can participate right in conservation plans even parks participate that was it. Um um but I just wanted to add council member that um we have been working my office has been working with uh Puma County, the University of Arizona um to really rethink how we do economic development.

One of the reasons that we recently created the Office of Community and Economic Impact is because we did not want to um look at economic development on its own. We created this office of community and economic impact to include the prosperity initiative, the climate resiliency office, the office of economic development, um the equity office is part of this team as well as what am I missing?

cultural, culture, cultural affairs, um, equity, all of these, all of these issues that really should be unsiloed and we should it we shouldn't consider economic development opportunities if it doesn't fit all of the ethic um that we all feel are important for the city of Tucson. And that's what we're doing.

Um, and in in my work with Pima County and the University of Arizona, uh, looking at how can we bring, uh, and develop economic opportunities in advanced manufacturing or advanced packaging, which use much less water resources and electricity resources. than even um chip manufacturing which is a huge thing up in Phoenix. Uh but we want to be able to create these opportunities and we are looking into what fits in Tucson.

Um, so I I'm going to be supporting the substitute motion because we are requesting as I heard it um that the staff at Tucson Water bring us back a report with information about conservation planning 5,000 CC ccs and up and um also what did you say the the different usages of different industry that we're um possibly interested in. So I I don't know if there's any other uh comments. Uh Council Member Cunningham. So my big thing is so we're not passing anything tonight. Yes. What are we passing?

So the the motion currently will be whether to adopt the substitute motion or as your main motion to then consider and vote on or to not adopt the substitute motion and to consider the original motion made by council member D. Can you repeat the substitute motion? Can you repeat it? Yes.

Uh so was to move to approve the staff recommendation resulting from collaboration with the large water quantity users ad hoc committee and directing staff to bring back this item in 120 days for mayor and council to consider requiring a water conservation plan. So that's the part mayor for large water users that meets the specific threshold at 5,000 ccf for the for the plan review. The future presentation should include an analysis of thresholds used by comparable cities with similar needs.

anticipated water use by different types of development and recommendations for thresholds that protect Tucson's water resources while supporting the types of businesses and opportunities we want to attract to Tucson and the mayor council and that's not in my language but yes and notify mayor and council if any large water user trips the threshold. I I'm getting waved over by the city manager. I I had one point of uh question for our so we're hearing the um motion correctly.

Uh Council Member Lee, were you also including in that motion lowering the threshold to 8,500 as an immediate action or was that to be considered as part of the 120day? I'll go ahead and do it. Let's go ahead and do it immediately. drop it to 8,500 and then 5,000 is the trigger for the conservation plan. And and the way we would interpret that is all of the staff recommended uh modifications would be immediately in force.

The threshold for the overall ordinance would be at 8,500 in lie of 10,000 CCF and we would come back in 120 days with the conforming language about the conservation plan requirements between five and 8500 and the notifications of the mayor and council of all the things especially that last piece. If we're hearing that correctly then that's we just want to make sure that that's what you'd be that's how I understand it. Yes.

So, I'd like to have the mayor and council consider the substitute motion if there's no um objection. No objection. Okay. So, everyone agrees that you're going to go with the substitute motion unanimously or should I'm going to vote no. Okay. So, so the vote vote on it. So, the vote will be um you you will vote yes if you want to consider the substitute motion as your main motion and you will vote no if you'd like to consider the original motion by council member Dah as the main motion.

So, yes, if we want to consider to consider the substitute motion and no um to consider the original motion. Okay. So, we'll start with council member Dah. No. Council member Cunningham. No. Council member Schubert, no. Council member Barahas, yes. Councilwoman Lee, yes. Vice Mayor Santa Cruz, yes. Mayor Romero, yes. Okay, so the motion on the table to discuss now is the substitute motion. Roll call. if you'd like. Councilwoman Lee, I. Council member Barahas, I. Council member Dah. No.

Council member Cunningham. Wait, didn't I just vote? No. Yeah, the second time. So, so the original you were voting on which motion to vote on. This is now for the actual substitute motion. No. Council member Schubert. I'd like to make some comments before I make my vote. Is that okay? Procedurally, I was waiting to make remarks. And procedurally, it should have been done before the vote. I can vote and then make remarks. Is that better? You can make um remarks after the roll call. Okay.

No, Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. Okay. That was an I correct. Correct. Thank you, Mayor Merrell. I So, the motion passes uh four to three. Okay. So, you did count council member. Did you vote? She voted second. Okay, good. Second. Um All righty. So, if you if you had any comments, please make them now. Yeah, totally not the order that I meant for this to go in. Um thank you to everybody who's still here.

Um, and thank you to each person who spoke here today and who wrote to a council office over the past few weeks. We received a lot of emails at the word six office. We actually received dozens of calls and emails, almost all of which were asking for additional changes to the proposed ordinance, specifically reducing the 10,000 ccf a month threshold and incorporating stronger protections for our water supply, such as requiring a water offset for consumptive water use.

I also want to thank everyone who brought this existing ordinance into being last year and quickly filled a glaring gap in our water policy, particularly the community activists and the strong leadership from this mayor and council before I was sitting up here.

Thank you to the leadership of no data no desert data center coalition wershed management group citizen water advisory committee and Tucson water and all the participants and facilitators of the ad hoc committee who gave thoughtful feedback that was incorporated into the changes that were being considered today.

Thank you to those who have been stewarding water in this region since time immemorial to the ood and yomi peoples and to the people of all backgrounds who continue to steward the land water inhabitants of this place. I also want to underline that the ordinance draft that was under consideration is stronger than what we put on the books a year ago. It closes a loophole to ensure that users cannot have multiple meters in order to avoid the 10,000 ccf threshold.

It allows for a waterrestricting device to be installed at the violator's expense at a second violation rather than at a fourth. It adds a director's notice of non-compliance as a public record advancing toward greater transparency. All of that being said, I don't think these changes go far enough to meet the realities that we're facing. As we have heard from person after person this evening and over the past few weeks, 10,000 ccfs a month is an unbelievable amount of water.

It's more than the average Tucson single family home uses in 114 years. And that's in one month. It is the top 0.006% of all Tucson water users. And that amount is the lowest amount of water that would trigger a conservation plan with our current ordinance. I support business and I want more businesses to come to Tucson. But the businesses I want to see here are ones that are willing to make a conservation plan, stand behind it, and aren't afraid to show it to Tucson residents.

All this ordinance is asking is for accountability and a transparent plan for conservation. Notably, no one is being capped on water usage through this ordinance. I repeat, there's no cap in this ordinance. I absolutely agree that jobs are important and needed for Tucson, but I want them to be jobs from employers who share our community's values and recognize the importance of water.

My office has heard calls from the community including including the Coalition for Sonor and Desert Protection, the Greater Tucson Climate Coalition, Tucson Puma Historical Commission, Watershed Management Group, members of the ad hoc committee to lower the large water user threshold to 2500 CCF a month. I agree. It's still higher than some other Arizona municipalities.

Using 2500 ccfs of water every single month or what an average family in Tucson would consume over 27 years seems like a reasonable level for an entity to provide reporting and conservation planning in a southwest desert community increasingly reliant on its groundwater. 2500 ccfs of water is still less than the top 0.02% of all Tucson water customers.

I commit to continuing to work with community partners, my colleagues on the council and Tucson water over the next 120 days and I hope that when it comes back it is strengthened. Thank you so much. I want to add uh some comments. I do want to thank the people here because it's important that the community participate in this.

I want to thank our water director, John uh Kimik, deputy director, Scott Schlowweiler, uh Chris Avery, our city attorney, our chief resilience officer, Fatima Maluna, my own Eddie Garcia, that participated in the many hours they dedicated to this process. Um I also want to recognize every member of the large quantity water users ad hoc committee for bringing their expertise p perspectives and thoughtful um questions to the discussion.

Um their participation really helped us uh understand how to continue um advancing the ordinance and I want to reiterate that finding the balance that we need. We are approving the ordinance. It's not that we're not approving the ordinance. The ordinance did not exist before uh project blue and it is an ordinance that we're approving uh that we're making better.

And um I truly wish that we continue having an um a dialogue with our community uh to offer information about our water resources as well as engage with the community about how we move forward um in terms of our water resources and the quality of our water because I think part of that conversation has uh has to be had with PAS. and um PAS remediation in our aquifer as well as um uh uh other um issues and contaminants uh that we have.

And by the way, um the city of Tucson prides itself itself in offer in um serving absolutely incredible clean water. Um, so I I just want to reiterate that uh this mayor and council have um done everything we possibly can to make sure that we are protecting our water resources and we will continue to do that.

Uh this motion that we supported is passing and improving the large water users ordinance and um really making it an opportunity to uh develop the um conservation plans which I really like um at a particular threshold and see how we move forward uh with that and reporting to mayor and council I think is an important piece. um so that we can decide how to proceed with those that are violating our water ordinance. So with that um thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for your work and thank you to all that stayed behind uh for the vote. We now move on to item nine. You need item nine. Did we need to read the ordinance number uh or we're good with the vote? We're good with the vote. We we read the ordinance number. Okay. All righty. So, we move on to item nine. Adjournment. City council is adjourned. The next regular scheduled meeting will be on Tuesday, October 6th at or after 5:30 p.m.