Tucson Water is tracking updated guidelines for “forever chemicals” based on new federal limits on the contaminants.
In April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set new limits for several perfluorinated alkylated substances — conveniently collectively abbreviated as PFAS — which have been contaminating parts of Tucson’s water system. Six compounds were included in the new rules, which create enforceable thresholds that water systems must achieve by 2029.
A plume of PFAS has been found spreading from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Tucson International Airport, where the chemicals were used in firefighting foam. A major clean-up and monitoring program is now underway, with the state and feds involved.
Tucson Water adjusted its operating standards due to the new national drinking water regulations, officials said.
And the city isn’t worried about meeting those updated levels because the city is already operating in line with the EPA’s rules. PFAS is already being removed, said City Manager Tim Thomure.
“We are not waiting for technology to beat these standards,” Thomure said. “We are beating these standards now.”
“The water is safe,” Thomure said.
According to a report from Assistant City Manager Elizabeth Morales, “potable water served by Tucson Water during the past quarter was below the operational targets.”
EPA drinking water standards seek to do two things: Figure out what substances are dangerous and remove them. The problem can be that technology limits how much can feasibly be filtered out. So what the enemies of freedom in the EPA do is figure out what the latest technology will allow.
Enforcing a law on an industry or local government that can’t be met, would mean that underlying activity couldn’t be done. So industry could be crushed by unattainable standards. Losing a potable water supply isn’t an option for organized civilization.
So standards are increased as tech emerges. This is the so-called “administrative state,” which some people can’t shut up about. A bunch of civil servants doing research to figure out what those attainable levels are at any given time and what the threat of contamination might be
Expertise is required to do dastardly things like keep drinking water safe.
If the military industrial complex can’t poison water systems, how can America possibly remain free? Or is it: If captains of industry can’t poison the people at will, then the people might forget they are just serfs.
Beep! Beep!
Hockey will remain in Tucson for another
year, if the City Council agrees to extend a lease with the Tucson
Roadrunners.
The vote is coming up Wednesday during the Council’s regular meeting.
In 2016, the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District and the team signed a 10-year lease for the use of Tucson Convention Center Arena.
The
new deal will keep the farm team of the former Phoenix Coyotes in
Tucson through 2027. The Coyotes ownership sold the team to an outfit
that is moving it to Salt Lake City. Then franchise owner Alex Meruelo
planned to move the the Roadrunners to Phoenix.
Well, that appears to have changed after a piece of state land he had his eyes on is no longer available because the state canceled an auction for the parcel.
His new plan is apparently to move the Roadrunners to Reno.
Meruelo owns a resort in Reno, which he is reportedly trying to expand to include a new ice arena.
Under
the new deal, the Rio Nuevo District will pay half the team’s licensing
fees and the Roadrunners will pay $350,000 in annual rent. Also, team
employees will get an extra 25 parking spots and a 10-cent per-ticket
fee will be eliminated. Also, the Roadrunners will play six games in the
Phoenix area instead of five.
Yeah, these are the kind of
hard-hitting, smash-mouth negotiations that happen when a hockey team
wants to move but doesn’t have a new home ready and their landlord
is willing to wait and see if it will be built any time soon.
I’m sure Meruelo wants out of Tucson. I’m just not sure he knows the way out of Dodge. Hint: It’s just west of Alvernon Way.
Homeless numbers
The City Council will also get a rundown of the housing problem in Tucson, which is leaving many to live on the streets.
An online dashboard has been created to allow the public to report homeless encampments.
Those reports are divided into three tiers.
Tier 1 cases are abandoned camps. No one lives there. Tier 2 are camps where people are able to govern themselves, clean up after themselves and present no ongoing threat to the public. Tier 3 are high-problem camps.
Once reported, assessment teams show up to talk to individuals and try to figure out what services they need and how to get them started on the road back.
Since February, city teams have assessed 300 sites that proved to be Tier 3 camps, which is about 35 percent of the total outreach.
There have been 479 immediate removals in the since October 2022.
Since April, the Housing First team reported assisting 289 individuals at different shelters around town.
Police are being used less and less as social work has replaced law enforcement. The idea is not to arrest Tucson out of the problem but to put people in touch with the services they need.
However, in May police took part in the removal of the “100-Acre Wood” site, which required removal of 55 tons of debris.
The council will also begin to tackle redistricting. Yes, it’s early.
Redistricting doesn’t happen until after a decennial census. The next one is scheduled for 2030, with boundaries for City Council wards to be re-drawn thereafter.
However, the council is trying to clean up some language in the goals of redistricting to make two provisions work together. One objective of any redistricting process is to keep ward lines as consistent as possible. Another is to ensure certain populations have representation.
Sometimes those can be in conflict so the idea is to change the language to make them work with each other. The plan is to toss in language to the goal to maintain consistency that reads “except as may be necessary to achieve other objectives listed in this section.”
Genius.
The council will also get presentations from the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona, plus another from the director of the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System.
The pension for public safety workers got really upside down in the wake of the Great Recession as investments went bust and demands on the system outstripped the long-term money available. A deal was reached between the pension managers and the unions involved that required a constitutional amendment approved by Arizona voters in 2016.
The city pays a huge chunk of change to get the system fully funded. Every year, that payment is bigger than most departmental budgets.
Michael Townsend, the pension fund’s executive director, will make the trip down from Phoenix to address the current situation and answer questions.
Here’s a question someone should throw at him: How come the system doesn’t just put all the money in an index fund? They tend to outperform those funds managed by Wall Street bros, without the excessive management fees.
Tax breaks to sneeze at
During the Tucson Council’s regular meeting, they will vote on approval of two Government Property Lease Excise Tax agreements (GPLETS, Gusendheit) with a pair of developers.
These incentives work like this: Government-owned property is exempt from property taxes. So a local government can buy property and lease it to businesses in exchange for not paying those taxes but the business will generate sales taxes.
The deal makes sense for both parties, if the sales taxes exceed the lost property tax revenue and the lease the property owner pays is lower than the property taxes they would have paid.
GPLETS (God bless you) irritate right-wing groups like the Goldwater Institute because they say it’s a violation of the “Gift Clause” of the state Constitution. Sometimes I think Goldwater overdoes their bird-dogging of the clause, but I like the fact that they’re aggressive. It’s good that the Arizona Constitution bans taxpayer gifts to private businesses and someone’s gotta be watching.
The Legislature passed a change to the GPLET program, which Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed. I wish I could trust the Legislature, but since Rusty Bowers got himself run out of town, I can’t say that I in any way do.
On one project, Central Barrio slated for 941 N. Stone Ave., the city expects to receive $327,592 in direct and “indirect” tax revenues from the mixed-use development. It will charge the developer $1,200 in annual rent. (Question: Can I rent from the city at $100 a month? I promise to spend the money I save on goods subject to sales tax).
A second lease agreement would be reinstated if approved by the City Council.
This time, the plan is for a Hyatt Regency Hotel at 181 E. Broadway to be built by Pueblo Partners. Ah yes, a developer is taking another shot at the Hotel Arizona property.
The original proposal got delayed during the pandemic and was terminated in Oct. 2021.
Now, the city staff is recommending the council put the plan back in place with a deadline of Dec. 31, 2027.
The eight-year lease is anticipated to increase the value of the old hotel property by 100 percent and the city will still receive more in sales tax revenue than is lost in property taxes sacrificed.
Well, yeah, but…
The city gets next to nothing in property taxes, with a primary rate of $0.4311, which is just under 10 percent of the Pima County primary property tax rate. So it’s not a huge sacrifice for the city. On the other hand, if Tucson can turn a property like this old hotel into a sales-tax-generating monster, it’s well worth the city’s while. Sales tax revenues represent a big part of the city’s unrestricted budget.
The Council is also set to vote on a plan to cut in half the terms for special magistrates, full-time magistrates pro tempore and limited special magistrates.
They now are appointed to four-year terms and under the new plan they would get two years on the City Court bench.
Councilmembers could tighten up the reins on judges, and more regularly review their performance.
These magistrates will also get a bump in pay from $125 to $150 per session.
Adding certainty
The Oro Valley Town Council will get an update on the plans to address the “missing middle” in the town’s housing stock.
Missing middle is another way of saying “affordable housing.” Nationally, there’s a critical shortage in things like condominiums and townhouses.
Several developers sought to build these projects in Oro Valley and town staff realized the land development code needed a rethink to allow construction of these projects.
Under the proposed revamp, the town wouldn’t lower standards but it would streamline the process for approval of these projects. In fact, the plan doesn’t expand the areas where high-density housing can be built.
What it does to is do is put an end to overlapping definitions in the town code that conflates patio homes, apartments and town homes with one another. The idea is to change the code to provide bright-line definitions of each, so developers know what’s what.
Basically, what’s going on is that the town is trying to provide certainty instead of lax restrictions. Developers often complain about the lack of certainty as much as or more than they do about rigid regulations.
They often just want to know what the rules are and can work with them. Whether the end product pencils out to affordable homes is another matter.
Over in Marana, the Town Council is set to approve a development agreement for the 2,509-home Saguaro Bloom project in the general area of West Twin Peaks and North Silverbell roads.
The original agreement was approved in 2011 and the deal requires the developer to pay the town, up front, half the $14 million bill for road construction Twin Peaks Road required to accommodate the project.
On the flip side, the developer will get back $3 million in impact fees because West Twin Peaks Road is in the town’s streets plan. So if the town was set to do the work anyway, it will give back some of the money to the developer who does the work.
Priceless square mileage for journalism
Down in Santa Cruz County, the Board of Supervisors appears to be the actual last, and final (not kidding this time) Southern Arizona government to approve its Fiscal Year 2024-25 budget.
If the board approves the $159 million budget, it will spend $18 million more than last year with a slight tax cut to property owners.
This is in part possible because the county is carrying over $67 million from fiscal year 2024 and there are other funds, like grants, that are anticipated. Remember, a county can’t spend more than it budgets so supervisors must maintain a degree of wiggle room in case those funds are approved.
Local property taxes will only account for $20.5 million of the total spending, up from $19.9 million last fiscal year.
The primary property tax rates will fall slightly from $0.40265 per $100 of assessed valuation in fiscal year 2024 to $0.40065 this fiscal year. Secondary taxes will fall from $0.9053 to $0.9013 after a slight drop in flood control taxes.
Supervisors will approve this budget during a special meeting Tuesday and then adjourn to its regular meeting when it will vote on a new policy for the public safety pension plan.
Santa Cruz County is actually as close to fine as any local government in Southern Arizona.
It’s public safety plan is funded at 87.4 percent of it’s liabilities. A lot of Southern Arizona’s funding ratios are in the mid 70s. Also, the corrections officers have a pension fund that has 104.7 percent of its liabilities funded.
Hell, they’re just swimming in it.
The Nogales City Council will vote on whether to fire Fire Chief Jefferey Sargent.
Sargent was placed on administrative leave in April while the city conducted an internal investigation about something he did.
City Manager Roy Bermudez told the Nogales International it was a confidential personnel matter and he couldn’t comment on the nature of the problem. Sargent replaced former chief Mike McKearney in 2019 after McKearney stepped down for unexplained reasons.
The council will also discuss a corrective action required by an audit but provides no explanation about what the corrective action entails.
This is a relatively sketchy meeting agenda in a city where the county treasurer is under federal investigation over millions of missing dollars. Also, one of the biggest stories in the country is happening right there in Nogales as the U.S.-Mexico border provides daily drama.
All this is to say that the small staff at the International newspaper has 10 square miles of some of the best journalistic geography on the planet.