Ward 2 Council Member Paul Cunningham

As many of you know, my colleagues and I adopted an alternative plan for zoo expansion on Tuesday. Back on March 9, we were tasked with approving an expansion plan that many in the community thought was ill considered, and my colleagues and I believed that the Reid Park Zoological Society hadn’t done an adequate job of engaging the public before bringing their plan forward. 

At Tuesday’s meeting my colleagues on the council and I worked on three items having to do with our environment. We got an update on PFAS contamination in some of our wells, worked on the planning process for future green stormwater infrastructure projects, and discussed future code changes to accommodate electrical vehicles in new construction.

Some concerns about the recycling monitoring project have come back to my office. I wanted to talk a little bit about it. 

Since the city has had curbside recycling, Environmental Services has had a number of educational campaigns about what should be recycled and what shouldn’t. This has included public information campaigns in local media and inserts in water bills to remind people. Unfortunately, this has not been working. 

On Monday, I attended the opening of twelve new pickleball courts at Udall Park. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what pickleball was until I was approached by several local pickleball players a few years ago. They wanted more places in Tucson to play their sport. 

Ward 2 Council Member Paul Cunningham and Tucson Parks and Recreation invite you to celebrate the opening of the pickleball courts at Morris K. Udall Park. The court renovations were completed using Tucson Delivers Parks + Connections voter-approved bond funds from the November 2018 election. The renovations included the conversion of four existing tennis courts into 12 standard-size pickleball courts.

Last year, I received an email from one of our Ward 2 neighborhood associations. Due to lack of traffic on east side streets during the COVID curfew, street racers had seen an opportunity and grabbed it. They used those wide, empty streets for organized racing, sometimes with speeds over 100 miles an hour.