Ward 2 Council Member Paul Cunningham

My office has gotten a lot of feedback about the plans for zoo expansion and how it will affect the south pond at Reid Park, the smaller of the two ponds. My staff and I have been working with both Reid Park Zoo and the Parks and Recreation Department on an informative, comprehensive response to your questions. I thought I’d share our office’s response as part of this newsletter: 

After the two in custody deaths of Carlos Ingram Lopez and Damian Alvarado, TPD opened up a process called a “Sentinel Event Review Board” which took a month to examine what went wrong in those cases. The analysis included everything from how our 911 center is staffed to how certain types of equipment are deployed to the attitudes and training of our officers.

There’s been a lot of national talk about mail-in ballots, but what gets lost in our local discussion is how long we’ve been doing mail-in ballots here in Arizona. Back in the 90’s the requirements were loosened for what were then called absentee ballots. Since then, Arizonans have been voting by mail in large numbers, usually close to 75% of the total vote. The fact that so many voters were voting by mail was among the reasons that Tucson decided to move to an all-mail system for city elections, leaving only a few polling places to staff for so few election day voters. 

Assistant Fire Chief Laura Baker retired this week after 26 years of serving our community. I’d like to extend my appreciation and best wishes on behalf of all of our Ward 2 neighbors.

Chief Baker was Tucson’s first woman fire chief. She also worked hard to get other women into the firefighting profession, including starting Camp Fury back in 2009. Camp Fury is a project with the Girl Scouts to introduce girls to firefighting. It is now a nationwide program.

Thank you, and good luck in what ever you do next, Chief.

Even during the summer (or should I say, a normal summer), Tucson derives a lot of its revenue from tourism. Needless to say, the tourism industry is struggling. Visit Tucson reports that hotel revenues were down 35% in the six months from January to July. While that’s not as bad as the cities we compete with for tourist dollars (Seattle, for example, was down 64%), it’s still a big hit to our local economy.

Judging by the emails to my office over the last week, the issues on Wednesday’s council agenda that generated the most heat in our community were the extension of GPLET incentives and our declaration of a climate emergency. I’d like to talk a little about another item we discussed that ties into climate change and that touches on the very survival of Tucson as a city in the coming decades: a plan for what to do in a severe drought.

Make Way for Books is offering a free opportunity for families with young children. The spots are filling up quickly.