Vice Mayor Paul Cunningham

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.

One of the things that has been most frustrating during our community conversation about COVID-19 has been that there are some people who refuse to believe that there is a real disease out there that is affecting thousands of their fellow Tucsonans. It’s almost as though they think that if they have a certain set of beliefs, that will protect them from being sick. We’ve seen plenty of tragic cases over these past few months that you’d think would show this isn’t the case, but people want to believe what they want, I guess.

We’ve been doing COVID-19 testing at Udall Park for the last week or so. It’s relatively easy to sign up and get the testing done. I know this because I made an appointment and got tested earlier this week.

It takes five minutes to sign up. All you need to do is go to www.pima.gov/covid19testing and click on the Schedule My Test link for Udall, or call 800-369-3584 to schedule an appointment. The test itself was easy too, and there was nearly no waiting.