Ward 2 Council Member Paul Cunningham

The old Pima County Courthouse is an icon, sometimes not necessarily of our community. It showed up in an establishing shot on an episode of the X-Files once and was identified as the San Diego County courthouse. It also stood in as the Cochise County courthouse on the show Sheriff of Cochise back in the 1950s. Long time Tucsonans can name a friend or relative that was an extra on the 1970’s drama Petrocelli, where the building served as the courthouse for the fictional city of San Remo. 

I received an update from Police Chief Christopher Magnus about TPD recruiting. I wanted to share it with you. 

Given our staffing challenges, we thought it might be useful for you to get a sense of some of our outreach and recruiting efforts.  If you have ideas or suggestion about other opportunities to recruit new officers or CSOs, please let me know and we will happily follow-up on them. 

Former Old Fort Lowell Neighborhood Association president Kathleen Flasch passed away. I’d like to extend my condolences on behalf of my staff and our Ward 2 friends to her husband Frank and her whole family. 

Kathleen was born in England and came to Tucson by way of Chicago. She was a world traveler, a huge fan of the Rolling Stones and a tenacious advocate for her neighborhood since first moving there in 2001. 

You may be hearing the initials ADU, which stands for Accessory Dwelling Unit. Basically, these are smaller, second houses built on a lot with a larger house. My colleagues and I are considering making code changes that will make them easier to build in Tucson. 

László Veres announced that he is “winding down” his tenure with the Tucson Pops Orchestra this summer. 

It’s a loss for Tucson, to be sure, but those of us who enjoy the concerts of the Arizona Symphonic Winds, an ensemble he founded in 1986, have at least a few more seasons to hear them play at Udall Park. 

I often mention climate change in my notes to constituents, and each time I do, someone writes to me taking issue with my bringing it up. Sometimes, it’s to deny that there is climate change; sometimes it’s someone who is mad that I mentioned it at all. 

Yesterday, the COVID-19 dashboard from the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) showed 239 new cases and 1 new death here in Pima County. The now fully approved Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offers the surest protection against a virus that continues hospitalizing and killing those who aren’t vaccinated. Full approvals of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are expected in the near future. There are many places in Tucson to get tested and to get vaccinated.