Board of Supervisors Addendum - Regular Meeting

Alrighty, thank you everyone. Good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us today. This is a little bit of starting to be a tradition to at least have a couple of joint Board of Supervisors, Mayor and Council meetings. And we wanted to welcome you to, I think this is our third joint meeting. Again, thank you for joining us. I'M GOING TO HAVE TO START THE MEETING OF THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL. SO I BELIEVE WE NEED TO GO TO ROLL CALL, MS. CLERK.

COUNCILMEMBER CUNNINGHAM.

COUNCILMEMBER DELL. COUNCILMEMBER LEE. I'M HERE. COUNCILMEMBER BARRAJA.

HERE.

COUNCILMEMBER SCHUBERT.

HERE.

VICE MAYOR SANTA CRUZ. ABSENT, EXCUSED.

Here.

We have a quorum. Thank you.

And on our end for Pima County Board of Supervisors, welcome. And I will pass it over to Clerk Menriquez to do roll call.

Okay. Supervisor Cano. Supervisor Christy. Supervisor Hines.

Present.

Supervisor Scott.

Here.

Chair Allen.

Oh, I'm here.

Let the record show Supervisor Christie is absent. Supervisor Kano is not present. All other board members are present. We do have a quorum.

We'll move to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And it is a republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Before I move on to the land acknowledgement, which is item three, I do want to note for the record that Councilman Lee and Councilmember Schubert are joining us electronically via Teams. Thank you. So I'd like to have the Pima County land acknowledgement that is read into every Board of Supervisor meeting. And on behalf of Pima County residents and City of Tucson residents, we honor the tribal nations who have served as caretakers of this land from time immemorial. and respectfully acknowledge the ancestral homelands of the Tohono O'odham Nation and the multi-millennial presence of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe within Pima County. Consistent with Pima County's commitment to diversity and inclusion, we strive towards building equal partner relationships with Arizona's tribal nations. Ms. Chair?

It doesn't need to be in color. The city of Tucson is on the lands that have been stewarded by the Dona Watham since time immemorial and the Pascua Yaqui people who have lived in the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years. Thank you. Sure. Well, so first of all, thank you to everyone for being here. I think one of the things about meetings like this, when we are not in our own chambers, is that they are slightly deceiving in the sense that some of us can stroll in, sit down. However, all of our IT, our clerks, Our communications staff do a ton of work behind the scenes to sort of bring our institutions together in a place that is not where we normally meet. So I just want to thank and acknowledge all of the staff who are doing all the behind the scenes work to make this happen. It is much, much appreciated. I also think that these meetings are challenging. In the sense that, well, maybe it's because I'm still relatively new, but I will acknowledge that sometimes it is hard to throw out ideas that are just off the cuff and being responsive to things and ideas that our colleagues are putting out. So we're talking about the Prosperity Initiative and combating poverty and figuring out ways to build wealth in our communities together. And sometimes like it is, you know, we can throw things out and then just to name it, sometimes there might be somebody that clings to that idea and then we get defined by some wildly impractical idea that we just threw out in the moment. And so we can be a bit reluctant to do that. But I think that's one of the charms, the uniqueness of meetings like this. And I think that is one of the higher purposes, in fact, of a meeting like this is for discussions. meaningful discussion to think about how we can get out of the potential sort of silo of the city or the county and come up with new ideas. Because in that collaboration, we can be far more effective. We can be far more efficient. And we can be far more creative and hopefully addressing some of the needs that our community is increasingly facing at the root cause. So We have a roadmap and we are so privileged to have this roadmap called the Prosperity Initiative. And so I want to thank Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. And I also want to thank someone who I am lucky enough to have on my team, Bonnie Posada, for incubating, for doing so much initial legwork. And then also our staff who are leading the Prosperity Initiative today. in bringing this to us and continuing to elaborate it. Because what it means is that we have a roadmap. We have examples. We have research-based, evidence-based examples of how to combat poverty in our community that have been tested in other communities across the country. We have a glaring need. in our community that we all struggle with. But we also have the political will amongst us to really tackle this in a meaningful way. And we both, city and county, we've got such a track record of implementing the Prosperity Initiative and taking on other bold initiatives. And we've got amazing teams who want to do this work. We've got the challenges, right, of limited funding, competing priorities. And having so many things that we need to do, right? So it's challenges around the prioritization. So, you know, all of those challenges become lessened when we can really roll up our sleeves and figure out some ways in which we can do work differently and do it together. So I'm very excited for this discussion and thank you for the opportunity to be part of it with you all.

Thank you, Ms. Chair. And I just wanted to open up by thanking the staff from our clerk's offices for putting this together. And of course, our city manager, county administrator for putting all this together for us. And even though it's a lot of work, I think that it is very important that we meet together, that we the Board of Supervisors and Mayor and Council meet and really try and resolve issues that is greater than ourselves. And the issue of poverty and intergenerational poverty is one of those issues that we cannot do alone. Not one government can do alone. We have to really hold hands and be very intentional about how we break the cycles of poverty. So thank you, Chair Allen, for really insisting on us having this conversation. Because as you all remember, we started, and I think I was talking to you, Chair, I started my conversations with the chair of the Board of Supervisors back when Sharon Bronson was the chair. And the topic there was COVID and how we handle COVID together. And then I moved on to Chair Grijalva. Our conversations there were about the opioid settlement. And that's when we decided to really put City of Tucson's designated funding with Pima County's funding so that we can make it work. With Chair Scott, we wanted to tackle our issue of unsheltered homelessness and the opioid crisis in our communities. And so we had meetings on that. And when Chair Allen became chair, she said, I think we need to go upstream more, right? We're attacking an issue that we could tackle further upstream. And so I appreciate that because absolutely, and we don't have to drop one to work on this. and the prosperity initiative i'm very proud of and i know that you are and everyone on the county side is because this is something that we held hands and did together and i think that the more we do that as a city government and county government the better it is for our shared residents because city of tucson residents are county residents and we have a lot of shared needs. And so appreciate again, I'm really sad that the vice mayor is not here because she helped spearhead on the city side and happy that Bonnie is here joining us today. But this has really become a very important central issue, the prosperity initiative. It's made up of It makes sense, right? It's made up of policies that have proven to work. And if we focus and invest in these areas, then we have proof that it works. So we just have to make sure. that we're focused, that we have a focused approach and that we're strategic about it. And so I just wanted to welcome my colleagues on the council, the board of supervisors. Thank you, Chair Allen, for really wanting us to start here in your chairmanship because it really is, the prosperity initiative is a hopeful approach where we are trying to get to prevent crime in our community, where we get to prevent teen pregnancy in our community. It's a preventative investment in our people. So thank you all for coming. We did have some preliminary questions so that we can start discussion. I know that we have also videos to present. Ms. Clerk, I know that your team is working on the text, so if you'd like to present the videos, or I don't know, Mr. Tamir and Administrator Lesher, if you had any opening. Okay.

I think we're ready to present the video to start.

You know, I'm going to take this tech break to also just acknowledge two other important folks that are in the room that are key players in the work with the city and county on Prosperity Initiative is the Community Coalition for Prosperity and want to just thank and acknowledge that we have Jenny Grable, the project director, and Brooke Jillian as the Deputy Director for CC4P, Community Coalition for Prosperity, and that we actually make three legs of the stool working together between city, county, and community. So thank you for the work that you all do and for being here.

Tucson families and families across Pima County are facing interconnected challenges every day, rising housing costs, child care costs, transportation barriers and the increasing cost of needs. Families need support from multiple areas. That is why the Prosperity Initiative matters. It gives the city, county and our community partners a shared framework to better align our work, our investments and our decisions around the conditions families need to build stability and long term economic mobility. This is about moving beyond isolated efforts and making sure our systems are working together towards the same goal of interrupting generational poverty. Prosperity means families can afford to live here, work here, and build a future here.

Housing costs and transportation costs and lack of access show up in people's lives by the choices they have to make. So whether that is having enough to pay the rent or the mortgage, making sure you get your car payment in, and then you add layers like medical expenses, children, making sure they have food, clothes. So these are choices people have to make. So having lack of access really impacts the choices people have to make. Transportation can be the invisible link that helps connect people to the resources or the things that they need the most. Underinvestment in Tucson neighborhoods doesn't happen overnight. It happens after decades of underinvestment where we've invested for better parks or better roads or better infrastructure in other parts of the city at the expense of another part of the city and it's not distributed equally. And we see that here in Tucson, just west of the freeway, south of the freeway, The freeway has been a physical barrier for a long time for better investment and planning on the other side and better connections to our downtown or these other cultural commercial corridors. And part of our challenge has been how do we think outside of these walls that have been put in place during urban renewal? And I think it's important that we prioritize reinvesting or investing sometimes for the first time in these neighborhoods so that we have more parity throughout the city. It's important for our city to invest in the communities and the neighborhoods that have been left behind if we really care about better outcomes for our community. For too long, we've been living in a city that's still heavily segregated, where you have wealthier income neighborhoods and then very low income neighborhoods. And so we need to have more of a mix throughout our city so that low-income families, even though they make less money, they still have access to really good schools. They have access to safe parks. They have access to a public transportation system because we know that access to opportunities is going to create better outcomes in the long run.

The Prosperity Initiative is a shared vision between the city, the county, and our community partners looking to reduce generational poverty. We are working together to share the word, to share the message of how we can do this in very practical ways. We have families that are challenged to get ahead and the Prosperity Initiative provides us the foundation, the guidebook on how to implement practical solutions to help families get ahead. The bigger picture is when we can see the full system and how people navigate through it. Understanding how we can create those opportunities for people is really what we're trying to do with these policies.

Housing stability is one of the foundations of prosperity because having a stable home is what builds foundation and sort of connects all of the pieces of your life, work, school, health, how you care for your children, how you care for your parents. Housing stability is the foundation for all of that. Through creating housing stability, we can prevent financial crises in families. We can prevent generational crises for children. Housing stability and investing in housing stability is one of the single most important things we can do for our community. Housing costs are so much more than just rent or mortgage payments. They are the choice, often the very hard choice, the impossible choice for many of our families between having stable, secure housing and basic human needs like food and electricity and education and health care. Housing is often one of the biggest costs that we have, and so many of our families in our community are housing cost burdened. helping create affordable housing, preserve the affordable housing we have, is one of the biggest things that we can do in our community to create more stability and to improve outcomes for our families in all of the areas of their lives, not just in housing. It is so important to work with our community, with our residents, with our businesses, that we are building with them and not for them. By doing this, The residents and the businesses, they know their community and their neighborhoods better than anybody else. They experience it every day. By working with them, we can deeply understand the challenges that they're facing and build solutions that meet those challenges and meet those people where they are. This is the way we make lasting investments in our community, things that really make a difference and aren't just checking a box.

for a lot of our working families, childcare is not a luxury, it's a necessity, right? It's what allows parents and guardians to go to work, continue their education, and possibly go for better job opportunities because they can rely on affordable childcare, which is what our Kidco program is. It also allows parents to put that stress aside You know, what's my kid going to do after school? Where are they going to go during the summertime? And it allows them to concentrate at work or concentrate at school, knowing that their kid is in a safe place. I was raised by a single mom. My dad passed away when I was two. He got sick. And so my mom worked as a hairdresser in the city of Tucson for, you know, my childhood. And I went to that KidCo program, which we really relied on. As a child, it allowed me to make connections with other kiddos, It also allowed me to get mentors, positive mentors that I wouldn't necessarily have in my life. And I fully believe that without those connections and those mentors, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. And then for parents as well, I think it brings a sense of community. You know, they're able to have their kids engage with kids from different neighborhoods, different income backgrounds. social statuses. And so I think really we want the best for our kids and having that child care that you know is reliable, it's safe, and that they care about their kids is really, really impactful.

Thanks to direction from the Tucson Mayor and City Council, we've created the new Office of Community and Economic Impact, where we bring several key city programs, including our equity efforts, cultural affairs, economic development, climate action, and prosperity programs, all together under one team where we're able to start really implementing the policies and goals in the prosperity initiative. We're going to start to measure economic development differently in our office so that we can create a culturally vibrant, inclusive, and resilient community where there is opportunity for all.

The action plan takes the adopted prosperity initiative policies and turns them into actionable steps for city departments to implement over the next three to five years. This is taking us from the planning phase into the implementation phase. The city is also working with the county on a joint indicator dashboard to track implementation process of the prosperity initiative. The indicator dashboard will have different indicators for each policy that will track nationally and locally to see if we in Tucson are making a difference in breaking the cycles of intergenerational poverty. The dashboard will track different indicators across housing, like housing stability and housing mobility and neighborhood change, education, like early childhood education access and post-secondary access, health, like health coverage and reducing unintended pregnancies, and workforce, job access, transportation access, and economic mobility. All of these indicators will help city and county staff track over time if we are making an impact with our implementation of the prosperity initiative, keeping us accountable and letting us pivot if we need to change course. Tracking progress is important because the city and county can make informed decisions about our current policies, programs and initiatives and our future ones as well. It allows us to be transparent with our community about what's working, where we are in the process, if we've deviated or changed anything up. making sure that our community is fully informed, our city is fully informed, and the county is fully informed along the way.

Prosperous Tucson is where City Hall doesn't just make decisions for our neighbors. It's where we listen to our neighbors, we build with our community partners, and we deliver an investment to make that a reality.

And while the county video is getting queued up, I also just want to note for the record that Supervisor Connell, representing District 5, is in attendance.

The Prosperity Initiative is a regional partnership working to reduce generational poverty. Our combined vision is a community where every family prospers. The mission is to decrease generational poverty by addressing root causes, reducing barriers, and improving opportunities for families to thrive economically. The Prosperity Initiative focuses on four factors that are important for families to have long-term economic prosperity. Education, work, health, and housing. Helen Schaefer's role is to lead the implementation of the policy within Pima County. Solving generational poverty seems like a daunting task for a county or city government. How is Pima County helping to achieve the goals of the initiative?

Well, the scale can be daunting, but it's not just us. We've got so much community support and we're not in this alone. Our efforts are guided by a really detailed policy recommendations report and it tells us what's important and there's actually a structure embedded within that approach. So it's about evidence-based thinking. And our job is to introduce that structure across the organization. So the board's vision is really, I think, undeniably a bold vision because what they're asking for in this policy is transformational change. Making that happen at scale means getting really broad buy-in and maintaining the bulk of our labor at a policy and systems level. And so what that means is we're focusing on policy change program design and evaluation work, organizational culture change, and of course it's imperative in all of this that we maintain good coordination and communication with the City of Tucson, our Community Coalition for Prosperity, and other regional partners.

Right now, about one in five children in Pima County are growing up in poverty. As adults, these kids are at higher risk of remaining in poverty. Decades of research shows that investing in high-quality preschool provides both short-term and lasting benefits to the children enrolled, their families, employers, taxpayers, and the community. One economic study concluded the return on investment is $6.30 for every $1 invested in high-quality early care and education. In 2021, Pima County created the Pima Early Education Program Scholarships, PEEPS, to increase access for qualifying families with preschool-aged children to attend high-quality early childhood education programs and to increase the number of high-quality preschool providers in our region. Entering its sixth year, KEEPS has supported more than 6,000 children.

I think the benefit to having a program like this is being able to have children go to school and being able to create that bigger workforce, being able to have people going back to work. And even furthering education, I've contemplated it myself, but obviously... And it's hard to do with maintaining kids full time. So without this program, we wouldn't be able to work. I wouldn't be able to work nearly as much as I can.

The Community and Workforce Development Department has been connecting employers to workers for decades. But in addition to services for adults, there are several programs that aid teens and young adults in skills learning and job attainment. Dan Sullivan is the director of CWD. Dan, how do the youth job programs at CWD connect to the Prosperity Initiative?

Serving young people has always been one of CWD's greatest strengths. For decades, we've been leading the way, helping youth facing barriers gain the skills, dignity, and opportunity they need to succeed and thrive. That commitment is part of who we are. Our youth programs are some of the best in the country, serving our community's youth with heart and urgency every day. For decades, we've been leading the way, helping youth facing barriers gain the skills, dignity, and opportunities they need to succeed and thrive. The Prosperity Initiative has challenged us to think differently and invest in innovative programs that prepare young people for the jobs of today and tomorrow. A great example is Arizona's only Building and Construction Straits Council Union Pre-Apprenticeship Programs. Through this program, we're helping young people with barriers connect to family-sustaining careers in the skilled trades. They receive hands-on training, industry-recognized credentials, mentorship, and direct pathways into registered apprenticeships and high-demand careers. These career opportunities will help build wealth for them and for the next generation. That is what the Prosperity Initiative is all about.

Affordable housing and stable housing are essential for prosperity. It is important that once individuals and families obtain housing, there also needs to be supporting programs to help them remain housed.

It's life-changing. It's our foundation for a completely new life. No more stressing about if I need to look for a second job or work more hours. I get to dedicate that time to my son, and it's wonderful. It's not a luxury. It's an essential. Everybody should be able to have affordable housing to feel safe. to feel community, to feel supportive. Like, it's everybody's right.

Jennifer Darling coordinates housing and homeless programs among the various county departments. Jen, how does adequate and affordable housing affect opportunities for prosperity?

Adequate and affordable housing is one of the most powerful drivers of prosperity. We know that access to stable housing is a critical factor in ending and preventing homelessness. And children who grow up in safe, opportunity-rich neighborhoods have better education, health, and long-term economic outcomes. The Prosperity Initiative addresses housing and three key policy priorities. Increases housing supply, mobility, and opportunity. It improves the quality of life and opportunity in high-poverty neighborhoods. And increasing housing stability. Since 2022, the Board of Supervisors has approved over 20 million in gap funding for the development and preservation of roughly 1,800 units of housing that will be affordable for households earning at or below 80% of the area median income. And in 2025, the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved a 10-year, $250 million funding commitment to address housing affordability, reduce housing insecurity, and prevent homelessness across the region. This investment in housing affordability doesn't just prevent homelessness. It opens doors and creates pathways out of poverty and drives economic mobility. Housing is a platform that allows families to thrive, communities prosper.

Expanding opportunities for adequate health care, addressing social determinants of health, and avoiding medical debt are all key initiatives of the County Health Department as it relates to the Prosperity Initiative. Dr. Cullen, what are social determinants of health, and how do they affect individual or household prosperity? And are there health department programs that seek to improve or mitigate factors that affect the overall health and prosperity of our county?

At Pima County Health Department, we talk a lot about the social determinants of health, non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. These are the everyday things that determine whether becoming and staying healthy is easy or difficult. Things like economic stability, reliable transportation, education access, access to healthcare when needed, healthy food, and community resources available to support your family and community. These things matter. But here's the part that we don't say enough. Health itself is the foundation for prosperity. I often tell my team health is wealth. When people are healthy, They're able to go to school and work, care for their families, pursue opportunities, and move toward long-term stability. Almost everything we do at the Pima County Health Department aims to improve the health and prosperity of the people we serve, especially families with children. Programs like WIC help families access healthy foods during and after pregnancy. Our home visiting nurses support new and expecting parents in their homes. Our clinical team providers provide low or no-cost services, including immunizations to prevent disease, sports physicals, and other essential care. When families are healthy, they flourish. And when families flourish, our whole community becomes stronger, more resilient, and more prosperous.

An important partner in the City and County Prosperity Initiative effort is the Community Coalition for Prosperity, a nonprofit that helps coordinate numerous community organizations in achieving initiative goals. Jenny Grable is the project director for CC4B. When Pima County and the City of Tucson adopted the Prosperity Initiative, they knew government alone couldn't carry this work.

When Pima County and the City of Tucson adopted the Prosperity Initiative, they knew government alone couldn't carry this work. And that's where the Community Coalition for Prosperity comes in. We're a grassroots community-led coalition, nonprofits, funders, businesses, and people with lived experience of poverty. all working alongside the city and county. We don't deliver direct services. Our job is to be the connective tissue aligning systems so that every service, every dollar, and every partnership works better together. We are six months in, and our mission is taking root. We've held over 150 meetings with community leaders to build trust, Our coalition has grown to 49 member organizations and individuals, and our communications network has grown from 320 to 470 people who are staying engaged. For our alignment pillar, this year we asked our nonprofit partners to look inward. Over 30 local nonprofits completed the Prosperity Initiative nonprofit assessment, a close look at how their own programs and systems aligned with the initiative's goals. From that group, we selected more than 20 organizations to join our inaugural growth alignment cohort launching this August. In our implementation pillar, that coordination shows up in real projects across housing, workforce, education, and health. Our housing working group is building a community-wide, person-centered housing and homelessness strategy. Our workforce development working group anticipates JPMorgan Chase funding to build a workforce development heat map, mapping what programming exists and who it serves so that employers can see exactly where the gaps are. Our education working group is supercharging peeps and working to boost FAFSA completion. And our health working group is partnering closely with the Pima County Health Department on its community health worker pilot in the 29th Street Thrive Zone. For our advocacy pillar, we're centering the people closest to the problem. We're launching an advocacy connectors cohort this fall, putting people with lived experience at the center of shaping our coalition's advocacy priorities. not just informing them.

This quick overview of the Prosperity Initiative and Pima County's policies and programs seeking to improve our community's overall health and prosperity is just a scratch on the surface in understanding all we are doing. Over the past four years, we have aligned the county budget to building a more just, verdant, and prosperous community. We adopted the Prosperity Initiative in 2023 and have been working toward embedding it in the culture of the county and its budget writing. Reducing generational poverty and improving overall community wealth are enormous undertakings that require all of us working towards these common goals. The county's partnership with the city in this initiative is invaluable and cherished, as are the contributions of all the regional partners. This journey to prosperity, like the journey of life, will not be without its bumps and setbacks. But I believe the commitment of the city and county to work every day toward improving the lives and opportunities of the people of Pima County will see us through.

I feel like clapping after these videos. So one of the things that we talked about, Chair Allen and I, was to just start with questions. And we're not going to go around the table. We are going to open it up for the colleagues to jump in. But we have some prepared questions so that you can think through. And it will help us lead the conversation. And to those council colleagues that are with us electronically, Please make sure that you're like raising your hand and we will have our clerk making sure that we are paying attention to the screen. So. Sure.

So we thought kind of basing the discussion both like level setting with the videos as a foundation and then just thinking about two key questions. One is where do we, and we meaning county if you're county, city if you're city, Where do we lead on the prosperity initiative, right? Because sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow. And then the second question is about what gaps do you think exist in our prosperity initiative work?

If you want to jump in. Supervisor Cano and then Councilmember Cunningham.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Honorable Mayor, members of the board and council. I want to spend a few minutes talking about preschool, not simply as an education issue, but as an economic development issue. If you have never heard of PEEPS, the concept is pretty straightforward. The Pima Early Education Program Scholarships, PEEPS, is Pima County's investment in helping families access high quality preschool. We do that through partnerships with school districts, Head Start, and high quality community providers. As you heard in the videos today, we are investing approximately $10.9 million annually in this effort and serving more than 1500 children each year. And since we launched this effort in 2021, PEEPS has supported more than 5,600 annual preschool enrollments and an estimated 7 million hours of early learning. Those are big numbers, but I want to translate them into what they mean for our economy. If you are a parent of a three- or four-year-old, child care can be one of the biggest costs in your household. A full PEEP scholarship is valued at $12,600 a year. So for our residents, our shared residents, think about what putting roughly $1,000 a month back into a working family's budget can mean. It can mean making rent or a mortgage payment, paying for groceries, paying down debt, and it can mean being able to afford to stay in the workforce in the first place. We actually asked our PEEPS parents about this. 59% said going back to work or increasing their work hours was a very important reason they enrolled their child in preschool. That is why I want our neighbors and our public and private sector leaders to understand that preschool is workforce infrastructure. We build roads to get people to work. We invest in workforce training to prepare people for work. But for thousands of parents, none of that matters if they do not have a safe and reliable place for their three- or four-year-old to go while they are working. And the need for us to come together like we are today is significant. Our latest analysis found that an estimated 13,000 children can benefit from access to pre-K countywide. PEEPS and our partners are serving about 40% of that need. That means that while we have built something significant, we are not close to being finished. As of the end of May of this year, 630 eligible children were on a PEEPS waiting list. These aren't families who might someday be interested in pre-K. They qualified, they applied, and they are waiting because we do not have enough scholarships and classroom capacity. So to answer the question, Madam Chair, Madam Mayor, I think that that 630 number should matter to all of us. It should matter to the county, it should matter to the city, and it should matter to every employer struggling to recruit and retain workers. because behind every one of those children is a household trying to figure out the same question, who is going to care for my child while I go to work? This is where PEEPS fits squarely within the Prosperity Initiative. It's about removing barriers that prevent people from building economic security in the first place, and child care has to be at the top of that list. Our long-term ambition should be to get Pima County much closer to broad access to high-quality pre-K, including working and middle-class families who earn too much to qualify for traditional assistance but nowhere near enough to comfortably absorb a five-figure child care bill. We have already demonstrated that local government can make a difference. The city of Tucson and our municipal partners have contributed over the lifetime of PEEPS approximately $4.7 million, including $3.8 million from the city of Tucson. Thank you. Now we need to ask what the next chapter looks like. Government cannot do this alone. I want our employers... our philanthropic institutions, our school districts, our providers, our municipalities, and our community partners to be at the table with us. Investment in pre-K is an investment in human capital. It's an investment in the three-year-old sitting in a classroom today who will become a part of Pima County's workforce 20 years from now. So in conclusion, kids learning, parents working, families saving money, employers growing their impact. When these things happen together, our entire region becomes more prosperous, and that's what the Prosperity Initiative is about. Thank you.

Councilmember Cunningham.

First of all, congratulations to all the folks who've worked on the prosperity initiative so far. It's a great start and great inventory of all the things we have, focusing it and aligning it to make it work forward. My ideas for the prosperity initiative are long-term and a little bit ambitious. I like to come up with things that are a little bit more out of the box. For instance, jumping off, I'm going to do this one first because of where you just came from on on early childhood education, I actually think we can set a goal to have a 42-month-old or older pre-K program universally in Tucson in Pima County in the next 10 years. We have 50,000 kids, give or take, that are zero to 60 months in Tucson. And right now, if you add up the number of families served through DES, First Things First, PEEPS, or Head Start, we actually capture a substantial number of those. It only comes out to about 40%. Some folks are never going to engage a government system, and that's fine. But if you really think about it, if we had 42-month-old pre-K and older universally, we'd cut in half that piece. The other thing I think we should, again, advocate for at the state level is a model that California uses and where parents can cash in half or part of their unemployment to take up to six to 12 months off in the first year of their child's life. That changes some of the dynamics between the child and the parent, and it also relieves some of the stress on the social system for daycare. So I think those are two programs that we can look at. Whether or not they are folded into the prosperity initiative short-term or long-term, I think they're worthwhile. Moreover, we also have Kidco in the city of Tucson. It's an amazing program, but we're serving only about 1,000 kids. I think with some minor tweaks to how we fund it and what we do charge, we'd meet the gap and be able to offer it to 6,000 to 7,000 families in the city. We've talked about this multiple times, and I think it's time that the Prosperity Initiative look at those numbers to see if they hold water. Moving on, I'd like to talk today about little bit about personal debt relief and consumer debt relief for our citizens we have so many folks in tucson that get underwater with credit cards personal loans and car loans and when we do find and sometimes end up in our unsheltered program and when they're coming back that's one of the biggest barriers and one of the biggest pieces and i don't know how we understand how we can relieve consumer debt within the city of tucson but we have a number of different private citizens who are so overwhelmed by the thought of confronting consumer debt and student loan debt long term that they don't even know where to begin. And I think it's one of the biggest challenges we have. I saw that we have some great programs that we're doing for after graduation for our young people age 18 to 25 as they develop job training. One of the things that I think we ought to consider is establishing a city college, a county college, or expanding the community college so that it includes baccalaureate degrees and includes the certifications necessary to be vendors at both the county and the city, certifications to be a tradesman at both the county and the city. That could be handed out through the community or city college that we have. It's the same model that's used in New York City and County. And at the end of that, I think it's really important that we do have an alternative for local people to send their children to college. I just wrote a $7,500 check for my son's tuition. And I think that's a lot. And I wonder how families that are struggling are able to put their kids through school. There's no excuse to not have a public baccalaureate degree system that only charges $175 a credit hour. And I think that's there. I think the math works out there. And it's something that we should look at with Pima Community College. Back to affordability, I think our challenges are twofold. One of them, I think, is the rehousing piece, where we have to establish some opportunity for folks who are in the rehousing process. Every single time you're rehoused, you have to come up with a deposit, first and last month's rent, you get a credit check, you have to get tenant references, and if you've been evicted, you might as well forget it. We can't have that. We have to have some guidelines for landlords and some opportunities for landlords so that they can protect themselves if they do when they take risks on rehousing folks who have in the past possibly been bad tenants. But at the same time, we have to take care of our tenants too. We have to take a look at opportunities to relieve or work off past utility debt and enroll in utility programs. Last thing for the county, I urge the county, our county partners, to consider promoting annexation and incorporation countywide and then using that opportunity to lower property taxes. Because if that does happen, it does make Tucson more affordable. I know it's the last thing you guys need to hear from me right now, but the fact of the matter is that's one of the barriers that we have in making that housing piece affordable. My last piece will be about mobility. I saw that we've talked a lot about transit with mobility, but unfortunately, our community was built post-war, and as a result of being built in post-World War II and having multiple neighborhoods that are suburban and one story spread out, we are a car community to some degree. Eventually, we'll build the density we want to be transit-based, but for now, most households at least need one vehicle or access to one vehicle. I think there's an opportunity there to set up a co-op in which a nonprofit would provide guaranteed air conditioning in the vehicle. I think that's really important. Repairs and maintenance, insurance, all in one lease payment. So if your car broke down, you'd just get another one and it would go back to the shop and be repaired by someone else. but it would be all in one payment. If we can keep that payment under $350 a month, I think there's a lot of folks that are struggling out there that would buy that. And it doesn't really have to be subsidized that much. It's a very minor subsidy. It's about taking on the risk of the vehicles. If all the vehicles are the same, the deductible can be lower and the underwriter can probably handle it. The math actually works. So those are my things for today. Again, the Prosperity Initiative is outstanding but the Prosperity Initiative 2.0 or the opportunity can take some of these out-of-box ideas and actually implement them. Thanks for indulging me and allowing me to pontificate.

Thank you. Any others? Councilmember Barajas?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chair. Well, I'm really excited to learn more about the Prosperity Initiative. You know, I'm still too relatively new, so this is something that really... not just me, but my office gravitated towards. And I really want to today just focus on youth re-engagement, thinking about middle school to 24 years old and thinking how can we connect our young adults, our youth, specifically our young men, into more jobs, workforce development? How can we do a lot more around preventative, you know, violence? activities and events and awareness and really honing in on those zip codes, those neighborhoods that are experienced or have historically experienced a lot of, you know, violence and just barriers. So since I've taken office at Ward 5, we've been really engaging with our youth. We have youth fellows, former Sunnyside alum and now U of A students. We have current high school students at our office. So the youth voice is very important. We've been hosting roundtables. We've been meeting the youth and families where they're at. You know, I've attended several Southwest Rams practices, talking to cheerleaders, football players, and parents that aren't fully aware of, one, who I am, but just what the city and the county is doing on these initiatives. So I really want to think and pivot towards how can we be more intentional on engagement? How can we reach those non-traditional nonprofit partners like our youth leagues, our sport leagues, and really community-based nonprofits that are on the ground level that are doing that neighborhood activation? And we've been having a lot of hard conversations with young people and their families around losing loved ones to gun violence. to street racing, to domestic violence issues. So it is going to take a holistic approach, but I know we can get there. And one other component that I really want to focus on is park activation. You know, thinking again around the neighborhoods that I represent. Ward 5, we're the hottest parcels. We're the hottest zip codes. You know, our temperatures at some point can be 7 to 15 degrees hotter than other areas of town. So our parks, our green space, our access to trees are very important and they're very limited. So I really want to think about, um, you know, the, the strategies that the prosperity initiative carries improved quality of life and opportunity in high poverty areas, center to Jen whole family approach, hearing again from the concerns and families and partnering with parks and rec and Tucson police department, which we're already doing. how to activate our sports builds that aren't used as much, splash pads, ramadas, making sure that the bathrooms are clean, that the snack bars have activity and more. And then that leads into addressing climate resilience and environmental justice. So again, thinking of those zip codes. And this will hopefully prevent and reduce crime if we do more of that community-oriented public safety partnerships And my hope is that, you know, with Supervisor Cano discussing PEEPS, now this is like the next step, right, the next phase. So we're looking at that early childhood, which is super critical. I know both my daughters went through the PEEPS program, and I am a testimony of being able to work while I was able to drop off my daughters at preschool. And I really want to think about the middle school and the 24-year-olds. around, again, youth jobs, youth employment, mentorship, access to mentorship, and, you know, seeing that list of nonprofits expand. So thank you.

Supervisor Scott.

Thank you, Chair Allen. Thank you, Mayor Romero. Colleagues, good to be here with all of you. I really appreciated the two question prompts, I think they're the right questions to be asking ourselves and the community at this stage of our implementation of the prosperity initiative. The most significant way that we are leading is by making a commitment to taking on intergenerational poverty. If you take a look at the 250-year history of this country, there is a recurring theme of our obligation to take on both inequity and deprivation. And the Prosperity Initiative therefore is not just a policy framework to guide our budgetary and other decisions moving forward. It is also a moral undertaking by this entire community and demonstrates a commitment to lift all of our people up. To the second question, I don't know that I necessarily see gaps that exist in our work so much as a need to always remind ourselves of why we started this work and what we said would be benchmarks for success back when we started. For example, there is this quote from a September 20, 2022 memo to the Board of Supervisors as the Prosperity Initiative was being considered and drafted. And it says as follows, drawing from recent research, staff will likely recommend policies focused on one, ensuring the availability of jobs that will economically support a household. Two, providing an effective social safety net. And three, building individual and community assets. Thinking about these fundamentals, I therefore see the two-generation whole family cross-policy strategy as central and fundamental to what we focus on. We can't help kids to have brighter futures unless we are helping their parents now. A prosperity initiative goal for 2026 as stated in a March 16, 2026 memo to the Board of Supervisors is to identify specific goals for implementation progress with clear milestones and measurable targets. All of those goals should answer the question, How are the goals that we are setting helping families now so that our children lead richer and more fulfilling lives in their futures? We need to always distinguish as we're doing this work between what government should and can do and what the private sector should and can do. The Prosperity Initiative mandates a relentless focus on economic development that results in more and better paying jobs for our people. And we have two initiatives going on right now. The Board of Supervisors is going to be considering the three-year reappraisal of our economic development strategic plan at our next meeting. Merro Merro is involved with an initiative through the Bloomberg Foundation that is also focused on regional economic development. And everything that we do in economic development should trace back to the prosperity initiative and always with that ultimate goal of bringing in better and better paying jobs into our community. I think the Community Coalition for Prosperity is an outstanding resource for helping us to keep our focus, to help differentiate between public and private sector actions, and to be a clearinghouse for ideas from within and without the community. I would like to hear more being reported to both the Board of Supervisors and the City Council about our partnership with the Urban Institute. I think we need some more information about what we are learning from other communities and what they are learning from us. One last point, and this goes back again to where we started. This needs to be more of a regional effort than it has been so far. The towns, the Pascua Yaqui tribe, the Tohono O'odham Nation need to be more involved than they have been up to this point. They were part of the drafting of the prosperity initiative, but in terms of implementation, I think we need to reach out and do more to include all of our other jurisdictional partners. Thank you all very much.

And I did see Councilmember Schubert's hand up. So Councilmember Schubert.

Thank you, Mayor Romero and Chair Allen. So first of all, I want to commend Vice Mayor Santa Cruz for initiating these conversations a few years ago and the full mayor and council for adopting the final policies. I'm really proud to be working with colleagues who recognize the need to invest in prevention, youth and community resources to impact Tucson's poverty rates long-term and acted upon it. I also appreciate that this plan is regional in scale and that we have wide-reaching buy-in, including from our county partners. In a challenging financial landscape, it's imperative that we do our best to both divide and conquer and thoughtfully complement our efforts to ensure we invest both comprehensively and impactfully. So just thinking about the city's existing work and our leadership, a few policy areas stand out to me. The first one is under workforce, transportation to connect disadvantaged communities to jobs and resources. The city is doing a lot here. Our fare free transit is this policy in action. And our community corridors tool, also known as the CCT, is helping us bring more housing to transit corridors. Under housing, Increasing housing supply, mobility, and opportunity. I see a lot of the work with the El Pueblo development arm showing up here, as well as our efforts to accelerate development with middle housing and the ADU ordinances, as well as the emergency housing declaration. Also under housing, improve quality of life and opportunity in high poverty areas. Our Thrive Zones exemplify a lot of what this policy recommends. I'd also count many of our bicycle, pedestrian, and transit initiatives, including the transit safety and security plan and our transit ambassador program, in this bucket. Under workforce, improve job quality for low-income workers. Given our minimum wage ordinance, I think there could be potential for the city to take a leadership role in this policy area. Under cross-policy strategies, address climate resilience and environmental justice. I'd also just add that I think that our Tucson Resilient Together Climate Action and Adaptation Plan illustrates a lot of these aspirations in action. And then in collaboration areas under housing, improving housing stability, just want to say that I've really appreciated learning more about the county's regional housing strategy and funding plan recently, especially the substantial prevention investments. I think there's a real opportunity to more strongly align here, especially between our teams engaging in prevention, really important work. And this is under our community safety, health and wellness, which we call CASU, as well as TC3 and ward office constituent services. And should I also address the what gaps you think exist in our prosperity initiative work or is that a separate section?

Yeah, no, you should absolutely jump in and then- and then we can continue the dialogue.

Sweet. Okay, thank you. So what gaps do I think exist in our prosperity initiative work? I think one of the prosperity initiative's challenges is that by focusing on intergenerational poverty and particularly families with children, there can be a sense that other vulnerable populations are being ignored because they don't show up directly in this plan. This is definitely something that I've heard from constituents before. I also think it's essential that we view this effort alongside other efforts, like our age-friendly plan related initiatives for older adults, as well as our Safe City and One Pima plans tackling substance use and homelessness, and recognize the importance of forward motion on all of them, just thinking very much in a yes and way rather than either or. All right, so thank you so much.

That's excellent. Any others? Okay, I just wanted to kind of synthesize what I've heard and then talk about what I think we're doing good on the city side together and then what the gaps I believe are that we can actually, I don't like to call them gaps, gaps as much as opportunities to do something about and work together on. So I think the city of Tucson is doing from the three cross-sector policy strategies, we're doing amazing work on climate resilience and environmental justice, our people-centered, focused approach equity-driven climate action plan is really that right environmental justice that's put into action. We have been very intentional to start in the areas of our community that have seen environmental injustices, high poverty areas where, as Council Member Baraja said, is where we see the areas that suffer higher temperatures because we're there's less tree canopy where we see the TCE and PFAS issues concentrated in. And so our climate work is, I believe, leading in the state and around the Southwest. And I know that Pima County also has, is, you know, focused on doing a lot of climate work. On housing, we have a housing affordability strategy. And I do see Ann Chanaka here saying, our director of housing community development and her team that's doing amazing work. Housing, increasing housing supply and creating opportunities in areas of our community and throughout the city of Tucson. I think we're excelling there. I highly commend Pima County for your investments in affordable housing. I think we're working incredibly well together there. And your EELS work is unbelievable, and the housing stability piece is important. So we hold hands on many of the projects that the city of Tucson is pushing forward through federal and state grants. One of the things that transportation too, right? Transportation providing free transit and mobility options for disabled communities and elderly is something that's very important on the numbers in terms of who's using our transit system. The numbers of people age 24 to 52 increased in Tucson because of free transit. And those are the workers. Those are the workers, those are the people that are getting to work with a free transit system. And so I think we're doing good on that, especially now that we have additional funds that mayor and council created the transit safety action plan and we have the funds to to make it happen in the transit ambassadors. We tested out transit ambassadors this week on a back-to-school, safe routes to school type of program and having ambassadors out in our community helping kids get to their schools, and it was wonderful. Anyway, so I think we're doing those things very well. One of the reasons that our team... The Bloomberg-Harvard initiative that the city of Tucson was accepted to our key priority was economic development, is economic development. And what has plagued Pima County and our city for more than 40 years is a large, a big number of people living in poverty. It's way... higher than the state average, than the national average. And that is one of the reasons why the Prosperity Initiative was created. I remember working with Bonnie when she first started having these conversations in Pima County, which was what, 15 years ago, maybe, Bonnie? 15 years ago. And so... we've got to be focused and really talk about economic development and creating high wage, long-term jobs in our community. Because as we say that, right, if we work on the four policy areas, which is education, providing work or jobs and high quality jobs, housing and health, then the quality of life and the prosperity of individual families in our community is going to improve so part of that work we go on I go on to opportunities right the opportunity that we have and I'm very excited about a couple of places in the city of Tucson we just created based on our work through the Bloomberg Harvard Initiative, we created our office of community and economic impact. And in that office, led by Lynn Mandel, is our chief resiliency office. We do have our equity office. We have the prosperity initiative. We have our economic initiatives piece, our cultural piece. And we want to bring down the silos in all of those, oops, sorry, in all of that work because they all relate to each other. And we've got to be able to help attract and grow the jobs that our community is ready to say yes to. And so that's why, you know, your comprehensive economic development strategy, our comprehensive economic development strategy and the recent work we're doing with Bloomberg Harvard and the Urban Institute is leading us to a place where we're really holding hands and moving forward to be able to create those opportunities. On the gaps, I think that we need to continue in focusing on prevention and reducing crime. Crime prevention and reduction The city of Tucson just created an office of violence prevention and intervention. And I know that Pima County invests heavily on youth employment. And I think there could be additional work there. I really do think that there's the... capacity on both the county and the city side to have a focused approach to youth investment, job creation for youth, and preventative measures and investments to reduce crime and violence in our city. And then on the economic piece, the city of Tucson has a small business program that I really believe we can hold hands on. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, that we can do some really good things together. We have tons of workshops. Our small business program is something that we just created for the past almost seven years. We created the small business program and so we have that experience under our belts that we can share with Pima County, that we can do amazing work together. Most recently, the economic development work that we've been partnering with has been very encouraging to me, including our teams at Economic Initiatives and the Economic Development Office in Pima County. Our trip with Pima County and the Arizona Commerce Authority to Taiwan is And the University of Arizona is an area where there's really good possibilities of opportunities. So those are the areas I think that we can take and run with and continue focusing on. I don't know if you want to add anything or any of the staff wants to add. So supervisor, I was going to say Supervisor Cano,

You can call him. You could also say supervisor. Supervisor Cano.

Thank you, Chair Allen, Madam Mayor. What I really appreciate about today's conversation is that we've been focused on the long-term plan and that's really critical. I hesitate to not mention the immediate short-term threats that we have with state and federal cuts making their way down to Pima County and really harming the ability for us to see the prosperity initiative be fully implemented. I wanted to take the opportunity to promote Pima County's leadership on this, led by my colleague from District 2. This board has now implemented two rounds of short-term crisis and emergency resource grants, investing nearly $2 million in one-time support for our trusted community organizations facing cuts. Round one provided about $900,000 for emergency needs, including food, housing, utilities, legal services, medical expenses, and transportation. And round two added another $900,000. So as the demand for doing something locally to ensure that disruption does not happen, what we know is that we are getting more requests than available funds that can sustain the amount of need in our community. In round two alone, we received 67 applications totaling $3.8 million. Ultimately, 28 programs were funded, supporting organizations like the Community Food Bank, FEMA Council on Aging, Sister Jose Women's Center, Emerge, Step Up to Justice, others helping ensure that the Prosperity Initiative stays implemented, that we don't fall back on our commitment to these issues. We cannot... replace every dollar that disappears from Washington or Phoenix, but we can make sure that families are not left to face hunger, housing instability, medical hardship, or other crises alone. And that's what holding the line looks like. So I think it's a very important part of being able to leave this conversation recognizing our shared commitment while also looking at how we are responding to the picture in front of us. And my colleague from District 2, I'm sure you have some additional words that you'd like to say on the impact that you've seen on those funds as well.

I know that city manager Tamir did put his hand up. So go ahead, Tam.

Thank you, honorable mayor, members of the council, members of the board of supervisors. I wanted to touch on just a couple of things of note reflecting on what you've been presenting here today. I wanted to note that the mayor and council recently approved the economic and workforce development grants for many community partners across the region. I bring that up myself because I had it on the menu of options for potential reductions to meet budget and was redirected pretty soundly by the mayor and council at that time. So that's a $1.2 million over two years investment for those organizations. I want to thank Administrator Lesher and her staff for the great collaboration, especially in the economic development space. They're actually finishing each other's sentences now, and we're at every table together. So thank you, Jan, for that. And the Mayor and Supervisor Hines were at an event yesterday that was an example of that. And we're early days on Kidco for this school year, but the numbers are looking already positive. August the 25th and kid co-enrollment increases as the school year goes on as people find jobs or as they find the need they the enrollment rate raises we are already um 170 kids higher than August of last year and we're almost at the number we ended last year at with kid co-enrollment for in-school kid co so We've done some reforms to the program. The financial projections are sound. That was a bit of an uncertainty there because we changed the structure and more than double the number of kids or parents who are receiving a discount than this time last year. So we've got higher enrollment than this time last year and a higher percentage of them receiving a significant discount. So thank you, Mayor and Council Members, for your leadership on the KidCo program. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all.

Thank you, Council Member Cunningham.

Just a few things about economic development that we weren't really touching on. We've gone through these conventional pieces for a long time about attracting surplus jobs. And everybody knows that's a very conventional and opportunistic way to look at economic development. I think it's a good thing. And then it kind of translated into home growing businesses here that would eventually give us surplus jobs. The big thing is how do you risk taxpayer dollars or leverage taxpayer dollars for something that's not a sure thing. So we've tried to promote incubators and things of that nature. But again, we're not really gonna have any guaranteed ROI. We can just do our best. I think the one thing though that we forget is when we talk about tourism dollars, there's two types of them. There's people actually coming to visit us because we're awesome, but there's other reasons. And that is people that live here and leaving just for the weekend because we don't have the things to offer them that they're looking for. Um, and that's, I think we, it's a huge missed opportunity for us. I think all too often people leave for the weekend to go to a concert, go to the lake, go to the beach. Not that we're going to get a beach anytime soon, but go to a water park. I have plenty of friends who leave for the Wolf Lodge. I don't know why we can't have a Wolf Lodge. We have plenty of people who leave for the lake. I don't know why we can't at least look at making that, working with our partners in Santa Cruz County and augmenting Patagonia so that it's a day trip and they're back the same day or or possibly doing something ourselves here in Pima County. I don't see why we don't look at being more aggressive, uh, attracting some of the local, the, the, the roving shows, whether it's Lyle Palooza or Country Thunder or Live Nation or any of those other groups that come through. And they seem to always veer to Phoenix. When I was a kid, uh, multiple groups that were the, some of the biggest groups in the world, U2, Motley Crue, uh, I saw all them at the TCC. So I want to try to bring some of those things back. The last one I'll talk about really quick is our airport. And this is one of those things that we really want to consider rethinking. There's an airport in Montana that has reformed how they allot the gate time and how the gate agreements are done through the airlines. And as a result, they've increased their single destination traffic by like 180%. And so I think it's something for our airport authority to look at. And I think it's one of those things that you don't take for granted. But recently a friend of mine flew from Spain, and they had only two choices to have one stop, and they both involved like nine-hour layovers. Well, we can't have that. That means that everybody, whenever they fly international, is just going to drive to Phoenix and leave their car in Phoenix for two weeks. And not that that's – I mean, I get it, rich people problems and stuff. But still, these are economic opportunities that we leave on the table. Every single time someone says, you know, Tucson just doesn't have what I need for this weekend. I mean, that can happen a couple times a year. But through whether it's the lake, youth sports, water parks, the beach, everybody's gone. Uh, the other thing I'd say, and this is again, uh, the mayor may not laugh about this. Um, I really think we should try to work with the tribe to shorten the drive to Rocky point, because again, why can't the beach be a day trip or an overnight trip instead of a four day trip? So when I said beach, I'm not really kidding that much. So those are some of those things that we leave things on the table. Every single time one of our own folks leaves Tucson to go have a night out in Scottsdale, well, that's lost revenue and sales tax that would have been a night out in Tucson. And I got to tell you, our downtown, downtown Tucson, our vibe and what we got going there, despite the latest things, I'll take that vibe over Scottsdale any day of the week. So we've just got to be able to maintain. We've got enough things in the community to keep us competitive and keep our folks competitive. keep our folks happy to be here. So that's it.

Alrighty. Any others? Council Member Arajas?

Well, since we're on the conversation of economic development, I would like to just share a couple observations that I've had, you know, most recently, actually on my way over here, I was speaking to a business owner and he has some frustrations around, you know, city county processes around permits, rezoning. He shared that he had a take out $75,000 to hire a firm to help with the permitting, the architecture plans, for that person to come down and get that process going at whatever office he had to go to. So when thinking about the prosperity initiative, I think it's great. Like let's keep increased small business ownership and expansion opportunities. But I feel like we also need to look at the businesses that have existed for more than, 15 years, you know, because there's been new processes in place. And I know for Ward 5, we've been having lunch meetups once a month and going to a lot of these businesses that are, you know, considered legacy businesses that aren't very savvy on emails or have websites or a current, you know, social media account. So I would like to make sure that we're revisiting those legacy businesses that have been very successful but need you know, more handholding with the permitting process because as this man shared on my way over here, he told me his crew's not going to be able to work if he doesn't get, you know, his store open. So if we could do a better job of coordinating that between the city and the county, I do feel like that will provide more opportunities for our community regionally. Thank you.

Yeah, I concur that we can... I think that's an area where we can explore more and focus on our small business support and development. And then also arming small businesses with training. That's something that our small business program has been doing really well. But, I mean, we used to have three, now two individuals that run that program. We could do so much more. if we were to do it together, sit down and talk about how we expand that work. Because isn't it like 60% of our economy or our jobs in Pima County are created by small businesses? So I agree that we can do additional work together in this space.

I would also note too that, I mean, I know between city and county are Our planning departments, our development services departments do a lot to ensure that when you cross the road, you don't confront different regulatory procedures, right? So that there is a seamlessness between the city and county. And I know there's effort to look at what could be done to speed up those processes, but I think clearly more could be done. And I think it's a brilliant idea of sort of integrating in some of the legacy businesses as well, because we do focus... And there's an increasing focus, I think, from entities beyond the city and the county on small business in this moment in time. But thinking about the legacy businesses that have been anchors in our community and how folks kind of hit the ceiling, what that next growth step is. Because I've heard higher numbers that job growth, that it generally comes, I'd heard 90% of new jobs that are created are from existing small businesses. And so there's such an anchor there. I want to just like one thing on Councilmember Cunningham's comment about sort of venues and attractions, right? We've got attractions and tourism and Visit Tucson. We have Mosaic Quarter under construction, but when it is completed, we'll have, I believe it's three new concert venues will be brought online. So it is, you know, if we build it, they will come. I wish. But bringing the recruitment from it, but we will have new space that is specifically aimed, I think, at that need. And, you know, maybe Motley Crue will come.

Well, I would say this. What I'd say is that actually Mosaic is a great opportunity. But I think there's other opportunities where there's some true collaboration, like tangible. I mean, we already have some, but I'm talking about an economic development standpoint where This is an opportunity where we can reimagine what the curb does. We can do that with Tucson Water. There's actually some pretty significant ideas and opportunity there. And we can even change some of the zoning so we get some hotel venues out there. And I think that's the long-term vision for that area. Lastly, I'd actually say that we build transit from downtown to that area along the southern Pacific right-of-way because they don't own that right-of-way. The state of Arizona does. But to be able to go from the Stadium District and the Keno District to downtown on a train through multimodal transit would be actually really good. And so I think there's a substantial opportunity there to build out Mosaic so that it is a youth sports destination and not just a youth sports destination. With what you're building at Mosaic, we have the opportunity to put in and possibly – do something really out of the box, like host the Pan Am Games or something like that. And I'm not even, I'm saying that with a straight face because I'm dead serious. And yeah, congratulations on what everything's going into Mosaic. It's going to be an outstanding project. But I think the lesson goes back to 30 years ago when we built a gorgeous stadium and they came for 15 years and they left because we didn't follow through on the second part of that vision. I don't want this body to do the same thing.

I do want to highlight something that Supervisor Cano talked about, which concerns me a lot, because one of the three cross-policy strategies, again, I go back to prevention and reduction of crime. And that we're doing a lot of work together also on unsheltered homelessness and opioid addiction. But Supervisor Cano talked about federal cuts that will impact that work that we're trying to do together, right? Federal cuts to Medicare, which is access here in Arizona, and food stamps or SNAP is going to really affect people that are super vulnerable right now. that can, because of the lack of medical services and food support, can become homeless. The city of Tucson had a volunteer recognition celebration through our Housing First program because we partner with a lot of churches and individuals that help do street outreach in our community. And one of the providers talked about it is going to exacerbate unsheltered homelessness. The cuts to Medicare and SNAP benefits is going to exacerbate unsheltered homelessness. And this is a federal decision that was thrust upon all of us. And it really is outside our hands. And we, both county and city, do not have the resources to alleviate those needs. And so I think we also have to have a conversation with the community and with each other about how do we attend to those concerns and try and push back on those federal decisions that will affect all of us. It's huge. It's a huge problem, but it will affect our community and the impact on the amount of people that find themselves unsheltered. And it will be the most vulnerable. It will be the seniors. It will be the people that are disabled. It will be people that have serious mental illnesses and that had been previously homeless. And because of this, we'll have to either afford a home or not. So I hate to be so sobering, but I think it's something that we should discuss as board, as a county and the city. Council Member Barak.

Is that something that we could bring in our congressional members, CD6 and CD7 onto? Because I know we've had a lot of conversations with our constituents of you know, folks coming because they're about to get evicted or just different cases. And they call our office because we're the local, you know, representative. They know where we're at. But it would be good if we can bring them in, too, when that starts to happen.

Chair Allen.

Professor Scott.

Could we ask either Administrator Lesher or somebody that she designates to share with everybody what the county is putting in place to try and help our constituents who are dealing with Medicare and other federal cuts. The board recently got a briefing from Dr. Cullen and from Director Sullivan on those efforts. And I think following up on Mayor Romero's point and some of the other concerns raised by our colleagues, that it would be instructive to get an overview of that.

No, it's not working. How about now?

Yes. There you go, after I did everything. So unfortunately, I can't speak so much on the Medicare side, but I can speak on the SNAP side. We're seeing an influx of folks who are losing their benefits, and it's really hurting our community. But fortunately, at the One Stop, this is what we do for a living. So we have beefed up everything that we do. Our navigators are now able to sign folks up directly for SNAP benefits. And all the work that we do through the One Stop of getting people into the workforce, be it through training programs, through the classes, the resume classes, the job search, everything counts towards that time. So we've redoubled that effort. We've communicated with the community that this is a way to maintain those benefits. And we are co-hosted with other organizations, most notably DES. And that's where folks go to ensure that their working hours are approved by DES. And because of where we're situated, the Keno One Stop is also the busiest DES SNAP location in Pima County.

Thank you, Alan. And then specific to Medicare and Medicaid, I know that we have heard how the health department is working with our constituents to deal with not only the gravity of those cuts, but also the preemptive decision made by the state's Department of Economic Security to cut back their own staffing. And the states are facing potentially very high penalties for their error rates. with Medicaid and that came about at the same time there were these cuts at DES and I know that Dr. Cullen and her team are working with our constituents to help them navigate not only the effects of those cuts but how to deal with a DES bureaucracy where they're not always getting responses to their phone calls. This is such a significant matter that there was even an episode of The Daily podcast from The New York Times last week that focused on Arizona and how our Medicaid cuts are a harbinger of what we can expect to see around the country, especially since the Congress put the main effects of the big, beautiful bill to take effect after the midterm election.

Yes, and I think that we need to make sure that we have a very clear, direct conversation with the community about these federal cuts that are going to affect. And I usually joke with other mayors around the country that if people could blame the mayors on the weather, which they do, by the way, they would. And so we are the, you know, board of supervisors and the mayor and council, we're the front line, right? We're on the ground. People stop us at the grocery store, ask us, you know, about stuff. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand the different levels of government and the services that they provide. I've been accused of not doing anything for Interstate 10. And, you know, it's a reality of the work that we do. This one in particular scares me a lot because it is human suffering. And so I really do think, I know that the city and the county are also working on the volunteer requirements. I know that Dr. Cullen is working with our Parks and Rec staff and with Liz Morales and our team to try and see, okay, where is it that we can help with that volunteer requirement? But it scares me what's coming because of these Medicare and SNAP cuts in our community. And I think we need to make sure that we're informing the community of what's coming and what the possibilities of how they're going to see these cuts in our neighborhoods and in our streets. So we gotta prepare for that. I know this is a sobering conversation and the Prosperity Initiative is the work that we're doing and we're picking up. And I know that Pima County and the city of Tucson, we're actually focusing our efforts, building our budgets on the Prosperity Initiative, but it's also important that we have partners in the federal and state governments to help us do this transformational work that we all want to make sure that we focus on. So I don't know, Chair, maybe where are we? We wanted to kind of have a discussion. The last time we had a joint meeting, there were a couple of my council colleagues that were very upset. that there was a lot of presentations and no discussion. And I think this discussion is really good just to see where our interests are. What do you think is the next place we need to go to?

Well, I think just to touch back on the urgency of the moment from the cuts and the greater obstacles that are being put in front of all of our constituents around both access to healthcare and food benefits And to just echo that the health department has put together, Dr. Cullen has put together an incredible plan that is a robust plan that is looking at ways in which we can be prepared to be able to assist people in both meeting the eligibility requirements, looking at volunteerism, looking at how to meet the work requirements. And so just to say that I think the getting some great collaboration on that. I know that we have been training navigators as well as community health workers, but then how that integrates in with the city as well so that our overlapping constituents, we can point them in all of the places where they can go to get that help. And then just on the sort of the housekeeping agenda, so this meeting wraps up at 2.30. It is five minutes to two. Um, we have, we kind of naturally gravitated towards the second part of the discussion, which is the, like, what are the ways, you know, what, what did you learn from hearing one another about what it is that we're each doing well as the County or the city and advancing the prosperity initiative? Um, so that was one question to sort of, what are you hearing from one another? What's sticking with you? Cause I've got a long list of things. And just as an aside, which is what I love about this meeting, you'll have some brilliant ideas and you're doing incredible work. Like I want to follow up with you about your youth fellows and think more about how you're engaging folks at the parks and the sports leagues and non-traditional organizations in our community. And so those thinking about how we can learn from one another and the work and the shared goals and understanding different tactics that we're employing to be more effective. But so it's what, you know, what are we hearing and learning from one another about how to more effectively advance the prosperity initiative? And then the second question is kind of based on what you've heard, what should we lead individually? But perhaps more importantly, what should we be doing together to better advance prosperity initiative successes, right? And we've been going there naturally, right? Like I love the sort of this idea of of thinking about Mosaic Quarter, and then how can we tie it in with good transit and access to lodging and getting folks downtown? Or how do we tie it in with the airport? And how do we think a little bit more holistically about some of the great things that we have going on? And I'll say the stuff that I've been hearing, so much focus on youth, as there should be. As we think intergenerationally, we think about where the gaps are and who is falling through. And you think intergenerationally, and where we can make investments so that they live out and have repercussions and do both the prevention but also the upstream long-term work, it's a focus on young people. So there were a lot of great suggestions on that. But I will stop talking so that if there are other things that have come to mind to tease up about that collaboration, I see Supervisor Scott and then Councilmember Coney.

Thank you, Chair Allen. I really feel, and I said this in my earlier remarks, that the Community Coalition for Prosperity can be a tremendous clearinghouse of ideas for what should be a community-wide discussion about how to take on intergenerational poverty. I was inspired when I saw all of the logos of the various groups that are part of the Community Coalition for Prosperity And I know that they have several working groups that already have some discussions underway because ideas should percolate up from the grassroots as we are talking about this. And that not only can help to inspire policy decisions that we might make as local governments, but it's also a way of sharing those best practices with other entities in the community. And Chair Allen, both you and I and our staffs, and I was pleased to have staff from the Prosperity Initiative join us in touring Keeling Elementary in the Amphi District and talking with Amphi staff about the family-based interventions that they have in place to not just assist students, enrolled on that campus in a very high poverty, high mobility neighborhood, but also to help their parents as well. And it struck me that what we were hearing going on in the Keeling community could well be instructive and helpful to other such communities around Pima County. So I hope that we're continuing to make use of the Community Coalition for Prosperity to help inspire and motivate all of us as well in our policy decisions.

So a couple things about youth sports, and let me start with delivering health care. I still want to throw back to the days in the 1970s where County Hospital was somewhat of a catch-all for the under and uninsured, and we're not going to get that model back. But can we... find a 2026 version of that model that's one piece i think that would be very aggressive and it would be it's not been done yet but it's something that like i don't we're here to provoke thought let's provoke thought so that's one of them the second piece to that is and i brought this up to a few people have talked to me about this is this idea that we can probably unfortunately with where medicare is at right now it throws a wrench in the system, but I truly believe there's a pathway to offering a single-payer option for children in Pima County. It would take an absolute – it would take probably a task force that we'd have to have with some of our local providers, our local nonprofit providers like TMC and El Rio. It would take Pima County Health, and it would take the city – and actually probably the school districts to make it work. The way I understand some of the things to do it is, so if you are in youth athletics in a school district, in public school district, you can purchase additional insurance through the school district for the youth athletics. And so because of that, I think, okay, well, if I can purchase additional health insurance for my kid for youth athletics, why can't I just purchase health insurance? And so that's the leap. that I keep talking about. A lot of folks have said, well, there's nine different reasons why we can't, and I appreciate that, but there's also nine different ways why we can't. And think about this. If we want to talk about affordability, we now are eliminating the cliff for the folks that are working in the middle that are making between $16 and $28 an hour, and all of a sudden, to ensure their child, it's not much more than what kids' care would be. And that's a really significant piece to what's missing in communities around the country. And believe it or not, if Pima County was a state in area, it would be about the 45th largest state. And in population, it would be the 48th largest state. So we can do this. We have the right population and people to make this work. So that's my healthcare access piece. Onto the youth enrichment piece. um as a coach of 20 years in youth athletics in this community in multiple different sports as both a professional and a volunteer and as a former athlete i will tell you that unfortunately youth sports become incredibly monetized and we can't have that any kid who gets interested in a sport and then tries to join a team where the five kids on the team have been playing that same sport with the same coach for nine years. That kid's not going to want to stay. And when the parents get the sticker shock for what it costs, it makes it even worse. And this happens in soccer. It happens in basketball. It happens in flag and tackle football. And it absolutely happens in baseball and tennis. And you'd think tennis, it's an individual sport. You get priced out.

So the biggest piece to that is

I've said a long time, and it's something that we should consider having him here, is I think our superintendent of schools here in Pima County can help with molding that discussion and having that discussion about youth sports. And it doesn't just need to be sports. Believe it or not, getting extra help in arts has gotten priced out of the market. Getting extra help in whether it's singing, dancing, ballet, whether it's drama, performance arts, or even like visual arts. Those enrichments, and then music, band and orchestra. All those things are, every kid should have the opportunity to be good at something. And every kid is usually good at something. And we don't have that encompassing piece. And all of a sudden, a lot of us as parents are thinking about, well, how many hours is this kid going to play online video games? How many hours is this going to happen? And so we're literally counting hours to fill time for our kids to do stuff, right? I mean, I don't know who – I believe people are familiar with what I'm talking about. I hope so. Anyway, the bottom line is that having those opportunities that are affordable really changes things. We can run a 10-week basketball league within our park system right now that would cost like $80 for 10 weeks, whereas to play just in one weekend tournament is like $120. And to be on the club that plays in that tournament costs another $100 a month. So those are some of the things that if we really want to talk about enriching youth and youth sports or, again, arts, We want to be able to facilitate those programs. I think Parks and Rec is built for this type of stuff, but the hard part is finding a way to make it all fit together. And we have a lot of folks that don't live in the city limits who'd like to be included in that. So that's where the collaboration comes in. Finally, by having the school districts as our partners, the best person to do that isn't on the city side. So the best agency to do it is Parks and Rec, which is on the city side. The best agency to guide it is superintendent schools, in my opinion. And so that's kind of where these disconnects are. So we're going to have dialogue. This is my dialogue. Thanks for letting me pontificate.

And then did you want to say something? Oh, go ahead.

Here.

Well, thank you all for that. This has been a great conversation and I think we have a lot of potential. So we owe you some money for transit, the city, right? And in light of the discussion we've had so far, I think it would be really great to leave here with maybe not a commitment, but at least consideration. Perhaps once you figure out how much money we owe you, you might want to just tell us to keep it and put it into PEEPS. So it could be as much as $3 million. But that would be a fantastic, concrete way to move forward a little bit, I think, to advance One of the things we all acknowledge, which is early childhood education, to have an ongoing city contribution as well. The fact that, you know, we need to pay you all more for the transit that is being used outside of, you know, your city limits, I think, of course, we'll do that, whatever that number ends up being, but All are part of that, I think it would be a tremendous thing to to redirect that into whether it's peeps or some other something else like that and. Because between both the city and the county we have close to $1.6 billion in our in the budget that we can do stuff with so we do have a tremendous potential. And where we put those dollars, it's a statement of our priorities and beliefs for this community. And I think that would be a fantastic and concrete way to demonstrate to our residents that we take that seriously and we want to continue and expand and grow those commitments.

Council Member Barajas.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to touch on the school districts. I do think we need to do a better job of collaborating both on the city and county because our schools are, you know, facing lower enrollment and that leads into improving housing stability. I want to figure out stronger pathways for our aging homeowners to, you know, those difficult conversations when Nana, you know, Rosa is going to pass away, who's going to take ownership of that property before you know, family members want to go out and buy a newer build and not invest in the current infrastructure. So I'm glad to see that there's, you know, projects like home repair, weatherization, you know, incentives to help modernize the homes. So continuing that, but also thinking of more workforce housing, workforce housing with our first time responders, educators, so they stay within the community, the community that they serve. And I would like to add that to the prosperity initiative.

If I may, one of the incredible work that the Coalition for Prosperity is doing is working with our nonprofit groups, and their goal is to bring additional businesses into the discussion in the table. I would encourage that. Coalition for Prosperity is an incredible piece of the puzzle of the work that we're doing. Absolutely do continued outreach for our business community. I think it's important to include, you know, the job creators here, right? I don't know where Raytheon is, but I believe they have a big responsibility to their community, which is Tucson. And I'm not sure how they add to the nonprofit sector and reinvest some of their billions of dollars into our community. I'm not sure. And we should know. And then, of course, the University of Arizona is a big employer. But other businesses should buy in into every piece of the prosperity initiative. This initiative shouldn't be, well, I like this piece and I'm not going to support the others. It's a holistic approach to reducing poverty in our community and transit and transportation and getting people to work is equally important as making sure that we're not that we're lowering the number of teen pregnancies in our community and that we're improving housing stability. All of them are important pieces that make a difference to our working families. The other piece, and I think that you said it, Council Member Barajas, is we should include school districts into the either CC4P conversations that are happening and our own work, to make sure that we are learning. You talked about healing, having a beautiful two-gen approach to their families and not just their students. So I think it's very important to bring in the school districts as well so that they are centers to be able to offer the services that we have. So what I see that we... that continue coming up are that we do have room to work together on youth prevention, intervention work, youth employment. I know that Pima County has an incredible youth employment program and other youth services that we can complement each other on and expand the work in. So I would love to be able to see how we continue and expand the work with each other, city and county, on youth investments. And I think that 11 to 24 is the sweet spot as part of our prevention and reduction of crime as one of our three cross policy strategies. And then, of course, I think our small business pieces That's part of our economic development work on both the city and the county. I think there's an opportunity there that we can work on.

Sure. I mean, there is so much that we could do. My notes are extensive. The one piece that I'll just flag, and not that we need to be flagging anything else that we could do together, because I think there's so much already, but just our work around climate. For both of us, we have goals, right? And climate is one of the cross-cutting policy areas of the Prosperity Initiative. We both have climate plans. The one that is completed within the county is the one that focuses on operations. And I think that there is so much that could be done around efficiencies if we did some of our energy efficiency reductions together. If we think about contracts, things that we are purchasing together that are intended to upgrade our buildings for better weatherization, for better efficiency. I just think that if we think about our purchasing, some of our procurement, some of those things that fall under climate that could be done at a greater scale, we could reduce our costs and increase our efficiency, whether that is expanding solarization from our buildings, our parking lots, et cetera. But if there's ways to do that together, we may be able to get better prices that would be able to move faster. But, you know, there's a lot. I think it would be helpful, and I absolutely agree with the mayor of thinking about the sort of three areas that the mayor put out about thinking about who's at the table and increased coordination and collaboration, direct communication with CC4P business employers and school districts. And those have different prongs that they relate to, like thinking about school districts, as has been said, is both for youth sports, youth engagement, also having youth employment, a number of pieces. Thinking about the Echo Project at the Keeling School, which is also on note happening in three different elementary schools in the Amphi area already. So it's both promoting quality education for young folks, but then also bringing in families in their entirety, youth, small business. So in terms of thinking about next steps, I would suggest that we have great notes and that we could work with the administrator, with the manager, with the notes and sort of seeing where some of those synergies exist and then bring it back at a future board meeting and a council meeting and really refine what we dig into then in the next meeting and figure out some concrete implementation. Because hopefully we hone in on something that has us doing our work differently so that we can be more effective. There's just a lot of ideas and they're great, but we'll refine them.

Chair Allen.

Supervisor Scott.

So the points just made by you and made earlier by Mayor Romero and Council Member Barajas, in terms of engaging the school districts, there is a longstanding entity called the Superintendent Board Member Collaborative. It's made up of school district superintendents and governing board members. And I believe that Dr. Kevin Stoltzfus, the superintendent in Flowing Wells, is the current head of that collaborative. They changed their leader each year, but I think Dr. Stoltzfus is the current head. And then just a request, my own learning style is such that I like to listen and I find it hard to listen intently if I'm also taking notes. So if there are a master set of notes that either the clerks or anybody else has that they're willing to share with everybody, I know I would appreciate it because I don't have any.

Although you do take really good notes. I've seen you do that.

Thank you, Mayor Romero. In a meeting like this one, though, where there's just all of these ideas pinging around, I'm less likely to be taking notes and more likely just to be listening. Thank you.

I would invite, since we're coming to the end of our meeting together, I would love to hear from Mr. Tamir and Administrator Lasher to, you know, help us, guide us to what's next, the next steps.

Thank you very much Mayor Romero and Chair Allen. And I think what we've heard today is really the focus on what we've chatted for a bit I think about where we lead and where we follow. Where are those gaps? What we do together and what we've heard is so many of the opportunities indicated by both the council and the board members of the things they'd like us to do, things they'd like us to focus on. And I think what we can do with our management teams is really delineate that inventory and see where are the things that are in the sweet spot for which jurisdictions. I've heard come back individually to the bodies with a report and analysis and then how we then project not only, I think, the next meeting, but we've been talking a bit about how do we sit down and look at a TikTok meeting

the next 18 months or so for these uh for these meetings thank you mayor thank you chair and thank you jan um i don't have much to add to it because we have had this dialogue leading up to the meeting trying to lay out kind of what a 12 to 18 month work plan might look like this was very informative to us to hear directly from all of you from all of your the chairs you're sitting in and the people that you represent which is which is all of us together so we'd be prepared to bring some things forward in that more of an action plan type format to the respective bodies, but also collectively to you.

Chair Allen, really quickly, I think we just heard Administrator Lesher indicate that she is extending her contract for another 18 months.

Great listening, Supervisor Cunnell.

Well, Chair, thank you so much for helping us, you know, think about this meeting and bringing in the prosperity initiative. I love the idea of preventing crime and unsheltered homelessness, which is something that we're working on ourselves. I'm very excited about the prosperity initiative and the focused attention we're kind of landing on and looking forward to our continued, not just conversation, but action on this work.

And I will just thank everybody for your commitment to your constituents, your commitment to families and to seeing where people are at and seeing and hearing the real struggles that people are facing and then coming together to come up with new and different ideas and stepping outside of our normal sort of jurisdictional boundaries to do work differently and to do it together because at the end of the day, it's our constituents, our families in the county and the city that matter the most. So thank you for all that you do.

Thank you all so much. And I believe this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.