Board of Supervisors Addendum - Regular Meeting

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

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 inst

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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 poli

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 gra

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 ent

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.

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 c

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 collabora

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 poli

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 effici

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

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.

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

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.