Board of Supervisors Addendum - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining

us today.

This meeting is being recorded. And I am take a

look results of Mayor and Council you. You. You.

Thank excited for this second meeting and look forward to a productive conversation.

All righty. So this is the the joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and Mayor and Council of the City of Tucson for 03/03/2026. The meeting is called to order. May we have a roll call for the city, please?

Councilmember Cunningham?

Here.

Councilmember Dahl? Here. Councilwoman Lee? Councilmember Brajas?

Here.

Councilmember Schubert. Here.

Vice Mayor Santa Cruz. Here. Mayor Romero. Here.

And we will do roll call for the Board of Supervisors.

Supervisor Gano? Supervisor Christie? Here. Supervisor Hines?

Present.

Supervisor Scott? Here. Chair Allen? Here.

That the record show all team accounting Board of Supervisors are present.

And now we will stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of The United States Of America and the two republic coalition stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alrighty. We move on to item three, and item three is land acknowledgment, and I would like to, as has become tradition, do a land acknowledgment prepared by Pima County. On behalf of Pima County residents, we honor 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.

Item four. So Chair Allen and I wanted to just do a little bit of an opening and setting up the theme. Would say. This, as we said before, is the second of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Mayor and Council meeting. And these meetings are hopefully going to be quarterly so that we can at least have four a year.

And our intention is to find solutions, mutual solutions that we all agree on, on issues that are bigger than one jurisdiction can handle, right. These are issues that both our residents are mutual residents because City Of Tucson residents are Pima County residents. And so we started in our first meeting talking about the homeless crisis that we see in our streets and how the city and county has been working together to find solutions that work for our community that we can all invest in and make sure that we follow-up. So these meetings is a continuation of the conversation that we had in our first meeting, the first time around. We will have presentations on the work that we've been doing together.

And then we hope that we can save item seven to open it up for comments, questions and all of your input in it. So I just wanted to say that, again, we're very happy to be here. Thank you to the Pima Association of Governments and the staff and the Executive Director, Mr. Michael Ortega, for opening this space for all of us to make sure that we have all of the necessary infrastructure to make these meetings happen. So I'm very happy to give you the floor, Chair Allen, and help us open up the items with your thoughts.

Well, thank you. And I would want to echo again thanking everyone at TAG for letting us use the space. And then also for the staff, because as is clear, we are all hopping in from other meetings and I mean this and going back. And so I know that our clerks, IT and tech comms are scuttling from location to location today. So very much appreciate your swiftness and agility in moving from meeting to meeting.

I also want to thank the Mayor and Supervisor Scott for bringing together the first joint city county meeting and getting this ball rolling. I appreciate your leadership in doing that and looking forward to helping continue those throughout this year. I think as materials that we've all got to show, there is so much that the city and that the county are both doing to make sure that our residents all feel safe and secure in the place that they love and they call home, to provide meaningful resources and support for people struggling with substance use disorder, mental health issues, and to address the housing affordability crisis, right? We understand, as evidenced by the complexity of the plans that we have in place, that there is no single fix, right, because at the root of it all is humans, and we are all complex little beings, and so therefore therefore the problems and the solutions are complex and require, kind of not a one size fits all in systems thinking, and, I think this is evidenced by seeing that if you squeeze the balloon on one side, right, it pops up somewhere else. People in washes and bike paths because they're there because of an affordability crisis, lack of lower low barrier shelter and traditional housing beds, insufficient behavioral health and treatment options, right, folks have been moved from city parks and washes, they end up on the loop, they get moved along again, and then the cycle continues, right.

And this is why, exactly why, meetings like this and collaboration and systems wide actions are so essential. So I appreciate that when people in this room come together together to talk, that's when policy change happens, right, because we are all privileged to be policymakers. So our task today is to do just that, talk to each other, and maybe a couple of other things. We should listen to the updates and listen for where city and county collaboration is and isn't working. Listen for duplication, right, because normally that's a bad thing, and ask questions to understand if what we're doing is really working, and are we making complex system wide change or are we just squeezing the balloon.

Ultimately, where we want to land at the end of this meeting is that we identify opportunities that we can create sort of a force multiplier effect because we are collaborating and playing on our strengths. So with that, I look forward to the discussion and presentation. And

our staffs flipped a coin and they coin decided who was going to present first. But if you think about it, just to follow-up on Chair Allen's opening statement is that since we met the first time, there's already a lot of work that we are escalating and not just continuing, but escalating in terms of the partnership on. I think that as we hear from the presenters, what we were thinking of is write down your questions, your observations, your commentary, and let's open it up in Item seven to open up for your questions. But what Chair Allen and I had talked about is think about as you ask your questions towards the end, think about what is working, what are partnerships and the programs that we're leading together that are working, and then how do we take action together on the gaps that exist. So with that, it is my pleasure to introduce our Assistant City Manager, Les Morales, to present and give an update on the Safe City initiative.

Thank you, Mayor Romero, Chair Allen, to our distinguished elected in the room. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. Yes, last time, Steve and I were able to present, I shared the rollout of our Safe City initiative. And we're moving beyond just the individual efforts and building a system now are building a system around what is working. That means formalizing deployments, strengthening pathways to treatment, pivoting proven models like STAR Village and aligning our work more closely with county partners.

Safe City is no longer just a coordinated response, it is becoming a structured framework built around measurable outcomes.

Did we have a slideshow?

Thank you. Is it one after the other?

We're getting it there.

Thank you. Sorry, turn trip. My apologies. Yes.

Yes, we didn't actually receive a copy of that. Yes.

All righty. It looks like they didn't receive it. So, Ala, you should have a copy of the Safe City initiative update. Yes, it's right in front of you. We will do that. And you can follow Liz's presentation there.

Thank you. So, in just talking about building a system around what works, next I'd like to talk about the policy guidance. Oh, there we go.

There it is. Yeah.

Still on, not on presentation. Okay. Thank you. Next slide, please. So I'd like to first talk about our Safe City Task Force, which was established in November.

We have a very broad representation and very broad and diverse across multiple sectors along with community members who bring lived and professional experience to the table. Over the course of the four meetings to date, the group has engaged in in-depth briefings and dialogue built to have shared understanding of key city departments, our programming services, and all things that we put under the Safe City umbrella. The task force also served as forum for policy review and feedback. For example, in December, the city attorney's office provided an overview of the drug loitering ordinance and associated pathways to treatment. And then we have our Director of Transportation and Mobility, Sam Cridio, he presented on our transit safety and security action plan, incorporating the members' questions and input, which we were able to deliver back to Mayor Council.

Each member contributes a distinct perspective and area of expertise. Together, the task force plays an important advisory role in strengthening the Safe City Action Plan and ensuring the policies reflect thoughtful cross sector insight into these complex challenges facing our community. Next slide. I'd like to speak for a moment around deployments, which is something we share. We've been able to coordinate and do some incredible work along the loop, expanded it throughout the city.

Our Tucson Police Department has used these targeted deployment strategies to address areas with chronic nuisance activity and quality of life crimes and direct support of initiative. In 2025, TPD conducted 13 focused deployments along the Santa Cruz, Reletho Corridors, The Loop, South Park And Ajo, 12th And Irvington, South 6th Avenue and I-ten and other high impact areas that we have located through data and community concerns. These deployments are intentional and data driven. Encounters are tracked to monitor connections to services, identify identify repeat contacts and assess behavioral change over time, ensuring that the efforts are not only enforcement based, but that they are also outcome focused. A key component of this strategy is deflection, redirecting individuals to treatment and supportive services instead of booking when appropriate.

While deflection is prioritized when feasible, we know that not every situation meets criteria. We've had two additional deployments, so for the total of 15 deployments we've had since we started, Tucson Police has made over three sixty contacts resulting in three twenty eight arrests, ten ninety seven total charges including three thirty two misdemeanors, 68 felonies, three forty five misdemeanor warrants and 24 felony warrants. But at the same time, these deployments facilitated 29 shelter placements, 26 detox acceptances, 15 medical assisted treatment referrals and the clearance of 50 demonstrating a balanced approach that integrates enforcement with diversion, treatment access and neighborhood stabilization. Next slide, please. I also now want to talk about our STAR Village, which is operated by Primavera Foundation and El Pueblo Community Services provides supportive services.

It is funded by the City of Tucson on City of Tucson property and it opened officially on October 15 as part of our again to support important critical gap in the emergency shelter and stabilization system. In just over one hundred and twenty days of operation, the program has provided safe structured shelter and supportive services to 73 individuals, serving on average 23 women and non binary individuals on a daily basis. Star Village continues to focus on stabilization, trust building and service connection for individuals with complex needs. Since its opening, of those who have left the program, we've been able to put four into permanent housing, and eight have been able to go on to other temporary housing opportunities. One of the things Star Village is already demonstrating is that models like this can improve public safety without requiring a police intervention.

I want to share one crime stat that we received from our Tucson Police Analysts Unit. We looked at the one mile radius of Star Village and if anyone knows it's around Grant And Stone, thank you. We looked at the four months prior to opening Star Village and four months since its opening. We had a total incidence of ten ten, four months prior to this opening, and since its opening we've had six thirty three incidents, a reduction of 34% of police incidents, so already demonstrating again this is an important still an important gap, but also helps address an area that was already experiencing a lot of concerns of criminal activity, loitering from nearby residents. I also want to talk about how the multidisciplinary outreach team, which is comprised of professionals El Rio Health, El Pueblo Community Services and our city's Housing First program, we call them the MDOT team.

They connect people in encampments to medical care, behavioral health services and ultimately permanent housing. And for Star Village, they conduct field outreach Monday through Thursday every morning, first thing in the morning, and they cover the one mile radius around Star Village. And they also have coordinated bimonthly cleanups and outreach events. They put a beautiful tent out front that allows for residents, neighborhoods, volunteers to come, and it really builds trust with the residents that are staying in Star Village, and they all help with the bimonthly cleanups. This consistent presence is strengthening the community.

It's building relationships and increasing neighborhood involvement. Next, I'd like to speak on the city. Under Safe City, we're really doing an emphasis to strengthen pathways to treatment, if we can on the next slide. There has been some really important work happening between the city and the county, and a few months ago with the thanks to Councilwoman Lee, really saying what can we do around an ordinance. Our city attorney Roy Lusk put together a draft ordinance around how do we address what other tool can we have to address open air drug use.

After review and stakeholder input, we have pivoted from an ordinance to really looking how to strengthen and better utilize existing tools that we have. And this includes improving charging documents. Thank you to Pima County Attorney's Office for working with our team, which will allow our police officers to submit charging documents to ensure cases are complete, consistent and positioned for meaningful intervention. Post arrest pathways are being clarified and strengthened so individuals are more consistently connected to the appropriate treatment and services. In addition, we are currently underway looking at how we can coordinate and work together around high utilizer strategy, focus on identifying individuals with repeated public drug use arrest and chronic system contact.

This includes structured cross agency data sharing between the city and the county partners, so we can understand patterns and intervene earlier. Outreach and engagement efforts will be coordinated to ensure consistent messaging, service navigation and follow through. We want a clear consequence framework to be implemented that really ensures people are being directed hopefully to treatment instead of prosecution. We believe this approach reflects the city and county alignment to ensure with enforcement, courts, behavioral health providers, outreach teams that we're working from playbook. Treatment remains the preferred path.

However, continued harmful behavior will result in progressively deeper system engagement, reinforcing that accountability and care must work together. Next slide. So you all received both through your clerks, but today I wanted to provide you a paper copy of the Safe City draft. It's still in draft, the action plan, and this will provide us again a framework to have long term impact. The action plan outlines and proposes clear priorities, roles and coordinated strategies across departments and partners.

It has defined strategies that's paired with measurable metrics to ensure accountability, to track progress and to guide continuous improvement. The next step for this, our task force will be very actively working on this document to provide us guidance and input. We also will have a public engagement process that will launch this spring so that our community can tell us and say, did we hear them, are we hitting the issues that they're dealing with. We want to strengthen transparency and build shared ownership of this strategy. And so we are committed to transparent reporting and regularly sharing data outcomes and lessons with all of you to be able to demonstrate that we are having measurable progress with our safe initiative.

Thank you.

Thank you, Liz. And I just wanted to add that, as mayor and council and our team at the City of Tucson, we actually are proud of being an organization that is innovative and tries different pilot programs. We try things. If things don't work, we pivot. And it's something that we're very proud of that we are continuously piloting and expanding the pilots that are working for us and those that are not, then we put them aside and we pivot to what is actually working.

So I'm proud of the draft Safe City Initiative action plan. You are all invited to participate in the community engagement opportunities, take a look at it. This is a draft and I'd like to call it a living document where we continue adding to our safe city initiative as we move along. Sure, Alan.

You will

rookie air, it's like on Zoom, right? You're on mute. You also have two documents, one is the One Pima initiative and then a slide deck that is an update on the One Pima initiative. And with that, I will pass it over to Deputy County Administrator, Steve Holmes, who will walk us through the update One Pima.

Thank you, Chair Allen, Honorable Mayor Romero, our wonderful Board of Supervisors, our City Council members and of course our County Administrator, Jan Lesher and our City Manager, Tim Tommier. Thank you all for having me today. I begin this presentation kind of really delivering in the spirit of both partnership and solidarity with the work that we've been doing together for quite some time now, right. And it's a lot of what you'll see today is rooted in a lot of the work that we discussions we've been having collectively, right. Although we're presenting the One Pima initiative as a wonderful document that brought coherence sponsored by our supervisor, Kano, and I thank you for that because it did bring some coherence around how we are working and how we're thinking about the work, but equally important, you'll see how this really dovetails a lot with conversations we've had ongoing.

I will start with I think I can do this, okay. These are the priority areas that you are shared in your documents, starting with loop cleanup, strengthening our public health and treatment access, expanding treatment and diversion programs, stabilizing housing and preventing homelessness, and supporting impacted neighborhoods and small businesses. These are the frameworks that actually was driving today's presentation and which I'll share on greater detail kind of our status update. On December 2025, our Board of Supervisors took action to really contract contract outside of just what we had in house to actually do our cleanups. And this was really sparked a lot about in our partnership from our deployments, right.

As we were working our deployments at that time, Chief Kasmar was getting a hold of us, hey, can we work and coordinate this work together so that as we're coming in, you guys are coming in and cleaning up, right. So there's visibly this not only just partnership, a signal to the community that we want to make sure that we're actually cleaning out those areas that have been a great concern and the issues that have been driven a lot of this work. To date, you see we've allocated about 85 tons, that's a lot of stuff, right, that we've pulled out of there and about $100,000 that's come out of our budget to really try to continue to make sure that our county asset is clean for the people that want to use it and continue to use it. We have a continued investment that's part of our budget this upcoming twenty seven year to make sure that this is expanded and that we make sure that visibly we know that as we're engaging our deployments that we're cleaning up after those as well. And then equally important, we have a loop survey that was launched in February 26 to then get feedback from our participants on the loop to let us know about what they feel about the loop, what how concerns about safety issues that can actually lead to better just outcomes and more importantly, better experiences for those who want to take their families out there in a ride or a walk or whatever they partake in.

I think I got this pretty almost. I'm going to point at every one of you until see which one goes. And then if you can go to the next slide, there we go, I may go backwards. In our public health and treatment area, I think one of the things that's super important, you'll hear a lot about it today with our health department under the direction of Doctor. Cullen.

One of the discussions we had as part of our joint metro justice meetings was to really look at documents that we had between our jurisdictions. They had a lot of overlap, but weren't really synthesized into kind of a real full GAAP analysis. So you hear a little bit about how those documents were all synthesized into some potential policy recommendations and some outcomes that would be great for discussion around this table to see where investments need to be made to improve on some of those gaps or try to fill some of those gaps. Some of those are not jurisdictional issues, but are statewide that are going to require a lot of collaboration around policy and quite frankly, a little bit of influence from those around the table. One of the things that we're proud of is our heat collaboration during season of heat.

Our health department has courted a lot of efforts in the summer. We are a hot place and as such we deal with a lot of concerns around people who are unhoused or are dealing with the heat. We've had many efforts that are collaborative. I know as part of our budget next year, we're looking at a division within our health department to actually deal with environmental issues such as heat as well. And so that's to be determined how that actually develops, but it's actually rooted in that idea of look at some of these environmental issues that we're facing and how we can begin to have the health department assist in those in a more formal way.

And then lastly, really looking at our legislative priorities, which are super important as we begin to look at house accesses actually supporting our folks who need additional help. Right now, we're dealing issues with just healthcare in general and how people can afford those that are willing to actually go through treatment, are they able to even afford the services. And then lastly in here, one thing that we will be doing as part of these gaps analysis is we're looking at a longer term injection of people that leaving the jail, who have actually are in MAT services. One of the issues that's come up in some of our gap analysis, people are leaving or not going filling their prescription, right. And so that doesn't help that people are leaving the jail having gone through MAT services and then are back out in the streets really trying to deal with their addiction, right.

And so this long acting injection actually lasts for up to thirty days, and so that's something that we believe will be a game changer in this space as well. Under our priority three, we all know about the transition center that's been a partnership. We are actively recruiting all positions to begin operating seven days a week in April 1. That's we see some great movement and hiring so that we can make sure that seven days a week things are operable. There has been a concern from our courts that they want to make sure there's some parity in the way they work with clients, but having that open seven days a week is going to be a big, big step for our community.

No pun intended, moving on to steps in that, which is our supportive treatment and engagement program services. As you recall, part of our Metro Justice meetings have been discussing a lot about how do we make our specialty courts more effective, right. And so I've been engaged conversations with our county attorney's office in collaboration with pretrial services, in collaboration with our public defenders to really look at what resources need to be there to not only support more better outcomes, but equally important what are some system improvements that have to happen across those areas so that we have the outcomes that we need. We serve just under about eight sixty eight people a year in that program. We have or at least are qualified about half of those people end up kind of actually participating and then about half of those actually complete the program, right.

And so we can do better, right. And how do we do better is a coordinated effort between the courts and our county attorney's office to get better outcomes in that space. And equally important is our drug alternative to prison program or drug court. We met with our presiding judge, and who said that we know if we want to make this better, we need another surveillance officer. Part of our investment in the courts as part of our One Pima initiative is to look at supporting our County Attorney's Attorney's Office with additional attorney next year along with a surveillance officer for the DTAC program.

And so that I think will continue in the spirit of improving our specialty courts that reside under our jurisdiction. I'm going to go through this quickly. A lot of you have this information. These are just the current status of our opioid settlement funds. I think it's really important.

We've received just a little over $30,000,000 to date. It's actually $31,000,000 but we have non pool jurisdictions that receive money as well. So once that money goes out to Orabel in Saburita, we're left with about $30,000,000 This is how it's broken down based upon the one agreement and jurisdictionally percentage of how that's build out or pooled. And equally importantly, you can see here that the efforts that we worked on with the ROSAAC committee, $8,000,000 of ongoing three year commitments to our RFPs, which I'll go into more detail, are in here as well and have been already allocated. I have to note there's we are scheduled to receive $126,000,000 out of this settlement, but that's over eighteen year period.

What the problem is we do not know when those funds come in. This allocation, the last time we received money was I believe August 2025. And so this is why when we're looking at allocations, want to be really sure that money is actually coming in because it's not a predictable kind of income stream that we're getting. This is to date. This is what our ROSAG committee approved as part of the last RFPs that were approved, as you can see here.

I'm going go into greater detail because this is super important. This is what actually got funded and what remaining funds after RFPs were allocated. We have had conversations with our ROSAC committee to see what we want to do with additional 1.7 that's there. They have been the ones that have been guided a lot of our discussions. As of now, they've only approved $300,000 of the 1,700,000.0 to actually resubmit the RFP for mobile mat services, which was unallocated as you can see from this chart.

They felt it was super important. So roughly about $1,400,000 is still being discussed by the ROSAC. There are members that want us to reissue RFPs. As you know, there were a lot of our community organizations that did not receive any money. They were kind of disqualified from it and they would like to see those kind of go back out and do that.

We will update both boards to make sure you're aware of what decisions are being made in that space. I do know Liz and I have been collaborating around maybe looking at a continuum of services for people leaving the STEPS program and seeing if we can house them in maybe another unit. That's another place where I think we can have great impact. I have to note too, one of the concerns around the SAFR center in here, the SAFR centers particularly if I can pause you

for a minute, can can you use the other mic next to you because that one seems to have failed.

You can turn it

off. How's that? Better? Maybe? Mayor Romero, just as we've been talking discussing the SAFR center in particular, dollars 2,200,000.0 has has been allocated for this first six month pilot. I have to know is it me? Mine is working Mike, just you cheap mics, you need better mics. Okay.

Can we try

another one, maybe Kevin, can you hand them your

mic? Maybe

Is there interference with the clicker? Yes. All right. Okay. And this allocation of $8,000,000 this includes $2,200,000 allocated to the SAFR center for the next three years. I just have to note that even though it's a pilot, we haven't determined whether we're going to move forward with this or not, there is still money allocated in this budget for that if we find success in that program. And I just want to note that because I think there was some confusion over what was allocated because of the six month pilot. Just want to bring clarity to that. So 2,200,000.0 is allocated in this year and in the following two years. And I'll I'll end with these last two slides.

Briefly, just very proud for what we've been able to accomplish in the housing space and collaboration. 20,900,000.0 for 28 affordable housing projects have been allocated. Think that really makes up eighteen fifty seven units affordable housing for thirty years, right. That's a huge impact as we continue in that. I know five of these projects are awarded funding sites from the City of Tucson.

Thank you for your continued work in that space. The ten year strategy plan for funding of $250,000,000 over ten years, thanks, supervisor Heinz bringing that forward. I think that's going to really be an impactful policy for us and then over time. Our Board actually allocated additional $3,500,000 this year from our traditional $5,000,000 to really look at keeping people housed. As you can see here, we have six forty nine total households that have been served for weather repair, rent, mortgage, housing that were not just affordable housing, but really supporting those that were housed and need additional support.

And then lastly, we continue to work on a sheltering dashboard that we're looking kind of early April. I'm trying not to set a timeline because there's a lot of people that need to play together, right, to get this data, but really is looking at a shelter dashboard and working with TPCH and SIRL to really get that going. So stay tuned for that. And then thank you for our investment with Supervaikanos, their Silver Lake Mission community, really looking at budget considerations for neighborhood revitalization that goes hand in hand with the work that we're doing. And then this is just really showing the partnership that continues to be regionally for us, particularly as we participate together with our safe city task force, our implementation meetings, our safe city deployments, our metro justice meetings and then including our other jurisdictions who have been really supportive and making sure coordinating services for those that are in encampments, individuals that are unhoused.

So I will end with that. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Holmes. I just wanted to thank Pima County. I know the transition center, Kate Dessley really participates in our safe city deployments. Every time we have them, they're happening once a month.

I wanted to thank Liz for your presentation, and I want to especially thank my colleague, Supervisor Scott, that really in my work as mayor with the chair, I've had the pleasure of working with three Pima County Board of Supervisors chairs now. And every single chair that I've worked with, we've advanced in the partnership between Pima County and the City Of Tucson with Chair Grijalva. We decided to pool our money together, our opioid funds together and created a plan and strategy on how to get that done with Chair Scott. We were able to put the Metro Justice team together because in the work of unsheltered and the opioid behavioral health crisis that's happening on our street, the justice system is a big huge part of it. So it's the justice system and also the housing, right, shelter, low barrier shelter.

So TPD is the one that interacts with the sheriff's department and then the individual interacts with the courts and all the services that are attached to it. So thank you, Supervisor Scott, for your work on that, and I'm looking forward to advancing additional work with Chair Allen. I also want to thank Tucson Police Department and our community outreach and resource engagement, our core officer team, as well as community safety, health and wellness, our Pima County Justice Services, Pima County or our public defender's office in the city of Tucson, our MDOT team and every volunteer and nonprofit organization that works in our safe city deployments. And then I know, Mr. Holmes, that you finalized your presentation with collaboration slide.

The county administrator's office, the health department and justice services are represented in the safe city task force, as well as in the safe city implementation meetings, the county administrator's office as well health department, justice services and office of housing opportunities and homeless solutions, they all participate in our Safe City conversations and in our Safe City task force. So just wanted to add that and wanted to see, Chair, if you wanted to invite both our city attorney and our county attorney to add to the conversation in the presentation that we just had. And I believe it was Liz that talked about our joint efforts in the justice system and wanted to see if County Attorney Laura Conover and Roy Lust wanted to add to our work together.

Sure. Thanks, Madam Mayor, and I'm happy to hear from Mr. Lusk as well. We've been doing a lot of work together since the last meeting, and as the countywide executive and executor of any of the stuff that we're talking about here today and at the last meeting, I'm feeling very optimistic about where we can go from here as long as it all continues to align with prosecutorial policies at the Pima County Attorney's Office as approved by the County. Since last time, I wanted to give a lot of grace and room for the city to explore a possible ordinance.

I wanted to allow the city time and space to do that. But instead of waiting while that research was conducted, I'm really thrilled that previous Chief Chad Kasmar and Mr. Lusk and I charged ahead on a renewal and expansion of the County Attorney's Office ongoing threat of harm, which is our overall training. In early December, I personally delivered the ongoing threat of harm training to over 80 regional law enforcement about how we could improve the information in the hands of the prosecutor at that very first hearing, which really goes to the heart of everything that the city and county have been talking about and maybe trying to get out with that ordinance. If we can improve who we are focusing on at that first hearing and get better outcomes at that first hearing, we can go so far.

It took time to turn that into four bullet points, because you got to memorize four bullet points out on the street when you're a street level officer, and that got delivered in early January, distribution has gone out. I am thrilled to say that our prosecutors who are running those initial appearances are already reporting tremendous success, so much thanks to the Tucson Police Department for adding information that we need in that hearing that happened so fast post arrest. And then I'll end here by saying that so much work together with Mr. Lusk, former Chief Kasmar. I think with former Chief Kasmar, it's going to be smooth sailing into working together, continuing through the county, and then it is with tremendous excitement that an absolute pro within the department has now been promoted as Chief and Monica Prieto.

So I think it's a point of real optimism about where we can go from here, and I'll be here for questions.

Mr. Lewis? Thank you, Honorable Mayor, members of council, members of the Board of Supervisors. I will echo what Ms. Conover has already said, that we've had lots of good positive conversations about how we can use the existing tools that we have.

Obviously, I'll applaud also Councilmember Lee's insistence that we explore those tools and to use them in a better way to make sure that if we didn't go with the ordinance, went with something that was effective. And I'll also applaud the membership of the mayor and council to encourage us to continue to think outside the box and also work with our wonderful partners at the Pima County Attorney's Office, which we've done. And I want to also thank Ms. Conoveris specifically about providing those tools as we're addressing what we would call the highest utilizers of the criminal justice system and focusing on putting the right tools in the right hands and making sure that we're being efficient with the resources that we have. Obviously, always asking for more resources, but of course understanding that if we are focusing on what we need to do with the folks that we're getting into the system with our specialty courts, with our substance use options for treatment, all of the things that the American Council and the Board of Supervisors have put into place to allow someone to make a better decision and then utilize those tools to make themselves a better life, then we're going to continue to go down that road.

So from that work, the work that has been done with the city attorney and the county attorney side, I know that we have improved charging documentation, we have clear post arrest treatment pathways, And then we also have coordination developing a high utilizer strategy, which is something that we didn't have before. And so the work from our first meeting to here, we've been able to work even with a safe city task force to explore the open air drug use ordinance. And it was because of the safe city task force that we did a strategic pivot and said, everybody felt as though the best pivot was to strengthen the existing legal tools that we had, and we're just going to have to continue making sure that we're coordinating on that side. Chair Allen, do you want to include anything else or move on to the next item?

I am anxious to hear SafeAssent update, so I'm happy to keep moving agenda. So I think next we have a presentation jointly by Doctor. Terry Cullen, the Director of Pima County Health Department I believe Liz Moravis as well.

Thank you, Chair Allen. I will just start by saying we don't have any slides to share, but we're going to speak on what is the latest. So Doctor. Cullen will start.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Chair, members of council, mayors of the Board of Supervisors. Thank you. I'm Teri Cohen. I'm the Health Director at Pima County. We're going to talk about SAFR, but before I do that, want to go back to some of what Steve Holmes presented in terms of the ROSAC, the Regional Opioid Settlement Committee, and we don't have slides.

We have shared this in the past, so hopefully none of it will be a surprise to anyone that's in the room. As you are aware, as the Mayor discussed, we did make the take the opportunity to pool funds from four jurisdictions. This is very unique in The United States, it remains unique. The vast amount of jurisdictions where there was a large city and a large county separated their funds. I am proud that I'm a member of the ROSAC committee where we were able to blend these funds so that the decisions are made conjointly.

There are six members on ROSAC and the city has some Pima County has one, the city of South Tucson and the city of Marana have representatives on that committee. I want to just briefly go out over these spending priorities because Steve shared with you what we had spent the $8,000,000 designation on. It was to address the continuum of care for recovery services for opioid use, implement strategies to support schools and families. We heard repeatedly in the last three years how critical prevention was in order to address and stop hopefully the opioid situation that we had. Support pre arrest and post arrest diversion and deflection and we'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about SAFR and then really convene a wide array of community stakeholders.

And I have this presentation and then I have another one in the second one you will see we come back to that conceptual model of how do we do an integrated strategic approach for a regional plan. You saw what the $8,000,000 was spent on. I would just remind you that part of that was for SAFR, the original set aside for SAFR, sobering alternative for recovery was 2,200,000.0 competitive RFP in the community, the amount awarded was $1,800,000 Do you want me to just keep going?

Yes. Okay.

SAFR started was stood up January 1. I will share with you that the first two weeks when we were in process, we had no admissions there, multiple reasons for that. You may be aware that we did an award late in November. We gave the procurement, the procurer which was CBI community bridges four weeks to stand up. So they did as aggressive a model as they could.

We worked closely with them, the city worked closely with them, multiple people were at the table to try to ensure that they could address what the needs are. If I step back a second, what's important to notice this idea is not new. It is an idea that has been implemented in many communities throughout The United States called sobering recovery centers. We are using the name SAFR. There actually is a national collaborative for sobering centers and we are part of that.

The Pima County Health Department is part of that. When we designed the RFP, we took what we believed were best practices that had showed success, and we'll have to talk a little bit about what success means from other communities. So we made certain decisions. For instance, the vast majority of sobering centers keep people for forty eight hours. We made a decision that the community bridges could keep people up to ninety six hours and I will say as an aside, we have a verbal commitment them to keep people more than that.

The reason for that is how difficult it is to get people into care. So you can imagine it's a Friday, it's a three day weekend, now you're at Monday, the person may or may not have Medicaid, they may have fallen off of Medicaid, we may not have resources available. So we made that decision to in the RFP include ninety six hours. We also know that made the decision as many of you know to include pets. This has been a known concern with many people in the past when they have sought treatment that their pets cannot go with them. So both of those plus some other services were offered.

Thank you, Doctor. Cohen. One of the things I wanted to share is some of the elements that I think that make it also very unique and different for our community. Being a 20 fourseven low barrier access to stabilization, it has also served as a deflection point for our first responders and our outreach workers, our police officers, reducing unnecessary emergency department visits and jail bookings, while promoting person centered care. The center focuses on trauma informed care and peer support and they have a no wrong door approach, which meets the individuals where they are connecting them to ongoing treatment and recovery services.

They take walk ins, but I will tell you about the referrals for a minute. Our TPD core that we just spoke a little bit ago has been actively through our deployments, through our other outreach efforts, we've done about 44 referrals there. So it's actively being used by our police and our outreach. What makes SAFR different is that they serve people regardless of insurance. Most other treatment facilities, detox require insurance.

This has no requirements. So someone comes in, whole piece of eligibility is taken off the table. It's aimed at a therapeutic environment. Emphasizes dignity and safety and comfort. One thing I learned is they don't just do recliners, they don't have recliners. That's a big deal. I didn't know. They have a place for people to lay down and sleep, where they feel comfortable, they have some space for themselves. They have comprehensive services that include screening, crisis stabilization, withdrawal management, initiation of the MAT treatment, the medicated assisted treatment and naloxone distribution. And it's innovative because not only with the pets, but people can bring their personal things.

A lot of places you just come in without your personal belongings here, are storage opportunities for them. With 15 beds, they are typically serving anywhere between 10 to 15 people, and what I think is really valuable with community bridges is that they can transition people into any of their other treatment programs. Once they know what a person needs, particular SAFR may not be what they need at that moment, and they have already demonstrated to move people where they need to. And now we will soon see that STEPPS program will be providing referrals as Doctor. Cullen or Steve had mentioned earlier.

One of the things I think is important is that the SAFR team does produce status reports. Was just talking to Brian Aller, we're going to be able to hear in the short term some information on what's coming out, and I'll leave that to Doctor. Cohen. But I just want you to know that we are very, very happy to be part of this and want to thank the health department for including the city from the get go of how we can work together, how we can do referrals and really trying to track people as they go through.

Perfect.

So let me share some data with you. I want to be very clear, this is very preliminary data, it's why you do not have a data report. If you'll recall, the close for the first two weeks, we have about six weeks of data. I'm going to give you some numbers that we are curating. Obviously, all of us want to ensure that this is a wise investment and that it proves to be effective.

And like stated before, what does effectiveness mean in this situation? What we know is looking at the national data, it's fifteen percent of people that seek care in a sobering center end up being referred and stay in some kind of treatment afterwards, that is considered a success. So I don't want anybody to be taken back by the numbers I'm going to share. I also want you to know that this is temporally mediated. So some weeks we appear to be doing really well, other weeks we have very few people going into treatment.

That is not to be that's not unexpected because there's not a control mechanism of who gets referred there and or who elects to stay. So since January 1 through February 21, there have been 113 admissions. In January, there were 47 admissions, 30 were male, seventeen were female. That's the other thing is that there are men and women and non binary individuals accepted into SAFR. The age range was 24 to 79 with an average of 41.

We had like I stated no admissions that first two weeks. Admission referral sources are multitude. We still have work to do here. Some of it is from the CBI twenty three hour unit, which is why you get this reference to the recliners because if anyone has been in CBI, that's what happens when people go in for twenty three hours. They're not given a bed, they're given a recliner.

The transition center has been a source of referral, the City of Tucson Police, Cashew and other people that have self referred themselves. As Liz stated, there's no wrong door. Anybody can self present, they are evaluated, there are firm criteria about who gets admitted and who needs to get referred. Obviously, we want to ensure that people are safe. CBI, however, has lots of experience in medical arena as well as the psychiatric arena has on staff as a requirement for the safer center, comprehensive clinical care, which means people for instance that have hypertension can get their hypertension treated, put under control and still stay there.

The same is true for psychiatric disease that may present if an individual has that and they're not deemed appropriate for safer, they can then transition into the CBI psychiatric care model so that they can get care there. I do want to share with you some recent data to just kind of illustrate this issue of if you ask me what will happen this week, I don't know. In the week of 02/25 to 02/21, there were fourteen people that came in, seven people successfully transitioned to a behavioral unit, that's fifty percent. However, if we go back to the week February 8 to February 14, we had three of seventeen people go to treatment. So it just gives you a sense of how critical it is going to be for us to assess this as we go forward.

And to talk about that briefly, I'll talk about the evaluation component of this written in the RFP are multiple metrics that are being reported on. We also have required that there be an evaluator, an external objective evaluator. CBI has chosen a division University of Arizona, which is actively involved in that. They also are required to do PI, a performance improvement quality improvement plan every month. Some of those plans, the first plan we've only seen one which which was for January resulted in a real the moving of the door for where people could enter into SAFR.

The inclusion of what we call the prepare questionnaire that is a social determinants of health objectively validated questionnaire so that we can get additional information about individuals specific situations. It's critical for us to have that in order to do any predictive modeling of do we go forward, what do we go forward with, what is missing. In addition, we are collecting qualitative data for discharge. Obviously, we have three out of seventeen people are transitioned into treatment, there's fourteen other people that have left not in treatment. Some are going home, but many people are not.

And so what is the difference there? Is there something we can do to encourage people to choose to go to treatment and or support them during that cycle, that period when they leave. And the other thing we have not done is specifically yet is the outreach to healthcare centers. Remember, one of the goals of this is to try to ensure that our healthcare system can do what it needs to do. When people go to the healthcare system that have a substance use disorder, it may not be the appropriate place for them.

It may be if it's an acute overdose, but our hope is to decrease some of the burden that we're seeing on the healthcare system by enabling the healthcare systems to refer directly into SAFR. So I think what's important to note is we are still supportive of this model. We hope to be able to prove that it is effective. We are working with many metrics as well as the external evaluator. And right now, we are in the area where we are collecting the data, looking at what we're seeing and hope to be able to because we have this continuous quality improvement model, and CBI has really been a great partner, figure out what we should do differently so that we can get better outcomes.

I just wanted to add, thank you so much for the report, really appreciate it. I'm a data nerd. I like to do policy and make policy based on data that's proven to work. And so, when we first the city of Tucson first started talking about Safer Center and being able to use opioid settlement funds, we looked at the data of how it was helping other cities. And so other cities have done it, but we have never, right?

This is something new that we're all trying, and I just want to make sure that I pay special attention and really thank the ROSDOT committee as well as the Board of Supervisors and Mayor and Council for willing to try something different that we've never done in order to be able to have better data and better results for the community. I've gone to SAFR Center. I don't know if all of you have. I would highly, highly recommend that each and every one of you go visit it. I know that SAFR has been in our partnership with CBI has been very effective.

There is a warm from our safe city deployments and our nonprofit partners that are there, TPD, Justice Services, all of us. What I've seen, because I've been to a safe city deployment as well, is that the goal is to connect people to the resources that they need. Those are the safe city deployment And from those deployments, we have either nonprofit partners or police officers that when individuals are asked and they say, yes,

I need

detox, a police officer can go drop off an individual at SAFR through a special door, and it's a warm handoff from the police officer to someone that works at SAFR, and that individual is helped within five minutes. That's the difference that SAFR creates when it comes to our police officers. The other option, what we were doing before was either dropping individuals off that needed detox treatment either to the Pima County Jail or our police officers would have to go to an emergency department. Department, it took hours if any of you have gone to emergency rooms, it took hours upon hours for a police officer to be able to leave that individual there. So this is saving us booking costs and jail costs and really moving people towards the real services that they truly need.

So thank you so much. I really appreciate that report. Sure, Alan. I don't know if you wanted to move to the next item.

Chairs? Yes. Okay. May I just really quickly say one thing?

Yes.

I guess I started anyway. So I just I think it's important after hearing that, just acknowledge that it is not typical for any of the 3,069 counties in this country to have a Doctor. Cullen. So just it's no, thank God for you. I mean, like she got us through the pandemic really well, and we're just really lucky to have you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate So

I think it is appropriate then to looking at our next agenda item and around the sort of unique incredible skills of Doctor. Cullen, digging into this gaps analysis. And I will just say, right, if you sort of think about where we have gone, we have had reports around both Safer City, One Pima, right, like complex and looking at the complexity of responses. We've heard about a pilot project where we are digging in piloting something that is fairly unique, and now I think the question still is, right, like we know we're not doing enough, but in order to figure out where to do more, I think we always come back to this question of where are the gaps, what do we need to be doing more of, and so I'm very excited to hear the presentation of the gaps analysis that has been put together by Doctor. Cullen and

the health department team. Yes, thank you. I do want to say one thing about SAFR. So a lot of eyes are on us for this. I was just at the big city health coalition, 35 largest public health departments in the country, who are like, so how's that going? I'm like, give me a little bit of time and we'll figure it out. Thank you, Doctor. Arndt. Does the slide deck come up or do I need there is a slide deck, hopefully, maybe not. Do you have that, David?

We're trying to find it, Doctor. Cullen?

Yes, I can go without it, because I think you guys all have a copy. Well, you have the full large document and I will give you a synopsis to that and we will go from there and hopefully David will be able to pull that up in the back. Okay, so I do want to say that and I really appreciate Doctor. Heinz saying that, however, this was not my idea to do this, it was at a Metro Justice meeting. Supervisor Scott, I'm looking at you because you were the one that suggested that there's a lot of stuff out there and maybe we should figure out how to pull it all together.

I glibly said, oh, I can do that in three weeks. Well, three months later and thank God he gave me grace to say you're never going to get that done despite using our because I was like, I'll just some AI, okay. So I do want to put out here that we did use a little artificial intelligence on this. I did not specifically pull up all of these myself.

Coming we got the presentation as well. Thank you.

Oh, here, perfect. First purpose and scope, okay. So we looked at over 20 documents, the exact number is 24. This includes many of the things you've already talked about, Safe Initiative, strategic plan, any document we could get a handle on. We started with documents back from 2021 and went through August 2025.

There have been, so for instance, there is an update on the safe city document that the updates are not included in this analysis that we did. What we specifically were looking at, what were the plans and strategies that have been identified by multiple stakeholders to address the opioid response in Pima County. We elected to compare these recommendations to what is a known public health framework, which is policy assessment and assurance, that's the triple leg stool that we talk about when we talk about public health and you're going to see that we've then used that as we go along. We looked for what had been identified by the individuals that wrote these documents of strengths, gaps and opportunities. It's important to note we did not ensure that what had been identified as a strength, gap opportunity by the person that wrote the document was accurate.

We assume that if the document had been there and all of these had been published and pushed out through the community that they were adequate and that we could use them. So there were 10 thematic thematic items, I thank you so much identified. You can see these here. What's important to note is these are very similar to the thematic item areas that we saw with ROSAC. ROSAC an independent group of people looking at what is the best way for us to solve what are the issues related to opioids, and people came up with these dramatic areas.

These are also many areas that have been funded through the set aside from Rosech that we talked about earlier. You can go if you have the opportunity, you can go through your large document and look at them specifically. You guys are doing it back there. Thank you. These are the strengths that were identified.

Fuel based harm reduction outreach efforts are scaled and consistent. What this means is that they were scaled and consistent throughout the delivery model. So not if Pima County was doing it well, if the city of Tucson was doing it well, if the City Of Marana was doing it well, this is what we saw consistently out there that there was coordinated engagement between partners and the jurisdictions and that that was gathering momentum. And we see that specifically in the work that we are doing with ROSAC and that government and investment commitments are helping drive substantial change and sustainable change. I want to talk just briefly about this.

You'll recall Mr. Holmes mentioned the opioid settlement dollars, the over $100,000,000 that is there and also mentioned that there's been no additional funding that has come in through August. Now that other funding is in the queue, but it's not in a queue that we control. It's in the queue of the individuals and the organizations that had settlements given to them in order to address the opioid situation. So this is really in my opinion helping drive sustainable change.

I'm not sure we're there yet and we're going to see that as we go through. Next slide. So the next slide is the gaps and these are gaps that if you recall what Steve presented, when Mr. Holmes presented for the ROSAC dollars, some of them are addressing this right transition points, continuity of care. Now remember, this is individuals that had written documents, pulled the documents together and they have said that some of these have not yet started or they've been initiated, but they aren't yet stable.

I think that I would agree with that assessment that there's a lot of work being done in this area, but we still need to move that work through so that it becomes foundational and really instituted in our delivery system. Structural integration shared infrastructure is in early stages, capacity for stabilization and step down care in early stage. Let me just comment a little. When we asked people, we went back and we said, where are you with these recommendations? And we asked the individuals that had written the documents and are being involved in the documents.

Early stage means it started, we're worried, we don't know how we're going to continue it and or there's greater need than we have been able to meet at that time. Youth prevention work and coverage, and I already talked about that briefly, but a huge component that we hear repeatedly. Workforce sustainability, this we know is a major gotcha. The workforce sustainability in this area in behavioral health and substance use disorder in primary care in the integration of behavioral health into primary care in the initiation of medication assisted treatment is sorely lacking. There's lots of efforts being done there.

Obviously, many of those are with healthcare training, behavioral health training, not really necessarily within the purview of the health department to make this happen, but the recognition that workforce initiation sustainability is critical needs to be highlighted. Then policy and reimbursement alignment, you heard this briefly when we talk about Medicaid as the looming Medicaid cliff happens and as disenrollment is happening and reenrollment will require a six month reenrollment and or work. This is a high concern for us. What's important to note is that behavioral health and or substance use disorder may exempt you from the eighty hour a month work requirement. That is a state decision to say what does it mean to have a behavioral health condition, what does it mean to have a substance use condition.

Lots of policy work left I think for us to do in conjunction with you. Next slide. So the opportunities, now these are opportunities that came up once again from the documents, remember the documents now are six months old, five months old, things change rapidly in there. Development and implement a unified regional opioid response plan, as part of that formalized government structures to strengthen and inform efforts. What you've heard today prior to my speaking is lots of efforts that are going on, so this recommendation was throughout most of the documents that we saw and I think there's multiple ways this can be approached, but it was a high priority issue that was identified and policy actions which I just talked about.

The policy actions however are not just with Medicaid, there are multiple other policy actions that need to be addressed. Next slide. The next slide that's governments and policy, remember policy assessment assurance, assessment accelerate data interoperability for any of you that have been at any of these meetings, know the data, data, data, the ability to share the data, the ability to reconcile the data, the ability to know my data is the same as your data is out there. This is being worked on, so I don't want to take away from the amazing work that the city of Tucson is doing, the other jurisdictions Pima County is doing, but we're not very far in it. And the further we can get, the better off we would be, and the same will be for a shared evaluation framework.

This goes to a question that I've been asked, Chair Allen, I think you have asked this myself when we have presented what the allocations were for the different parts of the ROSAC, the $8,000,000 what is the evaluation? What are you doing? Can there be an overarching shared framework? We do not have that right now. That does not mean that can't be done, but it was pointed out as an important Next slide.

And the next slide is the assurance, which is really and you guys have heard this a lot too, this interim shared referral system, this is a data system that would allow whoever was on the other end to know if a bed was available, what insurance that bed took, how I could get somebody there, can my animal come, can my family come if that's needed. Pilot transport and step down capacity linked to sobering reentry, I think that part of the transition center is starting to look at this. Stabilize and standardize use prevention, as you know, there are multiple use prevention opportunities, some of which were just recently funded from the ROSAC SOAP settlement. However, ability to see what is going to work and standardize is important. And finally workforce, which I've already talked about.

There is a last slide here that I that we just put together that you don't have, but I want to share with you. Related to the limitations of this study, because if you elect to discuss this, I just want to be clear, this reflects a point in time. It does reflect the use of AI, lots of human intervention on this, but we did rely on Copilot, which is the AI tool available at the county. It's not exhaustive. I'm sure there's our documents out there that we didn't know about that we couldn't find, that there was variation in detail and quality across the source documents, which we tried to reconcile, perhaps we missed some things in there, actually I'm sure we did, that recommendations may overemphasize early engagement and harm reduction and underrepresent long term treatment and stabilization.

And the reason for that is the immediacy of the need is for early intervention and something I can do right now for you. But what we know is treatment and sobriety and recovery are a journey. They don't happen quickly. The resources tend to fall off, however, fairly quickly for individuals that need them. And opportunities these opportunities are not prioritized. They are lists that we put together into a public health framework that we believe can be used for discussion. And with that, I thank you for the opportunity to present to you.

Thank you, Doctor. Cohen. This is incredibly helpful. We are going to pivot now to some questions. I have one very quickly, and I'm curious for those who are involved with the Justice Working Group, which then has some subgroups within it.

And I'm curious around the and this might be too early to ask this, but I'm curious around the Justice Working Group, which of these areas around the opportunities or the gaps do you feel like that the Justice Working Group is kind of digging in on, right, just in terms of thinking about which areas are we already kind of addressing through some existing structures? And that's kind of for anyone.

Sure, Alan. Thank you for the question, and Mero Mero, if I leave anything out because we've been working on this together for the last year or more. There are four working groups that were established by our Metro Justice System Partners principles. The first one looks at the operations of our courts and includes increased collaboration not only within the court system, but also between city and county attorney and also TPD and PCSD. The second group, and we heard an extensive presentation from them at our last meeting, has to do with data.

As Doctor. Cullen was saying during her presentation, we deal with significant siloing in the area of data. And it's really been the focus of that group to try and bring the two governments together in terms of all the different data sets that we have and the ability to be able to share them together. It really has been those two groups, Chair Allen, that have gotten the greatest attention. There are two other groups, one dealing with the transition center and the fourth one dealing with deployments, deployments that Ms.

Morales made reference to during her presentation on the safe city initiative. But we have found that it has been those first two groups that have needed the most time, direction and grace really from the principals who are part of the group. Marumero, did I leave anything out?

No, I think you've been super thorough. I don't know, Liz or Steve, if you wanted to add anything in terms of the Metro Justice Group's work on it. I think you did a great job. Thank you so much. We are going a little bit over time. We're at two, but we do want to make sure that we open it up for questions, comments, suggestions, etcetera, etcetera. So if that's okay, Chair Allen, we can open it up and then start from my left hand side and see if Councilman Lee, if you wanted to add, and then we'll just go down row if you'd like.

All right. I get to get the party started. Okay. Well, thank you to all of our colleagues and all the presenters today for all this wonderful information. A couple of things that come to mind and I hate that I have to go first because I really love to hear what you all have to say before I start, but this book is huge with all the gaps and it just feels like to me that we have a good opportunity to realign, so we're not so scattered.

There's like hundreds of things that are initiated and kind of spinning out there and it feels like it's a great opportunity to kind of recenter and restructure what those are. In preparing for this meeting today, I had a lot of notes together and I talked to the County Attorney yesterday and I threw all that out the window. And no, it was for good reason that threw what I was thinking out the window, so great communication there. I submitted a newsletter out to the community yesterday. We had our own retreat last I think it was last week, and my whole entire conversation was around core services.

And we've been talking extensively about the budget deficit that we are facing and that sparked an idea for me here. When think about our relationship right now, I feel like we're two friends, you know, and we just lost our job and we're kind of going broke, and you all are solid with a good job and you just got a raise, and we go out to dinner and we finish eating and the waiter brings the check and we have that awkward moment like who's going to pick this up. And I feel like we're kind of there right now because just to be completely honest, we are really struggling and we're going to have to have really difficult conversations about programs that we have built that are above and beyond core services, responding to nine eleven calls, filling potholes, keeping our parks maintained, that we're going to have to have support from the county to help us carry because we won't be able to carry that weight. So everyone is doing a lot, I'm just kind of putting it out there, my colleagues might disagree a little bit, but I feel like our capacity in some of these spaces is going to be extremely challenged in the near future and I know that the partnerships and the work together is going to have to continue and strengthen for us to all work together and keep addressing the community concerns that we all hear every day.

So that's just what I'm thinking, hopefully, for what it's worth, that's a horrible analogy, but that's just kind of what it feels like right now, and I just wanted to be honest about where I'm at and really concerned about our budget and our ability to keep moving forward. Are you thinking

funding outside of opioid settlement funds?

I don't know what specifically the answer yes, I don't know what the answer is. I'm just thinking about all work that we're doing with our outreach and everything where we're kind of intersecting with behavioral health and mental health and substance use disorder, and it's not in our scope, and we're going have to have hard conversations about what we offload and what we scale back, and really going to need to lean on the county for partnership in those areas.

Thank you, Councilman. I think that's for us to think about in terms of how we continue partnering as a city County.

We've met before, right? Supervisor Christie.

Thank you, cheers. All these analytics of treatment are very impressive, and of course it's a very important piece of the whole picture, but a lot of the programs treatments and a lot of the wraparound services and things of that nature were promulgated and the impetus was because the community was fed up and the business community was fed up with crime. And the motivating factor in most of these programs, of course, is treatment, but it was also the abatement of crime. I see no analytics about how these programs have impacted one way or the other crime in our community. Crime in our community was what created really these demands for some sort of action, but all I've seen is treatment.

What about what effect it's having on crime in our community?

Thank you, Mayor Supervisor Christie. That is an item we can certainly bring to the next meeting. We have seen incredible work by our Tucson Police to do the work around enforcement. I think there's some opportunities to talk about where we've seen crime reduction. We have seen crime reduction in various ways, whether or not we can point it directly to safe city, but in general, are seeing reductions in crime throughout our city.

But I'd like to bring some of that analytics back to you at our next joint meeting, so that we can understand how some of this work. I think the Star Village demonstrates that that kind of work did bring down crime in that neighborhood. And I

know that Tim would like to

add Yes. To Thank you.

Thank you, Honorable Mayor and Chair. And to your point

Can you pull the mic closer to you, I

I don't want to pull a Steve Holmes here. But in the safe city action plan, we do have key performance indicators and metrics. Two of them directly go to the questions you're asking. We have one about gun violence in Viva Zones and we have another about SunTrans safety incident rate. So we actually not only can bring tangible evidence of crime stats and things generally, but we actually have two of our KPIs directly in that space. Thank you.

Madam Chair, thank you, Mr. Timmerer. But those are just two parts of situation. There are many more categories, many more areas of criminality that are really affecting the livelihoods and the quality of life of the community in Pima County, And it's really important for, I think, this is going to be a success and if we're going to tout all of the treatments and all the programs and all of the great recovery things, which is very important, that we need to do it in the context of why it's there in the first place, it's because of crime. So I would encourage that we get a lot more involved with what impact this is all having on the overall criminal aspects and criminal activity in our community?

Yes. Supervisor Christie, we're getting really good data from the Star Village, mile radius data that is proving that incidence and that includes all kinds of crime coming down 35%. And that's in the first five months of creating the Star Village. The other piece of crime that I think we have to really talk about is our Viva sites, which are holistic, lots of work from TPD to our housing first coordinators to our own businesses and neighborhoods, we are seeing in some Viva locations 80% gun violence reduction and crime reduction. And so I think that it's important that we make sure that we all empower ourselves with the information that is being provided.

And your point is well taken, make sure that those pieces of information in terms of crime reduction is also shared with the community.

And let's not forget, Your Honor, the burglaries, assaults, thefts, auto thefts, there's a whole host of categories. I know you're talking to Star Village, but that's just one little square mile. And how many people did it serve, what, eighty, ninety and the criminality element is much more pervasive than

crime in the city has been going down as well as homicide.

I

crime Do

you think it's

a result of these programs?

Absolutely. In the last few years, crime has been going down in many areas of our stats in the city of Tucson. I think we need to make sure I don't have the percentages in hand, but what I can say is that in many areas of the city of Tucson, crime is going down, including an almost 20% reduction in homicides. So I think those percentages and that information should be made available to you all and the public.

Madam Mayor, Chair Allen and Supervisor Christie, I appreciate the question and we have all the county wide stats and I'm happy to help in advance at the next meeting.

I also just want to toss-up just a time check issue. Time is not on our side. So roughly, we've got about if everybody takes an equal amount of time, about

two minutes, two point five minutes per person.

Sorry, Councilmember Radhagha.

Thank you, Chair and thank you, Mayor. I just had a question, a follow-up question with the data, specifically with the SAFR Center. Are we collecting the data of where are these neighbors coming from? Are they originating from Tucson or from the state or another state? Would that help determine kind of like where we're going to focus on in terms of resources?

Yes, we are collecting a series of data. It's broad and all the demographic data, including kind of where they're from, will be part of that analysis.

Thank you, Chair Allen and Madame Mayor, colleagues. I'm really grateful for the opportunity for us to be here this afternoon for our second joint meeting, and I just kind of want to take a step back and applaud the work that local jurisdictions are doing to work together, particularly Pima County and the City Of Tucson at a time when all of the investments that we've talked about today are a combination of funding, a little bit of federal, a little bit of opioid, but for the most part, local taxpayer dollars that we are investing. And that is a statement that I start with because I don't see the federal government coming to support our work, I don't see our state legislature coming to ensure that access treatment is expanded and yet here we are looking for solutions. So I welcome all of us to the solutions driven table and I know I'm sitting at that one. I want to thank our County staff, our equipment operators, navigators, sheriff's deputies, librarians, doctors, nurses, justice and health partners.

They're all doing incredible work with professionalism and with humanity. The District five office introduced One Pima in November for a simple reason. People want to be able to take their kids to the river path without stepping over trash or needles, and they want to know that when someone is in crisis, we don't just push them somewhere else, we actually take care of them. So I'm proud of our Board for adopting this plan four to one because we agreed results matter. And you've heard about those results that we are delivering.

Let me break that down for the people watching at home. Next year, we're putting real resources behind diversion programs, one at the Superior Court, the Supportive Treatment and Engagement Program and two, the Drug Treatment Alternative Program with our County Attorney, dollars 3 and 50,000 each going to both of those programs in the year ahead. If diversion works and it does, we should scale it so that fewer people cycle back into jail. Second, you've heard about the progress on the loop. I was out there yesterday morning.

Since December, the county and contractors have cleared almost 100,000 pounds of trash along Dorito and the Santa Cruz. That's not a talking point, that's a safer, cleaner public space and we're doing it responsibly and with navigators by the way when we are clearing out those spaces so that we can get access to services. I know my time is getting limited and so I'll say the transition center going from five days to seven days in the coming weeks is a handoff point that is going to be super critical because people don't only need help Monday through Friday, seven days closes the weekend gap, and we have had over 2,500 people since the transition center was created three years ago come into our transition center to have that handoff, which is critical to this discussion. The innovation that we are talking incentivizing our housing providers to expand shelter access, pet friendly options, providing showers and bathrooms and basic hygiene amenities that's not on our streets is the right thing to do. And last but not least, Pima County has invested this year alone almost $10,000,000 in affordable housing.

The private sector is not doing this, the federal government is not doing this, the state government is not doing this, and we are going to do it to the tune of $250,000,000 over the next ten years because we need as a region to build 6,000 homes per year to be able to keep up with supply. That's one Pima in plain terms, diversion that works, corridors restored, a real handoff to services and smart innovation that removes practical barriers and housing at scale. And this is all happening because of the meetings like we are having today, and most importantly on the county side because of our 7,000 employees who every day do their very best. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Councilmember Schubert.

Thank you so much, Mayor Romero and Chair Allen and everybody who's here. Really exciting to be here at my first joint meeting, and I've loved the conversation. I'll keep it brief. Throughout the conversation, there's been comments sprinkled in about the savings for, for example, reduced bookings, reduced incarceration, reduced utilization of emergency services, nine eleven calls. I'm curious to know like the quantified and specific fiscal impacts of these investments that are research and data driven, because there are savings, it isn't just about the expense of launching the service, the payoffs are way more than that.

So I think part of making the case to our constituents should be outlining how much we're saving, not only in terms of people's literal livelihoods, but I know that compassion doesn't move everybody, so what money have we saved by not throwing people in jail for being addicted to fentanyl. And then just to plug that anybody who hasn't gone to the SAFR Center for a tour, the Ward six team and I went and it was really, really impactful, it really stuck with me to see the real people that this is impacting. And I know that it can seem really small given the enormity of the problem that we're facing, but we have to start somewhere. It's like the starfish thing, Like you find somebody and you help them and it lasts their whole lives and it affects their communities and their families and their loved ones. We have to start somewhere and I'm grateful to be here with

you to do that work. Thank you.

My turn? Yes. Thank you, Chair. Suggestion for next meeting, shorter, fewer presentations because we all want to talk more and this frustrating, and I'm just going to talk on one of 10 topics that I thought I could share with you today. I want to thank

Can you make sure that you just speak a little bit closer into the mic? Yes.

Thank you. I want to

especially thank Supervisor Cano and all of you for doing the loop. The section of the loop that I'm most concerned about North Of Walmart from Tohono Tadai to Stone was an area where a bicyclist was stabbed and killed, where it was known to be un manageable open air drug. Police, my office provided extra money so that we could have bicycle cops, which proved really successful, but they had to be there all the time. After the deployments, after everybody focused attention on that area, PPD was able to continue to deploy people there, not using over time, just regular time, and kept it has kept it safe. I think this is a model that's working, and I'm so proud that we were able to cooperate on it.

Look forward to other possible cooperations. Thank you.

Supervisor Hynes?

Thank you, and great to be here, and I would echo the comments of Councilmember Dahl, it would be great to be able to have a little more discourse because we don't really do that very often. So I will try to get through all of this in my like ninety seconds. But no, in hearing Councilmember Lee and the real budget situation going on with the city of Tucson, I do think there are some ways we can work together where we kind of already have. And I'm looking at this is not super related to what we were talking about earlier, but looking at kind of aligning development community feedback, budgetary concerns on the city side and also in talking with our own development services folks, I think it would be great for us to explore looking at just the building group side of things like that's the permitting process and that's inspections and stuff, and making it look a little more like the health department because that's basically the county. Doesn't touch like zoning, planning, land use, all of that stuff, but our building codes are quite a bit alike.

They're very, very similar. And we've had collaboration with this department before. We had during COVID, there was a huge backlog of permitting. That was something that the departments worked together on to fix that. And I just think it'd be great for frankly, efficiency in government, potentially taking a 4,000,000 to $5,000,000 line item off of the City of Tucson budget, and taking out some uncertainties there. We did it with libraries. I would love to see a working group come together to talk about this more because I think it's something that we could do together that might help, the whole community and maybe even speed along projects that we all care about like affordable housing. Thank you. Councilmember

Cunningham?

Along those lines, one of the discussions that I've thought about is the Rincon Station that deploys about 14 deputies during the day helping us shag a few calls. Look, a lot of this is accessibility. There's a big handoff piece. I like to think things about what's going on on the ground. So the way I do that is I go onto the ground and find out what's going on on the ground.

Well, okay, we have a person, they're under no influence, they are either unresponsive or they are acting unpredictably and we somebody calls police and police show up and police say, well, we'd like to have cashew come, but it's 07:00 at night and we don't have a service deployed, why not? And then the discussion is, well, what are we going to do? Are they going to go to jail? Are we going to take them to keynote to be cleared? If we take them to keynote to be cleared, where are they going to go after that?

And ultimately, especially if the person ends up in jail, where we don't want them to go. We have to think pragmatically about each case. Right now, my office works with people who walk in and we try to get them through CBI, through detox, through shelter and to working. We try to facilitate that, and it's all hands on deck. Everybody should be pitching in at that level if they know how to do it.

So I'm thinking about some of the things that we brought in today, and I'm thinking about how do we have them seven days a week, and how do we have them at least eleven to twelve hours a day. That's way more important. Officer, if a bar officer or a corresponding officer can do iPad court that instant and also have a social worker respond that instant, and we can start a case plan that instant, that's a lot more efficient and immediate. That's better for the court system, that's better for the social services. The worst thing you can tell somebody who's ready for help is, well hang on, hang in there and we'll have somebody call you in a couple days, and that seems to happen way too often.

So I'm thinking about I appreciate the report first of all, I don't mean to sound harsh at all because the work that's being done is amazing, and you guys are cutting edge and you're really trying. We've got to think about we got to be way out of the box here. I want to be able to do iPad court, social services and public safety response all in one move in one hour, and maybe we're there. Let's find out. Right now we're totally under resourced, and that's because we don't have any money. So I think there's some other discussions there. Sorry for going over my big fat two minutes.

Supervisor Scott?

Thank you, Chair Allen, and thank you to both you and Mayor Romero for your leadership in organizing and facilitating this meeting. I want to extend a special thanks and welcome Council members Barajas and Schubert, who were not with us at our first joint meeting because they were not yet part of the Council, very much looking forward to working with both of you moving forward. There's really three areas of focus that I wanted to ask us to consider going back to the question that was posed by both Chair Allen and Mayor Romero at the beginning of the meeting, which is how do we address gaps? I think we've gotten a great overview of what's working and also some opportunities of where we might do some further work. But there's three specific areas where I'd like to see us look at some of those gaps.

First of all, the Metro system, the Metro Justice System working groups have always been structured with the intention of offering policy recommendations to this body, that could be followed up on by both the City Council and the Board of Supervisors. So I'm hopeful that in future meetings, we get some specific policy recommendations from those working groups that we're able to bring to the table to discuss here. I am not saying that in any way to be critical because I know from my conversations with both Mr. Holmes and Ms. Morales, that all four of those working groups have needed more time and more direction from the principals groups in terms of how to move forward.

But that's something I'd like to see us focus on. At one specific example, the courts group is looking at expansion of DTaP and STEPS, which are mentioned in both the Safe City and the One Pima initiative. Secondly, we know that for people who are chronically homeless, especially if they are involved in the justice system, those who are resistant to the acceptance of services and shelter are the ones with whom we have the greatest difficulty, and they are the ones whose public behaviors often cause the greatest concern for the public at large. I don't know that we've talked enough as two governments. I don't know that we've looked at enough examples from other governments as to how we can build our success in terms of addressing people who are service and shelter resistant.

The last one is with regard to our local continuum of care, our local HUD required continuum of care, the Tucson, Pima Coalition to End Homelessness, as they're going through the strategic planning process, and both Merrill Romero and I have talked about this several times, not just amongst ourselves, but with jurisdictions that are represented in PPCH need to be given greater weight, and greater authority. I have talked with people who've been involved in continuums of care in other communities, and they're astonished to hear that both the county and the city are often in a minority role with regard to the operations of TTCH. Having said all that, I really look forward to these meetings moving forward. I know we're going to stick to that quarterly schedule and thanks for this opportunity.

Vice Mayor Santa Cruz?

Hi, Mayor and Chairwoman. Again, thank you for everyone who helped shape all these plans that we discussed today. I really do appreciate the coordination across the city and our county partners. And I just have three points that I wanted to highlight as it pertains to safety in our community. I just wanted to keep in front of us that when we talk about violence prevention, we also need to include traffic violence.

While fatalities remain far too high, we also have many residents each year who survive crashes but live with life changing injuries. These injuries affect our families, our jobs, our housing stability. So as the city develops, develops, we've started to developing our own high injury network map. I'd be interested in how the county might also align infrastructure and prevention efforts regionally, so we can address one of the most preventable forms of harm in our public spaces. Second, I want to also reaffirm that prevention starts early.

I would like to see a stronger integration with youth programming with our school partnerships that include parents, how are we working with our school districts and after school programs for behavioral health supports, youth and family engagement and even traffic safety education as part of this broader effort to interrupt cycles of violence. The earlier we intervene with education and support, the more we can prevent harm before it happens. And finally, I just wanted to highlight the SAFR Center pilot, because as we all know, addiction is a disease and we need to continue treating it as such. We also know that recovery is not linear, it can take multiple attempts and long term support and the safer model with their no wrong door approach to help stabilize people and connect them to medical treatment critical, especially if over the long term we want to save money from incarcerating people knowing that that is not the proper treatment for somebody with a disease, a chronic disease. The people seeking treatment are part of our families and our neighborhoods.

So I'm proud that we're investing in programs that meet people where they're at and support recovery. So again,

thank you for this time.

Thank you to my colleagues. I appreciate your feedback and input and all of the concerns and questions that you put together here. I know that we are taking notes and I think that our City Manager, Tim Demure our County Administrator, John Leisure, we meet as Chair and Mayor and City Manager and County Administrator, what is it, twice a month. And so we're going to make sure that we follow-up on these questions and comments and concerns that we bring up. In terms of gaps, I think that, one, I appreciate the partnership with Pima County.

The investments that the county government and the Board of Supervisors are making in affordable housing in our region are absolutely important. And I had the pleasure of joining a safe city deployment just this past week, and it had amazing presence of Pima County. And I was able to do a ride along and look at how we treat with respect and dignity the individuals that we approach on the street, offering them the treatment that they deserve. And in my conversation with both the City of Tucson staff, Justin Hamilton, that does our Housing First, our officers. I ask them, you are the frontline.

You are the ones that are seeing this day in and day out. And I want to hear your impact. What are the gaps? That was my question to both Officer Benitez that I did a ride along with and to Justin Hamilton and other nonprofit partners that were there. And what they said is that because of our safe city deployments, and it is it's a holistic approach, it's offering services and at the same time, it offers accountability to those that are breaking the law and committing crime.

And but the goal is treatment. Justin and our nonprofit partners said people are accepting our services at 50% rate. And as Doctor. Cullen said, that doesn't sound wonderful. But before we started our safe city deployments, the acceptance rate for treatment was less than ten percent.

And so it really is working. But what they said, especially the nonprofit providers are, okay, once we take them to the SAFR center or the wildcat, what's the long term solution for sobering facilities that are longer term, right? After the ninety six hours at SAFR, where do we connect that person? We do not have enough low barrier shelter. And we ask on the City Board of Supervisors really contemplate the investments in your affordable housing investments into low barrier shelter and transition housing.

And so that, I think, is a huge gap that we both together, we have to provide solutions for. I know that the city of Tucson is applying for funds from the affordable housing funds from Pima County for the Wildcat House. That's a low barrier shelter that is housing not just individuals and couples, but children, families that are unsheltered. And so we are applying for $1,100,000 for the next five years, I think, ten years, so that that affordable housing funds can continue making sure that we have low barrier shelter connecting individuals to that option. And then we're also applying for Krakow Towers, the City Of Tucson needs GAAP funding to rehab the Craycroft Towers that we're applying for funds from Pima County.

And then the other question that Officer Benitez asked like in terms of policy, He said, are there any other jurisdictions in the region, both Pima County Sheriffs and police departments in Marana or Ovali and Zawarita that are doing are similar to safe city deployments, right, having a holistic approach to offering those services to unsheltered individuals in their communities because that would really lighten the load that TPD has to carry when it comes to unsheltered homelessness and how to provide services to the people that are on our streets, unsheltered, suffering from behavioral health or mental health. So I would post to you what can the sheriff's department do, how can we have that conversation with our sheriffs and in terms of budgeting, how can the sheriff department be funded to participate in safe city deployments in the outskirts of the city of Tucson or offering a second deployment, because we have once a month deployment, safe city deployments with TPD, how can the sheriff's department be of assistance to a method, frankly, that is working and that is really showing tangible results to our community. We hear it from businesses, we hear it from neighbors, we hear it from friends and people that find at grocery stores saying how our safe city initiative and our safe city deployments are showing tangible results.

So I guess that's my piece in terms of how we work together to fill the gaps.

Well, just to close us out, first of all, an enormous thanks. Is it is an impressive room to sit in, to hear both the creativity and then also the unique perspective that each person brings in the lens, right. I appreciate the focus on integrating, utilizing the Justice Working Group and pushing to come up with more policy recommendations recommendations in this space and thinking about the integration of youth and adult and working through our schools and after school programs. I think just because I'd like to end meetings on time and we're already a minute over, I will just say I look forward to the conversations after this meeting and thinking about how do we answer some of the questions and get the data and research that has been asked for, how do the Mayor and I continue to have conversations about sort of moving some of this forward and also the conversations amongst ourselves to continue to move the conversation forward. So with that, deep appreciation for everyone being here, thank you County Attorney for being here, and I look forward to the next meeting in a quarter and definitely heard the feedback about less presentations and more So

thank you all so much. We really appreciate it. Our meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much.