The Solution Agenda: One neighborhood at a time
A local nonprofit is kicking off its next round of neighborhood improvement projects … They say these hyper-local efforts improve community safety ... $4 million missing in Santa Cruz County.
On Saturday, a few dozen community members braved the heat for a fiesta at Rudy Garcia Park on the south side, celebrating with Eegees, piñatas, face painting, free bike repairs and a pet goat.
The party was hosted by Just Communities Arizona (with help from the Rodeo Park community) as a kickoff to the next round of JCA’s community safety incubator projects.
We wrote last fall about JCA and their newly launched incubator projects, which focus on the idea that neighborhood residents know best the problems in their community and the solutions that they need to feel safe.
JCA’s mission is to create, foster and resource community-based models for safety and justice outside of the criminal justice system, and they say the incubator projects do just that.
The goal is to let neighborhood residents identify projects and services that they may not be able to afford or access and invest in those ideas.
JCA says these projects encourage engagement in neighborhoods, invest in interventions that increase safety, expand upon holistic approaches to community safety and increase the sustainability of organizations that serve under-resourced communities that have experienced high rates of criminal justice involvement.
In October, the group wrapped up its pilot project in the south side’s Fairgrounds Neighborhood and La Mariposa Park, collecting data along the way to gauge its impact.
The project included street cleanups, neighborhood beautification, installation of a little free library and a community cookout to bring neighbors together and celebrate their hard work.
The data collected from project participants suggest that it was a success in many ways: Responses to a JCA survey show that nearly 70% of project participants identified as people of color, mirroring the makeup of the neighborhood.
On top of that, 58% of respondents said they’d been personally impacted by the criminal justice system (and many by the immigration detention system,) which JCA says is an unfortunate reality for many of the communities in Tucson that are mostly Hispanic.
The good news, though, is that 77% of the people who responded to the survey said they felt safe in their community and a little more than half said they know some or most of their neighbors.
The survey responses and project itself track with answers to the question about what makes people feel safe, with clean streets, knowing one’s neighbors and having access to parks and green spaces coming in as respondents’ top choices.
“Every community cleanup and every group event is meant to increase the aesthetic of the neighborhood and this (project) happened after an intense microburst when a lot was not getting cleaned up by the city,” said JCA Organizer Enrique Olivares-Pelayo. “We left the neighborhood a little better than we found it.”
The Fairgrounds project also had help from David Garcia of Barrio Restoration, a south side-based group that inspires and teaches neighbors to respect Tucson’s Barrios. The group teaches skills like up-cycling and landscaping and provides affordable yard and streetscape services to south and west side residents.
Garcia made macetas (planters) out of old tires. JCA purchased plants from local Black-owned nursery DruTopia, placing the macetas on corners around the neighborhood.
“The main event was the unveiling of a book bank in the neighborhood, which is a permanent mark that we were here,” said Olivares-Pelayo. “Not just JCA, but the people in the neighborhood. We’re trying to leave something that stands the test of time.”
More than six months after its installation, the book bank is still standing and on a recent visit by the Tucson Agenda, it was full of books.
“It’s a good feeling,” Olivares-Pelayo said.
The next incubator project site is an apartment complex located by Rudy Garcia Park, off South Nogales Highway and East Irvington Road. The Palomino Crossing apartments haven’t been flagged by the city as having a particularly high crime rate, but it’s been identified by incubator safety team leaders as a place where there’s room for improvement.
“It’s right next to Rudy Garcia Park, which has a pretty hefty amount of unhoused neighbors,” Olivares-Pelayo said. “So, we’re looking at what we can do that’s not just a resource fair that ties (together) different parts of the neighborhood.”
During Saturday’s fiesta, JCA staff and volunteers gave away 30 “blessing bags” to unhoused community members, containing toiletries, hygiene items, laundry soap, socks and hair brushes. They also distributed dog food, treats and portable water bowls.
The event was both a launch of the project and a way to let neighbors know that they’d be working to upgrade the play structure at the apartment complex to make it safer for kids and more comfortable for their mostly older adult caretakers.
Olivares-Pelayo said that JCA is aware that the incubator projects aren’t “sweeping movement work,” but rather hyper-local efforts that make an impact to the community that is involved and doing the work.
“This is a city of hundreds of different communities, not just one big community. We think that this is the scale at which this thinking has failed over and over again,” Olivares-Pelayo said. “We can say we’re a big community but at that scale, people get lost in the mix. We help out the little guy.”
Suspicious transactions: More than $4 million went missing from a Santa Cruz County bank account that held money for school and fire districts, the Patagonia Regional Times’ Marion Vendituoli reports. County officials informed district officials earlier this month that 11 suspicious transactions of $375,000 each occurred in a bank account overseen by the County Treasurer’s Office. Former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Liz Gutfahr resigned April 12 after Chase Bank reported suspicious transactions and the FBI is now investigating.
Grave discovery: Residents of the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood made a grisly discovery: human bones under their yards. It turns out their homes were built on top of a cemetery, KJZZ’s Bridget Dowd reports. A local archaeologist, Homer Thiel, estimates hundreds, if not thousands, of human remains are still underground in what was the Court Street Cemetery from 1875 to 1909.
Bonds galore: The Sahuarita Town Council and the governing boards of the Amphitheater Unified School District and Pima Community College are considering bonds, overrides, and tax increases to make ends meet, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock reports as he digs through the agendas of various local school boards.
Housing funds incoming: The City of Tucson got $2.5 million for affordable housing from the Arizona Department of Housing, city officials said in a news release. The money comes from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and will be used to build 66 housing units on North Stone Avenue, known as Sugar Hill on Stone. The idea is to use it as replacement housing for residents of Tucson House.
We just wanted to remind you that we want the Tucson Agenda to be a place where readers also have a voice and that’s why we welcome letters to the editor (although we haven’t received any in quite some time.)
Ballots are hitting mailboxes next month and the primary election is drawing near. What are the issues you care most about in this year’s election? What are the races that you think are the most important? Tell us what’s on your election agenda and let’s get this conversation started.
If you need a refresher, you can find the guidelines here, but basically letters must be 100 words or less, locally focused, you must use your name and please, keep it classy.
Send your letters to curt@tucsonagenda.com
Enjoyed the story about community improvement projects that neighbors worked on. Mac Tronsdal's photos added information and human interest. Faces of people doing the work get our attention.. Loved seeing the Little Free Library.