Wildlife refuge gets thumbs up, figuring out opioids, and more

Roaming from "Mexico to Marana" ... It's political sign season ... The time for tamales is now.

Local officials are making some headway on overdose deaths, but they’re not sure why. Those deaths are down 17% this year, Pima County Health Director Theresa Cullen said during an hour-long discussion of homelessness and opioid abuse, as well as the millions of dollars local officials are trying to figure out how best to use.

The drop in deaths includes juveniles and the elderly, which officials were particularly concerned about earlier this year, Cullen told the Tucson City Council at their Wednesday meeting. At the same time, officials are seeing more overdose visits to emergency rooms, which she said is probably a positive sign, meaning people are showing up to the hospital alive and getting the help they need.

Cullen listed the variety of local efforts to deal with opioids, including distributing Narcan, launching anti-stigma campaigns, and building up peer support groups, among many others.

But it’s not clear which ones are behind the decline in deaths, or if they’re all working together.

“We are seeing a decrease. If you ask me why, I can give you a litany of reasons and I have no idea which one of those is the causal relationship here,” Cullen said.

The Tucson City Council gave a thumbs up to the Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge, a 90-mile riverbed “from Mexico to Marana,” as Luke Cole, director of the Santa Cruz River program at the Sonoran Institute, put it in a presentation to the council.

Now that water from local treatment plants has replenished the river over the past few years, the river has 40 miles of clean flowing water that attracts hundreds of species, including some endangered ones, Cole said.

Setting up the refuge would allow U.S. Fish and Wildlife to buy land from “willing sellers,” he said. It would not impose any regulations on land use. It would just be a mechanism for the federal government to provide funding.

Before federal officials authorize a refuge, they need to see “community desire and acquirable land.” County supervisors in Pima and Santa Cruz already publicly supported the designation, as did the San Xavier District Council.

The Tucson council approved a resolution of support for the refuge, although Councilman Paul Cunningham urged city staff to reach out to Marana officials to figure out how the refuge would affect agricultural water use.

Council member Lane Santa Cruz said she felt “blindsided” by the sweep of homeless people at Santa Rita Park on Wednesday morning.

Santa Cruz urged staff to work toward “clarity and consistency” as they deal with homelessness in parks, as well as perform “ongoing maintenance so that it doesn’t get to that point again.”

“We've been allowing for these park spaces to kind of get out of control and then turn a blind eye until it gets out of control and then we come and do enforcement with an iron fist,” Santa Cruz said.

Staff said they tried for two weeks to offer housing to unsheltered people in the park, but nobody accepted their offers.

Some people love Halloween decorations. Others are partial to Christmas lights. But our sister newsletter, the Arizona Agenda, is celebrating the official decor of election season: roadside political signs.

A handful of Southern Arizona candidate signs made their list of the good, the bad and the beautiful this sign season. Check it out.

"There’s a rule of thumb that any professional campaign consultant will tell you: Only put your face on your sign if you are objectively beautiful.

Some candidates ignore the rule at their own peril.

But Pima County Supervisor hopeful Val Romero knows this rule and he lives by it. He looks downright dapper in his signs (even if they are recycled from his failed 2021 city council campaign)."

Tamales incoming: Instead of waiting a year for health officials to put regulations in place, Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered the state Department of Health Services to immediately start allowing Arizonans to sell homemade tamales, empanadas and other homemade food items that couldn’t be sold legally until the Legislature passed HB 2402 this year, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reports.

Keeping his salary: Outgoing University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins will keep his presidential salary after he steps down Sept. 30 and starts teaching at the medical school, the Arizona Daily Star’s Ellie Wolfe reports. The Arizona Board of Regents signed off on his transition contract, including his current $734,000 salary, and potentially presidential-level bonuses, through June 2026.

County pumps the brakes: County officials are pushing pause on a plan to close several local library branches, the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff reports. Officials are going to launch a community engagement process, and they’ll have to do it with sharp criticism from the public at an advisory board meeting this week ringing in their ears.

City pumps the brakes: On Thursday’s edition of the Buckmaster Show, Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham shared his thinking on why the council backed away from an ordinance that would have made sleeping in a wash a misdemeanor. He “just wasn’t sure” why the ordinance was needed or how it could be enforced, including whether unsheltered people would even be able to pay a fine from the city.

Hitting the road: Tucson Mayor Regina Romero is going to join a delegation to the Oct. 1 inauguration ceremony for Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the Arizona Republic’s Sarah Lapidus reports. President Joe Biden picked Romero, the only mayor invited to join the delegation of mostly federal officials.

Never-ending story: The Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram has more details about the ongoing legal saga surrounding state Sen. Justine Wadsack’s criminal speeding case. She’s claiming the police officer who pulled her over didn’t actually clock her on radar going 71 mph in a 35 mph zone.

$18 million: The amount of money Pima County has received so far from a nationwide settlement with the pharmaceutical companies that helped set off the opioid epidemic. Most of that money is unspent.