The South East Arizona Council held a public meeting on Wednesday, July 24th at the Vail Innovation Center. Ed Buster, SEAC Board member, served as emcee extraordinaire.
The attendees heard presentations by Scott Schladweiler, Deputy Director, City of Tucson Water Department; Jim Tucker, Fire Chief, Rincon Valley Fire District; and Victor Pereira, Director, Pima County Parks and Recreation. Closing the program was Mary Allison Morgan, SEAC Board member.
(Pictured right to left: SEAC Member Mary Allison Morgan, SEAC Member Erica Holbert, Victor Pereira, Director Pima Conty Parks & Recreation, SEAC member & Emcee Ed Buster, Captain Doug Hanna, Pima County Sherrif Department, (back row) Rincon Valley Fire District Chief Jim Tucker, and Deputy Director Scott Schladweiler from Tucson Water Department.)
Scott Schladweiler, Deputy Director, City of Tucson Water Department
Deputy Director Schladweiler opened with a view of the 400-square mile service area.
Unlike other communities around the country that have natural resources, we don’t. What we have here is gravity storage that does not require energy. We have over 4.600 miles of pipe with booster stations spread everywhere between the Tucson Valley and Tucson mountains, Schladweiler said.
In 2000, we began a process to return the water into the ground for future use. Today it is 100% of our total water! We are one of the most impacted communities in the country.
Today we have over 1,000 customers online using reclaimed water, everything from residential customers to commercial. We looked at where the golf courses and parks are and that’s how the system was laid out. We have five recycled water projects and we put that water back into ground storage. The reason you see everything over on the west side of town, is that all the sources flow west, whether it’s groundwater, storm water, or all the rivers.
We have what are considered sources along the Santa Cruz River. There are two facilities at Sweetwater. We have the Sweetwater wetlands, and the Sweetwater recharge facilities. These are the original recharge basins from 1884. We first started on recharge adding more basins, and then we started the recharging. We have three basins out there right now, Schladweiler said.
Jim Tucker, Fire Chief, Rincon Valley Fire District
Our district is pursuing accreditation through the center for Public Safety of Excellence. Part of the process is to get community input. We’re a political subdivision of the State of Arizona established in October 31 of 1984. We have a five-member elected board. Our general tax rate is $2.78 which we haven’t increased in seven years. We do have a bond rate of $0.10, making our combined rate of $2.88. Most of our funding is from property taxes.
We have two fire stations – one on Camino Loma Alta with one staffed engine and ambulance and one on Highway 83 and I10 with a fire engine and ambulance. We currently have 45 operations personnel with five administrative staff. In the last twelve months, we’ve had over 3,000 incidents, 4,600-unit responses and 1,166 ambulance transports. When fully staffed we have 15 firefighters on shift daily. We encourage our firefighters to attend the National Fire Academy in Maryland, the Arizona Wildland Fire Academy, and the Arizona State Fire School. We participate in the PM County Regional Hazmat and Technical Rescue team.
Our in-district population is growing steadily. We are at 18,000 people today. Presently in 2024, 392 new housing permits have been issued in our district. Rocking K has sold approximately 700 homes and about 625 are occupied. Sixty-five percent of our calls are EMT related. Our district is 43 square miles but our actually response area is over 260 square miles. We provide all of the ambulance transport for Corona de Tucson, Fire Chief Tucker said.
Victor Pereira, Director, Pima County Parks & Recreation
In 2004, Pima County used bond money to start talking about what to do with Esmond Station Regional Park, said Director Victor Pereira.
In 2005, the City of Tucson completed and adopted the Houghton area master plan. Esmond Station is within the City of Tucson’s corporate limits. They identified 282 acres for the future regional park is to be built. This area is strictly for recreation. We are going to preserve all the cultural entities. In 2013, the City of Tucson and Pima County signed an intergovernmental agreement. It said Pima County is responsible to plan, design, develop, and operate Esmond Station Regional Park. It is a 300-page master plan for Esmond Station that was developed three years after Pima County purchased the property from the Arizona State Land Department, said Director Pereira. Two years later, in 2015, Pima County went out for a $6.8 million bond which failed.
The county has done away with bond programs. It has gone to the “pay as you go” system. I’ve hired an independent consulting company that is rooted in parks and recreation to do a recreation needs assessment. The master plan process with respect to input will most likely be coming out somewhere between September and October. We are hoping to get this done in one year, Pereira said.
Mary Allison Morgan, SEAC Board Member
Mary spoke on behalf of the SEAC Board about recent developments.
(General SEAC meetings are being planned monthly. All are welcome to attend. For further information or to get on the email list, contact seac@seazcouncil.org.)
