City workers in Tucson will see small pay raises this summer after city leaders decided to use some available funds to boost pay.
Mayor Regina Romero and Tucson city council members chose a plan to increase employee salaries during Tuesday’s study session.
Romero said the budgeted salary increase was important “to show our employees that we are not going to go back to the days of not seeing any progressive movement in their salaries.”
City Manager Michael Ortega presented five scenarios on how to use the $10.8 million set aside for employee compensation changes. The mayor and council members chose to increase all city employees’ base salaries by 1.5%, using $5.4 million, or half of the available funds, and leaving the remainder for possible compensation changes later in the fiscal year.
Council members unanimously approved the motion, which sets the change for July.
Heat plans include cooling centers
The mayor and council members also discussed the 2024 Heat Action Roadmap, created to prepare for the summer’s extreme temperatures.
“Later this week, we will be hitting temperatures of up to 110 degrees and this work could not be more pertinent,” said Fatima Luna, the city’s chief resilience officer.
The roadmap includes 10 strategies and 61 actions to manage the heat, drawing input from about 250 community members, other cities’ best practices and research on the subject.
The plan includes the following programs and initiatives:
- Home repair programs to “provide major rehabilitation for low-income homeowners, including roof replacements, HVAC repairs, and other essential home upgrades to ensure safety and sustainability.”
- A solar empowerment program to help low-income families install solar panels on their homes
- Cooling units and centers to provide unhoused people with heat relief
- Integrating heat-mitigating measures, such as tree cover and green spaces, into city and urban planning efforts
- Developing new climate-resilient building codes to “enhance new buildings through improved energy efficiency and indoor air quality.”
“It outlines short term solutions and builds capacity for long term resilience, and it will set us on the right path to work across sectors to protect people and cool the city,” Luna said.
Tucson’s free cooling centers are open 12-4 p.m. daily until August 31. Some locations provide summer sun respite for people experiencing homelessness. View the list of locations.
Romero said the action plan is especially important as the region continues to warm and people suffer as a result.
“Tucson’s heat risk is projected to increase and last year alone the county reported 176 heat-related deaths,” Romero said.
Heat risk is an index utilized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide “a forecast risk of heat-related impacts to occur over a 24-hour period.”
Of the heat-related deaths last year, 60% occurred outdoors and many of those who died were homeless or unhoused.
“Each one of those deaths were highly preventable,” Romero said, adding they were one of the reasons for the heat protection ordinance, which requires heat-hazard mitigation plans for outdoor workers. The ordinance was approved at Tuesday’s general meeting.
Public pool hours
While pools are listed in the newly approved heat action plan as a resource to prevent “heat related illnesses and deaths among vulnerable populations,” council members didn’t discuss the pool-hour cuts despite an intense discussion during a May 21 meeting.
Council members spoke out against the 37% cut to pool hours by the Parks and Recreation Department during the last study session. In response, Ortega said he felt confident he’d be able to increase pool time by 29 hours a week and would present a plan to do so at Tuesday’s meeting.
Following Tuesday’s meeting, the city’s parks and recreation department updated the summer calendar with extended hours. Ward 2 council member Paul Cunningham addressed the change in a newsletter Friday.
‘After some back and forth with our Parks and Rec department, looking into past usage at each pool and the costs associated, we were able to restore some operating hours at half of our 20 pools that are open this summer. Compared to last year, there are still reduced hours at some locations, but over the last few weeks we’ve worked hard to determine which pools should bear less of the brunt of these reductions.'”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
