The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, Project Blue's developer says it's moving forward with a proposal that includes low water technology.

And a new site scheduled to open next month to help unhoused people is facing backlash in Tucson.

A group of journalists joins me to discuss those stories and more next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein, our panel of journalists joining me today.

Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel, John Washington of Arizona Luminaria, and Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star.

Thank you all for being here today.

We appreciate it.

So John, oh my gosh, what would it be if we went a week on this program with that discussing Project Blue?

So it's sort of the gift that keeps on giving, and yet it's also a little confusing.

What was the latest development this week?

You reported in Luminaria about a letter, a news release from Beale Infrastructure.

What are the relevant details?

That's right.

Yesterday, Beale announced, and it first actually came through a county memo, that they are going to move forward, they're planning to move forward with Project Blue.

They plan to develop on the same site.

They say that they have done some rethinking about the project after the community pushback this summer.

They say, interestingly, in the release, that they were coordinating with the Pima County Board of Supervisors, and I understand that they met with each of the supervisors to discuss how they could move forward.

The city at this point is basically out of it.

They voted unanimously in early August to reject annexation.

So that leaves it in the county's hands, and their sort of revamp of the project is that instead of using water to cool the servers, they're going to be using air cooling technology, and they say that they will need no water except for their kitchens and bathrooms.

With Tucson rejecting the annexation, that's where they were gonna get their water from the first place, too, right?

So is this, based on all the plan Bs we've heard about, is it possible that Beale and the people behind Project Blue sort of had a plan C related to that?

Because that seems like a pretty hard pivot.

I think as far as we know, there was not only a plan C, but a plan D and E as well, and maybe more.

They had different locations potentially to be used.

I think one important thing here is that though this is the plan that they are presenting going forward, it was not the plan that the supervisors voted on when they decided to sell the land.

That is something that Supervisor Jen Allen was very clear about.

So there are significant changes here, and one question that she and community members have asked is what is there to hold them accountable to going forward with this plan?

And as far as we know, there are no mechanisms that we have seen yet, but that is par for the course with this project.

There remain a lot of unknowns.

Yeah, so Paul, what was your take on this new development?

I mean, I think one of the things that's really important is essentially they're saying, "We're not gonna use the water, "but we're gonna use electricity."

And they've been very, I think, very serious about saying they have an agreement with TEP about using a certain amount of electricity, which is about 286 megawatts, which is a significant amount of energy.

It's really what's in TEP's portfolio, kind of what they were future building, and they were going to use up a substantial chunk of that.

The company has said they're not gonna use any more power.

They're just gonna use what's in that portfolio.

But it's very clear that if they're not using water to cool their servers, they're gonna use a lot more electricity.

So there's gonna have to be a trade-off in terms of how much processing power that's gonna be used for this facility and how that's going to work.

We don't really know that.

And I think one of the things that's other, in talking to Jen Allen as well, what she told me yesterday is she still feels like this is a bit of a shell game when it comes to this company, how much power it's gonna use.

Because one thing we're really only focusing right now on phase one, there's potentially two other phases that are gonna be built, and how much power those systems are gonna use, we don't really know.

And we don't have, there's a lot of pieces in this puzzle that we keeps not really having a good handle on, even though they're showing, kind of showing their hands, but they sort of show their hand just as they need to, only when they have to.

And we still leave a lot of questions about what ultimately this project is really gonna look like.

John, based on your reporting, is there a feel that the supervisors were satisfied at all with some of these answers?

Because yes, okay, we're not gonna use much, if any, water.

And yet, as Paul said, the energy level is going to be different, but the energy concerns are, if not as strong as the water concerns, pretty close, right, when you live in a desert.

Right.

I think it depends on which supervisor you're talking about.

So Supervisor Matt Heinz has been very clear from the beginning that he is a supporter of the project, and he actually, in response to public criticism, in the call to the audience at the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting, he sort of laid out his position.

And he said that this is the sort of best case scenario, these are people that are gonna help us make sure that we are being good environmental stewards.

But if you look at Jen Allen, as we've already mentioned, or Andres Cano, who actually rebuked the county administrator, even rebuked the county attorney who was present at that meeting about how they've been handling or been forthcoming with the public.

So I think one thing we have seen with this project, it is sowing divisions in local government.

And you saw both the county and the city sort of trade barbs going back and forth.

I think that the public as well, I haven't really talked to anyone except some of those people who were at some of the early meetings, all dressed the same, union members, and potentially gonna directly benefit with employment.

I haven't talked to hardly anyone in the public besides leadership that is happy with this.

And the No Desert Data Coalition, their response to yesterday's announcement, sorry, Wednesday's announcement, was that they will find a way to keep pushing back.

So they very much aren't done with their criticism of the project.

Paul, this is an absurd analogy, but it almost makes me feel like when children don't wanna eat their vegetables, it's like, no, no, we're telling you this is gonna be great, and then ultimately you'll get your ice cream.

It almost feels like that's sort of the plan.

Like, okay, this doesn't sound great now, but we are gonna actually help the economy of Southern Arizona, this is gonna happen, whether you like it or not.

So just, we'll roll with it for a while.

Because John's point about the supervisors and the council, there's infighting there, but there doesn't seem to be as much infighting in the community generally.

Well, I mean, it's sort of, it's striking because I think when it comes to the larger community, there's just really a bunch of questions.

People want to know essentially two questions.

"Is my water bill gonna go up?"

"Is my electricity bill gonna go up?"

And will this help the economy?

And the first two questions are kinda, I feel like, are still hard to answer.

The last question, is this gonna help the economy: That's also, the company has said they're gonna provide billions of dollars in sales taxes.

There's gonna be a massive amount of property taxes.

The reality is the county needs it, so did the city, but the city rejected it.

So they put themselves in this situation.

But still, people are in the situation, where what is this gonna mean for the economy?

It can mean a lot of money, but is it actually gonna really buoy jobs?

We're really not talking about a lot of jobs when it really comes down to it.

We're talking less than 75 jobs.

We're talking about 3,000 construction jobs.

Now again, that's with phase one.

We haven't talked about phase two or three, which is still up in the air, which I think is important.

But still, people don't really have answers to those questions.

So when people now, I think, part is their assumption then is well, my water bill probably will go up, my electricity bill probably will go up, and I might not really see much income from this project.

John, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I think that this has been cast, like the public pushback has been cast in some lights as a case of NIMBYism, that they just don't want the project here.

But at the same time, I mean, perhaps zooming out even more, is there some reckoning that we have to do with our increasingly kind of ubiquitous reliance on technology?

And if we want to move forward with AI, so we see Mark Kelly, who's trying to fast track AI, we see an executive order for AI, they depend on data centers.

So I think we need to consider, if we want this constant connectivity in our pockets, then do we need data centers?

Or do we need to push back against the proliferation of the Internet?

Yeah.

All right, Prerana, let's change up and find out.

We are on the University of Arizona campus, I always like to remind people.

So let's talk about some development.

Did some great reporting in the Daily Star this week.

So, we had a Faculty Senate meeting with Provost Patricia Prelock.

I said it and I enjoyed saying it.

Not enough retention of students, not of graduating students.

Did you get an idea for the tone of how she was saying this?

And was it faculty you're not doing a good enough job, or we're all in this together?

No, it was more of, we're all in this together.

And this was also Provost Patricia Prelock's first Faculty Senate meeting.

And it was the first Faculty Senate meeting of the new academic year and the fall semester.

So when she kind of got up on the stage, and generally she does have the same kind of university spirit and we're all in this together, this is an awesome institution, which is exactly what she said.

And her tone was more of, we have to do better because this is a really great institution.

And she talked about improving student retention rates, student graduation rates, and kind of mapped out a plan for Faculty Senate.

And so she wants to increase student retention by 2% over the next three years so that they can reach 90%.

And she wants to increase student graduation rates by 2% over the next five years.

So the goal is to reach 65% for four-year graduation and 85% for six-year graduation.

And also on top of that, she also talked about enrollment.

And she talked about how they are being very intentional about enrollment and they want to "right size" the university, quote-unquote "right size."

And she talked about how they're reevaluating financial aid and merit allocations.

And just all in all, what is her plan as provost and how does she see the university bettering itself and the university supporting student success and faculty and just academic affairs.

So when she mentions numbers about increasing them by a couple of percent, were you privy to what some of her ideas were other than hey, this is a great institution?

She did talk about, I mean, she talked about how she was having like campus conversations.

So she was having a total of 21 conversations.

And she said by the end of it, she would have met about 400 individuals at the University of Arizona.

And she talked about how the recurring themes which were coming in were student advising.

So bettering student advising, giving student advisors more support because they have a lot on their plate and helping them cross advice as well.

If a student wants to change colleges or change majors, how are they gonna do that?

So student advising was an important theme.

The other important theme was better communication.

So just better communicating with students, with faculty, with the university community, and also coordination of services.

Coordinating all the different services which come under the provost's office, I guess, was also one of the things that were coming out.

So I guess what she wanted to say was that student success is definitely her priority and kind of line out the different retention, enrollment, graduation and give specific numbers to that.

Paul, any thoughts about that?

Yeah, I mean, student retention has been a problem with the U of A for a while.

There's been periods where they've been more successful and less successful over time.

I mean, the U of A has done things.

Keep in mind, like the cultural resource centers, which was something U of A created, which was to help with retention, and most of those entities are gone now because of the Trump administration.

I mean, the U of A has always tried to do that.

There are certain segments of students that really retention is even harder, and so they really have tried to focus on that.

But you know, it's hard.

I mean, part of it is that you have, whether or not people have the glasses that they need, whether people have the money that they need, tuition's gotten significantly more expensive, so it's harder and harder and harder for people to carry through.

The U of A is in a tough spot in part because enrollment is probably decreasing, especially international enrollment is decreasing.

The U of A has to figure out how to create that gap.

And I think maybe there's big questions about what the university system looks like going forward if fewer people are going to college.

I think the provost saying we need to right-size the university is probably pretty smart.

At some point, the U of A has to figure out how many students is it really gonna realistically have in the next few years, and what does that look like for its programs and research?

Yeah, I mean, you just mentioned it, but I think that it's important to remember that the revocation of student visas for international students who almost always pay full tuition has been, I mean, there's absolutely been a chilling effect in not only at U of A, but also at ASU.

And so where do we continue to pull in?

And the right-sizing for the last number of years has always been up and up and up.

At this point, is there gonna be some sort of stabilization with the number of enrollments?

Prerana, you also reported on the university's salary increase program, and about how pay raises are being distributed.

Did you hear some concerns about that?

Was there confusion?

Yes, so there was both.

There was concerns and there was confusion.

So because this was, like I said, this was the first faculty meeting, the Chief Financial Officer, John Arnold, was also there, and he was there to clear up some of the confusion and address some of the concerns and the questions.

And one of the things that I think people were confused about was how much they're getting in pay raises.

So when in the spring the announcement came, it was that the university was going to increase the minimum wage from $15 to $16.50, and they were going to give out pay raises to eligible faculty, and it was giving salaries from a pool of 2.7% for eligible staff, and a pool of 2.25% of eligible faculty.

And I think that was kind of difficult language for people to understand, and now a lot of the colleges are coming out with specific numbers, and they're within the colleges, they're giving out internal notices, which says this is exactly how much you're gonna get.

And I think it's in the range of 1% to 2%, almost like sometimes three, but 1% to 2%.

And the division of the salary increases is across the board and merit-based.

So when John Arnold got up on the stage, he said that they did want a merit component to the raises.

They did not want across-the-boa raises.

But as far as I'm hearing, there's some colleges which are doing across-the-board and merit, and there's some colleges which are doing just merit.

So that was a little bit of confusion, and I think some of the disappointment is coming from the numbers itself, like they thought they would be getting 2.75 or 2.25, and the number actually that they're getting is gonna be lesser than that.

So that was the confusion and the disappointment, I guess.

So what was the tone?

Were people riled up a little bit when you talk about confusion and concern?

What was the vibe in the room like?

Yes, absolutely.

There were some faculty members faculty senators which were a little bit riled up, like faculty Senator Ted Downing.

He did raise a question once the report was done and there was room for questions.

He raised a question about how the university's central administration prioritizes faculty and administrators because there were some administrators which were getting really, really huge salary increases, really like promotions and salary increases, and just huge bumps in the kind of paychecks that they get versus faculty that's getting a 1% to 2% raise.

So he did ask John Arnold, kind of put him on the spot and said, "What's the university's priority over here?"

Because that was the language that John Arnold had used in a previous meeting.

So he was like, "What's the priority?"

And John Arnold didn't really say much to that.

He just said that salaries and salary increases are decided on a number of factors, including market.

That was pretty much what he said, but did not really answer the question.

So my last question for you before we go to Paul and John on this is that leads me to this new position, the senior vice provost position with a salary of more than $400,000.

And President Garimella had written a column recently talking about how the university had overcome this massive deficit.

Is this the sort of thing we're talking about when people see someone a new hire making $400,000?

People are like, "Wait a second, and I'm getting less than a 2% raise, what's going on?"

So reaction to the new senior vice provost position is not something that I've gotten as much yet, but having said that, just to tell you a little bit about the position itself, the position was it did not have an open search as far as I know, and they've placed Jenna Rickus, who is from Purdue.

She was previously the senior vice provost at Purdue.

And as everyone knows by this point that Purdue is a university that the president of the University of Arizona, Suresh Garimella was before.

So this was another kind of like a step in the pattern of bringing in top level administrators from previous institutions.

Patricia Prelock, she's also from the University of Vermont where she was provost while Suresh was president.

So just, I think these kinds of things are not going unnoticed as far as I know so far, but not too many reactions about the senior vice provost position itself.

It's more about the pay raises that they're getting and the communication with that and the timeline with that as well has not been very clear.

Well, great reporting on all that, thanks so much.

John, thoughts on that?

I mean, $400,000 was the final-- $415,000.

So that would be almost 10 times the median salary of Tucson, maybe eight times the salary cap or the minimum salary for people working at Project Blue.

You know, just try to put this in some perspective.

Paul, any final thoughts on that?

I mean, that's actually a really good point.

I think when it comes down to the raises, for U of A employees, it's been very clear that raises have been kind of coming for a while, but the percentages have changed and they keep changing.

And probably at this point, if you're U of A employee, you won't know until you get your first paycheck what your raise is actually gonna look like.

So we started today's program talking about Project Blue and of course there have been public meetings, we got people animated.

There was also a very public meeting and very animated meeting on Wednesday related to STAR Village and our own Hannah Cree went out and collected some tape from folks, officials who were involved and also just some people around the city who were concerned.

(people yelling) So this is one solution that's temporary to address all of the suffering that you all are seeing.

Unhoused community does not bring crime and drugs into your neighborhood.

Predators follow the unhoused community into your neighborhoods.

Strictly against the fact that it's being put into our neighborhood, it's already very criminal- stricken and the city's not able to maintain or do anything with what they already have.

And now they're adding to it.

We don't do walk-up operations so you don't have a lot of people hanging out, trying to get into a shelter encampment.

We screen people through outreach and then within that we also have the Homeless Work Program in which we can have people work within the community to help clean up the community and we can help get people off the streets in the community.

Well we already have a lot of criminal activity, a lot of drug activity, local drug dealers and users.

This is gonna be within a few blocks of that local drug dealer.

So I think that people who are trying to recover don't need to have drugs that accessible and they're not gonna stop them from doing drugs, they're just gonna stop them from doing them in the encampment, they've been very clear of that.

I believe a lot of the anger in the room came down to a difference in opinion about solutions and belief about who deserves to be included in a definition of who our neighbors are in a definition of what community is and who belongs in community.

Okay Paul, let me ask generally about STAR Village, the aim of it, we know it's supposed to open in October, city-owned land to take care of some folks who are unhoused and yet there's been an interesting sort of backlash.

What do you know about the project?

What has come to mind for you?

I mean in short it's supposed to protect about 25 people.

The idea is it's an idea that's been kind of moving around through the city and the idea is simply like we create a protected campsite, allow people to sleep outside but really provide them some protection and then try to bring services in and this is really specifically aimed at people who are particularly vulnerable, who are homeless and vulnerable.

So the project is kind of based on that, it's not very big, it's only 25 people, there's a question about how much it's gonna cost but the neighborhood has gotten, there's been a lot of pushback from the neighborhood about it, part of it is maybe that the city did not do a good job in letting neighbors know what they were planning, what they were thinking, getting feedback from neighbors about that and there's also kind of a sense from people who live in these neighborhoods that they kind of end up with all these kinds of projects, these low-income housing projects, there's the new hotels that are further up that were hotels but a new housing that had been kind of built in the area and that this is kind of the ward area, the neighborhoods that keep kind of getting these projects and maybe they've been sort of oversubscribed in this sort of stuff, maybe the rest of the city can pick up the slack.

So I think there's some fury about that because of those two issues.

Tell me there's been frustration too, city council's passed policies that activists call anti-homeless, couldn't vote to ban camping in washes.

What does this whole spectrum look like to you?

I mean, there's obviously a very real problem, anyone who's in Tucson can recognize that people are unsheltered and people are in not great shape.

I mean, dealing with mental health issues, substance abuse and both city and county have been trying to figure out new ways to deal with it.

And I think this is another attempt.

There has been some criticism about maybe not the project in itself, but about not giving community early enough heads up.

And yet, I think that wherever these people are pushed when they are, when ordinances are passed to keep them out of washes, out of off of medians, there just are not enough houses, affordable houses yet for them.

So where are they going to go?

And the city is trying this new effort.

I think the mayor very clearly said that this is an experiment.

So this is something that they are trying and see if it can help mitigate the problem.

It's not going to solve it, but help at least deal with it.

I kind of parallel it slightly with what we talked about with Project Blue.

It's kind of a NIMBY thing as well, often is with unhoused people.

And then also, secrecy.

Did the community know enough?

I know it's a different level of secrecy from Project Blue, but almost those are the same concerns with a very different sort of project.

Right, yeah.

So Sadie Shaw, who was the candidate to replace, to try to replace Kevin Dahl, she narrowly lost by 19 votes and she called out Dahl saying that they needed more time.

But I mean, what exactly could the community have done differently to this project?

I'm not sure.

It's either going to be there or it's going to be somewhere else.

And I think we potentially are seeing just a whack-a-mole here so you can push them somewhere else, but until you find ultimate stability and services for them.

You know, a city official told me recently that there's been a lot of sort of declaiming that, oh, these people actually reject services, but they told me that actually these services are not people-centric.

And so until you can meet folks where they're at and actually provide them what they need, we're going to see this problem continue and maybe even proliferate.

Okay, Paul, in the last couple minutes, I want to move on to sort of the general social media backlash in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

We've seen national broadcasters suspended for comments.

There have been people fired for social media posts about the death.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has posted a video on Facebook and YouTube about Deputy Ramon Hernandez, who's on paid leave and apparently Secret Service is involved in this.

Yeah, I mean, essentially what Nanos said is that the deputy, and again, we don't know the full scope of it.

I have a lot of questions about exactly, what he said, how he did it, et cetera.

But one thing he said is this, one of his deputies is on leave.

And I think what it comes down to is in part, for the last several years, there's been lots and lots of threats that have been put against public officials and the federal agencies have taken them increasingly seriously.

And this is, you know, continuous, and you see, especially with like federal judges, lots and lots of federal judges have had continuous threats.

We've seen threats against congressmen, congresswomen, senators, et cetera.

And it's pretty consistent.

And the agencies really put themselves into trying to take every one of these claims seriously, because there's always the potential that someone will say, "I'm going to do this, and then we'll do this."

Because we have, unfortunately, we seem to live in an increasing violent world where people will commit violent acts against single people, or against, you know, I mean, you know, there was a shooting against a good chunk of congressmen.

You know, Gabrielle Giffords was shot.

I mean, there's been lots of these things.

And so all of the agencies are really taking these very seriously.

And I think there's maybe a disconnect in that people can say, can make a claim on social media and feel like maybe they're kind of talking to themselves and not understanding that all these agencies will take it seriously and will come talk to you and knock on your door.

Yeah, about 30 seconds, John.

Yeah, I mean, I think it doesn't speak great of where we're at as a society that entering into this conversa feels like you're wading through a minefield.

You know, I think of Voltaire's perhaps apocryphal quote of, "I completely disagree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

You know, are we going to see a backlash against press freedoms for someone that is being lauded by his supporters as a stalwart exemplar of free press?

I think we should really think hard about how we move forward after this tragedy.

That's a good, profound way to end.

Thank you, John Washington of Arizona Luminaria, Paul Ingram of Tucson Sentinel, Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star.

Guys, thank you all for being here.

Great panel today, great discussion.

Thank you very much for joining us for this edition of The Press Room.

We are back next week with another episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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