- Assessing the wildfire risk in Arizona's Coronado national forest.

- What the conditions now, all it takes is one spark.

- Rising demand for housing in Arizona sees affordability drop.

- It, just prices people out of the market.

- And what polls say about some early favorites to run in the 2022 midterm elections.

- It's kind of the year of the outsider.

- Hello and welcome to Arizona 360, I'm Christopher Conover filling in for Lorraine Rivera.

Thanks for joining us.

Two wildfires burning in Gila and Pinal counties sparked an emergency declaration from governor Doug Ducey this week, hundreds of fire personnel are fighting the Telegraph and Mescal fires.

Whose flames have scorched more than 130,000 acres combined.

The emergency declaration frees up to $400,000 for the efforts to control the fires.

A year ago, firefighters were busy battling the Big Horn fire as it spread across the Catalina mountains.

A lightning strike started that fire on June 5th, 2020 and it would go on to burn nearly 120,000 acres before crews contained it fully on July 23rd.

The risk for wildfires persists year round in Southern Arizona's Coronado national forest which we discussed with the US Forest Service, Heidi Schewel.

- We're very, very dry.

We're seeing fires.

We've been seeing fires and we're seeing fire behavior, at night like we would see during the day during the summer.

So the conditions are super super dry, super, super flammable.

And we're looking forward to a, hopefully timely and wet monsoon.

- When you say we're seeing fire behavior at night in the Coronado are, are there fires burning in the Coronado right now?

- Not right now, but we've had some recently and they've been active throughout the night.

So that's an indicator of of what the conditions are on the ground.

And you know, how are things really aren't responding as they, as they should be at this time of year.

- How does this year compare to last year at this time?

I mean, granted last year at this time we did have the Big Horn fire, but overall how do things compare?

- Well, we're another year into the drought.

We set records last year.

You know, we just haven't seen the precipitation that we've needed.

So, we're drier than we were last year.

And the unfortunate thing is there's a lot of fuels that are still out there on the ground from when things were actually growing in the past.

So that's all cured and dry now.

And all it needs is a spark.

- The Big Horn fire burned high, and it burned low in elevation which means it had different effects, but was as fire can be was, were at least parts of Big Horn, a good thing, ecologically as fire can be?

- Well, yeah, you know, just like most of our fires Big Horn burned in a mosaic.

So, the majority of it was it low to moderate severity and there were some areas the minority was at highest severity.

The areas that early low severity, you know fire can act like nature's great recycler, can clean out a bunch of old vegetation and then recycle those nutrients back into the soils.

- What do people need to remember when they're out enjoying the beauty of the Coronado?

- One the most important things is that we're in stage two fire restrictions and that means there are no fires of any kind allowed.

No charcoal grills.

No wood stoves, no smoking unless you're in an enclosed vehicle or a building.

No recreational shooting.

If you have a pressurized gas stove with an on and off switch, you're okay, but no fires.

And you know, what people really need to remember is, all the, with the conditions now, all it takes is one spark hitting a receptive fuel bed.

And then we could have a wildfire and people that are out enjoying the public lands enjoying the Coronado.

I think they're there because you know, they they liked the area and I don't think anybody really wants to see to see damage from another spirit fire.

So it's really important to each one of us to be as careful as we can be.

- All right, Heidi.

Well, thanks for spending some time with us.

- You're welcome.

Thank you for getting this important information out.

- The pandemics impact on Americans finances, proved to be uneven.

While so many struggled to keep a roof over their heads.

Others became homeowners.

The Pew research center reports the number of homeowners in the last year increased by more than 2 million compared to 2019.

This week, we discussed the demand in Arizona with state department of housing director, Tom Simplot who was appointed to his role in May.

- Well, it's so ironic, we come out of, we came out of the pandemic to find that we don't have enough supply in the marketplace.

So, as people were moving around the country, to to telework and, and work and commute, suddenly, housing prices shot up everywhere, not just in Arizona but we have an acute situation here in Arizona because in addition to the pandemic in addition to the labor shortage and the supply shortage we have this huge influx of new residents, who come into the state and they happened to be a lot of residents, a lot of people moving in with a lot of money.

And so they, they drove up the housing prices everywhere.

- Does that hurt the average buyer?

- Absolutely.

It, it just prices people out of the market.

I don't know any other way to say it.

And, and of course our home builders can't, they can't build the houses fast enough to, to, to meet the demand.

But then they're also facing incredible odds because of labor shortages and supply shortages.

- Is this going to make it harder for the economy to continue to grow, do you think?

- I don't.

And I think instead, I think I hope instead what it's going to force us all to do is work holistically is to think holistically, we don't attract new businesses without ensuring that we have workforce housing available and that's happening.

We are communicating.

I think if anything, over the course of the past year we've learned nobody works.

Nobody works alone.

Nobody can work in a silo.

And, and if the housing industry is going to respond or keep up, they need to know what's coming down the pike.

So in likewise, I think it's really become obvious now and apparent that, that our, our economic development folks now realize housing is not a given in Arizona you know, we used to have months.

We used to have up to a six months supply of available housing.

And now we have literally what less than two weeks supply it's, it's unheard of.

- What do people who need the help from the department of housing need to do to find out if there is aid available to them and how do they get it?

- Great question.

I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that.

So we have two different types of help here in the state from that came from the federal government.

Number one is the rental assistance.

Keep people in their homes, right?

First and foremost, don't let people become homeless.

It's much more burdensome and horrific once you are homeless.

So, first and foremost, keep people in their homes.

Now, our rental assistance programs are being operated through the department of economic security.

And people can find that assistance going through the department of economic security or they can also reach it through several of our larger cities and our counties.

They have their own monies available in their own programs to keep people in their homes.

Now, the other component is the mortgage assistance that is just now starting to, to come into the state.

We don't have, we actually don't have the money yet but we are creating a we're creating essentially a third party platform.

And we'll be partnering with the department of economic security to keep people in the homes they own and that sort of assistance that can include not just mortgage assistance to make sure they're paying their mortgage.

It can also include homeowner association fees that may be maybe, maybe, you know, long overdue perhaps taxes and even utilities.

And it's important people know that factor as well.

Again, the goal is to keep people in their homes.

- We've been talking about home ownership but there are plenty of people, who rent homes here in Arizona.

Are they seeing a similar financial squeeze?

Are rents going up also?

- They really are.

We also have a supply issue with, with the in the rental market.

And, and again, it's, it's that pipeline.

And so that is one of the fundamental rules of the department of housing, is to keep that pipeline of new affordable workforce housing, keep that pipeline open, so we continuously add new units.

We have fell, we fell way behind the need, over the past several years.

Some of that could have been foreseen, but some of it couldn't, you know, who could have who could have foreseen a pandemic.

So we're working very, very diligently with our partners public and private to open back up that pipeline.

And that includes one other partner in all of this.

And that's our cities and towns and counties, because at the end of the day, even if we have the money available, where an apartment community is built is a land use issue which resides with the cities, towns, and counties.

- Sounds like it's a big job.

Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

Anytime - Like housing, labor is also in short supply for restaurants and retailers, both industries scaled back their workforce's over the last year and now some are struggling to rehire.

For restaurants that already suffered huge losses, during the height of the pandemic it presents another roadblock toward their recovery.

We got insight from Steve Chucri, president of the Arizona restaurant association.

Before we get into the labor issue let's just set the table.

If you will, a little bit, what happened to the restaurant industry over the 18 months, the that the pandemic was going on and for so long restaurants were closed or very limited.

What did the losses look like, industry-wide in Arizona?

- It was incredible.

And I can give you some very important statistics that would, really make your jaw drop.

First and foremost, last March, as you know, when, when we said lights out when we had a really shut down businesses in Arizona in many other places in United States our daily payroll went from 14 million to two.

In a matter of three days, we laid off 80% of our workforce.

So that was, that was just cutting everyone off at the knees, sadly to say from a labor standpoint, restaurants, sale losses for the year 2020, just in Arizona alone, we're about 2.75 billion with a B.

We lost about 900 to 1100 restaurants that went out of business permanently.

And then juxtapose that to a national level.

We lost about $250 billion across the United States and restaurant sales losses.

- How long does it take to recover from those numbers?

Which is, you said are pretty staggering.

- Yeah, it, it, it takes time.

Obviously the, the influx of guests into our dining rooms has been really wonderful news for our industry.

It takes that time as I, as I mentioned, but keep in mind those sales are gone forever, right?

You're not going to go back and be able to recoup that 2.75 billion.

What you hope to do is be able to go and make up for it in this year.

- Whether it's to go or dine in obviously restaurants needs staff.

How do you attract those staff members back or the new staff members that you need to fill?

- Well, you know, working in a restaurant it's never easy.

It's always a challenging job from dish washing, on through the line.

That all being said, the reality we have seen is, is unlike what we have experienced in the past to have this severe of a shortage is really kind of unfounded.

So we have seen unique and entrepreneurial things like we always do in our restaurant industry.

And that is, we've seen signing bonuses.

We've seen bonuses just to, just to show up.

McDonald's was offering $50 just to show up for an interview.

That's that's quelled somewhat.

But, aside from that, what we're now witnessing many of our restaurateurs doing is okay.

If you're there for 60 days, you're going to get $500 bonus.

If you're there for 120 days that might go up to 1500, that kind of thing.

So, we're doing the best we can to incentivize our staff, to wanna stay with us, because you have some cannibalizing going on too between the restaurant industry and retail industry because everyone's so hard-pressed that you might have a great employee but they got might get napped up for $5 more an hour to another competitor.

- June is usually a slower time for restaurants.

It, it heats up here, a lot of people leave town go to cooler climates.

In Tucson, we also see the students leave and they make up a lot of staff for restaurants.

So, a slow period as things are really reopening.

Does that make it even more difficult?

- Well, I think in this case, you bring up a great point.

It's going to, it's a little different in that this is gonna help, I think, level set where we are for the summer because so many people are vacating especially there in Tucson, you mentioned the students other people are going to vacation.

And what I hope about that is, now that we're going to see fewer guests coming into our restaurants, that we'll be able to reconcile the current inequity we have in our labor market.

And then by Q3, of this year that we're seeing more normalcy as we did pre COVID.

- All right.

Well, thanks for spending some time with us.

- Thank you for thinking of us.

- One way restaurants adapted in Tucson.

They took advantage of patio extension programs that made it possible for them to provide outdoor seating and rely less on takeout.

Now with occupancy restrictions no longer in place.

It's a question of whether those patios are here to stay.

Tony Paniagua has more.

- Billy Elliott and his wife opened their own business in downtown Tucson, after Billy had been a waiter at different restaurants in the city.

It was 2012 and attracting customers to Elliott's On Congress he recalls, was much more difficult than they expected.

- In May of 2012, there was no street out here, because it was the construction of the streetcar what's going on.

So the first five months we were open we literally had no street in front of us.

- Fast forward to 2020, things came together and progressed until the pandemic.

Unpredictability has been a constant companion, ever since.

- In fact, it reminds me a lot of the first year we opened just because, everything's changing and we're adapting on the fly week to week.

You know, I don't know how to make the schedule.

I don't know how to staff it.

I don't know what our business hours are going to be.

And I feel like I have to be here, you know, all the time - But Elliott calls a new addition in front of the property.

A godsend.

The addition is extra outdoor spaces for customers.

About 16 seats and a fabricated patio over the sidewalk with a ramp for pedestrians to get around.

Elliott says the downtown Tucson partnership helped him with the city of Tucson application process.

He also worked with the state to ensure he could serve liquor outside.

- We started ours on October 12th, 2020.

Some businesses got a little earlier than that.

We could have gotten it earlier, but like I said I wanted to wait until I had the liquor license extended as well.

Cause I wouldn't want the patio.

If we couldn't sell her infused vodkas out there.

- Over the past few months, a growing number of patios have been popping up in the downtown area.

Restaurants are trying to meet the demand as customers' appetite for dining outdoors returns.

Chris Squires is the managing partner at Ten55 brewing which opened here in 2018.

- At this moment, outdoor seating is, is king, right?

I mean, we all know that that's the safest way to sit and dine.

- Retiree.

Steve Moore agrees.

He's a member of the Tucson home brew club.

He likes to check out different beers with his wife and they say the open air setting is an added bonus.

- It's a must.

We're a little shy about going eating indoors.

- Chris Squire says construction of the outdoor extension started last summer and went live in October.

- We were fortunate enough to be the recipient of a grant.

So we combined forces with our neighbors batch next door.

And we pulled some grant funding from the downtown Tucson partnership.

And then also from the state of Arizona, governor Ducey signed a, executive order, helping small businesses build outdoor seating like this.

Total all in was, was over $20,000.

But we were able to cover over half that with grant funding - Moving forward, merchants say they would love to keep these patios in the longterm, pandemic or not and they have some support.

Mayor Regina Romero's office says there have already been some preliminary discussions with the downtown Tucson partnership.

Regardless of what happens on that front, Elliot says, he'll stay the course.

The patios are most desirable during cooler temperatures.

So he's looking forward to a larger crowds in a few months - You had to adapt your business on the fly and roll the punches.

But at this point right now, it feels really good.

It feels really good to be standing strong.

And we've been here for a while.

We feel like we're a staple of downtown and we're going to keep on rolling - Following up on a discussion, Arizona 360 had last week about Mexico's midterm elections.

This week, the results are in.

As we discussed then, violence targeted toward candidates across the country's surge, as for how that affected turnout in Sonora and who the voters elected as their next governor.

We got analysis from KJZZ Hermosillo bureau reporter Kendal Blust.

- So, Alfonso Durazo is the winner of the governor's seat in Sonora.

He's a member of the Morena party.

That's the president's party and a party that's been pretty successful here in Sonora and across the country.

Durazo, has a long political history and is a prominent member of Morena and actually served as the secretary of security for the federal government before deciding to run for governor in Sonora.

And he won by a really wide margin.

He got more than 50% of the vote, among six candidates.

He hasn't talked a lot about his plans for cross-border relationships, but we know that he has apparently gotten congratulatory, congratulatory phone call from Doug Ducey and they both put out messages about their expectations and Durazo says he wants to see the region continue to thrive for people on both sides of the border.

- Was the relationship with Arizona, an issue at all?

Did it come up during the campaign?

- It's honestly not something that the candidates, any of the six brought up during the election or were asked about in debates.

We, we heard a lot more about issues about water which is huge here and security, which is probably the biggest issue people are worried about.

And economics, one thing to note about Durazo is that he, does say he's going to take on security.

That was his role in the federal government but violence has continued to increase here in Sonora including well he's held leadership roles.

So that's something that I think people here are really paying close attention to.

- You mentioned violence, especially in Sonora and during this election period, there was a lot of violence.

Did that contribute possibly to the low turnout that we're reading about here?

- Well, it's hard to say for sure how much violence might've played into that.

There was a lot of violence in Mexico, higher levels than in, in some previous elections.

And as you mentioned, including in Sonora where, Abel Murrieta who was running for mayor in the Southern Sonora municipality of Cajeme, was, was murdered gun down in the middle of the street in broad daylight during a campaign event.

So violence is certainly, you know, part of the picture but we've seen that as a trend in the low voter turnout in Sonora, it's been going down over several election cycles.

So, there could be some pandemic influence.

There could be some violence, but it also seems to be you know, perhaps not as much interest in the candidates that are available or, or some apathy toward towards the candidates that they have on the, on the ticket.

- What were some of the other national highlights as we start to digest the election results across Mexico?

- I think the, perhaps the biggest one were wins for women.

There were, you know just historic numbers of women running for offices.

Mexico has pushed parody for all this idea that women should be, you know, running in in all of the races and in equal numbers to men and or governor's seats, women won, it looks like it prelimina... preliminary results, it looks like they won six of the 15 seats.

And that's almost as many as women who have held seats as governor in all of Mexico's history, which is about eight.

And right now there's there's only two including Claudia Pavlovich of Sonora.

So, I think seeing that historic change six women will be taking over governor's seats really is an exciting change for Mexico.

- All right, well, we look forward to the final results and what all of that means when all the recounts are finished and things like that.

Thanks for spending some time with us.

- Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

- After eight years of Doug Ducey at the helm.

Arizonans will elect a new governor next year.

It's one of many races that will dominate the 2022 midterm elections.

Potential candidates on both sides of the aisle have thrown their hats into the arena.

We gauge the playing field with Mike Noble of the polling from OH Predictive Insights in Phoenix.

You all released a couple of weeks ago the power rankings for Arizona.

Second time, you all have done this before we get into what they say, let's talk about what are the power rankings.

So our viewers understand what you and I are talking about.

- Yeah, and so, the concept was behind is that, you know how do you quantify or measure the relative strength of any given candidate?

And so how you do that is you basically need to have a current expectation which we know by doing regular polling on, you know asking them what their name ideas of what voters think of them favorably or unfavorably and to see exactly where they measure right now.

So current expectations but then we have to measure then future expectations 15 or so questions asking like, would you prefer a candidate over the age of 55 or under 55?

Male or female?

White or Hispanic?

Or another ethnicity?

And so based on all of these demographic and if they've had past selection experience, et cetera.

So based on all that, you can basically then put it together to create a power score or kind of a pre-season ranking.

- So our preseason ranking for politics as it were, Katie Hobbs, secretary of state Democrat, number one.

And when you took this, she hadn't yet declared that she was running for governor.

Now, everybody knew she was going to, and she's made it official now, but she was number one.

So what does that say?

- What's interesting.

What's the unique thing that happened?

Because years of the secretary of state's office, let's be honest is a very boring office unless there's an election going on.

There's not going to be an election for some time.

However, there currently is an audits of the election that's going on here in Arizona where they may have made some mistakes and they basically have been putting their proverbial chin out and Hobbs has just had the opportunity to really get on national and other media to really expand her name and recognition.

And all of a sudden now she's number one.

And then soon after she announced for governor.

So, again, I think that the audit essentially kind of started, primed her up to ultimately run for a governor when it should be.

She should not be getting probably much of any news these days in her current role.

- And as we said, she's number one one of the other big races, of course everyone will be watching will be US Senate, Mark Kelly running for a full term and general McGuire, who's the former head of the Arizona national guard announced this week that he's gonna get in that race as a Republican.

- The incumbent US Senator Mark Kelly actually ranked number nine in the power rankings.

Bercovitch one of the Republican channel challengers and current attorney general, ranked number four.

And general McGuire ranked number seven.

So actually both of his challengers currently outrank him.

- Let's talk about our current governor, Doug Ducey.

A lot of people are expecting him to run for something, he ranked number 42 dead last in the power rankings that might surprise some people because he is the governor and was elected easily.

- Correct, and it's interesting cause the power rankings has won that again.

You're taking current expectations with future and the governor's numbers are currently recovering from the large COVID spike that happened in about, you know, December January timeframe, but what hurt him were really future expectations because demographically he doesn't test as well, they prefer, you know a female over a male.

They prefer someone under the age of 55.

Also someone that doesn't have elected experience is also a thing which is also an interesting dynamic in the last, I'd say probably five, six years, but it was interesting it flipped where being an incumbent used to be a huge advantage.

And now it's kind of the year of the outsider.

- So you and I can sit and talk about these power rankings for hours with the our fellow friends who like these kinds of things but for the average viewer, the average voter what should they take away from these power rankings?

- I think one of the big takeaways for me in the power rankings was, when you look at the top five lists on this most recent one, is that, you had three Republicans and two Democrats.

And it's interesting because that kind of really sums up the current state of where Arizona is.

Democrats have been putting up W's on the board and this midterm election I think is incredibly important to see where the future of the state if they turn back to Republicans, are they keep going with Democrats like they'd have for the last four years.

- All right, Mike, we'll see how this all turns out in a little more than a year.

Thanks for spending some time with us.

- Absolutely.

Thank you so much Chris.

And thanks again for the opportunity - And that's all for now.

Thanks for joining us.

To get in touch, visit us on social media or send an email to Arizona360@azpm.org and let us know what you think.

We'll see you next week.