Pima County outlines 1 Pima priorities and opioid-settlement spending; leaders press for metrics and sustainability
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Summary
Deputy County Administrator Steve Holmes and board members summarized Pima County's 1 Pima initiative, loop-cleanup efforts and opioid-settlement allocations (roughly $31 million received to date), and announced housing investments and plans for a shelter dashboard and transition-center expansion.
Pima County officials on March 3 briefed a joint meeting on the —1 Pima' initiative, opioid-statement funding and housing investments and sought continued coordination with the City of Tucson on service delivery and budget priorities.
Deputy County Administrator Steve Holmes said 1 Pima's priority areas include loop cleanup, public-health and treatment access, diversion and treatment programs, housing stabilization and support for impacted neighborhoods and small businesses. He reported contracted cleanup work that has removed roughly 85 tons of trash and about $100,000 expended to date.
Holmes gave an update on opioid-settlement dollars: "We've received just a little over $30,000,000 to date" and the county is scheduled to receive about $126,000,000 spread over 18 years, though timing is uncertain. He said the ROSAC committee has approved about $8,000,000 in commitments and that approximately $1.7 million remains under discussion; ROSAC recently approved $300,000 to reissue an RFP for mobile MAT services.
On housing, Holmes said the county allocated about $20.9 million to 28 affordable-housing projects that he said preserve long-term affordability (the slides and remarks characterized these as supporting roughly 1,857 affordable units with 30-year affordability commitments). The board also approved a 10-year strategy targeting $250 million in housing funding and added $3.5 million this year from county resources to support keeping people housed.
Holmes said the county is expanding the transition center to operate seven days a week, targeting an April start as recruitment completes, and is developing a sheltering dashboard to provide system-level data on shelter capacity and outcomes.
Several elected officials used the discussion period to press for clearer crime- and fiscal-impact analytics that tie these investments to public-safety outcomes; Supervisor Cano and Council members asked for concrete metrics that demonstrate how deployments and shelter investments reduce bookings, emergency-room utilization and neighborhood harms. Holmes and other staff agreed to return with additional analytics and to continue working on shared data and referral systems.
No formal votes were taken at the joint meeting; officials emphasized collaboration on funding priorities and asked staff to bring detailed metrics and policy recommendations to the next quarterly joint session.