The Daily Agenda: Let's look at the numbers

Here's to a short Monday ...

Good news, readers!

We’ve got a light edition for you today. Monday mornings are rough, even in our post-workplace society. You shouldn’t be required to read too much. 

So we’re helping you out. 

Take those extra five minutes and go for a walk. It’s officially fall! You can tell because the Arizona State Fair is back in town. 

Hank spent the weekend in the Old Pueblo with the Tucson Agenda crew finalizing some old plans, scheming up some new ones and crunching numbers. 

So many numbers… 

We’re super stoked to tell you what’s coming up! Yes, a new reporter! But that’s just the start. 

We’ll be rolling out some announcements starting next month. In the meantime, we’re very busy building a better Agenda for you. Stay tuned! 

Anyway, here’s today’s news roundup. It all came out in numerical format for some reason. 

Two: The number of political groups that are working on separate open primary initiatives, per KJZZ’s Ben Giles. One of the groups wants an initiative that would require all candidates to run in a single primary, then leave it up to lawmakers to choose between a top-two runoff or a five-way ranked-choice voting system in the general election. The new group, Better Ballot Arizona, wants open primaries plus a top-five ranked-choice voting system in the November election. Both initiatives will need about 385,000 valid signatures from registered voters to qualify for the 2024 ballot. 

475: The number of people living in The Zone in downtown Phoenix, down from 898 in July, according to the weekly census done by four employees at the Human Services Campus. The city has cleared nine blocks since May, and has six weeks to clear the remaining nine blocks, per a court order, according to the Republic’s Helen Rummel.

54: The number of trees a contractor working with a neighborhood association cut down in a Tucson wash without authorization, including 42 mesquites and 12 palo verdes, the Daily Star’s Nicole Ludden reports. The neighborhood association secretary says it was routine cleanup that was “not primarily” motivated by the homeless encampment in the wash that he sued the city to clear out. City officials are investigating. 

“I’m sad that people took it into their own hands to massacre those trees,” City Councilmember Kevin Dahl said.

90: The cost in dollars, of an annual subscription to the Agenda, for today only. That’s a savings of 25%.

Five: The number of seconds per 30-second political ad on TV must display a list of the three main donors, rather than a vaguely named political committee, under new rules proposed by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission to comply with the anti-dark-money initiative voters approved last year. The disclosure must be at least 4% of the vertical picture height, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer, and the same goes for those on billboards.

“Standard billboards are 14 feet high. That translates out to a disclosure about 7 inches in height,” Fischer writes.

22: The age, in years, of Tempe Union High School District’s Gen-Z president Armando Montero, according to Morgan Fischer’s profile in the Republic. The district serves almost 13,000 students in the East Valley. Montero was 18 when he first ran for the office. He’s running for his second term in 2024 while working on three majors at ASU. 

“Having to listen to a 19-year-old, there’s that initial sense of side-eye,” Montero said of how people responded to his age when he first joined the board.

318: The number of small animals — including guinea pigs, rats, hamsters and rabbits — that the Humane Society of Southern Arizona took from San Diego’s Humane Society and gave to another rescue, which says it found homes for all but 63 of them. The San Diego Humane Society doesn’t think that’s possible, sparking a feud between the three organizations and at least two online petitions with 1,000 signatures each, along with two news stories, including Eddie Celaya’s account in the Daily Star. Four hamster and gerbil advocates recently drove from San Diego to Tucson to adopt 24 of the animals.

5: The number of drive-thrus, per 100,000 people in Mesa, where city council members want to restrict future drive-thrus through zoning restrictions but have faced pushback from business owners since they started looking into it more than one year ago, per the Republic’s Maritza Dominguez. Neighboring Gilbert has only four drive-throughs per 100,000 people and Scottsdale has three. 

9,171: The elevation, in feet above sea level, of the peak of Mount Lemmon, which can be 20 to 30 degrees cooler than Tucson, which is 27 miles down the road below it, according to Sarah Lapidus’ helpful guide in the Republic. Mount Lemmon contains eight campgrounds, a dozen trails, 21 ski runs and offers stargazing about 350 nights per year.