GRIC grants

This week I helped prepare the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) gaming revenue sharing grants. As part of the state's approval for gaming, all tribes with casinos must share 12% of their annual gaming revenues to either local or state governments. Each tribe can choose who they give their 12% to. GRIC decided to share their 12% with the City of Phoenix. The City receives the final prepared grants from City programs and local non-profits within the boundaries of Phoenix, and sends them to the GRIC grant reviewer. It was my duty to make sure there were 8 copies of the grant application and all the required documents. I then had to put them all together and have them ready for John Wayne to deliver to GRIC. We set a deadline early enough for the grants to be delivered on time. Many of the grants were over the maximum page limit but John Wayne said we had to deliver them as is, so we do not alter the documents. It was an interesting project because I was able to understand the different types of funding requested and what organizations need aid to better help the City.

What works in public works?

While waiting for John Wayne to finish a meeting with a Councilman, I sat in on the last part of the City Manager's Sub-Committee Meeting on Public Works. Three Councilmen and City Manager were heading the meeting with an audience of City employees and the public. When I first sat down to listen, the sub-committee was discussing the new change for collecting both recycling and trash. It was decided to move both collections to the same day since it would save the City money and also make it more effective. Moving from the same day collections, the sub-committee had someone come discuss the possibility of moving towards charging for plastic bag usage in stores. The speaker knew much about the topic as she discussed how well California and New York's program are working. The two main reasons for implementing such a program would be to increase revenues and become more sustainable. During the summer, I had a chance to visit L.A. and every time I went to a store I was charged 15¢ for using a plastic bag. After a while, I had to decide whether I needed the bag or could just take the items with me. I understand how this initiative could help the environment but I'm not sure what the public will think.

Meeting Our Mayor

During the first week I had the chance of meeting our Mayor and his staff. He asked about the MPA program and how I was liking the internship so far. He also asked my bosses about the meeting we just came out of and how I liked the meeting. His schedule is so busy and I had few opportunities to interact with him during my internship so I was happy we chatted quickly.

What I noticed is that he has a motivated staff and is rarely seen stressed or tense. He likes to constantly be up to date on what is going on with the City. I had the choice of two internships with the City, either with the Mayor's Office or Government Relations. I believe I made the right decision but sometimes wonder what it would have been like to intern in his office.

While with the City, the Mayor made national news from his accident playing basketball against the Phoenix Mercury team. It even made it onto TMZ, a celebrity gossip site, where the Mayor interviewed with the owner of the site. The owner tried to ask questions that would ruffle feathers but I believe he did a good job in answering all the questions in a professional manner. Our office had a laugh and joked about the Mayor's accident but it was good to see he was a good sport about the injury.

Who's it gonna be in 2012

With our department, politics plays an important role, especially during election season. Understanding who will run for Senate or House of Reps at the state level is key in deciding what issues will be affected that the City wants to push forward or change. At the beginning of every legislative session, the department meets with City elected officials in deciding where they want to go. Also, at the end of each session, the department writes an end of session report about every issue the City worked on, whether it passed or needed to be reworked into the next session. Knowing who will run in each district is important as to understanding whether they are a blue or red seat. With the unknown seats, they are colored yellow. I had to create a Legislative Race Candidates form that included all possible candidates and follow up with a Power Point map of both House and Senate to show Karen what's seats are open. Karen is a visual person so the map is really helpful in understanding who is the majority, but it is known that Arizona is a heavily Republican state. This assignment helped in my better understanding of state politics, and I am happy to say that I follow the race a little bit more.

Native Americans in Arizona

Whenever I'm not in a meeting or researching for the department, I'm updating the Native Americans in Arizona database. As discussed earlier, the big green binder is not used much but when it is is very helpful. The first assignment with the binder was preparing a document for the Mayor by using the Ft. McDowell Yavapai Nation's section. Being Navajo, I was interested and started looking through the binder noticing that the Navajo Nation was not included and it was out of date. Not many tribes have an up to date website and using ITCA's (Inter Tribal Council of Arizona) information isn't much help either. I found it rather difficult to update the information without calling the tribe itself and request what I needed. Making a long distance call is hardly ever used in the department because we are charged for every minute. Since the budget is consistently cut every year, the department needs to watch where it makes unnecessary expenditures. So with the information I already had and what I could find, I rewrote almost all of it but upset that I couldn't complete the binder. I had a lot of fun learning about the 22 tribes in Arizona, never knowing the smaller ones and understanding the larger ones from the governmental side.

Federal Lobbying

I haven't posted in two weeks so now I'll catch up. Tom asked me to sit in on a conference call with one of our federal lobbyist teams, McBee Strategic. Some larger metropolitan cities are able to keep an office in Washington D.C. to conduct their own lobbying but Phoenix does not. We have two teams lobbying for issues concerning Phoenix like: Infrastructure, Aviation, Transportation, Water, and Environmental. The City hires lobbyists depending of their specialty and as we need specific or more general concerns addressed.

The conference call lasted about an hour where we simply went over the latest issues that happened since the previous call. A new technology is being used by the City called Sharepoint, that allows for people to have meetings across the country without actual meeting in person. We can make instant changes to documents on Sharepoint, view presentations, schedule future meetings through calendar, and view past notes on meetings. What I like about Sharepoint is that we are able to all see the same page and not be confused about what is being discussed.

One topic that I found interesting in the meeting was the Brownfields. At the time I did not know what they were and researched the topic. The Brownfields is a term used to describe real estate that is contaminated or perceived to be contaminated by hazardous substances or petroleum in soil or groundwater. The complexity and cost of cleanup creates an obstacle to redevelopment or reuse of the property. The cleanup and redevelopment of the Brownfields bring many economic development benefits to a community. The benefits of redevelopment include: job creation, increase of property values, reduction of potential health risks, and revitalization of neighborhoods.

To learn more about the Brownfields look here:
http://phoenix.gov/greenphoenix/land/brownfields/index.html

What is the RWC?

The Regional Wireless Cooperative (RWC) is an independent, multi-jurisdictional organization which manages and operates a regional radio communications network built to seamlessly serve the interoperable communication needs of first responders and other municipal radio users in and around Central Arizona's Valley of the Sun. Formerly known as the Phoenix Regional Wireless Network, the RWC has expanded to service a still growing list of 18 cities, towns, and fire districts, along with many other area entities who serve public safety needs. The RWC was formed through a governance structure founded on the principle of cooperation for the mutual benefit of all members. The RWC was placed within the Government Relations department due to the importance of its mission. The staff is small and comprised of four people who work towards improving public safety radio communications in the Valley.