I grew up at the downtown Tucson library and then the Valencia library and with its mobile library. What are the technology plans to get a tablet in every child's hands and get them started on the reading path to living?
After reading thousands of hard cover and paperback books, I rarely read paper at all, nor do many of today's children, I suspect. I have over 600 books on my Amazon kindle, many of them free books. I still read one to three hours a day.
For the millions invested in this library, tens of thousands of tablets could be in every child's hands. Even more thousands of great children books could be licensed to distribute for free.
About every three months, I call into the Registrar of Contractors, just to check. The last time i called, they answered the phone before it rang. Yes, before it rang. Pushed the zero to get a live person and before it rang once, the operator picked up the line.
Over the last 25 years, that response time has varied from that zero rings to a minute and a half. Surveys of contractors and complainants show that despite the acrimony that the Registrar is forced to deal with, 92% rate themselves satisfied with the Registrar's performance and 46% rate it excellent.
Stunningly, the experience is similar at MVD. Yes, MVD. They open at 8 so I showed up 7:45 to get a head start, only to find out that they had changed their hours to 7:30. When does a government agency change their hours to improve service? I was greeted at the door by a person who was working to make sure I had the proper paperwork and knew exactly what to do. Five minutes later, I had my business done and was walking out the door.
Unbelievably good. And, unbelievably inexpensive. Arizona has the second least expensive state government in the nation.
A friend of mine went to the New York MVD. People literally had sleeping bags with them. Some of them were experiencing their 3rd day in line and were engaging in an all out screaming rampage to vent their frustration.
New York has the second most expensive state government in the nation.
Now, the question is: will Tucson city management take over state government. Will we sink into the the New York/Tucson hell hole of expensive and ineffective government.
Katie Hobbs now is facing down a looting mob who want to replace all those effective managers with looters and loiterers.
That's what they do in Tucson, New York and Chicago. They regard these positions not as dedicated servants of the public but as looters. A salary not to be earned but as loot to be captured, a position not demanding of intense work from 8 in the morning to 7 pm at night but sinecures.
Tucson no longer surveys its citizens. Once you sink to only 8% rating their neighborhood an excellent place to raise a child, why survey? Once you hit an all-time record for murders (2021, Tucson) why care? Once you have 380,000 miles of cracks and potholes in 2,450 miles of street, why even pretend?
One evening, my cell phone rang. It was a vocational education teacher from the Holbrook School District. He had just been told that his vocational ed certification wasn't in order and his last day would be next Tuesday.
Jan Pentak, our incredible director of Teacher Certification was still there: 7 pm at night. The teacher was certified that evening. One of the proudest moments of my 32 years in public service.
I still have the slips from Citizens rating Chandler City Government when i was on the Chandler City Council. Every comment gave me guidance as to where to put my energy. We went from a 13% exellence rating in 1983 (yes 49 years ago) to 55% in 1995.
First amendment to the constitution, the right to petition your government, the most neglected clause.
Now, we get to see what this mess is going to look like.
Yes, you too can make a fortune turning children and adults into paranoid schizophrenics (yes, there is a statistically significant correlation between marijuana use and paranoid schizophrenia and it's causal).
If government could be trusted, I'd like your well-researched and thoughtful article. But, they can't be. I don't have a doubt in the world that they will use those 87,000 agents to target activist Republicans, the exact same way they've weaponized the corrupt FBI.
You ought to visit the city you supposedly write about Tom: Tucson. Visit the Catholic elementary schools, Saint Johns, Santa Cruz, Saint Ambrose, San Miguel.
You support spending $12,000 a year to send rich white atheists to Catalina Foothills schools while opposing the $6,500 to send a poor Hispanic Catholic to one of these schools.
You are a bigot. The discrimination is based solely on religion. As it was from the beginning. Catholic schools were denied funding in the early 1800s because they wouldn't used the protestant bible. Pure religious bigotry.
These schools were never public schools, they were always district schools. Districts were created to keep Blacks out of white schools. Now they are also used to trap minorities in schools that don't work for them.
Every day a minority spends in Tucson Unified, they fall further behind whites.
Karl Marx famously said that all of history is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. You are one of the oppressors defending one of the last bastions of white supremacy, the district school.
Your diatribe is getting weaker and weaker and more disgusting every day.
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After reading thousands of hard cover and paperback books, I rarely read paper at all, nor do many of today's children, I suspect. I have over 600 books on my Amazon kindle, many of them free books. I still read one to three hours a day.
For the millions invested in this library, tens of thousands of tablets could be in every child's hands. Even more thousands of great children books could be licensed to distribute for free.
Over the last 25 years, that response time has varied from that zero rings to a minute and a half. Surveys of contractors and complainants show that despite the acrimony that the Registrar is forced to deal with, 92% rate themselves satisfied with the Registrar's performance and 46% rate it excellent.
Stunningly, the experience is similar at MVD. Yes, MVD. They open at 8 so I showed up 7:45 to get a head start, only to find out that they had changed their hours to 7:30. When does a government agency change their hours to improve service? I was greeted at the door by a person who was working to make sure I had the proper paperwork and knew exactly what to do. Five minutes later, I had my business done and was walking out the door.
Unbelievably good. And, unbelievably inexpensive. Arizona has the second least expensive state government in the nation.
A friend of mine went to the New York MVD. People literally had sleeping bags with them. Some of them were experiencing their 3rd day in line and were engaging in an all out screaming rampage to vent their frustration.
New York has the second most expensive state government in the nation.
Now, the question is: will Tucson city management take over state government. Will we sink into the the New York/Tucson hell hole of expensive and ineffective government.
Katie Hobbs now is facing down a looting mob who want to replace all those effective managers with looters and loiterers.
That's what they do in Tucson, New York and Chicago. They regard these positions not as dedicated servants of the public but as looters. A salary not to be earned but as loot to be captured, a position not demanding of intense work from 8 in the morning to 7 pm at night but sinecures.
Tucson no longer surveys its citizens. Once you sink to only 8% rating their neighborhood an excellent place to raise a child, why survey? Once you hit an all-time record for murders (2021, Tucson) why care? Once you have 380,000 miles of cracks and potholes in 2,450 miles of street, why even pretend?
One evening, my cell phone rang. It was a vocational education teacher from the Holbrook School District. He had just been told that his vocational ed certification wasn't in order and his last day would be next Tuesday.
Jan Pentak, our incredible director of Teacher Certification was still there: 7 pm at night. The teacher was certified that evening. One of the proudest moments of my 32 years in public service.
I still have the slips from Citizens rating Chandler City Government when i was on the Chandler City Council. Every comment gave me guidance as to where to put my energy. We went from a 13% exellence rating in 1983 (yes 49 years ago) to 55% in 1995.
First amendment to the constitution, the right to petition your government, the most neglected clause.
Now, we get to see what this mess is going to look like.
Rightfully so. Paranoid schizophrenia is strongly correlated with cannabis usage.
Alzheimers: $3 billion
Climate Change: $632 billion
We live in a sick, sick, sick policy world.
By 2050, 10 million people per year will be dying from Alzheimers in the U.S.
By 2050, retirees will be walking 97 yards instead of 100 yards to get to the water in Miami.
You support spending $12,000 a year to send rich white atheists to Catalina Foothills schools while opposing the $6,500 to send a poor Hispanic Catholic to one of these schools.
You are a bigot. The discrimination is based solely on religion. As it was from the beginning. Catholic schools were denied funding in the early 1800s because they wouldn't used the protestant bible. Pure religious bigotry.
These schools were never public schools, they were always district schools. Districts were created to keep Blacks out of white schools. Now they are also used to trap minorities in schools that don't work for them.
Every day a minority spends in Tucson Unified, they fall further behind whites.
Karl Marx famously said that all of history is the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. You are one of the oppressors defending one of the last bastions of white supremacy, the district school.
Your diatribe is getting weaker and weaker and more disgusting every day.