The Board of Supervisors is the legislative, executive, and quasi-judicial body of county government. The Supervisors pass all ordinances governing the county and are responsible for seeing that functions delegated to the County are properly discharged.

The five Supervisors work collectively on county policies, programs, and projects for transportation, the environment, land use, health care, human services, housing, economic development, criminal justice, and many other services that directly impact all county residents and businesses.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors formulate and approve the annual county budget, including the amount transferred to the school system, establish local tax rates, approve or reject land use proposals, and make appointments to various boards and commissions that serve county residents and businesses.

The BoS appoints administrators and establishes policy for 60 County Departments as well as 100s of Authorities, Boards, Commissions, and Special Taxing Districts, each with their own budgets between hundreds of thousands to millions of taxpayer dollars.

A 30-year sustainability plan must include the development and implementation of climate-smart, technologically advanced, integrated, and efficient infrastructure with well-planned public works – such as water, transportation, buildings, and public spaces – as well as funding allocations for those plans. 

An equitable community engagement process is critical to reaching the goal of making our county more livable, healthy, and safe for all of our residents – which requires that the virtually unknown Board of Supervisors become more visible and accessible to the people they serve.

As a Supervisor for District 2, I commit to having town halls and mobile constituent services within my district. I will also advocate for quarterly meetings around the valley as well as a Request To Speak system so Maricopa County residents have real opportunities to voice their opinions on matters before the board.

It is critical to have Maricopa County residents at the table when the Board of Supervisors make important decisions that affect their daily life. #TheMostImportantOfficeYouNeverHeardOf

Economic Infrastructure: Transportation, Energy, Water, Health, Education, Safety & Resilience, Technology, and Culture.

Maricopa County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, with geography, population, and a budget larger than several states.

Basic business and management strategies include funding infrastructure for future growth, emergency scenario planning, and preparing for the unexpected – none of which the current Board has been doing effectively.

The Maricopa Association of Governments estimates a $7 billion gap in Maricopa County by 2040 if freeway maintenance remains at current funding levels.

The County morgue is near capacity every summer, with little space for an additional emergency situation.

Despite contract tracing being an established process for infectious disease containment for decades, despite County promises in April, and despite the Board of Supervisors allocating $15 million from CARES Act funding for contact tracing in June, as of July, the County is still unable to complete contact tracing for even half of the positive cases reported.

In the last eight years, the Supervisors have blown through $178 million for Arpaio lawsuits, $300,000 in fines for repeated Correctional Health violations related to one lawsuit, and hundreds of thousands defending sexual harassment cases against the County Attorney’s office – all issues known to the Board prior to the lawsuits being filed.

A 30-year sustainability plan must include the development, implementation, and funding of climate-smart, technologically advanced, integrated, and efficient infrastructure with well-planned public works, and an eye on investing in our communities, managing growth, contingency plans for all departments, and proactive corrective policies to mitigate potential lawsuits due to known legal violations.

Houselessness, like many issues, requires communication and coordination among the 24 cities and towns as well as unincorporated areas.

Piecemeal approaches are short-term band-aids and too often lead to moving houseless people from one jurisdiction to another – just shifting location and blame.

And that was before the health and economic pandemics we are now facing locally. 

The inability of our families, friends, and neighbors to afford housing is only getting worse.

While Maricopa County has fewer houseless shelters than necessary for our population and need, the County does have the hundreds of Authorities, Boards, and Commissions appointed and funded by the Supervisors to address houselessness in our communities.

Our greatest obstacles are unnecessary red-tape and over-compartmentalization.

Residents don’t know the resources exist, often don’t understand them, and finding them on the website is difficult.

Further, the County compartmentalized system often restricts communication and collaboration between the County entities, despite many of them having overlapping missions.

The Minutes for many of the entities are riddled with frustrated boards facing roadblocks to accessing relevant information from partners and the Board of Supervisors. The County Workforce Board Minutes show the program failed a 2019 Department of Labor audit, citing 10 violations, several involving conflicts of interest, that still have not been resolved due to obstructions directly from the Board of Supervisors. Failure to address DOL violations puts continued Workforce federal funding in jeopardy.

While we do need more funding and creative solutions to address houselessness in our County, as well as more coordination with overlapping municipalities, we very much need more communication, more streamlining, and more collaboration between the dozens of entities tasked with addressing houselessness already appointed and funded by the Board of Supervisors.

The Board of Supervisors play an important role in election administration, primarily because they must approve the budget for the County Recorder. 

The level of funding is a major factor in voter accessibility, specifically, in determining the types of voting systems, the number of voting locations, the hours and days voting location are available, as well as the amount and quality of voter education.

What we should always strive for in our Democracy is a Board of Supervisors committed to fully funding election administration in conjunction with a County Recorder committed to using every dollar in the most efficient manner to protect the integrity of our election system while honoring every eligible voter’s attempt to have their voice heard at the voting booth.  

The way we invest in transportation is essential to the welfare of all Maricopa County residents.

Transportation investments and policies have a major impact on physical activity, traffic injuries and fatalities, environmental quality, protecting open spaces, and access to services and jobs

The intersection of transportation and land use happens most profoundly on the regional level.  Many of the greatest health, equity, and environmental benefits of smarter planning and investment can only be fully realized at a regional level.

Transportation planning and community design that facilitates active transportation, including public transportation, tend to increase social interaction and community cohesion. Increased neighborly interactions can help reduce crime, depression, and poverty, provide support and safety and increase property values. Community cohesion and supportive transportation services are particularly important for vulnerable populations, including the elderly and disabled.

It’s also federal law that municipalities with a population over 50,000 create regional transportation plans identifying how a region will spend its transportation revenue.

The Board of Supervisors’ focus on “running lean” and decreasing budgets is increasing infrastructure maintenance gaps by billions of dollars while failing to keep our commuting communities safe and prepared for future growth.

Protecting animals in Arizona is a value statement reflected in our many laws holding people financially and criminally liable for animal abuse.

Arizona statute 11-11013 authorizers the County Board of Supervisors to establish county pounds and requires those county pounds to provide “proper care and maintenance” for impounded animals.

While state law allows the county to establish “pound fees,” the Maricopa County’s focus on the Animal Care and Control department being self-sufficient only though pound fees, licensing, and community donations does not reflect our value commitment to animal protection, nor is it fiscally responsible or practical.

The County Supervisors have failed to allocate funds toward the current infrastructure of our County pounds or its future needs, such as having more than two shelters in a County larger than some states or installing air-conditioning units in current facilities for Arizona summers when swamp coolers are ineffective.

And that was before a pandemic shut down most adoption access as well as a financial pandemic that has caused the inability for more people to afford their own housing or another mouth to feed – thus causing a decrease in fee and licensing funds and increased shelter costs due to more impounded animals for longer periods of time.

Our County budget and decisions should reflect our values. Protecting animals is one of those values.

We cannot deny that there are disparities within our county and that systemic racism is a part of it.

Most of us believe we treat everyone equally and individually, regardless of race or any other personal characteristic.

But study after study documents at the very least unconscious bias, and at the very most discriminatory intent, in some workplace environments –  from ethnic names being passed over for job interviews, to supporting and mentoring only those who look like us.

We don’t have the opportunities to demonstrate or test our commitment to equality every day because most of us aren’t in positions of power and Black Maricopa residents are less than 10% of our population.

But instances of bias, discrimination, and racism are happening to our family, friends, and neighbors even if we don’t witness them… or are used to ignoring them.

As a Supervisor, I am committed to addressing inequities and all forms of discrimination in Maricopa County for employees, management, and the communities we serve.

Employees are an asset that we should be cultivating for retention and advancement, otherwise, we’re simply running a free training program for the public sector.

Our current low morale and high turnover in County Departments is a direct result of poor management – too often due to unreasonable workloads, ill-defined employee development plans for future advancement, lack of open communication lines with management, and management acting as though an employee is fortunate to have a job rather than respecting the employee and his/her work.

Addressing these issues head-on will bring deficiencies to light and will benefit all our amazing and dedicated employees, including people of color while strengthening our County for future growth and progress.

An equitable community engagement process is critical to reaching the goal of making our county livable, healthy, and safe for all our residents – which requires the virtually unknown Board of Supervisors and their activities to become more visible, accessible, and accountable to the people they serve.

Creating more housing is good for business, and creating more affordable housing is particularly good for business. Without adequate shelter, it is virtually impossible to live a safe, healthy, and productive life.  The ability of businesses to attract and retain their work force is key to success, and housing that is both available and affordable is a key to attraction and retention of employees.

Arizonans making the state minimum wage must work two full-time jobs, effectively, to afford a market-value two-bedroom apartment, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) 2019 report.

Employees who make less won’t be able to afford to come here to work, and those who are here now will be looking elsewhere for less expensive places to live.  Both of these outcomes are bad for business. As customers, workers who spend a high percentage of their income for rent can’t purchase the goods and services that fuel our economic engine.  People who are suffering the effects of homelessness are similarly unable to be good customers for local businesses.

Further, homelessness often leads to repetitive use of services, like frequent emergency room visits, that are more costly to our public budgets than the alternative of providing permanent affordable housing.  The financial consequence leaves fewer resources available for infrastructure investment, such as road repairs, which in turn lessens the appeal of Sonoma County-again bad for business.

The cure for homelessness is permanent housing that is both affordable and linked to necessary services. Once in stable housing, people can be helped with education and training to improve their skills, creating a more robust labor market, which is again…good for business.

In summary, local business will benefit from an economy in which customers are plentiful and have disposable income for discretionary spending, and in which productive workers are available for career employment.  These conditions are served by creating the affordable housing essential for our shared prosperity.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors “currently uses a modified “pay-as-you-go” financial policy for large capital improvement projects and other infrastructure. Through this method, capital improvements are paid from the County’s current revenue base. The County pays cash for many capital improvements or utilizes lease reversions or other funding sources from the General Fund to pay for large dollar projects.”

If we don’t have the cash, we don’t make improvements or investments. Maricopa County hasn’t had a bond since 2004. Why not ask the voters if they’re willing to invest in affordable housing through a bond request on the ballot? This is how most other municipalities operate.

Supervisors claim they are saving the taxpayers money by not paying interest on bonds, but the interest on a bond for improving our affordable housing would be less than the $178 million we spent on Arpaio lawsuits for legal violations the Supervisors knew about but refused to mitigate through policy corrections.

Surely taxpayers would rather pay interest on bonds that benefit their family, friends, neighbors, businesses, communities, and property values than unnecessary attorney fees and court fines. We should ask them.

There has been accelerated growth in the body of research evidence with actionable implications for juvenile justice systems. The results of longitudinal studies of children and youth have delineated the pathways to delinquency and identified multiple risk factors predictive of later antisocial behavior, some of which can be addressed as criminogenic needs to reduce that risk.

Studies of the profiles of youth who enter the juvenile justice system have shown that a majority of offenses are committed by a comparatively small number of serious, violent, or chronic offenders.

Evaluation research of interventions with juvenile offenders has discovered a number of programs that are effective in reducing recidivism, especially for high-risk offenders, and meta-analyses of those studies have highlighted the program characteristics most strongly associated with positive and, in some cases, negative effects on later offending.

Other research focused on level of supervision has revealed that many high-risk offenders can be treated effectively in community-based programs and, further, that confinement for extended periods of time can exacerbate delinquent behavior.

The expected effectiveness of programs for reducing recidivism should be assessed with the Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEPTM) that compares key features of the respective programs with those found in evaluation research to be most strongly associated with positive effects on recidivism.

Risk and program information should be brought together in a disposition matrix tailored to each juvenile justice system and designed to gauge the level of supervision and services likely to produce the best outcomes for each youth managed in that system.

The most progressive juvenile justice systems are integrating these tools into an evidence-based platform that supports decisions aimed at increasing the probability of favorable outcomes at every stage as youth move through the system.

This platform integrates the best available decision-making tools to ensure that each youth who enters the juvenile justice system is screened using a standardized risk and needs assessment tool, matched to the appropriate level of supervision based on his/her risk to re-offend, matched to services based on the criminogenic needs identified during his/her assessment, and provided with program options that are effective in reducing recidivism.

In addition, ongoing evaluation of the decision-making process helps to determine whether the platform is leading to the desired outcomes (e.g., reduced recidivism) and identifies potential areas for program and system improvement.

Like in all the almost 500 authorities, boards, commissions, departments, and special taxing districts under the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, constant oversight and re-evaluation for positive outcomes and improvements from taxpayer-funded programs are necessary for effective change in the juvenile and justice courts systems.

We need goals, not just aspirations. And we need Supervisors committed to reaching the goals, with the flexibility to evaluate and implement new research, tools, and successes of other municipalities as they become available. Because policies to improve the lives and livelihoods of Maricopa County residents is the job of County Supervisors.