Arizona Commission on the Arts, Reflections from the 98th Arizona Town Hall
Jaime Dempsey's May 17th blog for the Arizona Commission on the Arts. "I left last week’s Town Hall feeling inspired, mentally exhausted but still ready to focus on constructing a more prosperous future for the arts and culture sector as well as our state."
ASU NEWS, Culture: The newest of Arizona’s “C’s”
ASU Profession and Editor of the background report, Betsy Fahlman, curated the report to include 23 chapters by the 39 authors, seven art works by eight artists, and three poems (one written specifically for the report).
Arizona Public Media, Arizona Town Hall Convenes Bill Read, senior vice president of the Flinn Foundation, and Bruce Dusenberry, chair of Arizona Town Hall, talk about capitalizing on Arizona’s art and culture.
Arizona ArtBeat, Arizona Town Hall: Capitalizing on Arts and Culture Participants (Robert Benson, Cathy Weiss and Gail Bradley) in the 98th Arizona Town Hall, that took place in Tucson May 1-4, discuss Town Hall’s recommendations for capitalizing on Arizona’s arts and culture.
News relating to the 97th Town Hall: Arizona's Government: The Next 100 Years
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 PBS, Channel 8, Horizon Program
February 11, 2011 "Town Hall's Message: Dump Term Limits" by Richard Tackett, Arizona Capitol Times
When the leader of a civic-improvement think tank declared that term limits drain much of the effectiveness from the Arizona Legislature, she was speaking to an audience that welcomed her opinion. More...
January 7, 2011 "Planning Arizona's government for the next 100 years" by Carol West, Inside Tucson Business
When President President William Howard Taft approved and signed Arizona's Constitution on Dec. 9, 1910, on the way to statehood Feb. 14, 1912, the state's bent for independence and populist government was in evidence. Arizona's constitution clearly states that power comes from the people and not the other way around. More...
Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness
October 17, 2010 "How to grow jobs" by Jim Seckler, The Mohave Daily News
About 60 people attended an outreach program Thursday to hear recommendations on job growth from the Arizona Town Hall held in April. More...
October 8, 2010 "AZ Town Hall tests Verde Valley's mood" by Jon Hutchinson, Verde Independent
For the third time, the Arizona Town Hall brought an outreach session to Yavapai College to share the forum's recommendations, and then to poll local thoughts. More...
July 27, 2010 "Arizona Town Hall focuses on economy" by Sarah Reed, YUMA SUN
Drastic changes need to take place in Arizona, according to officials from the Arizona Town Hall, who came to Yuma Tuesday to hear ideas from Greater Yuma Economic Development Corp. investors. More...
June 7, 2010 "Building Arizona's Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness" By Barbi Reuter TREND REPORT
Days after Arizona’s debate-provoking passage of the nation’s toughest immigration law, the 96th Arizona Town Hall convened in Tucson under the banner “Building Arizona’s Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.” Against a backdrop of both real and perceived economic impact, the timing resulted in a sense of urgency for Town Hall participants to craft strategies and solutions that would best posture Arizona for economic opportunity. More...
Thursday, May 20, 2010 PBS, Channel 8, Horizon Program
April 27, 2010 Fox 11, KMSB Tucson's coverage of Gov. Brewer's remarks to the Arizona Town Hall. Follow this link for more information.
View Channel 8's Horizon show which aired on Thursday, November 5th at 7:00 p.m. which featured participants of the 95th Arizona Town Hall discussing the Town Hall's recommendations. Visit the HORIZON Web site.
http://ArizonaNotebook.com contains a comprehensive story on the 93rd Town Hall by journalist, news blogger Mike Padgett (Nov. 21, 2008).
1/30/09 The Joint Budget Legislative Committee is proposing to redirect the unclaimed property funding in FY'10 to the General Fund. The effect of this change is to cut all State funding for the Housing Trust and State-funded housing programs. Click here to download an overview presented by the Arizona Department of Housing that outlines the role that the Housing Trust Fund plays in Arizona.
News relating to the 92nd Town Hall
"Who Will Teach Our Children?"
Arizona recently announced its commitment to the “Tough Choices or Tough Times” reform agenda, a major redesign of state education systems intended to help students succeed both in school and the workforce. Below are several news releases regarding the "Tough Choices or Tough Times" coalition to overhaul the state education system.
May 15 Horizon Show Features 92nd Arizona Town Hall--an overview of the
recent 92nd Arizona Town Hall and an in-studio discussion with two participants.
View the show through
Horizon's podcast. For more information visit www.azpbs.org/horizon.
"Land Use: Challenges and Choices for the 21st Century"
Arizona Town Hall: Land Use PlanningHorizon show that aired November 7, 2007, on KAET-TV Channel 8 featuring Jamie Hogue, Deputy Land Commissioner and Alberto Olivas, Acting Director, Maricopa Community Colleges' Center for Civic Participation
Access to Health CareHorizon show that aired August 22, 2007, on KAET-TV Channel 8 featuring Dr. Len Kirschner and Mr. Peter Burns.
Table Set for Health Debate published on April 27, 2007 The Arizona Republic Editorial: "Arizona Town Hall just shifted the debate on health care in Arizona..."
Universal health care gains support published on April 22, 2007 Tribune: East Valley/Scottsdale by Mary Reinhart: "The call for universal health care in Arizona has gone mainstream."
Health care reform argued at Town Hall published on April 19, 2007 The Arizona Republic by Ken Alltucker: "All Arizonans should have access to health care and private insurers should be required to provide coverage to even the highest-risk groups of patients, a panel of community leaders recommended Wednesday."
Better health care focus of Town Hall published on August 31, 2007 Sierra Vista Herald/Review by Dana Cole: "The need for health care reform to ensure a basic level of care for everyone in Arizona is one of the most pressing issues facing our state."
Sicko--A diagnosis in 5 parts
Is "Sicko," Michael Moore's diagnosis of our nation's health care system, an accurate documentary or pure propaganda? The Arizona Republic asked six health care officials and other professionals to watch the movie and then give their opinion via five questions. Review their interesting commentary.
KUAT in Tucson produced a short segment on the Town Hall that can be viewed
here.
Insurance for All published on May 17, 2007 Tucson Weekly by Saxon Burns: "Two groups attempt to take health-care plans to Arizona voters"
Current health system wasteful, cruel published on May 8, 2007 The Arizona Republic commentary by Representative Phil Lopes: "I welcome the Arizona Town Hall's conclusion that the best way to fix our broken health care system is through 'universal coverage.'"
Federally insuring more kids is what state wants published on August 5, 2007 The Arizona Republic: "Some portray efforts by Democrats in Congress to expand the federal health-insurance program for children as a vast liberal conspiracy. A Wall Street Journal editorial called it 'HillaryCare on the installment plan.'"
Expand on success
published on August 14, 2007 The Arizona Republic: "Congress should remember three things as it reconciles different approaches to reauthorizing the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program."
Untapped Medicare benefits
published on August 21, 2007 The Arizona Republic: "Preventive services, tests abound--are you taking full advantage? Only about one in 10 Medicare beneficiaries takes advantage of the full slate of Medicare-covered preventive services that could help them avoid or delay disease."
The Arizona Republic by Richard de Uriarte, editorial writer
"UA research viewed as good start on health care issues"
"Maximizing Arizona's Opportunities in the Biosciences and Biotechnology"
Arizona Town Hall Goes LIVE! on the Internet
(Phoenix) - The 87th Arizona Town Hall on "Maximizing Arizona's Opportunities in the Biosciences
and Biotechnology," Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, 2005 at the Grand Canyon was be the first to
appear live on the Internet.
The 8:30 pm Sunday evening opening address by William C. Harris, Director General of the Science
Foundation of Ireland in Dublin, and the Monday morning comments from Arizona Governor Janet
Napolitano at 7:30 am were webcast live.
GlobalMedia of Scottsdale (www.globalmedia.com) and Global
Webcast Live of Glendale are providing the streaming video and servers for the multiple camera
production for what will be the first live web cast from the Grand Canyon. Veteran Phoenix TV News
Anchor Roger Downey, President of Global Webcast Live, will be the host of the programs. The two
companies have developed a unique partnership of technology and talent for making Internet-based
live webcast and video productions available to individuals, companies and organizations at a
reasonable cost.
Published: 11.04.2005 -- Almost while it was sleeping - while its politicians were arguing
about tax cuts and school vouchers - Arizona became poised to be a world leader in portions of the
biosciences, the sciences that deal with living organisms.
Were Arizona to become that leader, the impact would be significant, both in the improvement of
health care and in the creation of new, high-paying jobs. One estimate is that 32,000 Arizona jobs
are at stake over the next decade, with average salaries significantly higher than the current average.
The question is whether Arizona can capitalize on its position. The fields within the biosciences
- agricultural feed and chemicals, drugs and pharmaceuticals, medical devices and instruments, hospitals
and laboratories and research and testing - are highly competitive. And several other states already
are ahead of Arizona.
That question of how Arizona can take advantage of its position was the key topic for three days
this week, as 109 Arizonans attended the 87th Arizona Town Hall. Participants met at the Grand
Canyon to discuss "Maximizing Arizona's Opportunities in the Biosciences and Biotechnology."
Good fortune was key to Arizona's favorable positioning, but infrastructure improvements contributed
as well.
A timeline in the background report prepared by Arizona State University for participants traces
Arizona's involvement in the biosciences to as early as 300 B.C., when the Hohokam pioneered the use
of irrigation canals for farming in the desert.
More recently, Jeffrey Trent announced in 2002 that he would create the Translational Genomics
Research Institute in Phoenix. The institute, thankfully nicknamed TGen, focuses on using DNA
discoveries to prevent and cure disease.
Trent's move gave Phoenix one of the world's cutting-edge organizations, the result of his desire
to return to Arizona after having attended high school in Phoenix and graduate school at the UA.
Good fortune arose, too, in the creation of the Critical Path Institute in Tucson to study ways
to accelerate the creation and regulatory approval of new drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
placed C-Path in Tucson primarily because of Dr. Raymond Woosley, who in 2001 had been a candidate
to head the FDA but chose instead at the time to become the vice president for health sciences at
the UA.
However, Arizona's prospects do not come entirely from chance. Voters' approval in 2000 of
Proposition 301 provided extra sales tax money for education. The three state universities - UA,
ASU and NAU - used their share to create biosciences institutes. Another significant advance was
the Legislature's approval in 2003 of $440 million for university research facilities.
To build on this platform, Town Hall participants issued a preliminary report containing several
recommendations. They included creating tax incentives for private firms, seeking congressional
support for more federal funding and building the biomedical campus in downtown Phoenix, which will
house the expanded UA College of Medicine.
These recommendations are important. But Arizona's biosciences future is not assured. Perhaps the
greatest threat comes from a lack of public knowledge and interest, which easily can translate into
a lack of public policy action.
Here's a revealing illustration from Shirley Agnos, president of the Arizona Town Hall: Last
October's Town Hall on water was the largest ever in the organization's 44-year history. But this
Town Hall session was "the smallest in many, many years," even though the organization continued
to issue invitations up to the last minute. Though it would have been easy to fill the session
with professionals in the field, Agnos said, lay people chose not to attend.
That refusal rate could reflect a lack of comfort with publicly discussing biosciences and
biotechnology, something most of us know almost nothing about, or it could reflect a lack of
interest. Either way, it suggests that the state has a long way to go to create the needed public
climate to capitalize on scientific and technological advances.
Published: 11.06.2005 -- I was surprised at how close education reformers came to hijacking
last week's Arizona Town Hall.
The topic for the three-day gathering of 109 leading Arizonans was maximizing the state's
bioscience opportunities. But a substantial portion of the discussions and final report dealt
instead with improving the state's educational system from preschool through the universities.
It's interesting to wonder what this implies for public policy in Arizona.
Does it reveal, for one possibility, that the move to improve Arizona's public schools is
gaining even more momentum?
And since the state is flush with more tax revenues than anticipated, this could set the
stage for a bruising philosophical and political fight in the coming gubernatorial election
year.
Educational quality obviously is relevant to a field that requires a highly skilled and trained
work force. But the Town Hall participants suggested reforms far beyond those necessary to
provide workers for the biosciences.
I searched the 170-page background report prepared by Arizona State University to see if
it could have triggered this impulse to turn the Town Hall into a forum on educational reform.
It obviously didn't. It mentioned K-12 education only once, and that was in supplemental information.
But Gov. Janet Napolitano no doubt played a key role in her breakfast talk to the group on
the session's first morning. Napolitano just barely mentioned the biosciences before launching
into a discussion of education.
"I don't think there's any dispute in this room that America as a country is becoming
increasingly noncompetitive," the governor said as she slipped into her education theme. "And
that begins with not preparing the next generation to be competitive."
Napolitano bemoaned the loss of a sense of urgency - "I kind of get the feeling a lot of times
that we are kind of fat and sassy and things are good enough." And she criticized Arizona for
"some very bad decisions in the '90s," particularly the failure to invest in the education system.
Napolitano spoke of the need to better align the curriculum with work force requirements,
the need for higher expectations and the need to better support teachers.
"That means, my friends," the governor said, "they need to have career development opportunities
... professional development opportunities and, yes, we need to pay them more to stay in the
classroom, and I will be proposing something of that nature to the Legislature this year."
That promise of an increase in teacher pay obviously will catch many people's attention.
For their part, Town Hall participants were not timid in demanding educational reform. I
counted nine different references to the need for reform in their 22-page report of conclusions
and recommendations.
They want curriculums to be better aligned from preschool through the universities, publicly
funded pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, better math and science education (which requires
better-trained teachers), more funding for the entire education system, smaller class sizes,
higher expectations and a general but significant reform of the K-12 education system.
Notably, neither the governor nor the Town Hall report made any reference to the idea of tying
compensation to performance. I wonder whether that omission was deliberate or an oversight.
Either way, the stage is being set for an interesting legislative session and gubernatorial
election next year.
Reformers undoubtedly will demand that legislators allocate more money, while some key
legislators can be expected to argue that the only reforms necessary now are more competition
for the public schools in the form of vouchers and tax credits for contributions to private
schools.
I think the Town Hall discussions and report show that Arizonans are in for an interesting
political year.
Of course, education reform - no matter what you think reform consists of - is much more than
just politics. Arizona's children are at stake, as is the state's future.
Editorial columnist Jim Kiser appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at
jkiser@azstarnet.com or 520-807-8012.
A nationally recognized expert on the legal responses
to bioscience and biotechnology told the 87th Arizona Town Hall that they are "the wave of the
future" and that their importance in helping to create public policy cannot be overemphasized.
More than a hundred prominent Arizonans are gathered at the Grand Canyon for the Town Hall on
"Maximizing Arizona's Opportunities in the Biosciences and Biotechnology."
Indiana University Law Professor Roger Dworkin said American medicine and healthcare are in
dire straits. "It is so bad, you might even call it shameful," Dworkin said.
Dworkin cites figures that show Americans outspend other countries on healthcare, devoting
nearly 15% of their income to it, but getting almost nothing in return. In fact, he said, the
United States "ranks 28th in the world for healthy life expectancy."
In the long term, Dworkin called for Arizona to promote education to help regulate the
bioscience and biotechnology fields. He maintains that more education in science and the art
of public policy will create a new breed of governing citizen. "While we're waiting for that
to happen," Dworkin said, "we have to depend on the citizens such as those of you here at Town
Hall" to help develop public policy.
Town Hall participants are providing the ideas on how Arizona should approach bioscience and
biotechnology issues during a series of panel discussions. Their suggestions will become a final
report of findings and recommendations on Wednesday.
The Town Hall report will highlight the benefits of bioscience and biotechnology in healthcare
and other fields and call for programs to train Arizona's workforce for participation in a 21st
Century economy that will encompass the biosciences and biotechnology.
Delegates believe a workforce educated in bioscience and biotechnology will attract new businesses
to the state. One preliminary consensus stresses that the importance of a bioscience and biotech
industry must be communicated to citizens around the state and the benefits made available to all
Arizonans.
Governor Janet Napolitano says Arizona has the
opportunity "to be strategic, to invest and to leapfrog over other states" in the biosciences.
But she told delegates to the 87th Arizona Town Hall meeting at the Grand Canyon that it will
require a statewide consensus about where Arizona is going in the 21st Century.
More than 100 prominent residents from across the state are spending the next two days discussing
the topic, "Maximizing Arizona's Opportunities in the Biosciences and Biotechnology."
Napolitano told the gathering it can be done and held up Ireland - known as the Celtic Tiger
because of its economic aggressiveness - as an example. "We need to create in Arizona our own
Desert Tiger, and we need to give it some meat."
The governor said the state needs to find ways to keep teachers in the classroom, improve
the educational system and get children to take the classes they need to succeed. She said she
is often dismayed when she meets an eighth grader who hasn't had second year Algebra. When that
happens, she jokingly tells her staff, she knows how to get every student to take Algebra II.
"I say they don't get a driver's license until they pass it."
On Sunday night, the Director General of the Science Foundation Ireland told delegates that
"if Arizona wants to compete successfully in the 21st Century, it must do things differently
than other states are doing now." William C. Harris was the featured speaker at the opening
dinner.
"I admire the focus that this Town Hall group has on biotechnology, but I have to warn you
that it is sort of the holy grail of invention that almost every city and country is chasing,"
Harris said.
In remarks carried on the Internet in the first live web cast from the Grand Canyon, Harris
called on Arizona's universities to pave the way in showing that new ideas make a difference.
Harris said, "I believe it is time to truly link the best of our school system, namely the universities,
with schools that serve most of our population - the K-through-12 system."
Harris warned that he sees signs that complacency in the U. S. has infected the American
educational system, politics and industry. He cited the rapid growth of university systems in
China and India that are turning out hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists each year.
After the second World War, the United States "turned knowledge into something different - global
economic dominance." Harris told the participants at the 87th Arizona Town Hall that China, India
and Ireland have now cracked the code of how to become an ultra-competitive nation. Ireland has a
higher income per capita than most of Europe. As a result, he said, "There are more BMWs in Ireland
per capita than there are in Germany, and they're all new."
Both speeches by Governor Napolitano and Harris were web cast live over the Internet.
After two days of no-holds-barred discussion groups, participants will meet in a plenary session
on Wednesday to adopt a final report of findings and recommendations.
Arizona Town Hall is a private, non-profit civic organization that for 43 years has assembled
residents from throughout the state twice each year to debate major policy issues, develop consensus
and make recommendations. The 1,500-member organization is under the leadership of a 62-member
elected board of directors representing all 15 counties and a wide cross section of communities
throughout the state.
The 8:30 pm Sunday evening opening address by William C. Harris, Director General of the Science
Foundation of Ireland in Dublin, and the Monday morning comments from Arizona Governor Janet
Napolitano at 7:30 am were webcast live.
A timeline in the background report prepared by Arizona State University for participants traces
Arizona's involvement in the biosciences to as early as 300 B.C., when the Hohokam pioneered the use
of irrigation canals for farming in the desert.
Educational quality obviously is relevant to a field that requires a highly skilled and trained
work force. But the Town Hall participants suggested reforms far beyond those necessary to
provide workers for the biosciences.
Town Hall participants are providing the ideas on how Arizona should approach bioscience and
biotechnology issues during a series of panel discussions. Their suggestions will become a final
report of findings and recommendations on Wednesday.
After the second World War, the United States "turned knowledge into something different - global
economic dominance." Harris told the participants at the 87th Arizona Town Hall that China, India
and Ireland have now cracked the code of how to become an ultra-competitive nation. Ireland has a
higher income per capita than most of Europe. As a result, he said, "There are more BMWs in Ireland
per capita than there are in Germany, and they're all new."