On It: Inner Loops + Annexation "The Mesa City Council believes that its people, not leaders, are what makes a City great and actively works to encourage citizen participation in the decision-making process. Whether it is through neighborhood meetings, advisory boards and committees, telephone calls and letters, or email, the Mesa City Council sets policies based on the input and needs of its citizens."
LINK to the Calendar and Council, Committee & Board Research Center http://mesa.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx Note where "Items from Citizens Present" appears in what order on the agenda:
"Citizens are provided an opportunity to address the Council on any issue under an agenda item titled "Items from Citizens Present." This item appears on the agenda of every regular Monday Council meeting and Thursday Study Session. Blue Speaker/Comment cards are available for those who wish to comment. Or, you may download a copy of the comment card [PDF] and hand it in during the meeting.
A maximum of three individual speakers is allowed at each meeting, and each speaker is allowed three minutes.
Note: Because of the Open Meeting Law, the Council cannot take action on any item brought up by a citizen at the meeting, but may refer items for further study . . .
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FINAL AGENDA FOR STUDY SESSION Printed o 12/05/2019
Hear a presentation and discuss the coordination, programs, and notices requirement for development within the Phoenix - Mesa Gateway Airport Overflight Overlay District; and the overflights within the City with a focus on the Inner Loop District.
Hear a presentation and discuss proposed annexations (ANX19-00420 (State Land) and ANX18-00788 (Private Property Owners)) within the Inner Loop District.
Hear a presentation and discuss the coordination, programs, and notices requirement for development within the Phoenix - Mesa Gateway Airport Overflight Overlay District; and the overflights within the City with a focus on the Inner Loop District.
Presentation is 21 Pages (Power Point slides) given by "Nana" *Appiah, Planning Director for the City of Mesa as of January 2019
BLOGGER NOTE: * The word "Nana" is not a proper or legal first name - it's an honorary title given by tribes of people in Africa. The presentation states that hand-outs will be provided.
Hear a presentation and discuss proposed annexations (ANX19-00420 (State Land) and ANX18-00788 (Private Property Owners)) within the Inner Loop District.
"Even as the U.S. economy hums along at a favorable pace, there is a vast segment of workers today earning wages low enough to leave their livelihood and families extremely vulnerable. That’s one of the main takeaways from our new analysis, in which we found that 53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64—accounting for 44% of all workers—qualify as “low-wage.” Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual earnings are about $18,000.
"Jobs play a central role in the lives of most adults. As forces like globalization and automation reshape the labor market, it is clear that some people and places are positioned to do well while others risk becoming collateral damage. The well-educated and technically savvy find ample employment opportunities, while those with lower levels of education face a labor market that is decidedly less welcoming, with lower wages and less potential for career growth. Meanwhile, some regions dramatically outpace others in job growth, incomes, and productivity, raising disquieting questions about how best to promote broad-based economic growth.
Against this backdrop, we provide in a new report extensive demographic and occupational data on low-wage workers nationally and in more than 350 metropolitan areas.
We segment low-wage workers into nine distinct clusters based on age, educational attainment, and school enrollment—factors we judged as providing the simplest yet most comprehensive framework to assess employment prospects . . .
The existence of low-wage work is hardly a surprise, but most people—except, perhaps, low-wage workers themselves—underestimate how prevalent it is. Many also misunderstand who these workers are. They are not only students, people at the beginning of their careers, or people who need extra spending money. A majority are adults in their prime working years, and low-wage work is the primary way they support themselves and their families.
Low-wage work is a source of economic vulnerability
There are two central questions when considering the prospects of low-wage workers:
1. Is the job a springboard or a dead end?
2. Does the job provide supplemental, “nice to have” income, or is it critical to covering basic living expenses?
> In our analysis, over half of low-wage workers have levels of education suggesting they will stay low-wage workers.
This includes
20 million workers ages 25-64 with a high school diploma or less, and
another 7 million young adults 18-24 who are not in school and do not have a college degree.
We define “low-wage work” as occupations in which, nationally, at least one-quarter of all workers make less than $10/hour.
The major low-wage categories include:
(1) sales and related occupations;
(2) food preparation and serving related occupations;
(3) building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations;
(4) personal care and service occupations; and
(5) farming, fishing, and forestry occupations.
> About two-thirds (67 percent) of workers in low-wage occupations live in suburban communities, just below the share of total workers who live in suburbs (69 percent).
For more people to escape low-wage work, we need to create more jobs paying higher wages
The data presented in this analysis highlight the scale of the issue: Nearly half of all workers earn wages that are not enough, on their own, to promote economic security. As policymakers and leaders of the private, social, and civic sectors seek to promote more inclusive economic growth, they need to keep these workers in mind.
"If you read the Constitution closely, you'll discover that our founders spilled no ink on education,"she said.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos called Arizona a "leader" in school choice and praised its Empowerment Scholarship Account program during her visit to the state Thursday.
"Arizona is really a leader in giving parents and students the kind of freedom that they need to find their right fit for education, . . . And I'm so grateful for the example that you are setting here." _______________________________________________________________ NOTICE: How the words choice and freedom have been mis-appropriated and given new meanings adapted to the political agenda of the conservative privately-funded ALEC who chose a location in Scottsdale for their 2019 States and Nation Policy Summit _________________________________________________________________________
Betsy DeVos in conversation with Gov. Doug DiceyDucey:
"DeVos is in Arizona attending the American Legislative Exchange Council policy summit. The round table discussion With Gov. Doug Ducey and remarks later in the day centered around her Education Freedom Scholarships proposal. Please scroll farther down to watch-and-listen to those more detailed comments and how the interaction appears spoon-fed, staged for public consumption and coordinated and rehearsed ahead of time. _________________________________________________________________________
In the afternoon, DeVos used Arizona's ESA program as an example of a state promoting what she called "expanded education freedom"
"Arizona is loving their ESAs,"she said.
Ducey also commended Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program, which directly gives qualifying families taxpayer money to send a child to private school or cover other designated education costs if the child fits into a qualifying category, including being a foster child or attending a failing school.
From Breitbart News: #RedforEd Arizona Teachers to Protest Trump Adminstration Education Policy at ALEC Meeting "The focus of the protest will be the educational policies of the Trump administration as implemented by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the Charles Koch Foundation, and members of ALEC who support vouchers. . .
The protest marks yet another instance of the politicization of public school teachers by union leaders and organizers of the #RedforEd movement. . ."
QUESTION: What does Andrew Breitbart not know about the Arizona State Constitution?
"A well-funded and subversive leftist movement of teachers in the United States threatens to tilt the political balance nationwide in the direction of Democrats across the country as Republicans barely hang on in key states that they need to hold for President Donald Trump to win re-election and for Republicans to have a shot at retaking the House and holding onto their Senate majority. This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals–higher teacher pay and better education conditions–are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever."
Source: Breitbart News ________________________________________________________________________ Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos joins ALECTV at the States and Nation Policy Summit
Published on Dec 5, 2019
Views: 35 at time of upload to this blog
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos joins Bill Meierling for this very special edition of ALECTV at the States and Nation Policy Summit.
Education Secretary pushes school vouchers at Arizona event
December 6, 2019
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday touted her $5 billion plan to fund tuition for private school students, telling a room of supportive parents and lobbyists that it would improve the quality of education.
DeVos praised Arizona's devotion to school choice programs that provide public funding for private and charter schools.
“Arizona is a real leader in giving parents and students the kind of freedom that they need to find their right fit for education, and I'm so grateful for the example that you are setting here,” DeVos said, seated next to Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on the sidelines of a conference of conservative legislators.
DeVos is pushing her plan to create "Education Freedom Scholarships" allowing businesses and individuals to get 100% federal tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting groups. . .
The Republican is a major backer of school vouchers and formerly led the American Federation for Children, which promotes the programs in Arizona and other states.
Arizona has a similar program that uses tax credits to fund private school tuition scholarships. It also has an “Empowerment Scholarship Account” school voucher program that takes state general fund money and funnels it to more than 6,000 private or home-schooled students.
Arizona public school teachers revolted in 2018 and persuaded voters to block an expansion of the state's school voucher program enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature and endorsed by Ducey. Voters rejected the expansion by a nearly 2-1 margin. Tens of thousands of teachers also went on strike that year over low pay and school funding and won big pay raises from Ducey and Arizona's Republican-dominated Legislature after he had rejected them earlier.
Despite the voucher program rejection at the ballot box, Ducey praised the program and urged DeVos to take it nationwide.
“Empowerment scholarship accounts work and there's no better time to scale this successful model to the rest of the country,” he said.
DeVos says her new $5 billion tax credit program allows parents to choose the best education for their children. Democrats pronounced it dead on arrival in Congress, but DeVos hasn’t given up.
Her plan would allow states to design their own programs or use the credits in existing programs, with parents allowed to use the funds for a education costs, including school tuition, tutoring, special education costs and home schooling.
Public education backers have said vouchers and private school tax credit plans drain tax dollars that should support public schools.
Later Thursday, DeVos carried a similar message to a conference held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of conservative lawmakers, business interests and others on the right who promote the advance of conservative legislation. The group known as ALEC drew protesters from several liberal groups and teachers at the start of the three-day event on Wednesday.
“Families in every state need more opportunities,” DeVos said, adding President Donald Trump's administration will back efforts in the states to expand school choice.
She also criticized the existence of her own agency, saying education should be left to the states.
“Federal taxpayers contribute less than 9% of total education funding in this country,” DeVos said. “So why is a federal agency of more than 3,000 employees needed to administer it at all?”
