Tuesday, April 6, 2021
The City of Tucson Parks and Recreation department will open three more extended-season pools and all splash pads on Monday, April 19.
For more information on pools, go to the City of Tucson website.
City splashpads are:
- Catalina Park Splash Pad, 925 N. Fourth Ave.
- Clements Splash Pad, 8155 E. Poinciana Drive
- Naida Jane Baker Splash Pad, 2536 N. Castro Ave.
- Palo Verde Park Splash Pad, 355 S. Mann Ave.
City officials recommend that groups are 10 or fewer people, visitors should stay 6 feet away from anyone they do not live with, stay home if feeling sick and follow all other CDC guidelines to keep safe. Masks are required when not in the water.
The landscape for this year’s Tucson City Council came into focus yesterday as the deadline to turn in nominating petitions arrived and eight candidates filed to run for office in the three wards up for grabs.
No Republican candidates filed to run this year, but two independent candidates did turn in their petitions ahead of yesterday’s deadline.
There are three seats up for grabs in Wards 3, 5 and 6. Barring successful legal challenges to nominating petitions or write-in campaigns in the primary, here’s how the ballot is shaping up:
Ward 3: This north-central seat is wide open as Paul Durham, who won the seat four years ago, stepped down last month for personal reasons. Democrat Karin Uhlich, a former Ward 3 council member, was appointed the seat but won’t be seeking election this year.
Two Democrats filed to run: Kevin Dahl and Juan Padres.
Dahl turned in his signatures last week.
“We hit the ground running with strong support from friends, neighbors, and Tucson’s environmental leaders," said Dahl, a resident of Ward's Samos neighborhood near Campbell and Grant for more than three decades. "Our message of addressing climate change, with its record-breaking heat and drought, has really resonated with Tucson voters."
Dahl, who has led the Tucson Audubon Society and Native Seeds/SEARCH and now works for the National Parks Conservation Association, has gathered a strong team of environmentalists behind him, including Congressman Raul Grijalva, who said that Dahl "has had a strong career as an advocate for the environment. He is strategic, passionate and inclusive.”
Two weird movies are now playing at local theaters. One of them is an arthouse offering that takes some bizarre twists, while another is as big as movies get on the dollars scale. Both...pretty damn weird.
MOVIE REVIEW: GODZILLA VS. KONG
Now Playing at Roadhouse Cinemas and Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18 (also streaming on HBO Max)
The Monsterverse goes full-tilt bonkers with Godzilla vs. Kong, a good enough smackdown between the infamous big boys, as long as they are punching each other or somebody else. As for the humans in this series, I wish they would just shut up.
Well, let’s step back for a second. Gareth Edwards started the Monsterverse in 2014 with his Godzilla, which did fine on the human front because it had Bryan Cranston, albeit only for part of its running time, delivering some real acting. Since Cranston kicked the bucket in the series, the likes of Aaron Taylor Johnson, Millie Bobbie Brown and a confused Sally Hawkins have had to handle the drama, and they, for the most part, have sucked.
Human suckage continues in this installment, with dopey subplots involving Brown, an embarrassed Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgard that provide nothing but opportunities for the producers to save on huge special effects scenes.
With 570 new cases reported today, the total number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases reached 845,480 cases as of Tuesday, April 6, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Pima County, which reported 69 new cases today, has seen 113,171 confirmed cases.
With six new deaths reported this morning, a total of 16,996 Arizonans have died after contracting COVID-19, including 2,359 deaths in Pima County, according to the April 6 report.
A total of 546 coronavirus patients were in the hospital as of April 5. That’s roughly 11% of the number hospitalized at the peak of the winter surge, which reached 5,082 on Jan. 11. The summer peak was 3,517, which was set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent lowest number of hospitalized COVID patients was 468, set on Sept. 27, 2020.
A total of 892 people visited emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on April 5. That number represents 38% of the record high of 2,341 set on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. That number had peaked during the summer wave at 2,008 on July 7, 2020; it hit a subsequent low of 653 on Sept. 28, 2020.
A total of 149 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on April 5, which roughly 12.5% of the record 1,183 ICU patients set on Jan. 11. The summer’s record number of patients in ICU beds was 970, set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent low was 114 on Sept. 22, 2020.
PHOENIX – Just like any sports franchise, the NCAA is a business, but does a correlation exist between how much money a collegiate athletic department spends on a team and how far it goes in the postseason?
In the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament, the answer this season is “yes.” According to data collected from the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis, when comparing all of the teams that made it to the Sweet 16, Baylor University, the University of Connecticut, the University of South Carolina and Stanford University had the highest expenses.
And three out of those four teams – UConn, South Carolina and Stanford – made it into the Final Four of the tournament.
Arizona, meanwhile, which made it to the title game but lost to Stanford, was the outlier, ranking 15th in expenses of the 16 schools.
Data is from the reporting period of July 2018 through June 2019, the most recent available.
Monday, April 5, 2021
With 608 new cases reported today, the total number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases neared 845,000 as of Monday, April 5, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Pima County, which reported 72 new cases today, has seen 113,102 of the state’s 844,910 confirmed cases.
With no new deaths reported this morning, a total of 16,990 Arizonans have died after contracting COVID-19, including 2,359 deaths in Pima County, according to the April 5 report.
A total of 516 coronavirus patients were in the hospital as of April 4. That’s roughly 10% of the number hospitalized at the peak of the winter surge, which reached 5,082 on Jan. 11. The summer peak was 3,517, which was set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent lowest number of hospitalized COVID patients was 468, set on Sept. 27, 2020.
A total of 722 people visited emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on April 4. That number represents 31% of the record high of 2,341 set on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. That number had peaked during the summer wave at 2,008 on July 7, 2020; it hit a subsequent low of 653 on Sept. 28, 2020.
A total of 148 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on April 4, which roughly 12.5% of the record 1,183 ICU patients set on Jan. 11. The summer’s record number of patients in ICU beds was 970, set on July 13, 2020. The subsequent low was 114 on Sept. 22, 2020.
Health officials seeing slight bump in COVID cases after Ducey lifts restrictions
After Gov. Doug Ducey recently began lifting COVID restrictions, Arizona reversed a trend of 10 straight weeks of declining cases and saw a slight bump in coronavirus cases, following a national trend of higher cases and hospitalizations, according to an April 1 memo from Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.
