Important Information
CSA Board of Directors Adopt Legislative Priorities
Concerned by the ongoing impact of state cost shifts on county operations and county residents, the County Supervisors Association Board of Directors held their annual Legislative Summit in Navajo County this past October. The Board met to discuss their legislative priorities and proposals for legislation to address county issues. State budget impacts and the recession have strained county budgets. Arizona counties are currently faced with increased mandated costs and significant losses in local and federal revenue. In an effort to address these concerns, county supervisors adopted three priorities for the upcoming 2012 legislative session:
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Repeal the prisoner shift contained in SB1621
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Eliminate the mandated county contributions
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Freeze and/or reduce Highway User Revenue Fund shifts to DPS and MVD
For more information on the 2012 legislative session county priorities, click here.
Celebrate April 2012
National County Government Month
 National County Government Month (NCGM) is celebrated every April by counties across the country to enhance public awareness and understanding about the roles and responsibilities of county government. This year's theme is "Healthy Counties, Healthy Families."
Counties participate in NCGM by hosting a variety of community outreach events and activities. This year the focus is on activities that promote your county’s health services, wellness programs, recreational programs and related services.
For more information on how your county can participate in this annual event, click here:
National County Government Month - April.
2012 Gabe Zimmerman Public Service Awards Call for Nominations
The Center for the Future of Arizona has announced nominations are being accepted for the 2012 Gabe Zimmerman Public Service Awards, a statewide competition recognizing non-elected public servants who serve as a critical link between citizens and the people elected to represent them.
The awards are named in honor of Gabrielle Giffords' director of community outreach, who lost his life on January 8, 2011, while serving the citizens of Arizona.
Awards will be presented in three categories: Leadership, Innovation and Civic Engagement. The awards are an opportunity to showcase the commitment and dedication of more than 100,000 public servants working at all levels of government. The nomination deadline is June 4, 2012.
With support from the Zimmerman family, the 2012 Gabe Zimmerman Public Service Awards are sponsored by the County Supervisors Association of Arizona (CSA), Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., and the League of Arizona Cities and Towns. Honorees will be recognized at the 2012 League of Arizona Cities and Towns Annual Meeting being held in August.
To nominate a public servant for the 2012 Gabe Zimmerman Public Service Awards, visit www.TheArizonaWeWant.org.
Superv isors Call On Forest Service To Implement Four Forest Restoration Initiative
With wildfires burning throughout the state, a coalition of northern Arizona county supervisors is calling on the U.S. Forest Service to implement a comprehensive forest restoration plan aimed at preventing landscape-scale fires, such as the Wallow Fire currently burning in Greenlee and Apache Counties.
In an op-ed published in the Arizona Republic on Saturday, Supervisors David Tenney, Richard Lunt, Tommie Martin, Mark Herrington, and Mandy Metzger called on federal officials to fully implement the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), an historic effort supported by industry, environmental groups, and local elected officials, to restore 2.4 million acres of forest across northern Arizona’s four national forests.
“If implemented properly by the Forest Service, 4FRI has the potential to make fires such as the Wallow and Rodeo Chediski a thing of the past,” the supervisors declared. “As the Wallow Fire continues to burn, Forest Service leadership at the regional and national level has a solemn obligation to unequivocally support these efforts and ensure a full and comprehensive implementation of 4FRI.”
According to the supervisors, what makes 4FRI unique is its call for the Forest Service to partner with private industry to restore the forest across much larger landscapes at little or no cost to the federal government. Whereas previous forest restoration efforts have relied on the Forest Service to pay for restoration thinning, 4FRI recognizes that the agency will never have sufficient resources to restore forests on the scale necessary to prevent unnatural landscape-scale fires like Wallow or Rodeo-Chediski, or the Schultz Fire in Coconino County.
If executed properly, 4FRI would enable the Forest Service to restore nearly 50,000 acres per year throughout northern Arizona, nearly ten times more than the Forest Service is restoring today through the White Mountain Stewardship Contract alone.
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