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Local Government News Feature Story

Story:
Matthew Evans said when he was his daughter's age, he would take the city bus to the mall.
Currently, he said he would never trust his 12-year-old daughter to take the bus by herself.

Evans points to homelessness and crime as the main reasons behind this decision. Because of
these issues, Evans is running for City Council in District 2 which encapsulates the northeast
portion of the city in order to create a better place for his children and girlfriend.

Evans has been a Phoenix resident for all of his life. He attended Arizona State University while
being a full-time worker and father and is now pivoting in hopes of making a change.

“It’s a time investment, but [my girlfriend and I] were willing to make a sacrifice because it’s
important for us to raise our kids in a safe place,” Evans said in a Zoom interview.

Evans said that he has never been a fan of career politicians and wants to bring a regular
person who will provide direct answers and solutions to the city of Phoenix.

Another Arizona local named Juan Schoville who is also running for City Council in District 6
endorsed Evans because he says he sees a lot of similarities between himself and Evans.

“I endorsed Matt Evans because like me he is also a grassroots working class Localist who
wants to put residents first over politicians & corporate interests,” Schovile said in an email
interview.

Evans works as a Senior Productions Engineer. According to Evans, his job is to find the cause
of software issues. He hopes to apply this to fixing the homelessness issue in Phoenix.

“The strategy that I took was similar to what I do in my job as a Senior Productions Engineer,
working for a software company,” Evans said. “What I do for a living is to troubleshoot systems
and identify root causes of problems because we ultimately need to fix those problems.”

Evans said the turning point when he knew he had to run when he visited Los Angeles two and
a half years ago.

“We went down to the grocery store … In order to get there, you got to go underneath this
underpass,” Evans said. “And there were tents of homeless people just sleeping there…I just
thought…it's becoming embedded into the city of Los Angeles.
Evans said he wondered if this problem was extending to Phoenix. As an Uber driver over the
pandemic, Evans said he saw the issue right in front of his face every day and had to do
something about it.

“I had this new exposure to the city that I was always seeing,” Evans said. “…When you start to
drive around all of Phoenix on a daily basis, and it's in front of your face every day, it was really
eye-opening and I felt like the writing was on the wall.”

Others have also noticed this increase. Xavier Cuevas is a manager at a local Chipotle
restaurant in Phoenix and said that he has noticed an increase in homeless people and said he
doesn’t believe Arizona will spend the money to give homeless people the resources they need.

“I think homelessness can be changed…but as of right now Phoenix is too big and
overpopulated for us to have a really good plan for the people who are homeless,” Cuevas said.

Contacts:
Matt Evans - info@mattforphoenix.com
Juan Schoville - realjuanschoville@gmail.com
Xavier Cuevas - (602) 412-7155
Local Government Story

Story:
Despite net losses in the number of Phoenix Police Department officers, hiring efforts and pay
incentives have helped to build and retain the workforce, according to Assistant Police Chief
Bryan Chapman.

Chapman spoke with the Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee for the City of Phoenix on
Wednesday at the City Council Chambers to discuss the effectiveness of these changes.

The Phoenix Police Department suffered heavy losses due to retirements and resignations
since 2020 but is starting to effectively combat this decrease.

“If you look at where we were a year ago, in terms of where we are today, we are in a much
better position,” Chapman said. “Next year, we'll be back to some normalized numbers or even
a better position than we are today.”

Councilman Jim Waring expressed hesitancy regarding the disproportionate number of people
joining the force and the number of people exiting it.

“It sounds like we're still experiencing net losses over the last few months,” Waring said.

Chapman responded by saying that he estimated there would be around 200 new hires by the
end of the year compared to only 94 hires last year. This is an effort to counteract the higher
than average retirement and resignation rate which is estimated to be about 275 people this
year.

A weak police force typically leads to a higher crime rate in areas of high population, like
Phoenix. There are simply not enough police officers for all of the crimes.

“I think recruiting police officers might be the most important thing we're doing in the city,
[besides] providing water and running the airport,” Waring said. “But realistically, all that's gonna
grind to a halt we don’t have enough officers.”

In an effort to bounce back from this staffing shortage, the department has issued a number of
programs and changes to help new recruits apply.

The change with the best increase in applicants has been the change to degree waiver hires.
This means that if an applicant has a conferred associate's degree, they are exempt, or waived,
from the written test and go right into the background check.

There has been an overall increase of 800% in degree waiver hires after this change. This
means that there will be more well-educated officers out in the field and dealing with crime.
The background check system has also been improved greatly thanks to a new computer
program called eSOPH. This program makes what would be a two-month hard-copy process of
background checks into a process that takes as few as 15 days all online.

In addition, the Phoenix Police Department is working to get the Skillbridge program from the
Department of Defense approved by the end of the year.

The program pays for retired and transitioning military members' pay and benefits for up to 180
days of their training for the department. It is estimated that this program will save $40,000 in
pay and benefits per participant.

“I applaud the significant steps that [the police departments] have taken to streamline this
process,” Ann O’Brien, councilwoman and chair of the subcommittee said. “It is so much
different than when I first became a councilwoman.”

Councilwoman Yassamin Ansari echoed O’Brien’s statement and applauded Chapman’s

presentation by saying the new hires and programs will provide “tremendous benefits to the
city.”

“This will be a couple of year process to get back to where we were,” Chapman said. “It was a
couple of year process to get where we are now.”

Sources:
Councilwoman Ann O’Brien, Chair
Phone - 602-262-7444​
Email - council.district.1@phoenix.gov
Councilman Jim Waring
Phone - 602-262-7445
Email - jim@jimwaring.com or council.district.2@phoenix.gov
Councilwoman Yassamin Ansari
Phone - 602-262-7492​
Email - yass@yassaminforphoenix.com or council.district.7@phoenix.gov
Jacqui MacConnell
Email - jacqui@angelsonpatrol.org
Melinda Cadena
Phone - (602) 541-4529
Email - melinda@angelsonpatrol.org
Bryan Chapman
Email - chapmanb@phoenix.gov
Statistical Story

Story:
Jazz in Arizona gives hundreds of children and adults in the greater Phoenix area a chance to
learn and play the more than century-old genre of jazz in many different ways.

Jazz in Arizona, a non-profit organization that operates out of The Nash Jazz Club, is currently
located on the culturally diverse Roosevelt Row right near the Roosevelt and Central Avenue
Lightrail station.

Joel Goldenthal, the executive director of Jazz in Arizona, seeks to teach anybody he can,
especially kids, about the history and culture of jazz.

“Ain’t nobody else doing [what we do],” Goldenthal said. “We are out exposing kids in schools.
We have a program, this organization called Act One that buses Title I kids in from schools into
shows that we do here at 10 on a Tuesday morning.”

The organization has grown substantially over the past 10 years since it first started hosting
shows and teaching programs at The Nash.

According to their 990s, Jazz in Arizona earned almost one million dollars in revenue in 2020
alone. This is a nearly three times increase since 2012.

Much of the money they make comes from grants and donations. This was extremely beneficial
when COVID hit as it relieved a lot of the pressure economically, according to Goldenthal.

“We were very fortunate to come through COVID. We were able to take advantage of all kinds
of forgivable loans and money that was made available to help non-profits and arts
organizations get through.”

The organization also raises money by hosting concerts and providing educational programs
that put on concerts of their own each semester, according to the Director of Education Dr. Clark
Gibson.

“We currently have Nash Futures [for] elementary school and junior high students, Nash Legacy
[for] high school students, Nash Vocal Ensemble [for] 16 yrs and up, and Nash DivAZ [which is
an] all-female group,” Gibson said.

While students are expected to bring their own instruments, they typically only have to pay a
small price, typically around $15, for the masterclasses, or lessons, that Jazz in Arizona holds
over the summer, according to Gibson.
Students are also not required to do any outside fundraising, like high school sports teams have
to, according to Gibson, however, they are allowed to participate and even play at fundraising
events the organization as a whole puts on.

According to Gibson, some of the largest expenditures don’t come from putting on concerts but
from paying teachers for these programs and masterclasses.

“The cost to put on a concert is relatively low, for example we may have to pay a sound tech but
the cost of the education programs in general are donation and grant funded,” Gibson said.
“Teacher pay is our largest expense. We spend a great amount of money each year paying
teacher salaries.”

Goldenthal hopes to keep providing a space in Arizona for jazz to live and thrive while
continuing to educate the youth while sticking to his mission statement.

“It’s a challenge because my booking is mission-driven not cash register-driven,” Goldenthal

said. “If I only booked musicians or acts that were gonna fill the seats up all the time, I’d have to
abandon the mission.

“There are plenty of people that we want to present that may not have the audience for
whatever reason but they’re important to present. [Whether that’s] because it’s new music or
innovative. Or, on the other side of the fence, because they’re historically significant to the art
form.”

Sources:
Joel Goldenthal - joel@thenash.org / 602-750-7045

Dr. Clark Gibson - clark.gibson@thenash.org / 205-907-1245

Jazz in Arizona 990s - Link