The woman chosen to be the next director of Arizona’s state parks once carved her name into a historic park’s property in southeastern Arizona.

She also helped recover thousands of acres of burned parks land in San Diego County and launched an innovative system to allow people to make campground reservations online.

The Arizona State Parks Board’s unanimous selection of Renée Bahl to take over the parks system next month has polarized state leaders.

Parks officials say she is a dynamic, experienced professional who will help lead the parks system out of a historic budget crisis.

Bahl, 40, is “a vigorous, intelligent, resourceful person who knows how to get through the most difficult of times,” said Bill Scalzo, who led the selection committee for the Arizona State Parks Board.

But at least one lawmaker says her selection as director is inappropriate given a vandalism incident that took place a decade ago.

Bahl, a former assistant state parks director, oversaw historic preservation at the San Rafael Ranch.

In 1999, another employee caught her etching her first name and the year into the wall of a historic adobe barn.

Bahl was disciplined but remained in her job until 2002, when she left to become director of parks and recreation for San Diego County in California.

State Rep. Daniel Patterson, D-Tucson, criticized the selection.

“Bahl should be fully questioned about her vandalism of state historic properties, and rejected as a poor choice for this important job,” Patterson wrote on his blog. “Someone as clueless as Bahl on protecting state treasures is clearly not appropriate to head state parks.”

Through a spokeswoman, Bahl declined to comment. Officials said they were impressed with Bahl’s education, which includes a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public administration with a focus on natural resource management.

Scalzo said Bahl brought up the vandalism incident during an interview and apologized for it, saying she had made a mistake.

“One thing I really appreciated is she brought that up,” Scalzo said. “She didn’t say, ‘I’ve had a perfect career I don’t make mistakes.’ ”

Bahl, who will make about $140,000 a year, will take over for Ken Travous, who is retiring after 23 years leading the parks system.

Lawmakers swept $36 million from parks coffers in the last year, prompting the closure of three parks and threatening several more with closure. The board is working to prevent further cuts proposed by the Legislature’s Republican leadership, which board members say would devastate the system.

Scalzo called criticism a distraction from the parks board’s most pressing problems.

“We need help; we don’t need criticism,” he said. “We need to have this new person come in here with everyone wishing her the best, because she’s going to need every bit of it.”

Arizona’s decision to defer payments of $300 million to school districts expecting the money by Friday means the districts will have to take out loans to meet payrolls.

Tucson-area districts are worried about losing capital funds saved for new schools and other improvements. The loans, registered warrants, come from the county treasurer’s office and districts pay interest on them.

The budget deal, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, closes a $650 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year by taking $400 million from the school districts and universities and using $250 million in federal stimulus funding.

It pushes $100 million of state aid for universities and $300 million of state payments to school districts into next fiscal year.

Sunnyside was expecting $6.4 million Friday, spokeswoman Monique Soria said, “and now we won’t get it until next fiscal year.”

Another wrinkle: Districts that have saved money exceeding 4 percent of their maintenance and operations budgets, which is the state cap, will not get the money at all because the plan requires districts to pay back their share of the $300 million from the excess funds.

The Tucson Unified School District, which had expected $32 million Friday, doesn’t have carryover money the state can “sweep,” spokeswoman Chyrl Hill Lander said.

Neither does Marana Unified, said Chief Financial Officer Dan Contorno. Still, he’s worried, based on the wording of the legislation, that other funds may be at risk.

Marana has about $3 million in carry-forward funds in unrestricted and soft capital: money being saved for things like new schools, textbooks and replacing buses that break down.

“I think the Legislature intended to protect the 4 percent in M&O (maintenance and operation) plus any balances in unrestricted and soft capital, but that’s not the way it’s worded,” Contorno said.

Amphi’s Todd Jaeger, associate to the superintendent regarding legal counsel, had similar concerns.

“This could impact our programs and our schools that have wisely and appropriately accrued capital funds over time to enable them to make large purchases,” he said.

As for the University of Arizona, roughly $40 million in state aid will be held back until the fiscal year that begins July 1. Johnny Cruz, director of media relations, said UA will have to rely on cash reserves maintained by some of its self-sustaining operations such as the bookstore, residence halls and the Student Union.

Citizen Staff Writer Eric Sagara contributed to this article.

PHOENIX – Gov. Jan Brewer signed the latest midyear budget-balancing legislation into law Thursday but added a warning to lawmakers that they should bend her way next time.

“It would be fiscally irresponsible for the Legislature to ignore the depths of the (2010-2011) state deficit by promoting a budget plan for (2009-2010) that relies primarily on one-time measures,” Brewer said in a statement.

To close the latest $650 million shortfall in the current budget, GOP lawmakers resorted to accounting maneuvers that postpone $400 million of education spending into the next fiscal year. They also included $250 million of stimulus money, an amount larger than Brewer wanted but much less than lawmakers sought.

The plan also set the stage for the state to grab some school district savings to help balance the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Estimates on how much money that would produce aren’t firm.

Brewer told lawmakers that the next state budget shouldn’t rely primarily on similar maneuvers because that would spell trouble for the following fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2010. It also faces a projected big shortfall that spending cuts alone won’t close, Brewer said.

Most majority Republican legislators have balked at Brewer’s call for a temporary tax increase to produce $1 billion of new revenue to help balance the next several budgets in face of deteriorating revenue collection.

Brewer said she “will not approve” a budget that doesn’t take into account the following year’s “needs and requirements.”

“I am hopeful that, with a continued emphasis on negotiation and compromise, the Legislature can reach consensus with my policy goals to approve a (2009-2010) budget package promptly,” she said.

Lawmakers approved the $650 million plan about 3 1/2 months after they closed a previous $1.6 billion budget shortfall. That action included spending cuts, raids on special-purpose funds and use of stimulus money.

FLAGSTAFF – A group of environmentalists is appealing a plan by the U.S. Forest Service to log an area north of the Grand Canyon.

It’s the second logging plan on the Kaibab National Forest that conservationists have challenged this year. Both sites are within an area where 58,000 acres burned in 2006.

The plan approved in March calls for logging on 9,100 acres and the planting of conifer trees on nearly 10,000 acres in an effort to restore forest conditions.

Conservationists say the plan makes no sense economically or ecologically. They say it would erode soil, damage habitat for the threatened Mexican spotted owl and increase the potential for wildfires.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians signed on to the appeal filed Thursday.

PHOENIX – A woman in Arizona suffering from a lung condition has apparently become the fourth person in the nation to die with swine flu.

The Maricopa County Health Department reported Thursday that the woman, in her late 40s, died last week of what appears to be complications of the new strain of influenza.

Laboratory tests confirmed that the woman was infected with the flu strain. Health department spokeswoman Jeanene Fowler says the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to add her to the official national tally on Friday.

The case would bring the number of swine flu deaths in the nation to four and put the worldwide death toll at 70, with an estimated 6,672 cases in 33 countries.

For D’backs, Rockies, third team

A Marana spring training complex as a February-March site for Major League Baseball is still in the works and could be home to up to three clubs.

“We really think we can populate a three-team facility in Marana,” said Tom Tracy, chairman of the Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority.

And two of those teams could still be the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies, he added.

Both MLB teams are exploring options to move from their Tucson spring training homes at Tucson Electric Park and Hi Corbett Field, respectively.

The Diamondbacks’ contract with Pima County to conduct spring training at TEP expires in 2012. The Rockies are obligated to play at Hi Corbett through 2011.

But Tracy maintained the move of either team is far from a done deal, despite a published report out of Phoenix that indicated the Diamondbacks may be close to a decision to relocate spring camp to the Phoenix area.

“I spoke with the Diamondbacks as recently as 24 hours ago,” Tracy said. “They have not made a decision to leave.”

The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday that Diamondbacks Chief Executive Derrick Hall said the team was considering three proposals for new spring training facilities in Maricopa County.

But team officials also have said they are interested in the proposed Marana spring training complex, particularly if the regional sports authority is successful in bringing a third MLB team to share such a facility with Tucson’s existing Cactus League teams, Tracy said.

“We are having active conversations with another major league team to have them come here as early as next spring,” Tracy said.

He declined to name the team.

Talks continue with a Japanese major league team to join the Cactus League and play its games at TEP, Tracy said.

A major component of the Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority’s mission is to establish a nationally known baseball academy in Tucson, in conjunction with Major League Baseball and the Chicago White Sox.

The region could become a national site for youth and amateur baseball tournaments, as well, Tracy said.

The White Sox set off the potential loss of spring training in Tucson when the team moved this year to a new facility in Glendale that it shares with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who moved from their longtime Grapefruit League home in Vero Beach, Fla.

The Diamondbacks’ and Rockies’ contracts allow them to leave early if there are not at least three MLB teams training in Tucson.

Tracy said the sports authority also is considering life after the Diamondbacks and Rockies, if those teams decide to leave.

“There is a lot going on and there is a lot going on outside of the Diamondbacks and Rockies,” he said without elaborating.

The sports authority would need permission from both the Arizona Legislature and Pima County voters to enact a tax to fund a new complex in Marana. The proposed tax would be on hotel rooms, restaurants, and other businesses that benefit from the estimated $30 million that spring training brings to Tucson.

FLAGSTAFF – A federal appeals court has ruled that a woman who started part of the largest wildfire in Arizona history must exhaust remedies in a tribal court.

Valinda Jo Elliott was lost on White Mountain Apache land for two days in 2002 when she started a blaze to get the attention of a television news helicopter. That fire merged into the Rodeo-Chediski fire.

She wasn’t criminally prosecuted, but the tribe brought a civil case against her.

After she tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed in tribal courts, she turned to a federal district court.

That court held that Elliott must exhaust her tribal court remedies and dismissed the case without prejudice.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling Thursday.

Offer is good for a year, with restrictions

Sales of Lipitor hit $12.4 billion for Pfizer Inc. in 2008, making it the company's top-selling prescription drug.

TRENTON, N.J. – Pfizer Inc. says it will provide 70 of its most widely prescribed prescription drugs including Lipitor and Viagra for free to people who have lost their jobs and health insurance.

The world’s biggest drugmaker said Thursday it will give away the medicines for up to a year to Americans who lost jobs since Jan. 1 and have been on the Pfizer drug for three months or more.

The announcement comes amid massive job losses caused by the recession and a campaign in Washington to rein in health care costs and extend coverage. The move could earn Pfizer some goodwill in that debate after long being a target of critics of drug industry prices and sales practices.

The program also likely will help keep those patients loyal to Pfizer brands.

“Everybody knows now a neighbor, a relative who has lost their job and is losing their insurance. People are definitely hurting out there,” Dr. Jorge Puente, Pfizer’s head of pharmaceuticals outside the U.S. and Europe and a champion of the project, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “Our aim is to help people bridge this point.”

The idea for the program came just five weeks ago, at a leadership training meeting, as the workers discussed how many patients are struggling, Puente said.

He said he urged top management to approve the program, presenting a recent Associated Press article about how newly uninsured diabetics are suffering serious complications because they can no longer afford the medicines and testing supplies. Approval came quickly.

“It was my idea,” he said. “I floated it, and the reception it got was so dramatic that it very quickly became our idea.”

Colleagues suggested employees could donate to a fund to help support the effort, Puente said. He said some employees had tears in their eyes when discussing how they could help people who had lost jobs.

Officials for New York-based Pfizer said they don’t know how much the program will cost and haven’t put a cap on spending for it.

Applicants will have to sign a statement that they are suffering financial hardship and provide a “pink slip” or similar employer notice. Applications will be accepted through Dec. 31, with medication provided for up to 12 months after approval, or until the person becomes insured again.

Starting Thursday, patients can call a toll-free number, 866-706-2400, to sign up, and those whose drugs are not included in the program will be referred to other company aid programs. Starting July 1, patients can also apply through the Web site, www.PfizerHelpfulAnswers.com, which has information about the other Pfizer aid programs.

Pfizer and the rest of the drug industry are trying to have a voice in the debate over how to overhaul the U.S. health care system, partly by joining in a pledge this week to help hold down inflation of health costs.

Pfizer’s program comes at a time when many drugmakers, including Pfizer, have been raising prices on their drugs, partly to offset declines in revenue as the global recession reduces the number of prescriptions people can afford to fill.

The 70-plus drugs covered in the program include several diabetes drugs and some of Pfizer’s top money makers, from cholesterol fighter Lipitor and painkiller Celebrex to fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica and Viagra for impotence. Drugs from several other popular classes such as antibiotics, antidepressants, antifungal treatments, heart mediations, contraceptives and smoking cessation products also are included. Cheaper generic versions are available for quite a few of the drugs.

Pfizer said that from 2004 through 2008, its patient assistance programs helped 5.1 million people get 51 million Pfizer prescriptions for free or at reduced cost, with a total value of $4.8 billion.

ABOVE: Gabriel Baca (left), his brother Antonio Baca (center) and Jose Rivera enjoy the new sodded athletic field at St. John's Community Park, 3610 S. 12th Ave.

LEFT: Stephanie Prinzing's dogs Hopper (front) and Spike wait to get a drink from the dog water fountain at Jacinto Park, 2600 N. 15th Ave.

BELOW: Sandra Ramirez pushes daughter Natalia Navarro, 3, on a swing at Jacinto Park.

It was a long wait, but residents of the Miracle Manor Neighborhood finally have a park with amenities like other city parks.

“We’ve been asking, ‘Why can’t we have equipment in a park that is 60 years old?’ ” Jim Quinn, vice president of the Miracle Manor Neighborhood Association, said Thursday.

Neighbors will gather at 9 a.m. Saturday at Jacinto Park, 2600 N. 15th Ave., to dedicate improvements that neighborhood residents had sought: a ramada, connecting sidewalks, a swing set with rubberized safety surfacing, a drinking fountain, picnic and game tables and a basketball half court.

Getting them was a chore since funds came from both the city and Pima County, said Marsha Quinn, the neighborhood association’s liaison with Tucson and Pima County.

The project’s $268,331 came from four sources: a $203,331 Pima County Neighborhood Reinvestment grant, $30,000 each from the Mayor’s Office and Ward 3 Back to Basics programs, and a $5,000 grant from PRO (People, Resources, Organizations) Neighborhoods.

St. John’s Community Park, 3610 S. 12th Ave., will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Wednesday and also will have new facilities.

The land is owned by St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, which is leasing it to the city as a park site for 25 years.

Funds for the improvements came from grants from both the city and county, said Leslie Nixon, of the Pima County Neighborhood Reinvestment and Preservation Office.

A $500,000 Pima County grant funded construction of a skateboard facility at the park, Nixon said.

Other improvements include crushed stone paths, athletic field landscaping, a ramada, picnic tables and benches.

Overflow stadium crowd braves heat to hear upbeat message

President Obama makes a point during the Arizona State University commencement ceremony on Wednesday in Tempe.

TEMPE – President Obama apologized for “stealing away” former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and urged students to never stop achieving as he made a commencement speech Wednesday night at Arizona State University.

Some 63,000 people filled the stands and most of the football field at Sun Devil Stadium.

It will be up to young people to redefine success, Obama told graduates, from materialistic greed to building a quality life while taking on the nation’s challenges. That means serving a higher purpose than themselves, he said.

Developing clean energy and improving failing schools will be this generation’s job, he said. He pointed to his own job title and said that doesn’t define success, comparing Abraham Lincoln to Millard Fillmore.

Being a superpower isn’t enough for America, he said. It must be mindful of the struggles of the rest of the world.

“Class of 2009, that’s why we’re going to need your help,” he said of issues such as global warming, rebuilding the economy and solving other “unprecedented” problems.

Careers such as engineering and teaching can be crafted with service in mind, he said.

A body of work is never finished, he said. He went on to cite the achievements of people who never gave up, including Kurt Warner, a former Arena Football League player who led the Arizona Cardinals to their first Super Bowl in 2009.

He also pointed to late achievers Julia Child, Col. Sanders and Winston Churchill.

While acknowledging that graduates were facing a tough economy – the nation has lost 1.3 million jobs since February – he called the challenges an opportunity.

“Because it’s moments like these that force us to try harder and dig deeper and to discover gifts we never knew we had – to find the greatness that lies within each of us. So don’t ever shy away from that endeavor,” Obama said during a speech that invoked the bravery firefighters demonstrated on Sept. 11, 2001, and the civil rights movement.

“Don’t stop adding to your body of work. As a nation, we’ll need a fundamental change of perspective and attitude,” he said. “It’s clear that we need to build a new foundation – a stronger foundation – for our economy and our prosperity, rethinking how we grow our economy, how we use energy, how we educate our children, how we care for our sick, how we treat our environment.”

Some 9,000 students were awarded diplomas at Sun Devil Stadium on a day when the high temperature in Phoenix was 101, but Obama wasn’t going to be one of them. University officials declined to give him an honorary degree, saying he had not yet accomplished enough to deserve the honor.

“His body of work is yet to come. That’s why we’re not recognizing him with a degree at the beginning of his presidency,” university spokeswoman Sharon Keeler said shortly after the school’s student newspaper reported the decision.

Obama said he “heartily concurred” with that assessment.

Officials later backtracked and instead named a scholarship in honor of the nation’s first African-American president. The President Barack Obama Scholars program will offer students up to $17,000 annually to pay for tuition, books, room and board.

Some sweated the wait for Obama’s speech. An official at the university’s emergency operations center said about 95 people were treated for heat-related illness while waiting for Obama’s address. None of the illnesses was considered life-threatening.

Rocker and Phoenix-area resident Alice Cooper was to perform “School’s Out.”

Obama was to fly to Albuquerque, N.M., after the speech. The president planned to have a town hall-style meeting Thursday in Albuquerque on proposed restrictions on credit card companies before he returned to Washington.

The White House has announced Obama plans other commencement addresses at the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Naval Academy.

Student protests were expected Sunday at Notre Dame over Obama’s support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

Nancy Tranchese (center) and her mother, Kathleen Tranchese, both of Tempe, join members of the End the War Coalition in a protest Wednesday in front of Sun Devil Stadium.

President Obama and Arizona State University President Michael Crow sing the National Anthem before the commencement address Wednesday at the university stadium.

President Obama arrives at the Arizona State University commencement ceremony at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe Wednesday.

By Citizen Staff Report, Wire Report

One proposal: Tax boss-paid health insurance

WASHINGTON – After weeks of discussing ways to provide health care to the uninsured, Congress is beginning the difficult task of finding a way to pay for it.

Lawmakers are considering a broad range of ideas – including a new federal tax on soda – but a key Senate committee focused Tuesday on a proposal to tax health insurance that millions of Americans receive through their employers.

“I don’t think you can avoid taking that on,” Gail Wilensky, senior fellow at the health education foundation Project HOPE, told the Senate Finance Committee, which is helping to craft an overhaul of the health care system.

Nearly 164 million people, or 62 percent of the nation’s non-elderly population, receive health insurance through work, according to a joint congressional committee on taxation. Money spent on insurance provided by employers is excluded from an employee’s taxable income. If the exemption was lifted entirely, it could have raised about $226 billion in 2008, the joint committee reports.

During the campaign last year, President Obama opposed taxing employer-based health care benefits, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated that opposition Tuesday.

Even so, Senate Democrats are taking a closer look at the idea of at least limiting the tax break. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the exemption helps the well-off more than the poor, who are less likely to receive health care through work.

Baucus said the idea of repealing the break entirely is “just not going to happen,” but said Congress could cap the amount of benefit made available tax-free. He also said lawmakers may set an income limit so the exemption would not apply to high-paid employees.

Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, also supports the idea of repealing the exemption.

Gerald Shea of the AFL-CIO said limiting the tax break is “a step in the wrong direction” because it could punish employees who negotiated for better health care coverage rather than higher wages. Also, some employees pay more for health care insurance because of factors outside of their control, including the size of their company, he said.

WASHINGTON – In the minutes before their commuter plane gyrated out of control near Buffalo, N.Y., the pilots of a Continental Connection flight joked and talked about work conditions – distractions that were forbidden under federal law.

The cockpit recording released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board offers some of the first clues that could help explain why the pilots allowed the plane to get too slow and then apparently tugged the plane into a sudden, fatal climb.

It shows that the pilots were perhaps inattentive during a critical phase of the Feb. 12 flight as they prepared to land. Other evidence released by the safety board suggests they may also have suffered from lack of sleep and poor training.

Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47, urged co-pilot Rebecca Shaw, 24, who had complained that she was not feeling well, to pop her ears seven minutes before the crash. Federal aviation regulations forbid any non-work related conversation during an approach to landing.

Neither pilot realized that they had reduced the power to a dangerously low setting, according to the recording and other data released by the safety board.

What happened next doomed the flight. The plane’s “stick shaker” – a device that warns pilots when a plane gets too slow – activated, violently vibrating the control column.

Instead of adding power and lowering the plane’s nose as pilots are taught, Renslow pulled the plane into a climb that slowed it further.

As Renslow struggled with the controls, Shaw tried to help by resetting flaps on the plane’s wings and retracting the landing gear.

By this time, the plane’s wings were no longer keeping the plane aloft and it was rolling violently and plunging toward the ground.

“We’re down,” Renslow said in the final seconds before the recording ended. “We’re . . .”

The final sound on the recording was a scream by Shaw, the board reported.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill.

Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday after the fumes led someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

What crews found was an unplugged refrigerator crammed with moldy food.

Authorities say an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess.

The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment – she can’t smell because of allergies.

Barbara Trump (left) and Arlene Jones process mail with ambiguous addresses at the U.S. Postal Service Glendale Remote Encoding Center in Glendale. The center is one of five in the U.S. devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.

PHOENIX – Without leaving their cubicles, U.S. Postal Service sleuths in Glendale solve more than a million mail-delivery mysteries daily for post offices nationwide. Their wits and their computers are their only tools.

Sloppy handwriting and incomplete addresses, it turns out, almost succeed where snow, rain, heat and gloom of night fail in staying mail carriers from completing their rounds. But those hard-to-read addresses usually don’t slow carriers because data-conversion operators using their best detecting skills are at work around the clock at the USPS Glendale Remote Encoding Center, save for the 10 hours it’s closed on Sundays.

The Glendale center is one of five in the United States – there were 55 when the postal service opened them in 1995 – devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.

In other words, the stuff that stumps the postal service’s sophisticated optical character-recognition software.

“This work makes me take a few extra minutes when I address my own envelopes,” says Debra Napier, one of more than 700 data-conversion operators, called keyers for short, employed at the site.

She’s seated in the midst of long rows of cubicles in a room adorned by little more than signs with U.S. cities’ names. Her eyes rarely stray from her computer.

Electronic images of envelopes sitting in 41 mail-processing plants across the U.S. flash onscreen, one after another, calling on her ability to decipher the shaky handwriting of a letter writer with arthritis or to see past the stickers obscuring an address. Twelve years as a teacher prepared her well for this job.

Napier also has learned a thing or two along the way. When addressing Christmas or birthday cards, she painstakingly prints rather than writing in cursive. She uses white envelopes even for Christmas cards, because addresses are hard to read on dark backgrounds. And forget silver ink.

Although most of the mail that keyers puzzle over is hand-addressed, they also see pieces printed with ink cartridges long overdue for replacement or displaying printer-produced addresses haphazardly positioned on envelopes.

In most cases, a machine at a mail-processing plant reads the address on an envelope, sprays on an ink barcode and sends the envelope on its way, keyer Steve Karr says. When the machine fails to read the address, an electronic image of the envelope is sent to a remote encoding center.

In the Glendale facility, the fastest keyers, like Karr, may handle an eye-blurring 900 to 1,000 images in an hour. Keyers succeed with as many as 75 percent of the pieces they process, says Chuck Van Dyke, manager of the Glendale Remote Encoding Center.

Aided by the Postal Service’s more than 2 petabytes of online data (think 4,000 years-plus of songs on your MP3 player), keyers examine the slightest clues – two digits of a ZIP code, a street name without house numbers, the first letter of a state abbreviation – and draw conclusions.

The goal is turning around each piece in no more than 20 minutes, Van Dyke says.

But the process usually is far speedier. Advances in technology have made the postal system’s optical scanning equipment capable of reading 95 percent of handwritten envelopes, up from 2 percent when the centers opened, Van Dyke says.

With demand for their work decreasing, three of the remaining remote encoding centers will be closed, the Glendale facility in May 2010.

Still, even the most advanced optical scanning and the best efforts of data-conversion operators fail at times to divine a letter’s destination. Then, once more, a human must intervene.

A letter addressed “Jane Doe, Second House Around the Corner from the Barber Shop, St. Peter, MN”?

That will go to Minnesota, where a mail carrier in St. Peter knows exactly whose mailbox to tuck the letter into.

Shaun McClusky describes representing the South Side on the City Council as his “sole ambition.”

“I’m not using this as a steppingstone,” he said, hinting that some members of the council intend to move on.

McClusky, 37, a Republican, said he is running for the Ward 5 council seat now held by Democrat Steve Leal, who is not seeking re-election, in part because he feels like public safety has been given an unwarranted back seat in city government.

“The most basic function of government is public security and public safety, and they haven’t provided that,” he said of the current, Democrat-dominated council.

McClusky is a former Davis-Monthan airman now working as a Realtor and property manager for Rincon Ventures, a company he helped found in 2007.

McClusky backs the citizen’s initiative being funded by the Tucson Association of Realtors that – if it makes it onto November ballots and passes – would increase the number of police officers and firefighters.

He also wants to make sure that money allocated to police is not diverted.

McClusky is especially concerned that funds intended for public safety are distributed instead to what city officials call “outside agencies” – nonprofits and other groups that provide services complementing those provided by the city, for example, crisis services.

He worries those groups look for handouts too quickly, an idea anathema to his small-businessman identity, he said.

He said easing restrictions on businesses and increasing economic development measures are high on his priority list.

McClusky is critical of the budget proposal the council is currently considering not only because he said he thinks more money should go to police and fire, but also because he’s against tax increases. As a property manager, he’s dead set against the proposed rental tax.

Calling himself a problem solver instead of a politician, McClusky promotes “an economically sensible approach.” He cites investing in geothermal energy for long-term savings and reducing city services to primary obligations, such as public safety, as examples of that.

He pledges to embody that sensibility by rejecting the vehicle and gas payments that are a council perk.