Pima County, Ariz. (Feb. 29, 2012) – Pima County’s Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security is the host of a workshop in Tucson Friday, March 2, aimed at coordinating preparedness training activities in Southern Arizona.

The event, which is not open to the public, will result in the development of a multi-year training exercise and event plan for emergency services and homeland security operations in Yuma, Santa Cruz, Cochise and Pima counties.

The counties work with each other to coordinate their incident command training, hazardous materials response and decontamination training, counterterrorism training and other activities related to homeland security and mass disaster preparation.

Representatives of military and federal agencies, utilities, private sector services and suppliers, tribal agencies, hospitals and volunteer organizations active in disaster response will take part in the “Partnership for Preparedness” workshop.

The event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Tucson Electric Power headquarters, 88 E. Broadway Blvd.

Among the types of events that are conducted by the counties is a full-scale, rapid-response training exercise set for April 18. In this exercise, Pima County responders will be deployed to Santa Cruz County to take part in a mock anti-terror event.

The economic slump’s impact on Pima County’s property tax base will be greater and last longer than the County predicted a year ago. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry is emphasizing the need for the County to budget conservatively for the upcoming fiscal year, as no new revenues will be available for program or service expansion.

Pima County updates its economic forecast each December. In a memorandum to the Board of Supervisors today, Huckelberry presented a comparison of the six-year forecast of secondary assessed value property tax base from December of 2010 and December 2011. The new forecast indicates that the decrease in the property tax base will be $600 million greater than forecasted a year ago and will occur in fiscal year 2014/15 rather than fiscal year 2013/14 as was predicted in December 2010.

For more information, download the Updated Property Tax Base Projections memo.

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