Payson Roundup 031315

Page 1

A nearly perfect game Longhorns on a roll with twin wins and a thrilling finish: See sports 1B

State grades school districts See our coverage of auditor general’s report for Payson, Pine and Tonto Basin: 5A-6A

PAYSON ROUNDUP

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FRIDAY | MARCH 13, 2015 | PAYSON, ARIZONA

Heroin addiction hits home

Pleas for help dominate crowded meeting Alexis Bechman

U.S. Heroin Deaths

by

2008 2010 2012 1,786 2,058 3,635

The heartbreaking stories poured out, one after the other, as the overflow crowd jammed into the Payson Town Hall. One woman said her daughter hasn’t taken any heroin for a month, but fears she’ll fall back into the pit of her addiction in Payson for lack of the kinds of support groups the family found in Prescott. Another woman said three of her children got hooked on heroin in Payson, one even tried to take his life after his parents forced him into treatment. Another man said he shot up black tar heroin for the first time in high school and went on a path of total destruction to feed the habit. Although he finally turned his life around, by then he’d lost everything but his life. The son of a local firefighter said although he came from a well-off family, he fell into the grips

Source: Centers for Disease Control

roundup staff reporter

of the drug. Despite the stereotypes about drug users, he discovered addicts often turn out to be the kid next door with hard-working parents and good grades. These stories spilled out of the frightening, agonized, sometimes desperate people who on Wednesday showed up for a Payson Police Department presentation on heroin. The scheduled one-hour session stretched to three hours as families and recovering addicts shared their stories — some crying in pain and others yelling out in anger. They all called for more help. What emerged was a picture of families struggling to cope with the devastating effects of addiction — often alone and in shame. The surprising community response spurred town councilor Su Connell to pledge her support to find a solution. Police Chief Don Engler said the department will also look for ways to help.

• See Heroin hits home, page 2A

State budget will have deep impact on Rim Country schools Superintendent briefs Payson board on losses, gains by

Pete Aleshire

roundup editor

Schools avoided big cuts in the just-adopted state budget, but the devil’s in the details and the fine print of the budget provisions, Payson Unified School District Superintendent Greg Wyman told the school board on Monday. “A couple of things I want to get across to you and to the public about the budget,” said Wyman. “I wouldn’t take everything that’s said about this budget at face value. It does look better for public education than a week ago. But what they give with one hand, they take away with another.” Overall, the budget includes a small net

gain for K-12 schools — but not enough to keep up with inflation and enrollment growth, much less repay schools for $336 million in an illegally withheld inflation adjustment for this year alone. The final budget language did soften Gov. Doug Ducey’s original suggestion that districts cut some $125 million from “non-classroom” spending. However, districts will still have to hold public hearings and report any spending shifts based on how much is going into the classroom versus other things — like food service, administration and building maintenance. However, the budget comes after years of state-imposed cuts in money that had gone into the classroom. For instance,

the Legislature several years ago combined “soft capital” for things like textbooks with “hard capital” for things like buildings. Once they combined the categories, they cut funding for the category by about 80 percent, said Wyman. “So you can take those dollars and move them to people, but then you have no money for your building,” said Wyman. In the meantime, the Legislature has also phased out the “career ladder” pay for teachers based on experience and extra training, which will cost Payson about $122,000 this year. Because that money went to teachers, the loss of the career ladder program effectively reduces the percentage of the budget going into classroom spending.

Finally! Builder unveils plans for hotel by

Alexis Bechman

roundup staff reporter

Plans to build a new three-story hotel next to Walgreens were unveiled Wednesday. A handful of residents visited the site on West Longhorn Road just off the Highways 87 and 260 intersection where the project’s engineer and architect had a poster board set up with renderings of the preliminary site plan. Brian Laubenthal, with Aline Architecture out of the Valley, said the hotel would feature 70 rooms and fit the style of the town, using rich colors and wood and stone accents. When Laubenthal presented hotel plans to the town

in May it named Hampton Inn the franchisee, but on Wednesday, Fairfield Inn and Suites was the planned contractor. A representative with Verde Engineering said the site has its challenges, with a wash running through the dirt lot. Runoff will be redirected around the back of the hotel and flow under the parking lot through a culvert. The next step for the project is a stop at the planning and zoning commission next month for a conditional use permit. Laubenthal said it should take five months to get all the permits with preliminary site work starting as early as the fall. He does not expect to see construction start until next spring.

Provided illustration

Developers offered neighbors renderings for a planned 70-room hotel on West Longhorn Road.

Planning department complaints drop by

Teresa McQuerrey

roundup staff reporter

After a presentation about the department from its director and several staff members March 10, Supervisors Tommie Martin, District One, and Mike Pastor, District Two, said they don’t hear the complaints about the department they WEATHER

volume 26, no. 21

Weekend: Sunny with daytime temperatures inching into the 70s, overnight lows in the low 40s. Details, 9A

did when they were first electpermits. ed. Margie Chapman, who Business for the department reported on the department’s dropped with the collapse of the code enforcement activities, building boom. An outside consaid the county’s decision to sultant in 2005 and 2006 found shift money from fees and fines a host of problems, including to the general fund hurt the long delays, poor communicaprogram. tion, low staffing, poor coordi“In June 2008, the code nation, inadequate training and Tommie Martin enforcement program had a overlapping permits. $50,000 budget in order for the Since then, staffing has fallen from 22 hearing officer to have some teeth to to 16 — a 27 percent drop. Director Bob enforce the rules. It worked great until Gould attributed the drop to a dramatic July 2012 then the funds were removed drop in new projects. and we no longer had the means to The department now tries to offer a See County, page 10A one-stop-shop approach for plans and

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“To make things even more confusing,” said Wyman, “they’ve changed the definition of ‘classroom dollars’ — so I’m not sure what they’re going to compare. Interestingly enough, when we get the doublespeak from the Legislature, those soft capital dollars they cut are classroom dollars — so we’re going to see the

classroom share go down anyway.” Wyman also said he saw an irony in the new requirements the districts hold a whole series of budget hearings focused on the classroom dollar question, enacted by the Legislature during an all-night

• See Superintendent, page 9A

Teen discovers crater, and a cosmic mystery by

Michele Nelson

roundup staff reporter

Cody Rislund searched the mass of photos of the face of Mars for his seventh-grade science project. Something stuck out. “I was just looking over these pictures with lava flows … (and) … up on top there was a really dark spot — it had a huge wind streak that was dark and spreading,” he said. That discovery started a chain of events that ended with the Payson High School senior finding and naming a crater on Spartan Crater Mars. Even more remarkable, after a long discovered by wait, a chance encounter, a second camCody Rislund era run and more hours of poring over the photos, the high school student made a striking finding. Now he not only was able to name a crater — he made a noteworthy, incredibly unlikely finding. Alas, Rislund may prove to be the last Payson student to achieve such a feat. Due to a lack of resources, PUSD students no longer participate in this program with Arizona State University’s planetary sciences program. Rislund and his classmates went to Arizona State University’s Mars Student Imaging Project with Rim Country Middle School science teacher Scott Davidson five years ago. The students had worked for weeks with Davidson f o r m u l a t - Studying this image of the suring a ques- face of Mars, a Payson student tion that discovered something strange the enor- about the brand new crater at mous mass the end of the yellow pointer. of images of the red planet’s surface could answer. The seventh-grade science teacher added the Mars Student Imagining Project to his curriculum to bring excitement to the study of geology. That year, the students had decided to look for signs of lava flows over water flows on the surface of a planet that once had a global ocean, before it evolved into a frigid, dead, dry husk. Yet Rislund’s find had nothing to do with PHS student Cody erosion, lava flows or wind blowing dust over Rislund made a startling

discovery.

• See Student discovers, page 2A

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