The Foothills Focus Zone 1 032322

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ECRWSS Carrier Route PreSorted Standard U.S. POSTAGE PAID Permit No. 371 Cave Creek, AZ

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Arizona Gives Day

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TheFoothillsFocus.com

INSIDE

This Week

FEATURES ........ 15

Davis brings experience to the Sonoran Arts League

FEATURES ........ 17 Dance Fusion celebrates artform

FEATURES ........ 21 Cars and Coffee drives into High Street

OPINION ................... 12 FEATURES ................ 15 CLASSIFIEDS ............ 22 Zone I

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Serving the communities of Anthem, Desert Hills, Norterra, Sonoran Foothills, Stetson Valley, Tramonto, New River, Desert Ridge and North Phoenix

Anthem Area Edition

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Anthem sees improvements to water system BY ALLISON BROWN Foothills Focus Staff Wrier

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xperts discussed improvements and upcoming projects in the Phoenix Water Services Department as well as Arizona’s water usage and drought mitigation strategies at a March 11 town hall meeting. City of Phoenix Water Services Department Jim Swanson is Phoenix’s assistant director of the water services department and has over 30 years of experience in wastewater operations, regulatory water resources and water management. He explained some of the recent improvements and ongoing projects in and around Anthem are in response to growth in the area. The biggest project has been the installation of a new water main and a new gravi-

ty sewer main. The goal of this project is to connect Anthem to the Phoenix water system. “What we’re currently doing is wielding water through EPCOR,” Swanson said. “We will deliver water to the EPCOR campus … and we’ll put our water into EPCOR storage tanks. Then, they will pump it up their water lines, it goes into a booster station and then we pump it to serve the houses up here. The long term plan is to use that system as a backup, and we will provide water directly to Anthem homeowners on the west side of I-17.” The installation of the new water main was completed in Fall 2021, though it is not in use yet. Swanson said this was no easy project, as the lines were 24 and 36 inches and sizable trenches had to be dug to install it. A new gravity sewer main line was also

installed in 2021 and Swanson said it is already working today. “Then, in roughly late summer, we will have our booster station fully operational,” he added. “So what that will do is it will be able to take all of the extra water that’s coming up this new main and we’ll be able to take it and then deliver it to the customers in West Anthem. Once that happens, we will no longer wield our water through EPCOR’s water treatment plant and then up and over, we will actually take our water directly.” In addition, the booster station has granular activated carbon in the tanks. According to Swanson, GAC works to remove some of the taste and odor issues, as well as solids, in the water. He said this is an advantage that is not commonly seen at booster sites. Swanson said the goal is to have that com-

fiscal and business services, said the Classroom Site Fund is generated from sales tax revenue. In 2021, the joint legislative budget committee realized it needed to make a projection adjustment, which ended up adding extra money to the fund. “It was only going to be one-time funding, so we didn’t want to attach that to our teachers’ salaries, because there was no guaran-

tee that the revenue would be sustained over time,” Migliorino said. “When the classroom site fund had a projection adjustment, we did the calculation for how much that would be per teacher.” The money was divided by the number of teachers, and a one-time payment was made

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New DV teachers given bonus payment

BY ALLISON BROWN Foothills Focus Staff Writer

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ore than 200 new teachers in the Deer Valley Unified School District received a one-time extra payment of $1,810 from a surplus in the Classroom Site Fund on March 3. Jim Migliorino, deputy superintendent of

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TEACHERS page 4


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