Opinion writer Edward Celaya's Fave Five

My first published piece as a full-fledged employee of the Daily Star was really the spiritual successor to my last piece in the Daily Wildcat. Where my Wildcat piece was a retrospective, this piece focused more on the road ahead, and how as an opinion writer, I can continue to help people.

─ Edward Celaya

Hello dear readers, my name is Edward Celaya. Although I’m new to this space, if you’ve ever held a private party, been to a University of Arizona tailgate or had a beer at a catered event somewhere around Tucson, there’s a good chance you might already know my face.

If you’ve had a child between the ages of 6 months and 6 years and a pool in the backyard, I might also be familiar to you from swim lessons for the little ones.

I’ve also been an editor for the two award-winning college newspapers in town, the Aztec Press and the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

On the surface there is little similar between swim lessons, bartending and opinion journalism.

But look closer, and you’ll see a common thread — service. At my essence, I am a helper.

Just like teaching children to float on their back results in fewer drownings, informing people of potential solutions to the upcoming e-scooter apocalypse is vital to the greater community good.

Each job I’ve had in the five years since I left Tempe for Tucson has had its lessons.

Be it a child vomiting all over me after aspirating too much water, or an adult doing the same after one too many, the ability to not let the end goal out of sight has been essential to finding the most positive outcome possible in challenges big and small.

Between the numerous jobs and titles, I know what it means to be a nontraditional college student struggling to make ends meet. When I moved here in 2014, that sort of work was fine, and provided me a small, at-the-time affordable one-bedroom apartment for just over $500 dollars a month, including utilities.

Fast forward to May 2019, and in a comparably sized one-bedroom apartment managed by the same ownership group, I pay nearly $150 more per month. This experience helped open my eyes to the issue of affordable housing, a topic I’ll be covering in depth for the Star’s Opinion section.

Taken together, those pre-journo jobs taught me work ethic, stick-to-itiveness and how to make do with less. Perhaps more importantly, it showed me that along with those skills and caring for others, I would need a higher education to achieve higher goals.

I will help give voice not just to Tucson’s new, emergent generation of young white-collar professionals freshly hired and eager to discover the growing cultural and natural splendors the city has to offer — but also the local blue-collar young adults who are still looking to get by in a city where rising rents and stagnant wages are becoming a frightening reality for those without a secondary degree.

Part of Tucson’s beauty is its diversity, and I look forward to hearing your voices and personal stories.

With the help of Opinion Editor Sarah Garrecht Gassen, I aim to bring you coverage that includes topics like affordable housing, transportation, city and county politics and what is going on at the UA.

I love Tucson, and will look to contribute content that helps illuminate what makes it so special. At the same time, I promise to never shy away from covering stories that expose a need for change, while at the same time guarding against looking at the community with a jaundiced eye.

Much like Tucson, I’ve suffered my own self-made potholes and still managed to make it down life’s proverbial Speedway. And just like Tucson, I’ll be trying to smooth out the potholes to make the ride easier for all of us.

This huge piece, a deep dive into what Tucson stood to lose or gain from the introduction of electric scooters to the city’s streets, is newly relevant, as I’m now one of the many to crash and suffer injuries while riding the devices.

─ Edward Celaya

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Since their introduction on the beaches of Santa Monica and the streets of San Diego, electric scooters, or e-scooters, have divided opinion along lines of generation, class and access to transportation.

They will hit Tucson streets by early September. Where in the city the e-scooters will operate is the subject of a meeting with vendors and city staff on Monday.

When the Tucson City Council banned the devices last year, it was in response to speculation companies like Lime, Bird and Razor had the city in their sights. But in March of this year, the council reversed course and voted 5-2 to approve a six-month pilot program.

So, what changed? What does the city stand to gain from allowing the e-scooters – devices some call a fad, a nuisance, blight or worse – on our streets?

How e-scooters work

Companies may drop off the e-scooters in areas with high population density and close to public modes of transportation. The concept is simple: You want to ride a scooter? You find one, log into the app that contains your credit card information, scan a code on the e-scooter and zoom away, at speeds up to 15 mph.

When you get where you’re going, you stop, get off, end the ride on the app (which charges your credit card based on ride distance and duration) and you leave the e-scooter upright on a sidewalk, so the next rider can use it.

The system is convenient for the rider, but not so convenient for pedestrians or businesses trying to keep their entryways clear.

The companies hire people to pick up all the scooters every evening, take them to charging stations and then drop them off again in the morning.

Control

Tucson’s decision to start with a pilot program to distribute e-scooters, coupled with the City Council’s decision to ban the devices from its rights-of-way until companies had secured the necessary licensing, stands in stark contrast to cities like Tempe that didn’t foresee companies setting up shop.

In Tempe, it all started back in December 2017 with e-bikes.

“All of a sudden, we start seeing bicycles,” said TaiAnna Yee, public information officer for Tempe’s Transportation Department. “We had a bunch of companies all come, and they just started showing up. They weren’t calling Tempe and saying, ‘Hey we’re dropping off these bikes.’ They just showed up out of nowhere.”

People and businesses complained, said Yee. Tempe formed a work group to address use of the city’s rights-of-way and license e-bike companies, then e-scooters arrived in May 2018 and torpedoed the whole process.

Another work group was formed to help address concerns about e-scooters and potential other new forms of transport. “We finally came around and finalized our licensing agreement in January of this year,” for all e-devices, Yee said.

Since then, Tempe has been in a game of legislative catch-up involving licensing multiple e-scooter and bike vendors, impounding devices and coming up with regulations that anticipate any new entries into the evolving transportation market.

According to Tucson City Councilman Paul Durham, Tucson’s pilot program avoids the genie-out-of-the-bottle scenario Tempe faced. First, it limits the number of vendors to two, avoiding the chaos of new vendors coming in seemingly overnight.

Second, it limits the number of e-scooters vendors can deploy to 1,000 total at first (500 per company), with the option to release 500 more (250 per company) if certain ridership goals set by the city are reached. This way, there isn’t a glut of unused e-scooters taking up sidewalk space.

Most importantly, it gives the city the ability to shut the program down at any point, without having to resort to threats of impound in hopes the companies aren’t willing to pay fines for their devices.

“The cities that have managed e-scooters well have done exactly what Tucson has done,” Durham said, citing Portland and Seattle. The city council “passed an initial ban then gave us time to develop a pilot program. Tucson has done it right.”

However, Durham’s fellow councilman Steve Kozachik, disagreed. He opposes the pilot for myriad reasons and contends the city’s control ends with regulating the companies operating the scooters. Once they end up in individual hands, all bets are off.

“People do not come up to these little things with helmet in hand, ready to ride responsibly in a bike lane” he said. “We see reports all over of students getting on drunk, riding on sidewalks and riding in traffic.”

Riders abandoning them where they shouldn’t be is a danger, too.

“I got a picture from Portland, a photograph of a blind guy sitting at a bus stop with a cane and a scooter sitting about 3 feet away from him that he doesn’t even know is there,” he said.

Although Tucson’s coordinator for Bicycle and Pedestrian Program, Andrew Bemis, said that parking and moving violations involving e-scooters will be treated similar to bike violations, Kozachik said the time spent by city police and Park Tucson staff dealing with e-scooter problems would be better spent elsewhere.

Keeping the e-scooters within an approved, finite area — for example, downtown — will be difficult if not impossible, even with technology that geographically limits where they will work, Kozachik said.

The University of Arizona has also banned use of the devices on campus, a move Kozachik found unsurprising.

“The university is banning the things and just looking to the city as a beta tester,” he said.

Fred Ronstadt, executive director of the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association, and a former Tucson City Council member, said vendors and business owners have serious concerns about the introduction of e-scooters.

He pointed to other cities, like San Diego, where complaints have ranged from devices cluttering up the sidewalk to physical collisions between pedestrians and riders.

“The thing is, we’re an entertainment district and we’re concerned that people, after having a good time at one of their favorite establishments, they might try to get on a scooter and have some fun and hurt someone,” Ronstadt said. “One of those ‘hold my beer moments.’”

Money

Last week, city officials announced that Razor and Bird won bids to operate the devices during the pilot program. Under the pilot, companies can begin to deploy the devices 30 days after receiving their business license. Tucsonans should expect to see e-scooters on streets near the end of August or beginning of September, according to Kozachik.

In order to acquire that license, the two companies must pay a $15,000 annual permit fee, and a $4,000 application fee. In addition, a 20-cents- per-ride fee will be assessed and sent back to city coffers.

If 1,000 e-scooters are used to the level the city anticipates, they could generate $132,114 during the six-month pilot, according to official city estimates. That number jumps to $186,744 with 1,500 devices.

According to Durham, if you project the anticipated ridership numbers out over 12 months, the city’s take would be somewhere between $264,000 to $373,000, depending on the number of e-scooters.

“That is designed to contribute to improvements in the rights-of-way, IT infrastructure improvement, maintenance of IT,” Durham said. “In the short term would require an outside vendor at a cost of $5,000 to $30,000 a year – then if we keep the program, a one-time cost to purchase new servers and database licensing,” Durham said.

However, there are skeptics of the city’s plan. For one, Kozachik said the city’s estimate is off.

“I think it’s phony,” he said, contending the estimate did not account for opportunity costs such as potential traffic, safety and enforcement concerns as well as added hassles for businesses and first responders.

“To me this is not about dollars and cents. These things are going to Fourth Avenue, they’re going downtown, the two least attractive sites for something like this in the entire city,” he said.

Kozachik said that while he didn’t support the program because of safety issues anyway, the city should have asked for a higher permit fee, citing San Francisco’s $25,000 fee. A higher registration fee likely would have meant no bids.

Another element to consider is the effect on the city’s bike-share program, Tugo. Initiated in November 2017, the 330 docked yellow bicycles are available at 36 stations centered around Tucson’s metro core and are available at a rate of $4 for one ride, or $8 for a day pass.

In April 2018, the Daily Star found the Tugo system averages about 100 rides a day, or about 0.3 rides per bike; revenue data was unavailable. Durham believes potential e-scooter riders and bike-share customers exist in two different markets.

“Generally, the Tugo bike share program serves people who want to go a longer distance. The e-scooters are used for shorter distances,” he said.

Kozachik disagreed, saying he was concerned about the potential poaching of business, and that Durham’s characterization of riders falling into different categories was misguided.

Injury

E-scooters have made national news lately due to high-profile accidents and fatalities. There have been eight deaths attributed to e-scooters since 2017, according to a Consumer Reports study.

It’s not only the number of injuries, but their nature.

A report released by the CDC in April found that head injuries made up 45% of e-scooter related accident reports, followed by 27% for upper-body extremity fractures.

Tucson mandates anyone younger than 18 must wear a helmet when riding a bike — but you have to be 18 to use an e-scooter, no helmet required. Anyone older than 18 is exempt. In city documents detailing the pilot program, helmets are mentioned once in the city’s indemnification waiver and again in safety regulations.

“Helmets shall be offered both periodically and upon request to users,” it reads.

Both supporters and detractors recognize that isn’t practical. However, Coordinator Bemis said that his department and Bird and Razor will be out in the community before and shortly after launch to help educate riders about safety issues and potential hazards.

“People will have the opportunity at demo riding a scooter,” Bemis said. “People can come to a safe environment in a parking lot and try out a scooter with a helmet provided and not have to deal with traffic and learn how to ride them in a safe environment.”

Tucson will also partner with University-Banner Medical Center and rely on city services to report accident data. Police and fire officials will report any e-scooter-related crash and injury data, Bemis noted, and both companies will also be obligated to disclose any info regarding safety.

Bemis said the crash data will help the city better understand how safe travel by e-scooter is, compared to other modes of transport.

Since e-scooters are constantly tracked, Bemis believes data gleaned about their use will be substantial and important to making any needed adjustments.

“We’ll have much better information for scooters than from the other modes,” he said. “For the other modes we don’t have that exposure, so we don’t know how many bike miles are traveled, how many pedestrian miles are traveled.”

Analysis

High density areas including Fourth Avenue, Main Gate Square and downtown are home to multiple restaurants, bars and establishments for people to meet up and have a good time. During busy evenings, the sidewalks are filled with pedestrians as cars look for parking and the streetcar whizzes by.

Part of the appeal of e-scooters is that they don’t need to be returned to a specific rack. In areas of high density and traffic congestion, like those described above, they can provide for quick and easy access to areas traditionally only reachable by foot. However, what makes e-scooters attractive also makes them a potential hazard in Tucson.

Considering the Tucson traffic and pedestrian ecosystem e-scooters will join, and that nearly half of reported e-scooter injuries involve head trauma, deploying e-scooters seems to be a literal accident waiting to happen.

Putting aside injury concerns, the idea of the devices piling up on street corners or on sidewalks gives pause to business owners who depend on foot traffic and a clean aesthetic. Injuries and accidents can be easily counted, but loss of commerce can be even more insidious.

Yet, e-scooters are coming. And while there are legitimate public health concerns, there are questions with answers that can only be determined by finding out how e-scooters are received.

All things considered, the city of Tucson should be praised for its even-handed approach to a hot-button national topic.

The city has guarded against abuse of its rights-of-way, so as not to be overrun by a disruptive technology. At the same time, Tucson also played a game of wait-and-see to evaluate how other jurisdictions dealt with something that could be a new tool in transportation.

Time will tell if Tucson’s pilot program for e-scooters will succeed. It’s possible the devices become a part of people’s lives both here and internationally for years to come.

But it’s just as likely the program lands on its head.

At my core, I’m preserved in the amber of time as a perpetual 20 something. This piece is more an advice column to would-be freshman coming into college, and outgoing seniors looking to face the real world.

─ Edward Celaya

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

While most K-12 students have already returned to school, Monday marks the beginning of the University of Arizona’s academic calendar. For the first time in four years, I won’t be part of the returning horde.

My journey through higher ed was a little different, but informative for freshmen and seniors alike, so let me explain.

Coming out of high school, I expected college to be the best time of my life. It was all that and more for about a semester, before I ended up dropping out. That led to my first stint in what many call the “real world.”

Like a reverse take on Tom Hanks’ “Big,” my intro to adulthood featured jobs better suited to a child’s cartoon fantasy.

After leaving the UA, I went to work in Florida and became a lifeguard for Disney World, where one of my duties included dressing as a pirate and chasing a kid around a resort to open the pool each day.

After hanging up my eye patch, I moved back to Arizona. Swim lessons and bartending followed my time as one of the Neverland Pirates, but teaching kids and adults to not throw up after drinking too much wasn’t exactly what I grew up envisioning my life to look like.

Eventually, and partially because of my experiences with those “summer jobs,” I ended up back in school, graduating with a degree and, now, a career.

But after spending nearly the last decade as an 18-to-22-year-old, I still feel the phantom butterflies and pangs all students do as school approaches.

That’s why I’m here to offer a few pieces of advice, both for returning students and for the parents who worry that their beloved son or daughter might end up as Peter Pan, never growing up.

• Pick a major that challenges you. Much is made of two extremes: being practical or finding what you love. It’s true that job prospects for some majors are better than others, and it’s equally true some well-paying jobs are tedious or just unappealing.

Instead of putting pressure on yourself to figure out which extreme appeals to you, split the difference and commit yourself to trying new and uncomfortable things. Then, challenge yourself to see them through. By doing this, you improve your work ethic and find out if something is or isn’t for you. Appreciation for a job or task isn’t often instant, and love for anything should be earned, not just expected.

• Get off campus. You’ll learn so much in class. You’ll learn even more exploring Tucson, Southern Arizona and even the ’hood you live in.

Do your homework, obviously, but make time to check out a movie at the Loft, a concert at the Rialto, a Sonoran Dog at BK’s or a hike at Sabino Canyon. Don’t just go to school at the UA — go to school and embrace the Tucson community.

• Don’t give up. There will be times you won’t get the grade you want, or times you bomb a test you studied all week for, or times you break up with a significant other. In the worst of those times, you’ll question what you’re doing and who you are.

Don’t give up on yourself.

• Parents, relax. This is the hardest thing for any parent to do. College is looked at in our society as the beginning of adulthood, and with that comes higher expectations and responsibility.

If your student makes a mistake or fail a class, remember it isn’t the end of the world, and what might have been scorned or punished at home would best be left for your child to deal with themselves or with professors.

Trust that your upbringing will lead them to the wise decisions you’d want them to make, and if it doesn’t right away, have patience in the person your student is becoming.

There will be points you might disagree with your child’s decisions, or the route in life they’ve chosen to take.

They may even challenge you and what you believe in. Don’t give up on them.

In the end, there isn’t a secret sauce to finally finishing school and becoming an adult.

It’s not found in some study technique or in fanatical insistence on graduating with a certain GPA on a certain time frame.

College is a time for having fun, and at the same time, for finding out what you’d like to take seriously for the rest of your life. Just make sure not to get stuck in Neverland. Bear Down, and good luck.

In my years of college journalism, I never got much feedback from the community on any of my pieces of work. This piece is different in that respect. Within an evening it had garnered over 300 Facebook comments, with one accusing me of fornicating with a dog during my high school years.

─ Edward Celaya

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Donald Trump has done a lot in his first two and a half years in office. Just ask him.

Perhaps his longest lasting legacy will be the evisceration of faith in systems and institutions we depend on to ensure justice, including the highest court in the land.

In nominating and successfully confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the bench, Trump and the GOP have effectively demolished all semblance of impartiality and good sense in pursuit of judicial power.

With this weekend’s release in the New York Times of an excerpt from the upcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation” by veteran reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, last year’s knock-down, drag-out fight over the confirmation process has been re-ignited.

Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, alleged that he “pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it,” according to the Times’ story.

During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh addressed Ramirez’ accusation directly and denied any prior knowledge of talking about such an incident when asked by Utah Republican Sen. Orin Hatch.

HATCH: When did you first hear of Ms. Ramirez’s allegations against you?

KAVANAUGH: … In the New Yorker.

HATCH: Did the ranking member [Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)] or any of her colleagues or any of their staffs ask you about Ms. Ramirez’s allegations before they were leaked to the press?

KAVANAUGH: No.

But reporting from right after the hearing’s casts doubt on Kavanaugh’s response.

According to a report from NBC, a mutual friend and classmate of both Ramirez and Kavanaugh, Karen Yarsagrave, sent a series of text messages, days before the publication of Ramirez’ accusations in the New Yorker, to a friend detailing how she had been in contact with “Brett’s guy” and with “Brett.”

The Sunday Times’ piece goes on to revel that seven individuals, including Ramirez’ mother and two classmates, had heard about Ramirez’ alleged incident before Kavanaugh even became a federal judge.

The Times’ story is not without controversy; part of the report detailing a new allegation of possible assault by Kavanaugh – as reported to the FBI by founder of the bi-partisan Center for Public Service, Max Steir – needed to be corrected.

Steir said that he witnessed Kavanaugh drunkenly shove his penis into the hand of another female classmate during a party at Yale in the early 1980s.

While it was reported Sunday that the unidentified woman had no recollection of the alleged incident, on Monday she told ABC News concerning the allegation that she “can’t do it again.”

When she was asked if there were others able to corroborate the story, she responded, “all I can say is, ask Brett.”

Clearly, someone is lying. And as the Sunday Times’ story points out, little has been done to find out who.

That much is clear after learning that the alleged incident involving the unnamed woman was reported to senators and the FBI during Kavanaugh’s confirmation process.

Max Steir, another former classmate of Kavanaugh’s and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Partnership for Public Service, “notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate,” according to the Times.

For those keeping score, that’s now three credible accusations of sexual misconduct by women (including the one by Christine Blasey Ford that started it all) against a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Where the court goes from here is unclear, although some in the Democratic party, mostly those running for president, have called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. That seems unlikely, and even if it did happen, there’s the Senate and Sen. Mitch McConnell waiting.

Instead, it looks likely that a compromised Supreme Court Justice — and the man elected for the express conservative purpose of nominating such a character — are here for the long haul.

My favorite piece is about my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving, and the joy I feel when I’m around my family (and their food.)

─ Edward Celaya

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but it hasn’t always been that way.

As a child in a large Mexican American family, Thanksgiving meant meeting up with my similarly-aged cousins and running around our Nana and Tata’s endlessly huge yard, with the added bonus of maybe getting to push one of my brothers or male cousins in the cold-for-Arizona-in-November pool.

At that stage in my life, Thanksgiving just meant being around family and having fun.

During my adolescence and teenage years, I looked forward to the chance to hang out with cousins, sure, but now our puberty-fueled tomfoolery had turned into sneaking beers instead of sharing snarky jokes.

While being around loved ones and mountains of food was great, looking forward to Christmas and how I could become less awkward around girls took precedence.

With a few more years, I began to appreciate and anticipate the smorgasbord that is Thanksgiving dinner with much more vigor. Dessert, capped by my Aunt Veronica’s sinful pumpkin pie cheesecake, was always the highlight.

Add in the fact that my nickname from childhood was “the human garbage disposal,” and you can probably understand just how much the holiday meant to me during my broke, should-have-been-in-college years.

Now, in my early 30s, with my wild years of drinking too much and eating myself into five-hour comas mostly behind me, I think I’ve figured out what Thanksgiving is really about. It’s cheesy and sort of corny: It’s my Aunt Bettina’s calabacitas.

Just kidding – but they are to die for.

It’s family. Or, more accurately, those that we love and who love us, regardless of their blood ties to us. The early, child-like joy I felt seeing my East Coast cousins was actually the closest, purest understanding of the holiday I’d had.

This Thanksgiving, however, is a little different. Since joining the staff here at the Daily Star nearly six months ago, everyone has gone out of their way to make me feel not just like a part of the team, but essential to our daily mission to report the news and get the truth out.

In particular, my editor Sarah Garrecht Gassen has been not just kind but indispensable in my understanding of how a newsroom – and the news – works in this beautiful desert mountain town. And not just for myself, but for every apprentice and intern, colleague and senior editor, reader and letter to the editor writer as well.

I know I’m lucky to have grown up with a kind, loving, supportive immediate and extended family. I’ve also been lucky to be accepted into another large, unruly but always caring cast of characters: the Arizona Daily Star.

This year, I, along with my regular and Daily Star families, hope you and yours enjoy the food, drink and lively conversation that make the holiday special. Whether it’s a small gathering or a large Celaya-style family blowout, we hope you’re surrounded by those who love you most.

Happy Thanksgiving!