At their first meeting of the new year the Coconino County Board of Supervisors (Board) took time to acknowledge the upcoming International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2023 and unanimously approved a first-of-its-kind proclamation to recognize and honor the memories of victims and survivors and bring awareness to the historic atrocity of the Holocaust to successive generations.
Art Workshops at Sedona Arts Center
In-Person Workshops at the Sedona Arts Center offer an intensive experience that will provide inspiration and information to distill and practice for months and even years afterwards. A wide variety of disciplines and mediums are offered with a special focus on studio and plein air landscape painting, mixed media and abstraction. Workshops are appropriate for all levels of students and are presented through demonstrations, individual instruction and group presentation. Instructors are experts in their field – experienced teachers with national recognition.
At the Jan. 10, 2023 special session of the Coconino County Board of Supervisors, the Board unanimously approved a proclamation to designate January as Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Month in Coconino County.
According to the US State Department, Arizona is a hub for illicit activity and a transit point for labor and sex trafficking due to our state’s geographic location and network of Interstate freeways. Locally, in the past five years various law enforcement and victim service agencies have encountered over 600 confirmed victims of human trafficking. Furthermore, numerous sting operations during that time have identified almost 500 individuals suspected of attempting to purchase sex with an underage victim.
“The exploitation of human beings for sex trafficking is a terrible crime and we must raise awareness and educate ourselves on this matter so that we can take action to end this travesty. This is an issue that affects all of our communities,” commented Chair of the Board Patrice Horstman.
Student Ceramic Exhibition & Sale
January 20 – 22, 2023
Opens Friday! January 20, 2023 from 4pm to 6pm
Saturday 10am to 5pm
Sunday, 12 to 5pm
Special Exhibitions Gallery in the Historic Art Barn
A ceramic exhibition and sale
featuring work from our advanced students and faculty.
All City of Flagstaff non-essential facilities will operate on a two-hour delayed start on Wednesday, Jan. 18 due to inclement weather and poor road conditions. The City urges all residents to delay travel if possible. For an overview of the opening times of various City facilities, please visit flagstaff.az.gov/4801/Delayed-Start.
The annual Point in Time Count (PIT) will take place starting Jan. 25 throughout the City of Flagstaff. This count documents the number of unsheltered people experiencing homelessness at a single point in time and is conducted across the country.
Local data collected during the annual PIT Count measures progress at local and national levels related to preventing and ending homelessness.
Cartagena de Indias, Cultural Heritage of Humanity, was founded in 1533 and still has a certain sumptuousness from that time: old houses of Spanish architecture with splendid central patios and bewitching balconies full of flowers. The city is all magical realism: it can be, at the same time, pearly, crimson, pink, bluish, brown, orange, purple, or emerald. In its narrow cobbled streets one can breathe legend, melancholy, gallantry, revelry, and natural beauty.
In the late afternoon, around 5:00 p.m. these colors of Cartagena become magical under the light of the tropical sunset, and the entire city becomes a colorful cacophony. The windows, the doors, the facades and walls of vibrant colors, all filled me with joy, enchanted me, and I felt like Florentino Ariza, that character of Gabriel García Márquez who thought he was dying of love. As the Colombian Nobel Prize for Literature would say in his autobiography Vivir para Contarla, “It was enough for me to take a step back inside the wall to see [Cartagena] in all its grandeur, in the light of 6 o’clock in the afternoon, and I could not repress the feeling of having been born again”
Due to heavy overnight snowfall and related accessibility issues, the City of Flagstaff’s Solid Waste section has cancelled all trash and recycling collection services for today, Tuesday, Jan. 17.
Residential collection service updates:
Due to inclement weather, the Downtown and East Flagstaff Community Libraries are closed Tuesday, January 17th.
Addressing cancer disparities in tribes
The Center for Native American Cancer Health Equity, funded by a new $4 million grant from the American Cancer Society, aims to improve education and screening rates in Native American tribes, which have disproportionately high rates of cancer.
We hope you are having a wonderful 2023 so far, and wanted to start off this new year right by thanking you.
You make the work of United Way of Northern Arizona possible and we wanted to share some of our favorite memories of the past year that happened because you generously gave through your donations, leadership, or volunteerism.
Winter Weather Returns; National Weather Service issues Travel Risk for impending weekend storm
According to the National Weather Service-Flagstaff, winter weather returns to the area this weekend, with periods of heavy snowfall likely beginning Saturday night across the high country. Snow levels will gradually fall from 6000–7000 feet Saturday evening to 4000–5000 feet Tuesday. One to two feet of snow is possible in the high country by the end of next week.
Prepare for an extended period of poor travel conditions next week!
REMEMBER – PLEASE KEEP ROADWAYS CLEAR OF VEHICLES; PARK IN YOUR DRIVEWAY AND FOR THOSE ON APACHE ST, PARK IN THE ALLEY. ALLEYS AND RESIDENTIAL ROADWAYS WILL BE PLOWED
Kimberlie Geile-Gonzalez and Laura Rosensweet have joined a talented group of individuals serving on the CCC&Y Board of Directors.
Geile-Gonzalez, a retired educator and a Realtor who is with Realty Executives Flagstaff, has served with a variety of nonprofit organizations in the region including the AZ Community Foundation of Flagstaff, Northland Family Help Center, Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona, and the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce Education and Workforce committee. She will serve on the Coalition’s Prevention Council.
“I truly believe children are our best hope for the future. I taught elementary students for over 20 years and have seen children and families struggle with adverse situations. CCC&Y provides a voice in the community for those who have no voice. I am looking forward to working with a coalition that provides opportunities to help children and families thrive and grow.”
Rosensweet is the Community Impact Manager Northern Arizona for Education Forward and serves on the Coalition’s Action & Outreach Committee.
“My entire career has been spent helping our most vulnerable youth be connected to education and services through my work as a teacher in behavior intervention. I’m excited to serve on the CCC&Y board and work with the community to support families and kids in living their best lives.”
Small in stature, but big in strength, grit, determination and resilience, Lena Cody stands tall and proud in her graduation cap and gown.
Motivated by the prospect of a pay increase at her job as a case manager for a social service agency at the age of 51, Lena enrolled as a part time student at Coconino Community College in the fall of 2017. At the same time, she gained guardianship of her 3-year-old grandson, Princeton. Lena said she knew she had a lot on her plate – going to school, working full-time and raising a young child as a single woman – but she was determined to make it work.
In her 2018 essay for her English 101 class, “You Can Smile in the End,” she wrote about growing up poor in an overcrowded mobile home, enduring domestic violence, rape, and raising three boys on her own as a single parent. Hardened by life, she learned to not depend on anyone.
“I felt like I was thrown to the wolves, and I needed to survive the hardships,” she said.
The City of Flagstaff Sustainability Office is excited to announce the recipients of the 2023 Neighborhood Sustainability Grant cycle. The initiative is a competitive grant program that funds a range of community projects related to food, waste, climate action, resilience, building energy, public health, and transportation with awards up to $5,000.
Awarded projects selected by the Sustainability Commission this year include:
Do You Have Coconino County Parks and Recreation on Your 2023 Bingo Card?
Now you can! Join Coconino County Parks and Recreation for a healthy, fun 2023!
Thanks to Friends of Coconino County Parks, we are able to offer a $25 gift card to Babbitt’s Backcountry Outfitters to a lucky winner who finishes their bingo card this year! Have fun, stay safe, leave no trace, and get outside in 2023! Check our website for information about parks, natural areas, events, programs, and the Fair, and keep a lookout for new updates as the year goes on!
City Hall administrative offices at 211 W. Aspen Ave. will be closed on Monday, Jan. 16 in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. City Hall offices will reopen on Tuesday, Jan. 17 with regular hours of 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Other City of Flagstaff facilities that are closed Martin Luther King Jr. Day include:
Sedona Arts Center Member Artists of all levels, working in all mediums are invited to enter into our Annual Juried Members Exhibition & Sale. The exhibition will run from March 6-31, 2023
Monetary awards will be given for First Place/Best of Show Award ($500), Second ($250) and Third ($150) place.
Honorable mention awards will be awarded at the discretion of the jurors and no monetary amount attached.
People’s Choice Award is announced at the end of the show. No monetary attached
STEMMY Awards are presented annually to Students, Teachers, and Organizations
who are STEAM leaders in the greater Flagstaff community.
Check out our previous winners here:
The STEMMYs – Flagstaff STEM City
Observing the Winter Sky
Tuesdays: 1/17, 1/24, 1/31, 2/7
6:45 – 8:15 pm
Locate and identify the sparkling gems of the winter night sky!
Winter Night Sky – Learn more and register!
COVID Updates
Masks Optional
As of January 5, Coconino County has remained in MEDIUM CDC Community Level. Masks are optional in all public buildings. We encourage individuals, regardless of vaccination status, to practice physical distancing from others while in indoor common areas.
Total new COVID cases in Arizona for the week of December 29-January 4 was 6,187 which is an increase from the week before at 4,973. There were three new COVID-19 cases reported in the park this week.
As a reminder, be sure to promptly report any illness, to include possible COVID-19 symptoms, COVID exposure, or a positive COVID test to your supervisor and our Public Health Consultant, Ronan King. Ronan can be reached at: 202-891-8599 or Ronan_King@nps.gov.
Friday, Jan. 6, 2023
See the beautiful full moon rise and hike the Buffalo Park loop. 5:30 p.m.; free.
The City of Flagstaff Solid Waste Section has published the 2023 schedule for bulky waste collection, which is provided to all single-family households within Flagstaff city limits. Bulky waste collection will continue to be performed in five geographic sections throughout the City once every five weeks per the map and schedule that can be downloaded athttps://www.flagstaff.az.gov/DocumentCenter/View/74416/2023-Bulk-Pickup-Schedule–.
Wishing you a peaceful, prosperous and productive 2023.
As the new year begins, the Coconino Coaltion for Children & Youth wants to remind everyone that we have a variety of free webinar training programs on our website to help relieve some of the stress as we wind down from a busy holiday season.
Our growing library of on-demand webinars is designed to help the public gain the tools they need to provide trauma-informed care, tips to help strengthen family protective factors, examine the effects of historical trauma and adverse childhood experiences, address issues such as bullying and the support to adults and youth through the use of mindfulness practices.
– APPLICATION Deadline: January 20, 2023
Sedona Arts Center Member Artists of all levels, working in all mediums are invited to enter into our Annual Juried Members Exhibition & Sale. The exhibition will run from March 6-31, 2023
Monetary awards will be given for First Place/Best of Show Award ($500), Second ($250) and Third ($150) place.
Honorable mention awards will be awarded at the discretion of the jurors and no monetary amount attached.
People’s Choice Award is announced at the end of the show. No monetary attached.
The City of Flagstaff’s Beautification, Arts and Sciences team is calling artists to participate in its traffic cabinet art wrap initiative by creating designs for traffic signal cabinets around Flagstaff. This initiative is supported by the City’s Beautification and Public Art Commission and is an opportunity to enhance the visual landscape by using traffic signal cabinets as canvasses.
This call is open to all artists, graphic designers, and illustrators, who are 18 years of age or older and currently live or work within the United States. Submitted designs must be original artwork and can be created in any medium, so long as it can be represented in a high-resolution digital image without loss of integrity or quality. The application period ends on Feb. 1, 2023.
Flagstaff property owners, businesses and citizens are invited to a free lunch-n-learn event at City Hall (211 W Aspen Ave) on Jan. 31 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The City has access to money that can be used for revitalizing properties at no cost to owners.
Two-hundred thousand dollars in funding remains from a grant awarded to the City by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of a property revitalization program. Money is available to property owners on a first come, first served basis until Sept. 30, 2023.
