The conference looked beyond the juvenile justice system proper to examine the roots and potential solutions to the over representation of minority youth in Arizona’s juvenile justice system. Through this important undertaking and the dedication of the Commission on Minorities, Arizona demonstrated once again its important role as a leader in shaping the future of the juvenile justice system.

Shortly after selecting Judge Roxanne Song Ong as Commission Chair and reconstituting its membership, Chief Justice McGregor directed the Commission to develop a strategic plan with projects that seek to enhance fairness and equity in the judiciary and present a report at the December 2006 meeting of the Arizona Judicial Council.

This report represent the efforts of the Commission since its reactivation under a new mandate in May of 1994. The goal of this work group is to develop policies and programs that will facilitate the growth of minority applicants seeking appointments as judges, commissioners, judges pro tempore, special masters, clerkships, and internships.

This Plan defines visionary, yet pragmatic, investment choices Arizona will make over the next 25 years to maintain and improve its multimodal transportation system. The Plan is not rigid or fixed. It is part of a continuous process of planning, implementation, operation, and preservation and will evolve over time to reflect and be responsive to future changes in needs, resources, and priorities. This Plan is strategic in nature, examining investment types for ADOT’s capital program; it does not examine nor recommend any specific projects.

This report examined the effects of freeway development on land use and property values. A case study was prepared for the Superstition Freeway (US60) corridor in Mesa and Gilbert, Arizona. Among the findings were the following observations:
* New freeways provide substantial benefits to users in the form of travel time savings and reductions in costs associated with operating motor vehicles.
* Access benefits are transferred from highway users to non-users through changes in property values.
Freeway construction may have an adverse impact on some properties, but in the aggregate, property
values tend to increase with freeway development.
* Not all properties values are affected by freeways in the same way. Proximity to the freeway was observed to have a negative effect on the value of detached single-family homes in the US60 corridor, but to have a positive effect on multifamily residential developments (e.g. condominiums) and most commercial properties.
* The most important factor in determining negative impact on property values appears to be the level of traffic on any major roads in the proximate area, which implies that regional traffic growth is more significant than the presence of a freeway per se.
* Given the beneficial effects of freeway development on the value of certain types of properties, local
governments may benefit from appropriate planning and zoning decisions in the vicinity of a freeway
corridor.

Seeking to identify how Arizona Department of Transportation could accomplish the greatest service improvements with the most efficient use of funds, ADOT engaged ARCADIS to perform a Crash Data Collection and Analysis study and examine the possibilities offered by technological innovations such as Electronic Data Entry, Relational Database Management Systems, and Geographic Information Systems. The study resulted in a comprehensive report with three components: an examination of best practices in use in the United States today, a use case and gap analysis examining ADOT's current data work, and a technical memorandum outlining how changes could be implemented.

A key outcome of the Arizona Multimodal Freight Analysis Study is “a strategy for establishing freight analysis as an integral part of Arizona’s long-range planning process.” This study was directed to include the following as part of the strategy development:

• Broad themes to guide future freight planning.
• A description of how multimodal transportation networks impact the freight industry.
• Potential impacts of freight strategies on economic development in Arizona.
• A strategy for freight data collection, analysis, and planning.
• Measurable indicators describing the impact of freight traffic on the performance of Arizona’s multimodal freight transportation network.