Provides recommendations that improve and enhance the inter-connectivity of trails and transit mobility in the City of Show Low and transit efficiency in the White Mountains, including the communities of Pinetop-Lakeside, Snowflake, Taylor, Holbrook and the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Upon its completion the study was further intended to update the City’s Five Year Transit Plan and the Trails Element of the Show Low General Plan.

Santa Cruz County was awarded funding from the Arizona Department of Transportation Planning Assistance for Rural Areas program to prepare the Rio Rico Walking and Biking Study. The purpose of the Study is to enable Santa Cruz County to establish a program for the construction of bike lanes and sidewalks that are desired to provide safe and convenient pedestrian and bicycle access and connectivity to select Santa Cruz Valley Unified School District No. 35 facilities as well as use for the general public for transportation and recreational purposes.

The Arizona Department of Transportation was authorized in 1996 to administer a State Infrastructure Bank under a cooperative agreement with the Federal Highway Administration. The Highway Expansion and Extension Loan Program (HELP) was established. The financial statements present only the funds comprising the Fund and are not intended to present fairly the financial position or results of operations of the Department.

The HELP program is meant to be a funding tool to accelerate needed highway projects throughout the state. Board Funding Obligations are an important part of the HELP capitalization and the current stress on the State's General Fund has impacted our ability to use BFOs as a funding source for new loans. Though $140 million of BFOs are authorized by statute to capitalize the HELP, the State Treasurer was required to call all outstanding BFOs in April 2009. Consequently, the State Transportation Board and the Department have suspended the HELP program given the uncertainty of a long term funding source.

Pima County, in partnership with the National Park Service, has been an active participant in the development of a 70 mile segment of the trail. With the preparation of this Master Plan, Pima County has embarked on an active program to acquire the necessary rights-of-way and easements and to construct the Pima County segment of the national historic trail.

The quality of jobs in the United States became a national concern in the 1980s after a long period of losses of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs and gains of frequently low-paying service jobs. National job quality remains a concern today, as witnessed by the debate in the 2004 presidential campaign. The overall average wage is a measure of prosperity or well-being, but is not in itself a measure of job quality since job quality is just one of several factors — including cost of living, productivity, and desirability of an area — that affect the overall average wage. Little information on these factors is available by state. Adjusting for job quality reduces the state-by-state variation in wages. However, even after adjusting for job quality, the average wage still varies substantially by state.

The long-term trend toward lower-quality jobs in the United States continued between 2001 and 2004. Industrial job quality fell 1.6 percent nationally between 2001 and 2004. The decrease in occupational job quality was not quite as great at 0.9 percent. Thus, overall U.S. job quality dropped 2.5 percent during the three years, causing the U.S. average wage to be 2.5 percent less than it otherwise would have been. Arizona’s job quality fell between 2001 and 2004 at a pace worse than the national average. Relative to the national average, the industrial and occupational job mixes each slipped a bit more than 0.3 percent during the three years, for an overall decline of 0.7 percent. In Arizona, job quality in 2004 was 2.0 percent below the national average, but Arizona ranked 23rd among all states.

Available data on the cost of living indicate that living costs in Arizona are close to the national average — thus, the state’s lower-than-average wages are not offset by low living costs. No productivity data exist for Arizona. Worker productivity in Arizona could be below the national average due to lesser investments in physical or human capital, which would result in lower wages. Labor market supply and demand factors are a likely cause of the low wages in Arizona. A substantial number of people seem willing to move to Arizona and accept a substandard wage in exchange for perceived qualitative advantages to living in Arizona, primarily climate.