The Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison (DTAP) Program enables drug addicted criminal defendants to plead guilty to an offense and then enter a residential, therapeutic community treatment system for three years as an alternative to a prison sentence. The Program begins with three months of in-patient, residential drug treatment followed by wraparound recovery support services managed by a resources specialist, including transitional housing, literacy services, higher education, job training and placement services, and counseling, accompanied by drug testing, probation monitoring, and regular court hearings.

The Arizona Smart Growth Scorecard is a tool for community self-assessment developed by a working group of the Growth Cabinet. It is designed to strengthen the ability of local officials to plan for future growth and development and to adopt comprehensive strategies that address growth-related pressures. Arizona's Growing Smarter Guiding Principles were developed by the Growing Smarter Oversight Council. The Guiding Principles are organized into six major categories which provide the basis for the Scorecard: responsibility and accountability; preservation of community character; stewardship of natural resources; opportunity for broad choices; essential service infrastructure; and economic development.

If one species had to be chosen to preserve and restore, perhaps it should be cottonwood. Cottonwood-willow forests, where they exist and are healthy, indicated the presence of a viable riparian area, which is in turn the key to conserving great proportions of our native species. A reflection of the dire status of our riparian systems is that the Sonoran cottonwood-willow and Sonoran mesquite-cottonwood forests.