Valley Interfaith Project (VIP) and St. Francis Xavier Catholic leaders leveraged more than $5 million to improve neighborhood safety in the Maryvale region of Phoenix following a year-long organizing effort.

In Spring 2021, leaders from St. Francis Xavier began a house meeting campaign to develop a team of leaders to learn about issues affecting Maryvale families.  Leaders heard stories about unlit neighborhoods, gang activity, and dangerous streets. They moved to meet with City of Phoenix council members from districts 4 & 5 to secure commitments from them to address these issues.

By the summer of 2021, VIP and St. Francis Xavier leaders secured more than 30 new street lamps in the same sites VIP leaders had identified as needing lighting and where crime was an issue.

In early 2022, the Phoenix City Council voted to approve more than $5 million dollars to create a safety corridor along 27th Avenue -- installing new lighting and traffic cameras, implementing street safety features and assigning added officers to address ongoing vandalism and gang activity.  At the time of the vote, Phoenix City Councilwoman Laura Pastor recognized VIP for its work in bringing this issue to the City's attention and making this project a possibility. 

[In photo, St. Francis Xavier and VIP leader Catalina Aldaco announces the win at VIP's leaders assembly.]

Phoenix Considers Safety and Crime Prevention Project for 27th Avenue Corridor, KJZZ [pdf]

Phoenix Approves $5M Safety Plan Targeting 27th Ave., 12 News 

Valley Interfaith Project (VIP), along with allied organizations, temporarily averted a $1 billion funding crisis for Arizona public schools. A decades-old spending limit would have required school districts to abide by 1980 spending levels without legislative action.  Normally, the legislature would vote to override the limit as a routine procedure.  However, partisan brinkmanship, amidst a closely divided legislature, led to individual legislators withholding their votes.

While school district budgets were based on funding that the Legislature had approved last year, this arbitrary spending limit, if left unchecked, would have resulted in massive budget cuts as soon as April 1, 2022.  The cuts would have amounted to $1.2 billion statewide, resulting in widespread layoffs or school closures.

VIP leaders met with individual legislators and mobilized a flood of constituent phone calls in key areas. On February 21st, only one week before the statutory deadline, the Senate followed the House's lead and voted to allow school districts to exceed the arbitrary spending limit for the current school year.

While leaders celebrated the last-minute fix, the long-term outlook has Arizona revisiting this crisis every year until voters can repeal the outdated spending limit.  VIP leaders hosted a leaders assembly with two senators to explore a more permanent resolution.

[In photo: Revs. Brooke Isingoma and Martha Seaman discuss the spending limit with State Senators Tyler Pace and Sean Bowie.]

"Arizona Senate Votes to Raise Education Spending Limit, Avoiding Big School Funding Cuts," Arizona Republic [pdf]

As part of a long-term regional economic development strategy, Valley Interfaith Project leader Monica Dorcey testified at a Maricopa Community College District board meeting to support increasing local investment in the community colleges. "These community colleges are the best driver of economic development that we have," said Dorcey, who is also a member of the board of Arizona Career Pathways, a non-profit job-training program that has a partnership with the community colleges.

"Valley Interfaith Project, a community organization composed of religious and civic leaders, spoke in support of the tax hike, telling the board members that the increase was small but would yield a good return on investment. 'The state has placed our educational system in a vise grip and now only provides 1 percent of the funding for the district,' Monica Dorcey said.

"Earlier this year, a faith-based political-action group began putting pressure on Phoenix officials to reinstate some services after noting there was no additional funding planned for after-school programs in the initial version of the city's budget proposal.

"The Department of Justice's announcement of allegations of civil-rights violations in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office have added to the cascade of non-stop bad press for Joe Arpaio. It's quite different from five years ago in El Mirage, when there was scant willingness to recognize the department's neglect.

by Greta Huls, ""Ecumenical Services Comfort Hundreds," Episcopal Diocese of Arizona