Pima County administrator Chuck Huckelberry went from king to savior this week when he announced that he was going to end poverty. Whether it is the stress of being exposed as an incompetent boob, or simply the natural course of thinking for a guy who controls everything, Huckelberry went from beyond jumping the shark to thinking he is the guy who created sharks.
Chuck Huckelberry announced this week that he is launching a broad-based initiative aimed at an audacious goal: to end poverty in Pima County.
Ending Poverty Now: An Economic Initiative of Pima County will focus on bringing community leaders, employers and government officials together to fight poverty from an economic standpoint, not just a social-services standpoint.
In announcing Ending Poverty Now, Huckelberry has invited employers, educators, community leaders and representatives from the faith and social-service sectors to sign a letter of commitment defining how they will help with the initiative.
Poverty is defined as the lack of resources to deal with problems, and it keeps the poor trapped in crisis and unable to realize a better future. National statistics show that 38 percent of children in the United States spend a year or more in poverty but they account for 70 percent of the children who do not graduate from high school. More than 35 percent of children in the city of Tucson live in poverty.
The county began examining options to eradicate poverty last September when more than 150 people attended a county-sponsored event based on Bridges Out of Poverty curriculum to learn about the impact poverty has on communities as a whole, not just poor individuals and their families. County supervisors, Tucson City Council members, state legislators, educators, school board members, and leaders from the faith and nonprofit sectors attended.
Since then, utilizing skills from the Bridges Out of Poverty program, county staff has been working to develop a “home grown” framework to eradicating poverty in the county. This framework includes service models pioneered by the One-Stop Career Center and the Pima County Housing Center, and is informed by concepts out of the Bridges program, Employer Resource Networks, Financial Opportunity Centers and Centers for Working Families. The result is Ending Poverty Now, which will work to build economic prosperity for all the county’s residents through education, cross-discipline partnerships, and business initiatives to promote retention and advancement of low-wage workers.
King James Bible, Matthew 26:11, Jesus Christ said, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help the poor, but Chuck does not and is not the solution. Pray.