On Friday afternoon, the Grove Miami Area Chamber of Commerce welcomed Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema and community leaders from Gila and Pinal counties, with Cinema launching a rural development working group. This new group (Friday’s meeting was his second, the first meeting that morning) was intended to give local community leaders an opportunity to discuss issues and concerns directly with cinema. .

“During the COVID pandemic, I was on weekly calls with mayors and county supervisors across the state,” Cinema said in an interview with Silverbelt. I got to hear what was happening in the community every week, and when we all returned to normal life after the pandemic, I missed those calls. , decided this was going to be the next phase: I was able to actually meet people instead of just making phone calls every week.”

During the course of the meeting, regional leaders briefly shared their commentsof the municipality relationship with cinema. These ranged from infrastructure needs such as road repairs, forest management, increased fentanyl use, flooding, supply he chain issues, salt cedar issues and federal subsidy windows. As a final example, Gila County Superintendent Tim Humphrey highlighted a Natural Resources Conservation Agency grant for a flood mitigation project. For this he had a 220 day window. Gila County was unable to meet the deadline and lost funds.

“Rural communities have a harder time getting federal funding than larger cities and towns,” Cinema told Silverbelt. It’s biased and we want to fix it.Many grants require matching funds, but small towns don’t have matching funds.One of the things I heard today is that small communities need more flexibility in the timing of hiring and contracting to complete community projects, even if they do receive grants. We want to change some of these rules to make them more friendly to rural communities.”

On another topic of great importance to the community, Independent Cinema said she and a bipartisan group of senators had sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding that it designate copper as a critical mineral. The letter was written by Mark Kelly (Democrat, Arizona), Joe Manchin (Democrat, Virginia), Mike Brown (Republican, Indiana), Raphael Warnock (Democrat, Georgia), Mitt Romney (Republican, Utah) co-signed by Senators. ).

“According to the description, copper already meets the specification. [Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to whom the letter was addressed] We have the authority to designate copper as a critical mineral at any time,” Cinema told Silverbelt. We also do not mine enough copper domestically to meet our construction needs. [electric vehicle] battery. Copper is also very important in the construction of defense materials, all the tools necessary for national security, and microchips. We made that claim to them. ”