Business View Civil and Municipal | May/June 2022

55 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 5 throughout the year and many of those events tie back to the cultural heritage.” “Safford has a very strong sense of community,” adds John Cassella, City Manager, “and they are very attentive to what you might call ‘family values’. It is tight-knit and it is also very active. The people here love to get together and help out – everyone is very community-minded and service-oriented.” The County seat of Graham County, Safford has a population (at last count) of 10,349 people and continues to grow. The city is also home to the Mount Graham Regional Medical Center, which is the largest medical facility in the county. Nearby Mount Graham is a partial Dark-sky Preserve which houses the Mount Graham International Observatory, with a world-renowned telescope created in Italy before being gifted to the United States. The Observatory is run by the University of Arizona. Safford also boasts a regional airport, Eastern Arizona College, and a copper mine. The Safford Mine is an open-pit copper mine, owned and operated by Freeport-McMoran, which operates another four copper mines in Arizona and two in New Mexico. It is one of the key economic drivers of the region. According to Hoshal, “Arizona has the five Cs as its economic drivers – copper, cotton, cattle, citrus, and climate. Well, we’ve got three out of the five right here in Safford, the copper, cattle, and cotton. We have a large farming community because of the Gila River and the irrigation that we draw from that. We also have cattle ranges all around us in the county.” This growth is also spurring change in the educational institutions of the city. Eastern Arizona College, through recent legislation passed in the state, is becoming accredited to grant four-year degrees. That will mean nursing and other professional degrees may be offered to students, which could lead to excellent employment opportunities in the area. Education is a big part of the old-fashioned values that SAFFORD , AR I ZONA