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A FLOWER to the Tucson Unified School District for news that its bond rating has been upgraded to A1 by Moody's Investors Service. The district's rating had been an A2 and the higher rating makes TUSD bonds more attractive to investors.

TUSD issued $57 million in general obligation bonds July 14, said Beatriz Rendon, the district's CEO. TUSD sold the bonds at a 4.43 percent interest rate, which was lower than anticipated, she said.

The higher rating was "based primarily on the district's sizeable tax base and economy, modest debt levels and rapid payout of principal," according to a TUSD press release.

The bonds are part of the $235 million bond package voters approved in 2004 to build classrooms and to upgrade and renovate school buildings, science labs, and physical-education and performing-arts facilities. The latest bond sale will pay for about 35 projects.

A THORN to whoever removed a memorial "Ghost Bike" honoring 14-year-old Jose Rincon from its location near East Broadway and Harrison Road. Ghost bikes have popped up around town over the past few months to draw attention to the hazards cyclists face.

The Star's Andrea Kelly reported that the bike, painted all white to memorialize people killed while riding their bikes and to raise awareness about cyclists on the road, was chained to a city sign near that intersection. The chain apparently had been cut and the bike taken.

Rincon was riding his bike on the shoulder of the road when he was killed by a driver in January.

The city's transportation department told Ari Shapiro, who put up the ghost bike in honor of Rincon, that he had to move it in the next week or so because it's illegal to lock anything to a city sign. But a department spokesman said no one from the city removed the bike.

Whoever took the ghost bike didn't just steal a bike, he or she hurt a grieving family. Jose Rincon, the boy's father, said the family would visit the bike for solace. "It's kind of upsetting; we liked it there," he told Kelly.

We hope Shapiro and the city can work together to place another ghost bike nearby, in a location that's legal and safe.

A THORN to the thief who walked off with a prosthetic leg belonging to a Sierra Vista woman. The woman told police that someone stole the prosthesis from her driveway, where she kept it next to her car so she could get to it easily.

The woman said she used the 11-year-old prosthetic leg when doing yard work or other things outdoors so that her primary prosthetic leg wasn't ruined. Cosmetic covers for prosthetics, shaped to match a person's organic leg in color and outline, can cost thousands of dollars and can rip or get marred fairly easily.

Keeping your spare leg next to the car might not make a lot of sense to someone who doesn't rely on a prosthesis, but to someone who does, it's a matter of quick access and efficiency — when you need it, it's there. Plus, who anticipates that someone is going to steal your leg?

We hope that whoever took the prosthetic leg does the decent thing and returns it.

A needling THORN to the U.S. Department of Interior, which has sent notice to the U.S. House Commmittee on Natural Resources asserting that the committee lacked a quorum when it invoked a rarely used declaration of emergency and voted to give public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon immunity from uranium mining activities.

The committee chairmain, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., wrote back that the commmittee did too have a quorum. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., in pushing for the declaration, predicted Interior would push back, but this is just plain silly.