Local Government – Page 68

Getting From Here to There

In his latest column, urbanist Neal Peirce recounts the deteriorating condition of mass transit in the U.S., and details the ways in which that deterioration–if left unattended–will further depress the economy and damage the environment. It’s a gloomy picture, not just because it is clearly accurate, but because our political system is in the thrall of people who find reality inconvenient, and are determined to ignore real problems in favor of culture war diatribes against gays, immigrants and women’s reproductive rights.

Fix transit? How pedestrian (terrible pun intended)!

One of the few positive elements in this otherwise gloomy state of affairs is the steady growth in the number of people who bike rather than drive–to work, to do errands, and of course, for recreation.

As Jay Walljasper (no, I did NOT make up that name) has recently reported, biking has even taken hold in places where the climate doesn’t seem hospitable. He chronicles the things that Minneapolis, of all places, has done to encourage the growth of people who pedal, and there is a lesson for Indianapolis here.

“In a city where bicyclists of all ages and backgrounds already ride recreational trails the goal is to encourage people to hop on their bikes for commuting or short trips. This is not a far-fetched dream, since nationally half of all automobile trips are three miles or less—a distance easily covered on bike in twenty minutes.

To make that happen, Minneapolis is committed to creating separate rights-of-way for bikes wherever feasible — which helps explain why the city defies trends of bicyclists as overwhelmingly male. While only a quarter of riders are women nationally, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports 37 percent in Minneapolis.

Research shows that most people — including many women, families and older citizens — are wary of biking alongside motor vehicles on busy streets. Having the option to ride apart from heavy traffic encourages more people to try out biking as a form of transportation.

Since the 1970s Dutch planners have separated bicyclists from motor vehicles on most arterial streets, with impressive results. Women now make up 55 percent of two-wheel traffic and citizens over 55 ride in numbers slightly higher than the national average.”

The lesson here is that how governments do things is every bit as important as what they choose to do.

Here in Indianapolis, one of the things the Ballard Administration has actually done right is focus on expanding bicycling. The Mayor has received a good deal of –deserved–commendation for extending bike lanes. But as a female rider, I can certainly attest to the accuracy of Walljasper’s report on the importance of separating those lanes from busy streets. Even my husband, a far more intrepid biker than I will ever be, tries to avoid the bike lanes that take riders across Michigan and New York Streets alongside speeding automobiles that far too frequently seem intent on running bikes off the road. A colleague of mine who doesn’t own a car, and commutes everywhere by bicycle, was seriously injured when a car sideswiped her last year.

As unglamorous as infrastructure may be, our elected officials need to learn to do things the right way. Just as it isn’t enough to pave roads if you don’t maintain them, it isn’t enough to slap some paint on an existing street and call it a bike lane.

So I’ll give Ballard an A for effort, but a D for execution. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much a description of his last four years.

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Sinking into Mediocrity

Apparently, those of us who live in Indianapolis only focus on the city–and what we’d like to see it become–every four years, during mayoral elections. If then.

Whatever one might think about the “visions” displayed by the current candidates, it occurs to me that those of us who call Indianapolis home need to develop some vision of our own.

What brought this to mind was a recent magazine article in “Travel and Leisure.” It was one of those “our readers vote” features–which five cities did readers choose in several categories, including best food, friendliest, cleanest, etc.

We didn’t make any of the lists.

This wasn’t scientific. I get that. But what exercises of this sort do reveal is which cities the respondents find memorable–which cities come to mind when asked such questions. Indianapolis obviously didn’t come to mind for most people. (We used to be widely cited for our friendliness and cleanliness, at least, if not for our food or architecture or arts scene. Now we don’t even make the list of clean cities.)

I realize that the ideal city for one person is very different from the ideal of another. But over the past decade or so, we seem to have settled for mediocre. Or worse. We “can’t afford” decent public transportation. We “can’t afford” to sweep streets in the mile square daily, as we used to do. We “can’t afford” first-rate schools. We “can’t afford” to maintain our parks. We can’t even afford to hire enough police officers. The only things we seem able to afford are sports venues.

Sorry, sports fans, but a couple of arenas simply cannot and will not create a great city. Or even a memorable one.

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It’s the Economy, Stupid!

Most of us remember James Carville’s admonition—the one that became the singular focus of the successful Clinton campaign—“it’s the economy, stupid!”

That laser-like focus on economic well-being was generally seen as a smart campaign tactic, which it was. But it was also smart policy.

Which brings us to the current campaign for Mayor of Indianapolis.

Partisans have argued about the candidates’ respective visions—or lack thereof—and there have been the usual competing claims about public safety, neighborhood revitalization, tax increases and the consequences of selling off city assets. But addressing those issues—in fact, addressing virtually every single issue that voters care about—depends upon the economic health of the city.

And that means good jobs.

It was Henry Ford who first recognized the importance of paying factory workers decent wages—not out of the goodness of his heart, or because he had some sort of humanitarian impulse (he wasn’t noted for either), but because he wanted them to be able to buy his cars. His logic—his recognition that success in business requires people with the means to buy your goods—seems to have escaped many of today’s officeholders.

The same logic applies to cities. You can’t create bike lanes, improve schools, hire police or pick up garbage without money. In Indiana, thanks to state-imposed tax caps that are starving units of local government, cities desperately need workers able to pay the taxes and fees we do impose. We also need to minimize the burden large numbers of jobless citizens place on municipal finances.

Which candidate is most likely to create the jobs we need? Indianapolis voters have a choice between a former Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and an incumbent with a jobs record we can examine.

So how has Ballard done?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 62,000 fewer people were working in Indianapolis this year than were working here in 2007. As the IBJ reported in late August, “while Indianapolis was hardly alone in losing jobs during the recession….no other major Midwestern city has seen such a sharp decline.” Among Midwestern cities, Indianapolis lagged Pittsburgh, Nashville, Columbus, Milwaukee, Louisville, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Chicago.

Those still working also lost ground; wages for private workers have declined 8.6 percent during the past four years.

This is stunningly bad performance.

To be fair, one reason for our pathetic showing is Governor Daniels, who believes that government should slash public employment to balance budgets—despite the loss of tax revenue and the added stress on social service budgets that accompany such measures. Most economists believe such actions trigger a self-reinforcing downward spiral. If Ballard recognized the consequences of Daniels’ policy for Indianapolis, he certainly didn’t protest.

Indianapolis needs leaders who understand the connections between government actions and private-sector reactions–leaders who understand that employers don’t relocate their businesses just by comparing tax rates. (Don’t believe that? Look again at the list of cities outpacing us.) Businesses don’t move to places with bad public schools, troubling crime rates and other elements signaling a poor quality of life; they move to—or stay in—cities offering amenities like well-tended parks, efficient government agencies and convenient public transportation.

Given Indiana’s tax caps and other fiscal constraints, the only way the next mayor will be able to do anything other than continue selling off public assets (and our children’s futures) is to create jobs and grow the tax base.

We aren’t stupid, and it really is the economy. Indianapolis—which used to lead—is lagging well behind our peer cities. Kennedy’s right—we can do better.

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New York, New York

When I told a coworker that I was coming to New York for the weekend, he shuddered. He hasn’t ever been there, he said, but he hates big cities.

I LOVE big cities. And therein lies a political challenge for those who would be mayor. We talk about the need for our candidates to demonstrate a vision for the city, but we have very different ideas about what sort of vision we’re looking for.

The virtues of urban life that seem so off-putting to many people–and so appealing to me–are multiple: the diversity of the people (and the tolerance for difference that is a necessary consequence), the multiple thriving arts scenes, the great public transportation, and the endless choices of everything–neighborhoods, retail establishments, food.

With all of this, of course, comes a certain anonymity, which delights some people and deeply troubles others. The virtues of community, which are accessed more easily in smaller cities and towns, have to be actively created in larger cities. And the mix of people–diverse in beliefs and attitudes as well as religion, skin color, national origin and the like–creates a culture that celebrates messages and behaviors that would be upsetting or shocking in smaller venues. (For example, we were able to get tickets to Book of Mormon–a smash hit–only because my nephew “knows people.” We loved it, but I imagine its irreverent message about all religion–not just Mormonism–would be received differently in more pious venues.)

What is our vision for Indianapolis? I doubt there is much consensus. Even people in my downtown neighborhood are divided about the virtues of urbanism; some still want the big lawns and low densities of suburban life, just closer to the city’s core. They fail to recognize that supporting the amenities they do want requires the urban characteristics they don’t.

We are in the middle of electing a new mayor and council. Ideally, we would evaluate all the candidates on two separate measures: their visions, and their capacities to achieve those visions. The best elections, from the standpoint of us voters, would offer us equally qualified candidates with competing visions. My colleague could vote for the person whose vision of Indianapolis is pastoral; I could vote for the candidate promising more urbanism. Unfortunately, we rarely get that sort of choice, and this election is no exception.

For mayor, we get to choose between a feckless incumbent whose management skills are invisible and whose vision of urbanism is a faux Chinatown, and a candidate with demonstrated management skills whose vision–better education, public safety and economic development–is solid, but hardly soaring.

Well–there’s always an occasional weekend in New York.

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Ballard Strikes Again

Is Mayor Ballard trying to give people reasons to vote for Melina Kennedy?

The Administration is spending a part of the proceeds from the sale of the water company to demolish unsafe, abandoned houses. Most of us have no problem with that–but, just as with the “if it moves, pave it–but only during rush hour and don’t check with the utilities” program–the administration has decided to use a mallet when a flyswatter is called for.

As news reports have noted, the City has greatly increased the number of structures being demolished, and the pace of demolition. In its haste, the Administration has decided not to bother with pesky procedures like checking with the affected neighborhoods, insuring that the buildings slated for demolition are structurally unsound, or checking on the historical or architectural significance of the targeted structures.

A few days ago, the City demolished a park structure in the Butler Tarkington area designed by noted architect Ed Pierre. To add insult to injury, they announced plans to replace it with a $200,000 pre fab “toilet facility.” The neighborhood wasn’t consulted, and many Butler Tarkington residents are furious.

As Ericka Smith wrote in her Star column this morning, once a building is gone, so are the neighborhood’s options. Once a historically significant building is gone, it’s gone–once a structurally sound structure is eliminated, so is the potential for its reuse. That doesn’t mean you never tear anything down; it means you do your homework first.

Decisions made by each administration limit the ability of future generations to shape our city. That’s why it is so important that those decisions be made thoughtfully, and in consultation with those affected. The Ballard Administration seems oblivious to that reality.

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