Beyond the Boom

The Rocky Mountain News did a series on the energy boom rocking parts of Colorado and how communities are enjoying, coping, and mitigating the impacts (or at least trying to). The series offers a a number of perspectives and the challenges involved in local-state-federal policy making and planning.

The day 1 article in the series, entitled “The billion dollar question: What if?”, is particularly interesting because two state legislators have taken seemingly opposite positions from the ones you would think they would take given their respective political ties. Their perspective is likely influenced by their location place in the state and the energy boom.

Representative Josh Penry, a Mesa County Republican, is witnessing the energy boom first hand and is a big supporter of creating a permanent trust fund from oil and gas severance taxes – similar to what Wyoming did a decade ago. Chris Romer, a Democratic Senator from the Denver Metro area, favors the more measured approach of analyzing how taxes are currently collected and allocated before the state tries to set up a permanent fund.

Who’s the conservative in this debate?

Read the entire series

Economies collide with nature

The natural resource based economy that dominated the Western Slope of Colorado for so many years is making a come back.

As Jason Blevins writes in the Sunday Denver Post, mining is coming back to a number of communities due to increasing demand and prices for precious minerals like molybdenum.

If the recent natural gas boom in Garfield County offers any crystal ball, more Western Slope communities are due increasing revenues, stressed infrastructure, a quick disappearance of affordable housing, and a shortage of workers.

The natural amenity and natural resource economy are colliding and the only thing they have in common is a reliance on nature.

Garfield County sees explosive growth

Garfield County received front page space in the Sunday Denver Post due to the energy boom driving the county’s economy.

Jason Blevins story captures the essence of life in Garfield County since the boom began five years ago. As New Castle Mayor Frank Breslin says, “It’s just all happening so fast out here. I just dart around like a bumblebee.”

The economic growth has been a boon to a county mired in a slump cause by the overnight departure of Exxon (Black Sunday) in 1982 and the county now has more jobs than it has workers. The challenge for the public sector is to try tokeep up and pay for the infrastructure to support the increases in traffic, homes, and wastewater while competing with the gas companies for workers.

Blevins quotes Christy Hamrick, the finance director for Garfield County’s 4,500-student school district, “We pay drivers $14 an hour, and they pay $22 an hour. We have to compete with that, and we’ve seen lots of turnover. ”

Communities innovate to provide health insurance

The lack of leadership at the national level to provide health insurance to the over 45 million Americans that do not have it, has driven states like Maine, Massachussetts to create programs for the uninsured within their borders. As Kevin Sack writes in the New York Times, some cities are becoming local laboratories for health insurance innovation.

[...] Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured [82,000 resident], and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.

It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.

After a two-month trial at two clinics in Chinatown, the program is scheduled to expand citywide to 20 more locations on Sept. 17.

Whether such a program might be replicated elsewhere is difficult to assess. In addition to its unique political culture, San Francisco, with a population of about 750,000, has the advantages of compact geography, a unified city-county government, an extensive network of public and community clinics and a relatively small number of uninsured adults. Virtually all the city’s children are covered by private insurance or government plans.

Read the full article . . .

Counter intuitive approaches to managing traffic

Many people in the U.S. have heard the expression “changing the rules of the game.” In some European cities, however, traffic engineers are just about eliminating the rules of the road and removing all the streets signs American drivers are so familiar with.

As Matthias Schulz writes at Spiegel Online:

The plans derive inspiration and motivation from a large-scale experiment in the town of Drachten in the Netherlands, which has 45,000 inhabitants. There, cars have already been driving over red natural stone for years. Cyclists dutifully raise their arm when they want to make a turn, and drivers communicate by hand signs, nods and waving.

“More than half of our signs have already been scrapped,” says traffic planner Koop Kerkstra. “Only two out of our original 18 traffic light crossings are left, and we’ve converted them to roundabouts.” Now traffic is regulated by only two rules in Drachten: “Yield to the right” and “Get in someone’s way and you’ll be towed.”

Strange as it may seem, the number of accidents has declined dramatically. Experts from Argentina and the United States have visited Drachten. Even London has expressed an interest in this new example of automobile anarchy. And the model is being tested in the British capital’s Kensington neighborhood.

TOD can save the planet

Transit oriented development is gaining traction around the U.S. (it’s already popular in many other countries) because it can address many community issues — provide affordable housing, increase transit service, prevent loss of open space, create public places — at the same time.

And now, in case you needed another reason to support TOD, it can also save the planet. As San Mateo County Supervisior Adrienne Tissier writes,

The solutions to global warming are found in modern urban planning and zoning and three little words: Transit Oriented Development. Build well-designed, affordable housing within walking distance of efficient mass transit, and the air-fouling traffic jams will unclog themselves. Better yet, build well-designed, affordable housing within walking distance of jobs, schools and retail, and car use will plummet.

It is nice to know that something good for a community has a global benefit as well.

Carbondale’s educational challenge

Combine a diverse student body, two charter schools, a well known private high school, a number of private elementary schools, and a statewide open enrollment policy and you get a number of challenging educational and community issues in Carbondale.

A couple of weeks ago, Town Trustees heard various opinions about a proposed state bill to create more accountability for state approved charter schools, which brought up issues of segregation in Carbondale’s elementary schools, and now parent concerns about enrollment and academic standards at Roaring Fork High School has reached public attention again.

Perhaps, as an editorial in the Valley Journal suggests, it is time for a meeting of the minds on the Carbondale’s school.

Basalt wrestles growth

When you are the first town downvalley from Aspen and Snowmass Village, and stradle the boundary between Pitkin and Eagle Counties, you would expect some challenging planning and community development situations.

Nowadays, just about every where the Town of Basalt turns presents another significant challenge. For example:

• Last month, one Basalt’s two downtown affordable hotels, The Green Drake Inn, sold for $4.4 million to an investment group that could repeat the trend in Aspen of converting small lodge and hotel rooms to fractional ownership luxury units;
• The town is working to connect the older part of town to the newer south side with an underpass, since the 6-lanes of State Highway 82 presents a formidable barrier between two parts of town;
• The booming second-home market is creating a shortage of affordable housing and every undevelopmed parcel in Basalt’s urban growth boundary has a development proposal in the review process; and,
• The town hopes to complete the update its of 1999 urban growth boundary and master plan by this summer.

No wonder a recent Aspen Times Weekly article by Scott Condon asked ‘What’s happening to my small, quirky town?’

System versus Silo Thinking

Neal Peirce writes about the the “green revolution” happening in America’s cities and towns in the January, American Prospect. 

Peirce describes a number of cities (Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle) that are re-connecting the commons (parks, roads, rivers, and everywhere there is public investment) through public infrastructure investments to create heatlhy places.  The projects are bold, exciting, and hold promise for state and national policy.  But, he points out, the work ahead requires a change it the way we think and approach problem solving.  He writes,

“[...] there’s the challenge to the professionals — the architects, planners, designers, engineers, builders, utility representatives, city and county housing officials, and others engaged on the front line of building and reshaping communities. Historically — and often, still today — they have worked sequentially, first doing the land planning, then the underground pipes, then roadways and buildings and so on.

In a smart 21st century, that won’t do. It costs too much and it misses opportunities for better aesthetics, energy efficiency, and quality of life. The time’s at hand to move from silos to systems [emphasis added]. It’s the right moment to ask the professionals to start thinking more broadly, to work closely with colleagues from the other disciplines from start to end of any project.”

No Parking: Condos Leave Out Cars

A recent NY Times article highlights examples of condos being built without associated parking spaces. Although this practice goes against the codes in many communities, planners are realizing that “free parking” might be a reason why housing has become so unaffordable to middle-income families.

The article quotes Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Los Angeles and the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, “In the United States, housing is expensive and parking is cheap. We’ve got it the wrong way around.”

Although condominiums without parking are common in Manhattan and the downtowns of a few other East Coast cities, they are the exception to the rule in most of the country. In fact, almost all local governments require developers to provide a minimum number of parking spaces for each unit — and to fold the cost of the space into the housing price.

The exact regulations, which are intended to prevent clogged streets and provide sufficient parking, vary by city. Houston’s code requires a minimum of 1.33 parking spaces for a one-bedroom and 2 spaces for a three-bedroom. Downtown Los Angeles mandates 2.25 parking spaces per unit, regardless of size.

Today, city planners around the country are trying to change or eliminate these standards, opting to promote mass transit and find a way to lower housing costs.

Read the full aricle in the New York Times . . .