Black Friday parking 2017: After the ball is over

This year's observance of the Black Friday Parking tradition took me down 16th Avenue SW, a five-lane stroad that runs west from New Bohemia past the former Lincoln School and eventually connects to old U.S. Highway 30. It's not a shopping hotspot on Black Friday or any day; as an example of first wave sprawl, it mainly features empty buildings, used car lots, and the occasional surviving restaurant. There's activity nearby--Jefferson High School, the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena, and two stadiums that between them in use most of the year--but it produces no spillover effects for 16th's economy. The average daily traffic count of 11500-13700 is mostly on their way somewhere else.

Going out of business

Gone out of business

Gone out of business

This used to be a K-Mart...

...and could be yours for the right price

Strip mall, parking lot about 40 percent full

Theisen's, parking lot close to full

Strip mall, lot about 50 percent full

Sidewalks have been added along parts of 16th Avenue;
I would not support more

Walgreen's parking lot about 50 percent full;
ditto the CVS across the street

Next year I promise to visit somewhere more hopping. In the meantime we should not invest a lot in trying to rescue 16th Avenue... just recognize that shopping areas with giant parking lots end up like this--unless, like Cedar Rapids's former Westdale Mall, the city pumps $10+ million into resuscitation--and maybe we should stop building them.

PREVIOUS VENTURES: 2016 (Edgewood Road & Westdale), 2015 (Blairs Ferry Rd)

Cedar Rapids parking ordinance: https://library.municode.com/ia/cedar_rapids/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH32ZO_S32.05DIPADEST_32.05.020PAST

On Twitter, check #blackfridayparking

MORE TO READ!
James Brasuell, "Better Land Use Planning: One of the Best Ways to Improve Transportation," Planetizen, 19 November 2017
Rachel Quednau, "This Week, Join in Our Annual Black Friday Parking Event," Strong Towns, 20 November 2017

Cedar Rapids City Council runoff 2017

Source: cedar-rapids.org

This month's elections for Cedar Rapids City Council featured races for five of the nine seats resulting in two new members (Marty Hoeger in District 1 and Tyler Olson at large), one member returning after a 16 year hiatus (Dale Todd in District 3), and two races that will require a runoff on Tuesday, December 5. It is to those races that we now turn.

Brad Hart and Monica Vernon are the survivors of an eight-person mayors' race. Vernon led the first round, with 30.3 percent of the vote to Hart's 20.4 percent out of  17,642 votes cast (Morelli). In our city's council-manager system, the part-time mayor is technically just one at-large vote on the City Council, but the visibility of the position allows considerable leadership potential, as outgoing mayor Ron Corbett demonstrated in his two terms. Both are running on their biographies, which are impressive. Both have been public, if not (in the case of Hart) political presences in the city for a number of years. Both surely exceed the threshold of strategic competence, articulated by my former writing colleague Paul J. Quirk as a generalist's ability to recognize the signs of responsible argument on a broad array of issues. As a manager of problems with high levels of personal activity and familiarity with the city, either would be fine.

Both have fairly elaborate websites (cited below) with separate issue pages. There's a lot of commonality between them. Vernon covers more issues, 12 to 8, while Hart's statements are longer. Both indicate recognition of city needs like jobs, financing and inclusion, but beyond being in support of all three there's not a lot of policy substance.

Employment, for example, is surely one of the core challenges America faces in the 21st century in the face of automation, outsourcing and persistent poverty. Here's Hart:

Strong businesses + workforce = healthy community. People will come to live and work in a community that is welcoming and has a great quality of life to offer--schools, housing, entertainment, recreation, safety. People stay when they become connected to the community and its people. We can all help in that effort by being more friendly, more welcoming, by random acts of kindness. Volunteering will play an important role here, too.

And Vernon:
Opportunity waits for no one. Economic development must be serious business for Cedar Rapids and the Mayor of Cedar Rapids must be a self-starter who will lead the charge with passion. Building and developing and re-developing this city must be done with a "pedal to the metal" mentality. Using common sense and an approach of equal opportunity, we must continue to push forward for progress.

I'm seeing good intentions here in both cases, but nothing one could call a plan, or even a suspicion of a strategy.

The Gazette profiles of Hart and Vernon shook loose some more specific positions. Vernon's more detailed answers include reasonable defenses of city investments in Greene Square and the New Bo City Market. She and Hart agree on the importance of recruiting and retaining major employers, accommodating all means of transportation ("we must also have drivability," says Vernon), getting state/federal support for flood protection, and judicious use of tax increment financing (TIFs), all of which involve a great deal of negotiating with and listening to businesses, state and federal officials, and city residents.

A rare criticism of past policy, besides their agreement that the incremental conversion of one-way streets to two-way has been "confusing," is Vernon arguing that the closing of the 1000 block of 2nd Avenue SE to accommodate Physicians Clinic of Iowa should have included funding for the immediate conversion of the entirety of 3rd Avenue. Funding from... the city (from what pile of cash)? Or from PCI, in which case how does that square with her stated willingness to "fight to keep" major employers, whether the issue is "housing, workforce development, land or infrastructure?"

Hart mentioned as part of an answer on city finances that "We also need to review the street construction requirements for new streets developed by others so when those streets become the responsibility of the city they last for the 40-50 years expected." That's a rare example of the mayor articulating a specific expectation, and it's spot on, although from what I know 40-50 years is optimistic for streets with a modicum of traffic.

District 5

In District 5, Vanorny outpolled three-term incumbent Shields by 60 votes out of 2128 cast, 43.2% to 40.4% (Ramm). District 5 runs along the southern edge of the city, with one northward spur west of 6th Avenue SW that just intersects the Taylor Area neighborhood. (See this map on the county website.) It appears to be the least dense of the five districts, and includes the swath of strip malls on the southwest side.

Justin Shields, from cedar-rapids.org

So it is not surprising that one of two issues discussed among Shields's recent Facebook posts, besides his leadership in flood recovery, is the multi-million dollar renovation of the former Westdale Mall. This was an enormous outflow of city money into development that is neither walkable nor sustainable. It is difficult to search for issues on a Facebook page, but there is little evidence that we are going to have to anything differently than we've done in 75 years of the suburban development pattern.

Ashley Vanorny, from her website

Ashley Vanorny is a 32-year-old IT analyst for University of Iowa Hospital. Her website discusses her calling to public service--a courageous statement in these cynical times--and her work with foster children at Four Oaks. Promoting community spirit is an essential quality of a city leader, but while she is critical of past Council actions on "issues regarding panhandling and affordable housing," but that as policy-specific as her content gets.

America, which includes Cedar Rapids, faces some profound challenges. How do we enable a satisfactory quality of life and economic opportunity for our citizens in the face of economic, environmental, racial and financial challenges? Cedar Rapids faces specific issues of a major physical remake of our school system; an overhaul of the zoning code; continued implementation of complete streets policies, particularly funding for sidewalks; development in the MedQuarter, core neighborhoods and new areas created by the Highway 100 extension; and the future of our bus system as well as potential inter-city public transportation. We've managed to have a school board election and two rounds of a city council election this fall without serious debate over any of these. It's no wonder so few people vote.

SEE ALSO:
"Cedar Rapids Mayoral Forum Nov. 13, 2017" (video), KCRG-TV9, 14 November 2017
B.A. Morelli, "Hart and Vernon to Face Off for Cedar Rapids Mayor in Runoff," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 7 November 2017
Michaela Ramm, "Cedar Rapids District 5 City Council Race Headed for Dec. 5 Runoff," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 7 November 2017
Steve Shriver, interviews with Brad Hart and Monica Vernon, 3 October 2017
"Brad Hart for Mayor: Home," www.hart4cr.com
"Justin Shields for Cedar Rapids" Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/JustinShieldsForCedarRapids/
"Ashley Vanorny--A Voice for Cedar Rapids," www.ashleyvanorny.com
"Home--Monica Vernon Cedar Rapids Mayor Candidate," www.monicavernonformayor.com
"Cedar Rapids City Council Runoff," Holy Mountain, 23 November 2013

CRCSD plan

Public input forum at Washington High School, 11/9/2017

The Cedar Rapids Community School District is floating a bold plan to remake our city's elementary schools by 2034. Nearly all (18 of 21) existing schools would be closed under the plan, which is to be officially presented to the school board in December and voted on in January. New, larger schools would be built on ten existing school sites, the three remaining schools (Grant, Hiawatha and Viola Gibson) would be renovated, and the other eight schools would be closed and re-purposed, sold, or something.

The district's rationale mixes necessity and pragmatism. They cite the need for a total of $241 million dollars of building updates in our current elementaries, while the new schools could be built for pretty much the same amount ($260 million) and could save money on staffing and operating costs. The Physical Plant and Equipment Levy Fund (PPEL) is inadequate to fund needed repairs, and by 2024 the cumulative efforts to patch aging facilities will have exhausted the fund's reserves. Because SAVE money will be available from the State of Iowa beginning in 2020 to supplement the PPEL funds, the district can execute this plan without either a tax increase or a bond issue. Given the district's previous experience closing Polk School, there's also probably something to be said for getting all the pain out of the way at once.

District chart showing PPEL fund's inability to keep up with maintenance needs

I confess to difficulty analyzing the plan, the audacity of which is breathtaking. It is immediately redolent of the "orderly but dumb" top-down comprehensive planning that Strong Towns is always criticizing. In part we are responding to a situation that is created by decades of suburban development with a comprehensive reaction that will probably reinforce that pattern. Five years ago, there were five elementary schools located in the city's core neighborhoods (two in Mound View); after this process is through there will remain two (none in Mound View).

But react we must, probably. I'm going with the district's numbers on this, because I don't have my own. From 35 years in colleges and universities, I can tell you it's impossible to win an argument with an administration who says financial necessity requires us to do something unpleasant. Where opposing perspectives and alternative plans would emerge is during election campaigns, but remarkably, we've just this fall had elections for the school board and city council in which this city-altering proposal was not discussed.

So we're left trusting (or not) that school officials are acting in good faith and with good judgment. Long-term planning is inevitably risky, because they're based on forecasts that by definition amount to guesswork with varying degrees of certainty. Among the arguable assumptions of the plan or its advocates:

• Building new facilities (the "learning environment") is the most effective use of available money to improve student learning.
• The improved facilities and professional staffing (like full-time librarians) that come with newer schools cannot be achieved in any other way.
• Maintenance needs of schools at the back end of the plan (due for reconstruction or destruction in 2030-2034) will not in the meantime affect the overall cost calculus
• State funding will not appreciably increase anytime soon--OK, that's not really arguable--but we can rely on them maintaining current programs and funding levels.
• The population of Cedar Rapids will continue to sprawl. While young professionals or empty-nesters might be attracted to residences in the city center, we won't see similar shifts among school-age children.
• The assessment of infrastructure needs is accurate, and represents needs that must be immediately addressed. These figures are in no way inflated a la the American Society of Civil Engineers' annual report that the U.S. must spend trillions of dollars to bring its roads and bridges into shape (see Marohn 2011).
• Construction of the new facilities will be of high quality that will last... like some of our oldest schools that have lasted more than 100 years, and not like some of the shoddier stuff that was thrown up in the 1950s and 60s.
• Transportation costs to the district under the plan can be managed, because not many more students will require busing--many parents are already driving their children to school--and energy costs will remain relatively low.
• Less than 25 percent of students currently walk to school, so the impact of larger attendance areas will be small. There is no hope of increasing the percentage of students walking anyway.
• Of the 1200+ students currently choosing to home school or attend out of district, many will be lured back by new facilities with up-to-date features. "People have said to me they chose not to move to Cedar Rapids because they drove up and looked at our schools," Superintendent Brad Buck told the Gazette (Duffy, cited below). [By way of contrast, today's Gazette includes a quote from Coolidge School parent Janelle Lund who argues parents aren't fleeing bad schools, they're fleeing bad test scores: It has nothing to do with how (the schools) look bad on the outside. It's because the proficiency levels are too low. Of course, test scores are driven neither by buildings nor by the quality of the instruction, they're driven by the socio-economic status of the student body. So basically they're fleeing poor people, and they're not the first to do that.]
• Impacts on neighborhood property values are unavoidable if not negligible. Overall impact on assessed value in the city will be negligible.
• Something positive will occur on the sites of the closed schools. Certainly, said one person Thursday night, "we don't want [the properties] to become derelict." We should be encouraged that previously-closed Monroe School, on a block with a large number of cheap apartments in poor condition far from existing schools or employment opportunities, is going to become even more affordable housing.

The Facilities Master Plan may need to be comprehensive, but implementation should be considered incremental. In other words, as we learn more about how these closings and consolidations are affecting students as well as the city at large, we should modify or scrap the remaining part. We can only hope that neither the contracts nor the officials themselves are so rigid as to stick to the script when adverse consequences emerge.

A word to the wise: The district's information circulated at the public input discussions noted that future investments in middle and high schools will require going to the voters (p. 27). How the matter of the elementary schools is handled will have a significant impact on the public's receptivity to the future middle-high referendum.

SEE ALSO:
Molly Duffy, "C.R. Makes Bold Pitch for Schools to Parents," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 13 November 2017, 17A, 20A
"Public Deserves More Time to Weigh C.R. Schools' Facilities Plan," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 5 November 2013
"Starting a Conversation about Education," Holy Mountain, 16 August 2015