FY25 budget

President Biden released the Budget of the United States this week, directly on his State of the Union address last week. The Budget has been a presidential responsibility since 1921, when Congress essentially threw up its collective hands and delegated it to President Warren G. Harding in the Budget Act. Presidents got a significant staffing upgrade relative to this task in 1970, when another Budget Act created the Office of Management and Budget directly responsible to the chief executive.

This edition of the budget is for fiscal year 2025, which begins this coming October 1. It comes somewhat later in the calendar than usual, but otherwise is pretty typical for a budget. It's mostly a continuation of past government financing, with some policy recommendations that would if adopted have some impact on the bottom line numbers. It has no policy authority of its own; actual government financing requires appropriations by Congress, which given its divided and polarized condition tends even more towards the incremental. Still, it's as good a statement as any of the financial shape and direction of the U.S.

Biden's budget projects a country returning to normal over its 10-year time perspective, following the dislocations of the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns--dislocations that were profound but seem to have been mercifully short-lived. Real GDP growth is expected to be in the low 2 percents through fiscal 2034 (Table S-9, p. 173). (It is a real temptation for presidents to forecast exceptional economic growth, because it makes the bottom line look better. Trump did this; Biden hasn't, to his credit.) Inflation is projected to be down to 2.3 percent in 2025 and in the low 2 percents after that. Entitlement ("mandatory") spending is predicted to be stable at 15-16 percent of gross domestic product, with interest payments rising to 3.5 percent of GDP over this period (Table S-5, p. 142).

Government revenues have averaged about 18 percent of GDP since the 1970s, though they dropped sharply during the 2008-10 recession and the pandemic. FY25 revenues are estimated to be 18.7 percent, with gradual rises after that to 20+ percent beginning in FY31 (Table S-1, p. 137). Biden proposes tax increases on "the wealthiest Americans and big corporations" totaling $5 trillion over this period, not to mention allowing most of the 2017 tax cuts to expire when they sunset in 2025.

Government spending has averaged about 21 percent of GDP since the 1970s, running higher during the recession and then surging over 30 percent at the height of the pandemic. FY25 spending is estimated at 24.8 percent, remaining between 24 and 25 percent for the rest of the period (Table S-1, p. 137). It will top $7 trillion for the first time, and reaching $10 trillion in FY33--consistent with growth in the size of the economy, but staggering numbers for someone who remembers Jimmy Carter getting static for proposing the first $500 billion budget. (Now the defense budget alone is more than half-again larger!) There are a few new spending programs included, such as "investments" in health care and expanding access to child care and early childhood education. More notably, the budget projects no cuts in Social Security or Medicare, the two largest and fastest-growing government programs, and declining demands on the defense budget.

The FY25 budget projects a FY25 deficit of $1.781 trillion, 6.1 percent of GDP, optimistically assuming adoption of his proposals and seemingly peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. Otherwise the deficit remains over 5 percent of GDP (Table S-2, p. 138), or gets higher if the 2017 tax cuts are extended. I understand that you don't want to be so aggressive about the deficit that you blow up the economy, and that none of the most-feared negative effects--crowding the private sector out of lending markets, vulnerability in a crisis, vulnerability to international creditors--has come to pass after 40 years of high borrowing. 

 But neither am I sanguine about our financial future. Maybe I'm too Newtonian but the lack of urgency shown by either party when they're in power seems less than resilient. But on the other hand, is rationalizing the budget more urgent than cleaning up forever chemicals or burying interstates or getting the health insurance system on a sound footing?

SEE ALSO:

James Capretta, "The Biden Administration's 2025 Budget," AEIdeas, 12 March 2024

Anna Malinovskaya and Louise Sheiner, "The Hutchins Center Explains: Federal Budget Basics," Brookings Institution, 13 December 2018 [lots of good if out-of-date charts here]

Michael E. O'Hanlon and Alejandra Rocha, "What's in Biden's $850-Billion Defense Budget Proposal?," Brookings Institution, 15 March 2024

Alan Rappeport, "Biden Budget Lays Out Economic Battle Lines with Trump," New York Times, 12 March 2024

10th anniversary post: Still sillypants

In contrast to 2013, Washington's Stanton Park remains open

DISCLAIMER: Also in contrast to 2013, I now have a son who works for a federal contractor. So this has become personal!

Ten years ago, I wrote two posts about the U.S. government shutdown, one about the difficulty of knowing when essential conversations about our common life are open and fair to all, and the other a pictorial reflection about being in Washington during the early days of the shutdown. "Some people," said a mother to her daughter explaining why there was a wee fence around Stanton Park, "are being sillypants."

That little girl must be 12 or 13 now, and presumably maturing in an age-appropriate way. That is less clear for congressional Republicans. This week I returned to Washington during another game of congressional chicken over federal budgeting. (I'm not ambulance chasing--really! Both years I was representing Coe College at the October meeting of Capitol Hill Internship Program advisers.) As it happened, the threat of a shutdown seems to have been averted Saturday, or at least postponed for 45 days, and anyhow my trip this year would have occurred too early for another round of shutdown pictures.

Still, as close as we got to a shutdown, with the demolition derby that our national politics has become, occupied the thoughts of all of us who take government people. To paraphrase Lincoln, ours is a government of people, by people, for people--so it will never get things exactly right, it will always leave some if not everyone unsatisfied, and yet it matters a lot to the quality of our lives together. Government is not meant to be a plaything, or a weapon.

After our meeting, I went up to U Street NW clutching the invaluable Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. [Wiley, 2009... this is walk #15]. Jazz great Duke Ellington (1899-1974 grew up here, and for decades it was a center of black culture, even after suffering much from the 1968 riots.

"Community Rhythms" mural by Alfred J. Smith, U Street station

13th St NW: Young Duke Ellington lived here

13th and T: Adult Duke Ellington stayed here

 

11th and U: This club hosted the greats of 50s/60s jazz

There are other landmarks here as well, including a memorial to African-Americans who served in the Civil War that lists every known participant. There also was (on this day, anyway) a young man in a Civil War uniform, expounding considerably about the war and the memorial.

10th and U: African-American Civil War Memorial

Names on the memorial

11th and U: Oldest black-owned bank in DC

12th and S: Wax Abraham Lincoln with wicks for lighting

U Street has gentrified a lot in recent years.

Some of the multitude of new construction

While I'm normally rather sanguine about gentrification, which does bring wealth and racial integration to places, it's jarring to see it to such a degree in a neighborhood so closely identified with black history. At least that history is being preserved.

U Street, too, is Washington--a place that embodies America's ongoing efforts to build and rebuild the good life. Washington is more than the cartoonish caricature presented by so many politicians, like former U.S. Representative Rod Blum, who served Iowa for two terns in Congress, and who is probably best remembered for wanting to inflict a recession on Washington. 

Once you get away from the Capitol and into the neighborhoods, though, you find Washington is full of people, a lot of whom work for or with the federal government, and who are trying, as we all are, to do their jobs.

10th and U: This too is Washington

Making sense of the city budget

The good people at Asheville-based Urban 3 have produced an amusing, accessible video showing Josh McCarty and Maxine Eng walking through their city's budget. They make a number of points, including (Strong Towns 2020):

1. Pick your city and do an Internet search for the most recent version of your municipal budget. Cedar Rapids is working from the fiscal year 2021 budget, which comes in two parts. The most recent year for which actual numbers have been compiled is 2019. Alas, unlike Asheville, the first thing that comes up on an Internet search for "Cedar Rapids budget" is, indeed, Budget Rent-a-Car.
2. Open an Excel spreadsheet and get ready to scroll through the document until you see some charts. The spreadsheet is for note-taking, really, enabling you to find numbers from all over the document and place them together. For example, the budget for the police department is at volume I, page 102; that for street improvements is at volume II, page 202; and that for debt service is at I, 55.
3. Start noting the many different pots of money feeding your government. Cedar Rapids has a general fund, which draws on property taxes (22%), charges for services (30%), intergovernmental revenue (13%), and a variety of smaller sources like the local option sales tax (2%) and the hotel motel tax (<1%) (I, 60, 62). There is also an enterprise fund (dedicated revenue from water bills, golf fees, the Doubletree Hotel, e.g.), a capital fund (large one-time projects, see #10 below), and slightly smaller funds called special revenue and internal service. So, the general fund amounted to $147,598,125 in fiscal year 2019 (I, 97), but the total amount the city spent was $522,091,049 (I, 60).
4. Start tracking the relationship between income and expenses. 
5. Watch out for things like "interfund transfers" and debt. Over $180 million of city revenue was attributed to "transfers in" (I, 60). "The special revenue, internal service, and capital project budgets are balanced with current revenues or use existing cash on hand from past fiscal years to fund expenditures due to planned expenditures or the timing of expenditures," explains an explanatory note. "The use of fund balance or transfers in is decided by Departments and/or the Finance Department based on needs and availability. The Finance Department confirms if funds can be transferred or used given the circumstance of the expense and original source of the funds" (I, 71-72).
6. Pay attention to the planned vs. actual budget. I don't see that much difference between actual 2019 and planned 2021, but it's nice to know that the numbers you're looking at are based on experience not aspiration.
7. As you look through, note different types of revenue that might be vulnerable to economic shocks, like the pandemic. Actually very little of Cedar Rapids's budget relies on sales tax or its equivalents--see #3 above--although in a tight budget every cut hurts.
8. Because there are multiple local governments in any place, comparing expenditures on, say, police vs. mental health vs. schools requires looking at school district and county budgets as well as the city's. The school district's budget amounts to $282,329,202 (p. 10), almost half of the city's and, presuming all that goes for K-12 education, vastly larger than any specific city budget item. Looking strictly at the City of Cedar Rapids, police spending is $38,475,488, 31 percent of the general fund, but only 7.4 percent of total spending (I, 102). Spending on street repair beats police at $42,413,827--we have a lot of streets in Cedar Rapids--but it comes out of the capital fund, not the general fund, so it shows up on a different pie chart (II, 202). We spent more on streets and less on parks than Asheville does.
9. Debt service and debt limits: Iowa allows cities to borrow up to 5 percent of the total assessed property valuation... North Carolina allows up to 9 percent! Cedar Rapids paid $61,968,015 on its debt in 2019 (I,55), 11.9 percent of total spending, more than on police and fire combined.
10. Capital improvement plans: Cedar Rapids has one, too, detailed on pages 210-271 of Volume I of the budget. The five-year spending plan is for $865.8 million; the largest two categories are flood control ($249.6 million) and street improvements ($173.4 million) (I, 211). Funding sources include bonds and "other debt" (44%), grants (20%), and the local option sales tax (11%); the remaining categories are vague (I, 212). Specific projects are listed beginning on p. 214 with widening Collins Road, extending Tower Terrace Road, and punching through 6th Street from B Avenue to Ellis Boulevard NW. 

I learned a lot, but I found it difficult going, even with a high personal feeling of competence in this area. So be warned, and there is no way I would assign students to do this, which is too bad, because budgets are where the reality lives.

The Urban3 video:

The budget deal and the future of Congress

"Political Drama" by Robert Delaunay (1885-1941)
at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

There's a positive tone in town right now, thanks to the budget deal worked out by the Senate Republican and Democratic leaders that not only prevents another shutdown, but funds the government through March 23, which makes it that much longer before we have to endure more brinksmanship. National defense, the Children's Health Insurance Program, disaster relief and the opioid epidemic get two years of funding.

It's not a great deal, being pretty much a logroll that provides additional spending for both parties' priorities. This will, of course, further aggravate the budget outlook already set askew by an irresponsible tax bill in December. The budget deal adds to the Keynesian stimulus begun by the tax cut, at a time when stimulus is clearly not indicated, and stock markets took another dive Thursday. Representative Dave Brat (R-VA), a member of the Freedom Caucus, is perfectly correct to call it a "Christmas tree on steroids" (Sullivan and Lee 2018). On the other hand, given the Freedom Caucus's enthusiasm for that tax cut, it could be taken as sour grapes that they weren't going to get their way on everything.

It's no news to you that Congress hasn't been impressing anyone for quite awhile. After a brief blip up into the 20s last winter, public approval ratings have settled back to the 15-20 percent range where they've been for nearly a decade. Congress as a group has rarely been wildly popular, but it's important to remember that the current numbers are low by historical standards, at least for the 75 years of national public opinion surveys.

My read on the quagmire at our nation's Capitol, previously explored in a number of posts listed below, is rooted in incentive structures. Ideological polarization and geographic sorting mean that neither Democratic nor Republican legislators have much incentive to seek constructive solutions to public problems. Core partisans are suspicious of bipartisan solutions, and there aren't enough swing voters in enough states and districts to counteract that. Accurate representation of their constituents gets them re-elected, but it also tends to stalemate or at best zero-sum solutions.

Ian Shapiro (from yale.edu)

So I was intrigued earlier this week to hear Ira Shapiro, a scholar and author as well as president of Ira Shapiro Global Straegies, LLC, highlight the importance of leadership at a forum celebrating the release of his new book, Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country (Brookings, 2018). He argues the decline of the Senate as a deliberative body is decades old, but suddenly accelerated in the middle of the last decade. "It's no accident," he said, "that the accelerating downward spiral of the Senate coincided with Mitch McConnell's time as leader." Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Democratic leader from 2005-2017, was no prize, either: "Their joint legacy would be a broken Senate."

Source: flickr.com

McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, became the party's Senate leader in 2007, and Senate majority leader after Republican successes in the 2014 elections finally recaptured control of the chamber late in the Obama administration. Shapiro gave three examples of McConnell's norm-busting, counter-productive leadership style:

• After helping pass economic stimulus in fall 2008 when George W. Bush was still President, he "suddenly became against everything" once Barack Obama was inaugurated. Was he more concerned about how Obama's approval rating might affect Republican electoral fortunes than he was about the economy?
• His 2016 refusal to consider anyone Obama nominated to the Supreme Court after Justice Scalia died
• The unproductive handling of health care repeal in 2017

Shapiro clearly sees leadership style as a key causal variable in the current state of Congress. He concluded by pronouncing himself optimistic, anticipating the day when the 75 or 80 Senators "who know what the Senate is supposed to be and hate what it is now" step forward and "actually put country first."

Shapiro was joined on the panel by Molly Reynolds, a fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and author of Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Management in the U.S. Senate (Brookings, 2017). She presented the evidence for the causal role of institutional incentives, in which senators' and voters' "ideological positions make it much more difficult to work collaboratively." Morover, partisan competition for control has increased since the era (1960s & 70s) that Shapiro used as his baseline for Senate performance. As a result, we see both parties staking out ideological positions, and using Senate procedures to thwart the other side, eschewing compromise in favor of "getting [or trying to get] policy done that is close to their own ideological positions." Individual senators, too, use procedures--like holds, which used to be rare but now are as common as dirt--to enhance their own reputations. There've always been such individuals--Wayne Morse and Jesse Helms leap to mind--but there are many more of them. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's mini-filibuster Friday morning is only the most recent example. Reynolds shares Shapiro's discontent with the current state of the Senate, but concluded with a question rather than a hopeful statement: "How do we work within the existing set of incentives to change behavior?"

A third view, identified with political scientists like Morris Fiorina, is that partisan polarization among the electorate was created and manipulated by elites (see also Zingher 2018 and his co-authored article with Michael Flynn in the British Journal of Political Science). If polarized politics resulted from choices, can elites choose to move past it? Or, as I gloomily suspect, is this monster going to be harder to destroy than it was to create?

The panel was organized and hosted by William Galston, Ezra K. Zilkha chair and senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. I once appeared on a panel with Galston, in 2009, which makes me feel one degree of separation from something.

VIDEO of the event is here: https://youtu.be/zB8XZrGxqoU 

SEE ALSO:
"Shutdowns and Sillypants (and the Statler Brothers)," 8 October 2013
"Deliberation and the Shutdown," 3 October 2013
"What's the Matter with Congress," 30 May 2013

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

Can our alley be sustainable?

We had a lot of rain this weekend, a series of downpours beginning Friday afternoon and continuing off and on late into Saturday night. Our weather wasn't as severe as in northern Iowa, where there were reports of tornadoes, nor was the aftermath as notable as the standing water I noticed all over the Chicago area where I traveled last weekend.

Nonetheless, on my block we experienced a rather common occurrence after strong rains: loose gravel had washed down our alley and been deposited into Blake Boulevard.

I think the alley must be about 80 years old. That's the age of most of the houses on the block. It's paved, but hasn't been repaired in a long time, and shows quite a bit of wear.

The pothole-riddled surface requires careful walking, and is particularly tricky for bicycles (and, I would imagine, strollers). The sandbar at the intersection with the street is an obstacle for cycling, although eventually a city truck will scoop it clear.

I don't know if it's the result of an official policy, but the alley's neglected condition reflects a nationwide reality: Having overbuilt our auto infrastructure for decades, financially-strapped governments face increasing difficulty keeping up with maintenance. It may be rational in places to let some trafficways regress without maintenance. Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn heard former Iowa transportation director Paul Trombino say a couple years ago the state highway system was going to be downsized, although Trombino's subsequent statements suggest he was speaking about low-use roads in remote areas.

All other considerations aside, I might want the city to repave our alley, and hereafter provide regular maintenance. Alleys do have clear functionality in well-populated urban neighborhoods (Reardon and Storch 2005). They provide places for trash pickup away from the street itself, and access for cars that doesn't require a lot of curb cuts on the streets.

But all other considerations are not aside. The city of Cedar Rapids, like nearly all local governments in the United States today, is not flush with cash. And we want our city to do more than provide places for cars to drive. The public library, which could be a civic jewel of the region, has recently been forced to reduce its operating hours, and that matters to us, too.

Although it's operated separately, the school district has just floated a proposal to reduce the number of elementary schools in the city by more than a third. Just maintaining the existing level of public services is requiring difficult choices, leading to what some might call desperate solutions.

I'm not enough of an engineer to know what I'm looking for, but I'm thinking redoing the alley with a surface--packed gravel? permeable pavement?--that would resist erosion but be inexpensive to maintain. If it's not too difficult, we might regrade the alley so rainwater goes off to the side rather than flowing like a river to the street. We need to do what makes sense, in light of the functions the alley performs but also the many other things we need our city budget to do.

Starting a conversation about education

Garfield School in Cedar Rapids, where my boys attended and where I still volunteer, will have a new librarian on staff this fall. As was the case with several of her predecessors, she will spend only part of her week at Garfield; however, for the first time, Garfield will share a librarian with two other schools, not just one. Surely this is driven by a search for savings by the school district. Having one-third of a school librarian is particularly awkward for schools like Garfield, where 67.6 percent come from families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunch. But why should even upper middle class students be shorted?

This led me to a series of questions about American education, because I am guessing, although confidently, that such staffing exigencies are not unique to Cedar Rapids.

The education system's ongoing struggle for funds sends me back to the question with which Strong Towns begins its Curbside Chat: Why, despite all the growth America has experienced, do our cities struggle financially just doing the basics? The same question can be asked about our public school systems. So... I'm asking it. I understand this is inviting frustration: there's no standard for how much education spending is "enough," or what specific mix of expenditures is optimal, and public education has become fraught with ideology in a way that it was not when I was growing up. To make matters even more frustrating, there surely is a complex set of causes.

And there are the longstanding issues of educational outcomes, as well as a recently emerging shortage of teachers. These are also complicated, and may be related to budgets. My question here is not why schools don't "perform" better, or even whether more resources would improve performance, but why schools have such difficulty mobilizing resources at all.

Today my ambition is limited to articulating what is known about education in the United States, as well as the questions that I'm currently stuck on. After that I'll be keeping my antennae up for usable information, while I hope that accessing and sharing a variety of perspectives will be somehow productive.

Whittier School, Wheaton, Illinois, where I attended 4th-6th grade

What We Know

Education in America, unlike health care or the macro-economy, has a long history as a government responsibility. Public schools predate American independence, though the rationales for positive externalities have changed over time. Democratic governance was seen to rest on a certain level of citizen competence, which made education a public problem, and in the predominantly Calvinist-Protestant culture being able to read the Bible was seen as essential to a sound understanding of God. As waves of immigration in the 19th century brought more ethnic and religious diversity, public schools came to be seen as a bulwark of American culture: whatever bad thinking their parents brought with them from the old country, children could be properly socialized through the school system. (Roman Catholics understandably bristled at these assumptions, and by the mid-19th century had evolved an extensive set of parochial schools.) Eventually, and particularly as the economy transitioned from a local basis in agriculture to a global basis in services, education was seen as essential to develop the skills individuals needed to support themselves and the country needed to stay ahead of international competition. Throughout this period, what remained consistent throughout this period was the view that there were positive externalities, so education was a societal responsibility.

Today's educational environment is different in many ways from the one I grew up in 40-50 years ago. Most if not all of these complicate the financing of today's schools:

1. Overall costs have exceeded inflation: per-pupil expenditures in 2011-12 were about 2.5 times what they were in 1969-70 (in constant dollars, of course... what do you take me for?). Like health care, education is a labor-intensive industry, and professional labor to boot, while consumers are not price-sensitive and may even consider costs and amenities as markers of quality. Education remains a distinctively un-remunerative professional degree, but at the same time schools no longer can take advantage of a large pool of women with few other career options. The average teacher salary roughly doubled between 1950 and 1990, and even then relatively low starting salaries were highlighted by Derek Bok in The Cost of Talent (Simon and Schuster, 1993).. Average salaries have been about constant since.
2. Instructional technology now exists, and at a non-trivial cost. When I was in elementary school, instructional technology was projectors, screens and blackboards.
3. Education was considered a local concern when most people worked and died in the same town where they were born. In today's highly mobile, global society, it's less clear what are the stakes to residents of a specific community in the education of individual students who happen to live there.
4. The acceleration of suburban sprawl through the mid-2000s has created some districts with relatively enormous tax bases, while leaving areas of concentrated urban poverty where needs have overwhelmed neighborhood schools, as well as new developments so spread out that neighborhood schools were no longer possible. (On the latter point, see Strong Towns posts by Ben Oleson (2011) and Nathaniel M. Hood (2014).) More than half of students are transported to school at public expense--this has been the case since 1973-74--with transportation expenditures more than tripling since 1970.
5. The consensus on the basis skills that needed to be taught ("readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic," and such) has broken down. The ability to memorize large number of facts turns out not to be very valuable in the real world, which I say with some wistfulness because I used to be exceptionally good at it. Even so, assessment of students, teachers and schools by multiple-choice testing has exploded since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.
6. Important changes in the 1960s undercut political support for public education. I say this wistfully, too, because I support all of them : creation of a means of national government funding through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, a series of Supreme Court decisions barring school sponsorship of religious indoctrination, and mandates for racial desegregation. While increasing public expenditures for public education was supported by 61.7 percent of respondents in the 2012 American National Election study, the proportions were only 48.6 percent of white born again Christians, 42.7 percent of white conservatives and 43.8 percent of Republicans. Perhaps that emboldened Iowa governor Terry Branstad to item-veto the legislature's bipartisan education budget compromise? Or accounts for more aggressive budget-cutting in states like Kansas, North Carolina and Wisconsin?
7. Private schools and home schooling have emerged as alternatives to public schools. About 3 1/2 percent of K-12 students are home-schooled. Even so, public school enrollment as a proportion of the total hasn't varied much over the last few decades.
8. Potshots at teachers' unions and "government schools" have become de rigeur for conservative politicians. Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie, who wants to punch unions in the face, might use the most incendiary rhetoric, but he is hardly alone in his sentiments.

What I Don't Know

Since 1970, spending on public schools (as reported by the NCES) by all governments has consistently been between 3.5 and 3.75 percent of GDP. This is about the average of OECD countries. What do the countries that spend significantly more on public education--including Britain, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries--spend less on to compensate?

While American public education spending has been stable overall, transportation costs have increased, and surely health insurance coverage and instructional technology as well. At the same time, average student-teacher ratios have dropped, from 22.3:1 in 1970 to 16.0 in 2012. Does this mean actual class sizes have dropped, or does this reflect additional personnel for students who need special help (because of severe autism, for example)? This suggests there have been reallocations within a relatively fixed education budget. Are there potential additional reallocations, either within the education budget, or from other areas of spending by governments (which total has been fairly constant at 30-35 percent of GDP)?

In other words, what would we have to trade to get a full-time school librarian?
 

SOURCES: The National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education, is an excellent one-stop shop for data, whether at the national, state, district or individual school level. Data on the overall economy and government spending come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, and from the Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2015, and are reported in The World Almanac and Book of Facts. James W. Fraser's book Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America (St. Martin's Griffin, 1999) covers the cultural history of American public education.

Citieees gone wild

Thinking about how a lot of seemingly unrelated political issues have a common origin began when Jane and I were driving on 4th Avenue SE last weekend, and stopped for a red light behind three other cars at 10th Street. After waiting a long time, and with no cars on the cross street, car #1 finally ran the light. A few cars came down 10th Street; then, after a significant pause, car #2 ran the light. A few more cars came down 10th Street, then another pause; finally, car #3 ran the light. Finally, as we came to our moment to decide, the light turned green. We'd been at the intersection at least two minutes. I don't know how long the earlier cars had been waiting. I said to Jane, "At least there wasn't one of those traffic cameras at the light." Jane pointed out that there was, in fact, a camera above the intersection:

I had the awful vision of drivers #1, 2 and 3 getting unpleasant surprises in their mailboxes soon. Thanks to informed citizen Phillip Platz, however, I know that the purpose of this particular camera is to monitor the intersection so that traffic lights changed in a timely fashion. Which, of course, they weren't doing on this particular afternoon.

What real traffic cameras look like; from wbir.com

Meanwhile, though, it got me thinking...

My town of Cedar Rapids is engaged in a court battle with the Iowa Department of Transportation over placement of traffic cameras on Interstate 380 near downtown. IDOT wants them down because they're too close to a change in speed limit, thus amounting to a speed trap; Cedar Rapids claims their presence has reduced the number of accidents on a dangerous curve. But the city also notes that they stand to lose more than $2 million in revenue if the cameras go away (Smith "Traffic Cameras," cited below).

I'm a big believer in safe driving, and applaud almost anything that will slow cars through town. But even so I have a tough time swallowing that the cameras' primary purpose is anything other than to fulfill a desperate need for revenue.

How did we come to such a desperate revenue pass? There are multiple factors, of course, some of which are out of our control, but it is undeniable that governments at every level in the U.S. are over-extended. (For an illustration with unusually clear numbers, see Charles Marohn's charts from Hays, Kansas.) We believed for a long time that we could expand our way to ever-greater prosperity, with happy lives in large-lot subdivisions for all, and that informed 70 years of development after World War II. Now citizens, particularly lower-income citizens, face limits on their economic opportunity based on increased distance from where the jobs are (Holmes and Berube); governments face the long-term obligations incurred by expansion that are coming due; and it's increasingly apparent we had bought into what Strong Towns calls a "Ponzi scheme," with up-front benefits of development eventually outweighed by debt payments and the deferred costs of keeping it going:

The issue we face with our current pattern of development is that it fosters short-term thinking and an illusion of wealth. The math simply does not work in its favor in the long run. When you lose money on every transaction, you don’t make it up in volume. ("Follow the Curbside Chat")

It's no wonder cities are in difficult situations, with few ways out. One approach is to reduce expenditures, which involves cutting services and deferring maintenance (see D. Weissman on Chicago). Schools suffer, veterans suffer, buildings go uninspected, potholes get bigger, and so forth. Governments lose support as they become less able to respond to citizen expectations. Political rhetoric ratchets up, and fingers get pointed, often at the wrong targets: the poor for budget deficits, teachers for educational outcomes, bicyclists for potholes (see Dutzick, Weissman and Baxandall on that last one), or the ever-mysterious-but-convenient catch-all category of "waste."

Or you could try budget gimmicks, which is really creating the illusion of fiscal health and kicking the problem down the road (Gregg, Haddon).

Another approach is to go for infusions of revenue--essentially, to keep the Ponzi approach going a little longer. This would explain why the City of Cedar Rapids keeps hoping to revive the casino project (Smith, "Casino Consolidation")--and why casinos in other cities killed it at the state level--and why cities like ours keep heeding the blandishments of developers who promise their projects will create jobs and enrich the whole town and not just themselves. It explains state lotteries, speed traps, the fascination with traffic cameras, and states putting crippling fees on people in the criminal justice system (Liptak)--each of which winds up alienating the citizens the government is supposed to be serving. And, perversely, it explains the ongoing lure of supply-side economics, which promises tax cuts will produce economic growth resulting in increased revenues--such as Kansas and Wisconsin are currently not experiencing. Experience can be a good teacher, but only when desperation isn't preventing us from heeding her lessons.

There is another option. Governments at local and higher levels could re-orient themselves, returning to time-tested fundamentals to build a fiscally-sound place that is resilient to economic shocks. It's a slow process, which won't make our current debts instantly disappear, and there aren't the photo opportunities that come with a ribbon cutting or the applause that comes with a tax cut. But it requires neither swinging wildly for the fiscal fences, nor creating bad feeling between government and citizens.

SOURCES

Tony Dutzick, Gideon Weissman and Phineas Baxendall, Who Pays for Roads?: How the "Users Pay" Myth Gets in the Way of Solving America's Transportation Problems (Frontier Group, 2015), http://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads

"Follow the Curbside Chat," Strong Towns, http://www.strongtowns.org/curbside-chat#about-1

Katherine Gregg, "House GOP Outlines Fix for Bridges," Providence Journal, 16 June 2015, A1

Heather Haddon, "Panel Singles Out New Jersey For Budget Maneuvers," Wall Street Journal, 8 June 2015, http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2015/06/08/panel-singles-out-new-jersey-for-budget-maneuvers/

Natalie Holmes and Alan Berube, "Close to Home: Social Mobility and the Growing Distance between People and Jobs," Social Mobility Memos, Brookings Institution, 9 June 2015, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2015/06/09-social-mobility-jobs-berube?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=18264819&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9f009REn0ZPQS0oWzP6iaI_3jkGaKuiArOLAZ17QRJvG3zYrixi4YH8YM8aTQvfQ6WDCkheav2yXE_eKQJybO2Yux88w&_hsmi=18264819

Adam Liptak, "Debt to Society is Least of Costs for Ex-Convicts," New York Times, 23 February 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/national/23fees.html?_r=0

Rick Smith, "Traffic Cameras Still On; Cedar Rapids Will Decide Quickly on Next Step," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 13 May 2015, http://thegazette.com/subject/news/traffic-cameras-still-on-cedar-rapids-will-decide-quickly-on-next-step-20150513

Rick Smith, "Casino Consolidation Raises Cedar Rapids' Hopes," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 4 June 2015, http://thegazette.com/subject/news/three-kehl-casinos-consolidate-20150604

Dan Weissman, "How Bad Are Chicago's Debt Problems, Really?" Marketplace, 9 June 2015, http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/how-screwed-chicago-really

Cedar Rapids City Council runoff

Cedar Rapids voters get a second bite at the apple the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, as they choose among the four top finishers for two at-large seats on the City Council. The top city issues appear to be the budget, flood protection, street repairs and trust in government. None of these is unimportant, but they have pretty nearly crowded out issues of physical design and how we can all live together. For example, none of the candidates pushes discussion of the budget as far as questioning whether spending $10.5 million on buffing up a mall at the edge of town is a good use of scarce funds. Or whether the city's share of a $200 million ring road around the west side (which amount doesn't count maintenance responsibility for the rest of time) will pay for itself, given we're having enough trouble keeping up with the streets we have. None expressed any views on proposals for MedQuarter. None of the four candidates is visionary, though each has something appealing about them.

To the candidates, then! In what follows I rely on op-ed pieces by each candidate that ran in the Cedar Rapids Gazette on Sunday 10/20/13, and which are available on the newspaper's website, thegazette.com; follow-up interviews with each candidate done this weekend by reporters Rick Smith and Melissa Roadman; and, where available, the candidates' websites. (Brutally frank aside: None of the candidates takes much advantage of the opportunities for depth offered by the Internet. Four paragraphs by Carletta Knox-Seymour account for over 90 percent of issue discussion on the candidates' sites.)

Carletta Knox-Seymour, from her Facebook page

Carletta Knox-Seymour, who currently operates two small businesses (house cleaning and baking), 
touches on urbanist issues more than the other candidates. She told the Gazette reporters flood protection was her biggest issue as well as her top budget priority. She expands on this on her website, focusing her concern on the neighborhoods that need help with "revitalization so they can thrive in business and increase in housing." Her flyer mailed out late last week has three additional bullet points under neighborhoods: "retrofit existing buildings for multi purposes... sustain and strengthen core neighborhoods... [and] encourage land infill development." Her October op-ed cites additional concerns with youth at risk, and inequality in general:  "Far too many people go to work for less than a living wage." She shows awareness of issues of economic opportunity that most candidates (hey, most people) don't mention.

Ralph Russell, from cedar-rapids.org

Ralph Russell is retired after many years as CEO of the Howard R. Green engineering firm. I'm
impressed by his advocacy of economic development agreements with neighboring cities, which he mentions both in his op-ed and this weekend's Q-and-A with reporters. Not only is this approach a good way to avoid costly bidding wars, but it's a step towards controlling metropolitan sprawl. On the debit side he says his biggest issue is lack of trust in government. I'm not opposed to trust in government, but it is what it is, and over the years mainly seems to be a way to appeal to cranks. Yet he is the best funded of the four candidates. Could he be constructing a crank-elite coalition? Under community development he lists working with neighborhood associations in creating the city's comprehensive plan, and developing amenities attractive to youth. His biggest budget priority is public safety.

Chuck Swore, from his Facebook page

Chuck Swore has served on the City Council since 2009, prior to which he did business development
for a local contractor. He's proudest of pushing a "buy-local, build-local, employ-local" approach to flood recovery. On the other hand he's also proud of swinging the deal for Westdale Mall. In the Q-and-A with reporters he deferred to the city's professional staff on the big issues, while looking for "backburner" problems like train noise through downtown. This will be critical to developing downtown as a residential area.

Susie Weinacht, from cedar-rapids.org

Susie Weinacht is the executive director of the Iowa PTA, and has served in a variety of civic and 
volunteer capacities. She is not, in anything I've read, big on details, but gets much credit for principles. Her op-ed expressed concern with flood protection, as well as making economic development sustainable by "adding new business, and finding new ways to create jobs and encourage investment." She is specifically attentive to NewBo, Kingston and Ellis Boulevard. She told the Gazette reporters her budget priorities are public safety and infrastructure: "We need to infill; we need to have property tax on our rolls." To another question, she added: "We need to prioritize what I'm considering the rebirth of our inner city--urban infill rather than sprawl." Hear hear! Her website's cryptic issues page says she wants the city to "[S]upport and encourage stronger, safer neighborhoods and positive youth development."

In the first round, I voted for Knox-Seymour and Anthony Brown. While each candidate has something to recommend them, Knox-Seymour and Weinacht are distinctive in their degree of attention to urban issues and our common life.

Results from the first round:
Chuck Swore 7950 (24.26%)
Ralph Russell 6334 (19.36%)
Susie Weinacht 6230 (19.01%)
Carletta Knox-Seymour 4931 (15.05%)
Jerry McGrane 3199 (9.76%)
Anthony Brown 2622 (8.00%)
Leland Freie 1187 (3.62%)