Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

WISDOT: No Roundabouts on 27th Street

Greg Kowalski at Franklin Today reports that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has decided against roundabouts for 27th Street. Given the Fed-level priority placed on placing roundabouts whenever possible, one can only hope that the reasons given in the the WISDOT letter are indeed relevant; while a time-saving, safety-enhancing feature in many instances, roundabouts are certainly not appropriate everywhere.

For the record: The City Franklin did not, to my knowledge, offer any encouragement whatsoever to make roundabouts a part of 27th Street. This will be something to remember when the bills for signal light installation and maintainence arrive, and also when we read yet again about a drunk driver who is conveyed effortlessly through wide streets and into a residential area where he or she can do some real damage.

Meanwhile, Franklin adds to its enforced-by-"planning" reputation as a drive-thru city.

Coveting an interchange, will a local business pony up the cash?

ABOVE: In a photo taken while Northwestern Mutual's "phase 2" was still under construction (see girders at upper right), the Oak Creek "commitment" to connecting 27th street to a possible Drexel interchange is demonstrated. The road has since been re-paved --- but remains a narrow, near-shoulderless barrier.

Steve Jagler, executive editor of BizTimes in Milwaukee, made some spring predictions via the OnMilwaukee.com site.

While we're on the south side of the county, Oak Creek and Franklin have been unable to come up with the matching local funds that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation would require to build a new freeway interchange on Interstate 94 at Drexel Avenue. Later this year, look for Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co. to pony up and cover the heretofore missing dollars. The Quiet Company is hush about its plans, but sources say Northwestern Mutual needs the exit ramp to serve its sprawling campus on South 27th Street. The company also has acquired several parcels of land surrounding the campus, and a freeway exit at Drexel Avenue would add commercial value to the properties.

This is a fairly fascinating notion. Anyone who has traveled Drexel on the Oak Creek side of 27th Street can't help but notice that the road is very consciously "under-engineered." After all --- the "spirit of Franklin-Oak Creek 27th Street cooperation" notwithstanding --- Oak Creek wants traffic to go EAST to their burgeoning commercial strip on Howell. What do they need with 27th Street?

So a fairly superfluousness interchange may be funded because Northwestern Mutual perceives a 45-second time-savings as a possible boon to property it owns around the 27th Street campus --- most significantly, on the Oak Creek side. Rather than take the Rawson exit, which brings traffic right down 27th Street (and through a commercial district that Oak Creek-Franklin profess interest in cooperatively growing), a Drexel interchange offers drivers a choice of turning west on a narrow, uninviting road (the Franklin side), or right on a meticulously maintained, multi-lane asphalt wonder (the Oak Creek side), which has a huge, vacant Delphi plant waiting for commercial development.

It doesn't take much imagination to see, in the lack of regional cooperation at work here, a moat forming around the island city of Franklin.

I've placed this on the agenda for discussion at the next Franklin Economic Development Commission meeting and that of the Trails Committee; we'll see what sense of urgency is created.

Fountains of Franklin demise: Case Study One for new development task force

ABOVE: Completely arbitrary (and therefor as accurate as any other presented) artist's depiction of planned Fountains of Franklin retail development.

The long-languishing Fountains of Franklin development site faces a foreclosure suit.

The history of this project is, frankly, the stuff of reality TV, complete with "evil developers," a call for an alderman's resignation, sudden city "forgetfulness" regarding zoning, selective enforcement of ordinances, accusations of preferential treatment of developers whose names begin with "C" and end with "arstensen," incriminating spy photos, a comically-perturbed local blogger, startling new definitions for the term "upscale," and, finally, time travel.

That's why this project is a perfect case study for the new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, which was created, after all, to untangle the development process in Franklin.

So: I triple dog dare the Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to look carefully at the development process as followed in the case of Fountains of Franklin. I submit that we would learn more in diagramming the twists and turns in that single debacle than in the pages of any expensively commissioned report.

 

"Tax revolt" fans, meet the piper. Pay up.

I attended a Council of the Whole meeting a few nights back where my city's Common Council discussed funding for the annual 4th of July celebration. Because of a tight city budget, the mayor asked for cuts. Here's what he got:

 
The 4th of July celebration is NOT self-funding; revenue coming in does not match expenditures, and the city generally has to kick in (yet, I think beer is a mere fifty cents at this ostensibly family-oriented event - but that's a topic for another blog Beer is $3 per cup - tickets for beer are fifty cents each.). So, visitors to this year's celebration may well have to go without childrens games, flags and bleachers for the parade. (Update: flags are back).

One more community amenity on its last legs due to budget shortfalls.

There is no shortage of local pandering to tax revolt fantasies in suburban America. In communities where precious few public amenities exist to begin with, the mathematically challenged (is it really so hard to look up the definition of "median"?) rail against what they view as an egregious property tax bill.

These are the same people, of course, who celebrate the 1979 "taxpayer revolt" passage of California's Proposition 13, the result of a campaign funded by eccentric millionaires. It's effects have rippled out across the country, eviscerating communities while perhaps saving homeowners fifty or sixty bucks a year on their property tax bill. 

Why do strip malls and speedway collector roads dominate the landscape where we once enjoyed prosperous downtowns, safe streets, parks, open-all-week libraries, and actual sidewalks? You can trace the genesis of our current "geography of nowhere" to tax freeze enthusiasm whipped up by well-heeled interests. 

Troy Senik in National Affairs:

The two-thirds requirement for tax increases, for instance, is a result of 1978's Proposition 13 ballot initiative, which also capped the state's property taxes at 1% of assessed value and ensured that the assessed value can't increase by more than 2% per year. In the three decades since Prop. 13 passed, it has saved California taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars. But its limitations on property-tax revenues have also led the state to rely far more on income and sales taxes. And with the state's steeply progressive tax code leaving it heavily dependent on the capital gains of California's wealthiest citizens, bear markets inevitably lead to disproportionately sharp downturns in state revenue. The legislature then finds itself unable to stanch the financial bleeding through tax policy, since it is constrained by the two-thirds rule.

Victory for the "tax revolt." Meanwhile, California - its education system and public sector the envy of the nation in the sixties - sinks into ruin.

Read below about another tax revolt victory in Colorado Springs. Facing property tax increases to make ends meet, politically fearful municipal "leaders" bent to threats by "anti-big government" sentiment.

Welcome to the concept of consequences.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Read the rest at:Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post.

And MORE piper-paying: LA City Council slated to consider 1,000 job cuts

Further reading: Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future by Peter Schrag

"Not all growth is created equal. Some kinds of growth are more valuable than others. Where dumb growth is unsustainable, unfair, and brittle, smart growth is sustainable, equitable, and resilient."

Perhaps the statement above, by Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review, encapsulates the conflict between "growth at all costs" economic development and Smart Growth approaches that are scarce in suburban enclaves like Franklin.

It should be noted that, not too long ago, some Franklin elected officials were ousted because they were deemed "anti-development" by a band of leafleters who felt no particular obligation to the truth. Though many officials who were either members of or supported by "Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership" have since distanced themselves from the group, "institutional memory" is strong and bow-to-the-developer habits are hard to break. I see it - and often confront it - at every city meeting I attend as a spectator or participant.

Consider Haque's four pillars of smart growth for economies, communities, and corporations:

1. Outcomes, not income. Dumb growth is about incomes - are we richer today than we were yesterday? Smart growth is about people, and how much better or worse off they are - not merely how much junk an economy can churn out. Smart growth measures people's outcomes - not just their incomes. Are people healthier, fitter, smarter, happier? Economics that measure financial numbers, we've learned the hard way, often fail to be meaningful, except to the quants among us. It is tangible human outcomes that are the arbiters of authentic value creation.

2. Connections, not transactions. Dumb growth looks at what's flowing through the pipes of the global economy: the volume of trade. Smart growth looks at how pipes are formed, and why some pipes matter more than others: the quality of connections. It doesn't just look at transactions at the global, regional, or national level -- how much world trade has grown, for example -- but looks at how local and global relationships power invention and innovation. Without Silicon Valley's relationships powering the development of personal computing and the internet, for example, the volume of trade between Taiwan, Japan, and China, would be a fraction of what it is. Smart growth seeks to amplify connection and community -- because the goal isn't just to trade, but to co-create and collaborate.

3. People, not product. The next time you hear an old dude talking about "product", let him know the 20th century ended a decade ago. Smart growth isn't driven by pushing product, but by the skill, dedication, and creativity of people. What's the difference? Everything. Globalization driven by McJobs deskilling the world, versus globalization driven by entrepreneurship, venture economies, and radical innovation. People not product means a renewed focus on labor mobility, human capital investment, labor market standards, and labor market efficiency. Smart growth isn't powered by capital dully seeking the lowest-cost labor -- but by giving labor the power to seek the capital with they can create, invent, and innovate the most.

4. Creativity, not productivity. Uh-oh: Creativity is an economic four-letter word. Why? Because it's hard to measure, manage, and model. So economists focus on productivity instead -- and the result is dumb growth. Smart growth focuses on economic creativity - because creativity is what let us know that competition is creating new value, instead of just shifting old value around. What is economic creativity? How many new industries, markets, categories, and segments an economy can consistently create. Think China's gonna save the world? Think again: it's economically productive, but it's far from economically creative. Smart growth is creative -- not merely productive.

Read the rest at The Smart Growth Manifesto - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review.

Help support the Franklin Library at Pick 'n Save

It's a small step that can mean quite a bit to a crucial local amenity: If you take a few moments to register your Pick 'n Save Advantage Card, a portion of each grocery bill total is donated to the library.

Shared Work Spaces - WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at co-working spaces, which I have proposed for Franklin.

Telecommuters, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed all grapple with the logistical challenges of working alone. At home, workers face isolation and domestic distraction. At the corner coffee shop offering free Wi-Fi, there's insufficient privacy, too few electrical outlets and the nuisance of latte orders shouted out through the day.

A growing number of workers face these hassles every day. As of November 2009, there were nine million self-employed workers in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Meanwhile, the volume of workers telecommuting at least once a month for employers grew 17% between 2006 and 2008, to 33.7 million workers, according to WorldatWork, a human-resources research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Read the rest at: Cranky Consumer | A Test of Shared Work Spaces - WSJ.com