The Bicycle masterplan will receive a hearing in front of the Rochester Planning & Zoning Board on May 23rd at 7 PM (the meeting is at the government center and is typically in the council chambers). If you care about these issues, plan on showing up and speaking.
The redistricting map approved by Olmsted County is a textbook example how to ensure cities, minorities, and urban poor are not given fair representation. It is a shameful act of disenfranchisement that relies on fictitious principles of redistricting while ignoring real redistricting considerations. As a result of the redistricting, Rochester is not likely to achieve the representation that the deserve.
The justification for the selection of “Option 15″ basically came about by weighing arbitrary or meaningless metrics while ignoring more important metrics. Basic principles such and compactness, respect for political subdivisions, and respect for communities of interest (neighborhoods) were ignored needlessly. Read the rest of this entry »
As many of you know I have a background in business finance and am particularly interested in finance issues. You are also probably aware that the City of Rochester was directed by the FTA to have competitive bids to run OUR transit system (I refer to it as ours since we own the buses, streets, shelters, set the fares and routes, and have paid for most of everything for decades…). You probably also know that I believe that we should have bid this competitively even if we weren’t required to. Here are the financial results in 3 charts. If you look at these 3 charts, I think you can see why competitive bidding is good for the city.
For a decade we saw double digit growth in expenses compared to less than 5% population growth + inflation. The bid resulted in growth rates that are far better. FT = First Transit
Edit: Today I asked staff about this and part of what we need to look at is revenue hours for each year. Staff is getting me that information and I will update.
Here are total expenses per the bids vs. what would happen if RCL had continued to grow at the same rate as the past 10 years.
Edit 2: The jump in 2012 is due to an adjustment in revenue hours (I think). I will confirm.
Edit 3: I will update this chart to adjust for revenue hours when available.
As many of you are aware, the city council sent a note to the County Board pointing out that Rochester now represents more than 5/7 of the county. As such it is our expectation the 5 seats be contained entirely in Rochester. Also we asked that districts be drawn fairly and respect neighborhood boundaries. Since we are asking the County to redistrict fair, we need to do the same. The plan that passed the council 6-1 does just that. We adopted what is called Option 8.
Note that Ward 2 is pretty much the same (as it should be). Ward 2 was actually the closest to the correct size of all 6 wards, and thus shouldn’t have changed much. Basically I pick up all of the Historic SW, including the urban village and the Parkway Neighborhood. I picked up all of Kutzky Park south of the river, which still divides Kutzky, but not as bad as previously. I also lose Salem Sound and Bamber Valley Estates which are outside of West Circle Drive. From a political standpoint I lose areas were I did well in 2008 (Salem Sound), and gain areas that I didn’t do as well (Kutzky Park). So why am I happy? Because the maps are fair to Rochester neighborhoods and that is what districts should be.
Edit: I also gain 3 areas with a population of 0, but I was willing to take more…
Edit 2: Upon further review looks like I didn’t take the urban village?
Here is one of many county roads in Rochester which fails to account for pedestrians, cyclists, businesses, transit users, the young, the old, or the disabled.
Well if she does we hope she sends the money to the right state.
The funniest part of this is that when she is reading off the list of events, she actually reads off a New York state event, but still doesn’t put two and two together. When I was searching for the above video I also found this nugget, below.
In fairness, I don’t know what the public said, or if there were just being clueless. We occasionally have some clueless folks at our city council meeting that get corrected or asked to sit down. But the fact that there was someone on the committee actually defending the witnesses tells me that Rep. Anderson was probably out of line.
Mark Bilderback and I were fortunate enough to join some great kids from Rochester on their day at the capital. This group was very engaged despite some coming from challenging circumstances. There were some great exchanges with Senator David Senjem and Mark Dayton. Both Governor and the Majority were as non-partisan as human beings could ever have been. This was all about the kids. I also loved that we had a diverse group of kids who actually represent what Rochester looks like. Not the “white and wealthy that elected officials from other parts of the state sometimes envision.
Senator Senjem took time out of his schedule to visit with the kids. My favorite questions was, “Are you the governor?” Sen. Senjem also told the kids that you are successful when you help others to be successful. The kids met with most local elected officials. I even went back and forth with Sen. Nelson who offered to meet with the kids. Unfortunately schedules did not permit.
I am processing the video, but I will eventually add the video of kids asking Mark Dayton questions. The best part of the whole day was Mark Dayton blowing off his staffers and later our own Mayor so that he could keep answering questions from the kids. Even after his staff finally wrestled him out of the room, he came back again for a picture.
Most the questions were quite good, there were a few that were overly scripted. One person from the press corps commented that the kids asked better questions than the press corps.
I have no idea what Dan is talking about. We own the buses, shelters, and infrastructure. I can only assume that Dan thinks the transit system means the gum under the seat.
I met with two of Dan’s senior staffers a few weeks back (shortly after Dan held the public hostage for a $110,000 shakedown). In talking with them even they realized that RCL didn’t own the system and they couldn’t defend the lack of competition. A constituent joked to me that Dan’s fighting to maintain his government sanctioned competition free contract would make him a great leader of the old Soviet Communist Party. Read the rest of this entry »
