Green roof update

Still green in 2012

My green roof had a tougher winter this year – lack of snow cover meant the relatively thin soil layer heated up and cooled down a lot.  Most of the plants did very well anyway, but a couple of sedum species had more winter kill.  No dandelion taproots have yet emerged through my kitchen ceiling (this is my secret fear about the roof).  I still enjoy looking out at it every time I go by the window at the top of the stairs and seeing the yarrow and little bluestem grass peek over the parapet from the ground.

In the wider green roof world – here’s a snazzy little tool from American Rivers using Google maps to pick a roof – your own, or the local Target store, or any downtown building and (virtually) turning it green to see how it can help improve river quality and save money.  I tested it out with the roof of City Hall (which needs repair anyway) and the approximately 10,000 sf roof, if green, would save about 116,000 gallons of stormwater from reaching the river and save about $9000 in heating and cooling costs.

Although I love my little green rooflet, I’m not ready to advocate for projects like greening City Hall.  Green roofs take structural reinforcement (they’re heavy with soil and all that water) and regular maintenance (see the dandelion remark, above).  I’d like to know the scale at which green roofs make the most sense in terms of stormwater/savings vs. installation and maintenance.  Or, what proportion of roofs in an area need to be green have a significant impact on the heat island effect and stormwater management?  Would large flat roof surfaces be better green or with solar panels?  Bottom line: I’m eager to keep learning about how we reduce energy costs, improve water quality and use all that rooftop real estate to help…

 

Financing the Public Safety Center-what and why

How did we get here?

The June 5, 2012 Council agenda included 2 items related to financing the Public Safety Center – a public hearing required before the City could issue Capital Improvement Bonds and approval of a resolution authorizing the use of CIP Bonds for the Safety Center.

The hearing was duly held and the Council heard from members of the Chamber of Commerce, NDDC, and interested citizens who asked for the Council to send the Safety Center issue directly to a referendum rather than using CIP bonds.  The Council did decide not to issue CIP bonds, but also decided not to send the issue to the voters.

Procedurally, the meeting was complicated by Patrick Ganey’s absence.  A motion to use GO referendum bonds and the motion to issue CIP bonds both failed on tie votes (Rhonda Pownell, Suzie Nakasian, and Ivan Imm supported both; Mayor Rossing, Erica Zweifel and I voted no).  Erica Zweifel made a motion – not impromptu as the LWV blog called it, but well thought our and justified – to use EDA/HRA lease revenue bonds; the motion was adopted on a 4-2 vote (Yes – Rossing, Buckheit, Imm, Zweifel; No – Nakasian and Pownell.

Statutory interlude about bond types: skip it if you know this stuff.

Under state statute, cities may issue general obligation (GO) bonds for a wide range of public purposes (except operating expenses) which pledge the full faith and credit of the city to payment of principal and interest (which is why municipal GO bonds are considered such safe investments).  GO Bonds usually require voter approval – a referendum – before the City can issue the debt.

Capital Improvement Bonds (CIP bonds) are a type of GO Bond which may be issued only for building or improving a city hall, library, public safety facility, or public works facility; CIP bonds are also an exception to the voter approval requirement, but citizens may submit a petition calling for a reverse referendum.

In addition to GO bonds, there are financing methods which do not pledge the full faith and credit of the city, but instead use the revenue from the project financed to pay the debt.  The Council chose a type of revenue bond on Tuesday: EDA/HRA lease/revenue bonds. Either the Housing and Redevelopment Authority or Economic Development Authority may issue revenue bonds to pay to construct the facility, and then lease the facility to the City.  The City then makes lease payments to the HRA or EDA to pay off the debt.

Back to the “why?” 

My starting point is a firm belief in representative government and not seeking voter approval for essential projects.  But, as I blogged back in 2010, I did not have much confidence in the Safety Center decision making process and particularly not in the information flow for making the decisions.  I have been extremely sympathetic to the referendum advocates because if I struggled with the project, those without a seat at the table would likely be more confused.

Since 2010, I’ve come to believe that CIP bonds are a strange compromise financing vehicle which can lead to the sort of brinksmanship we saw at the Council meeting with threats (very real ones, I’m sure) of a reverse referendum and its “citizen veto” character.  So, there I was, impaled on the fence between referendum and lease/revenue bonds.

Since 2010, and especially since earlier this year, the Council has made significant progress in defining the scope of the project, cost, location, and creating flexibility to address fire department organization, equipment and facilities issues (June 12 worksession includes a discussion of the possibility of creating a joint powers board to govern a fire district which includes Northfield, Dundas, Dennison and the townships who are members of the current Rural Fire association; the last worksession included information on equipment).  So, while the road to get here has been bumpy, we’re nearing the destination and I’m leaning away from the referendum.

The speakers at the public hearing, however, pushed me over the edge toward lease/revenue bonds.  The general message from the public: we are in favor of this project and want it to succeed.  More information was requested by a few, but, as Mayor Rossing pointed out, the City would not be spending additional money to develop more detailed plans and specifications until we know the project will move ahead which requires the authorization to finance it.  I fell off the fence here.

So, the best way to get this project done, provide more detailed information to the public, get our police officers into a facility which helps rather than hinders their ability to protect us, and save time, professional fees, and possibly increased construction costs would be to proceed directly to the project via lease revenue bonds.  The best way to fix the process problems is to determine what we can learn from it and improve it – hindsight can provide quite a lot of perspective on what we could have done better and differently.

Keep nagging us, however, to get information out and even suggest the best ways to do that.  We’ll keep working to keep the project costs down and build a functional, efficient facility.

Hospital Strategic Futures Task Force meets

On Thursday, May 24 the newly minted Hospital Strategic Futures task force met for the first time.  The League of Women Voters blog has a good summary.

What are we doing?  the Council passed a motion outlining the scope of the discussion in which

The Task force will study the respective contributions of the Hospital and the City to the public health and economic development of the community, and consider models of future collaboration between the Hospital and the City which:

• ensure that the residents of Northfield continue to have access to a high quality, affordable health care delivery system;
• make investments that improve community health, fitness, and wellness; and,
• Promote effect local governance and direction of the health care delivery system

When I blogged about this earlier, I made some suggestions which can fit under those bullet points.  For the initial meeting, however, we simply tried to get organized and acquainted.  The Council members of the task force – Ivan Imm, Patrick Ganey and myself – agreed that we needed more background on the hospital finances and operations to be able to discuss matters on a par with our hospital board colleagues Brett Reese, Jim Schlichting, and Charlie Austin.  The 3 Councilmembers are going to do our homework with hospital staff and then we’ll meet again on June 18, 7 pm with the Hospital Board members.  I am the chair of the group; I see my role as chair as keeping meetings on track and on task with the task force working to define agendas and questions as we go along.

How can you find out what we’re doing?  Meetings will be open to the public and meeting notes will be available on the City website.  Reports from the task force members to their respective bodies will also be given; I’ll try to ensure these reports (and any other supporting material we may rely upon) are on the website, too.

More about parking

For transportation geeks: parking, parking lots, parking pricing, price of parking…here’s a selection of what I’ve been perusing:

The aesthetics of parking lots: Taking parking lots seriously as public spaces.  Michael Kimmelman, art and architecture critic, argues we should treat parking lots more like architecture than mere infrastructure.

new technology, new money and parking: the National League of Cities with its corporate partners IBM and Citi announced a $25 million credit facility for parking innovation.  Reading further on IBM’s Smarter Planet site reveals they aim to improve “drivers’ experience, not just where and when they drive. And it could lead to advances in the cars we drive, the roads we drive them on, and the public transit we might take instead.”  I remain skeptical that their modeling, traffic flow analysis, and the like are going to be sufficient to manage traffic for their projection that the 1 billion cars on the road today will double by 2020.

Atlantic Cities’ It’s the parking, stupid describes Nelson Nygaard transportation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin’s anti-free parking mission which he describes as operating “like a methadone clinic to get cities off their parking addictions,” he says. “And each addict goes through a different route.”

More about the problems with free parking, minimum parking requirements, and other “traditional” practices can be found in Parking Policy Reform More Important Than LEED Certification by Todd Litman (the guy behind the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute – check out the page on parking and land use).

And some questions about parking over at Finding a place for parking at the Project for Public Spaces  designed to get planners to think less about parking spaces and more about bringing people to places, as well as practical questions about how to maximize existing parking.

And some blogs devoted to parking: Reinventing Parking and Parking World.

Domestic partnership registry update – an updated update

May 15, 2012: Making progress!  The City Council received the domestic partnership ordinance from the HRC and set the date for the first reading as June 5, 2012 (see the Charter for ordinance procedure) on a 5-1 vote (Rhonda Pownell voted no; Suzie Nakasian was absent).

It was gratifying to see and hear more people speak in favor of this ordinance – thank you all, with particular thanks to Phil Duran from OutFront MN.

April 15, 2012: The Human Rights Commission approved a draft ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry in Northfield.  The forecast of Council agendas puts this issue on the May 15 meeting agenda.

Thanks to the Commission for doing the work, Phil Duran, the legal director for OutFront Minnesota for help with specific language, Dan Hudson for getting this issue moving in Northfield and to all of you who have called or emailed in support.

Hospital study

Why study the hospital/city relationship at all since this is obviously an emotionally charged issue?

The city needs to ask tough, even painful, questions because it has real, structural budget issues which cannot be solved by a few cuts or some temporary austerity.  Even assuming the city keeps receiving local government aid from the state, it cannot maintain the infrastructure and facilities it currently has and struggles to continue services at the same levels.  The council is already facing the need to increase property taxes for the new public safety facilities and it cannot use the tax tool to solve all the problems.

What else can the city do?  Ask tough questions about everything the city owns, provides, and maintains to understand city operations and be able to make better decisions.  Ask if there are different ways to provide services.  Ask what the city can do to enhance its economic development potential.  Ask what tools are available (legally, politically, practically) to help ensure Northfield is a financially resilient city for the long term.

The hospital is our biggest asset.  Over just the last few years, starting in 2005, “the hospital” has grown to be the Northfield Hospital and Clinics in Northfield, Lonsdale, Lakeville, Farmington, and soon in Elko Newmarket.  The council and residents need to know how Northfield city ownership of a regional health system works, then ask what actions we might take to ensure the financial health of city and its healthcare system for the long term.

The City Charter divides up the responsibilities between the council-appointed hospital board and the council.  The hospital board controls and manages all hospitals and related medical facilities, but has no power to construct additional facilities, buy or sell any of these, or to levy taxes.  The council has the powers to construct new facilities, buy and sell them and levy taxes, but has no role in the operation of the hospital.  Despite approving the expansion by approving each land purchase, clinic project, etc., the council has not kept current with hospital strategy in a way that lets it understand what it means to own a regional healthcare system rather than a single hospital.

What basic principles will guide the discussion?  Perhaps some like this:

• The council will not attempt to study healthcare industry, the future of healthcare, or the success of the hospital (which is shorthand for the entire system) as a healthcare provider – the council has no expertise and the Charter assigns this to the hospital board.
• No action to benefit the city will be taken which can be foreseen to undermine the hospital’s financial or operational success – the suggestion that the council simply wants to get cash now, regardless of the impact on the hospital and the community is ludicrous.
• The city values and wants to sustain a hospital in Northfield – in other words, it is important to have a high quality hospital in the city.
• The city would like to understand more about the hospital, its operations, and strategic planning in order to make better informed decisions within its power as owner.
• The city would like to develop a better framework for collaborating on decisions which impact both city government and the hospital.

Possible questions:

Basic, broad questions: what are the costs, benefits, and liabilities of owning a regional healthcare system?

Where do city/hospital needs, plans, missions intersect?  For instance:

• what are the hospital’s infrastructure needs, are they considered in the city’s CIP, and how will costs be assessed?  The fringe location of the hospital increases these costs, so how do we plan for them effectively?
• What does the city do which impacts public health and could benefit from participation (which could be informational, financial, etc.) by the hospital?
• What development plans of the city impact the hospital or vice versa?  For example, could earlier conversations about the EMS facility have helped the council decide on a location for the public safety center sooner?  How does creating a public service cluster at that site guide future development?
• How can the hospital participate in the city’s economic development efforts?  Healthcare has been identified as a target industry in the city’s economic development plan as has the more general objective of retaining existing businesses (and the hospital is one of our largest employers).

How can the city measure what matters about the hospital as it makes policy? In other words, how does the financial information figure in a larger picture of economic, environmental and social sustainability?  We’ve heard a lot about “quality of life” as a goal of city services, as something which attracts residents and businesses, and which contributes to our identity and well-being as a community.  In addition to being worth a lot of money, the hospital has great value for the city.  How does city ownership of the hospital increase the value?

IKEA as urban planner

IKEA's neighborhood planning plan

As an about-to-get married 20-something, I was glad IKEA opened its first US store in King of Prussia, PA, a short drive from my Philadelphia apartment.  We’ve been married 25 years and are still using the IKEA shelves we bought to replace our student cinder block and board constructions – we felt so grown up!  And IKEA has followed us across the country so we can still buy cheap candles, LACK tables, and BILLY bookcases.

But what about an IKEA neighborhood?  Jokes come to mind about all the houses coming flat-packed and assembled with those little hex-key tools with pieces not quite fitting, of course, but the idea is really quite interesting.

The project will redevelop 11 hectares (a bit more than 27 acres) in east London with 1200 all-rental housing units built following in typical (for Britain, anyway) rowhouses and flats for a variety of incomes and in a variety of sizes.  Busier edges of the development will have office/commercial space while IKEA will encourage such things as farmers’ markets and small local businesses. The whole shebang will be owned and managed by IKEA.  The Globe and Mail says IKEA is

not interested in a Disney-style kind of an animatronic spectacle. Rather, they’re seeding Strand East with evocations of spontaneous urban life in hopes that it will become spontaneous urban life; they say they’d be happy to see it shift and evolve to suit market conditions. It’s not clear, though, how this desire will coexist with Ikea’s desire to keep the place under its control.

Construction is planned for 2013.  Knowing IKEA’s philosophy of trying to use good design to solve problems and reduce costs as well as their good company logistics, the experiment seem like it should be efficient and can, perhaps, give municipal government some hints about how to operate.  I want to see what’s happened on my 50th anniversary.