I’ve been singing the “Idaho is Urban” song for many years now, whether it was my “This Urban Idaho” article, or my “Myths of Idaho” presentation at Ignite Boise 1. Then all of a sudden this week we get not one but TWO articles confirming what all of us who don’t serve in the legislature already know: urbanization in Idaho and the U.S. is a continuing trend.
An article in the Statesman discussed what 2009 Census data revealed:
The latest U.S. Census figures released last week estimated that 23 rural Idaho counties had more people moving out than moving in during a 12-month period ending in June 2009. That’s the largest number of counties recording out-migration since 26 of the state’s 44 counties experienced the same trend between mid-2000 and mid-2001, the last major recession.
The figures, released by the Idaho Department of Labor, show more than 3,200 people moved out of those counties. Statewide, the data show the Gem State’s population increased by nearly 19,000, or 1.2 percent, making Idaho 12th strongest nationwide. Of that population increase, 29 percent was in Ada County; 13.6 percent in Canyon County, and 13 percent in Kootenai County.
As we learned from the Brookings Mountain Monitor report last week, this is fairly typical. One of the reasons that the smaller cities in the Intermountain West appear to leading the region out of the recession is because they are “exporting” their unemployment. Thus, when times get tough in rural areas, unemployed workers move to population centers to find work, and the unemployment rate in the rural areas goes down.
But not only are people moving out of the hinterland to the city, within the city they are moving closer to the core. For the second year in a row, the EPA has found that housing starts in urban areas are increasing. You can read the updated report for 2010 at the EPA’s website.
Attention Idaho Legislators: learn it, know it, live it - the few remaining souls in the hinterlands have left, and they are in our cities. Said another way, all your base are belong to us.
If you watched Fox 12 News at Nine like you should be, you saw me pooh-pooh the Otter/Wasden/12 other states lawsuit against the federal government.
The lawsuit asserts that Congress has no authority under the U.S. Constitution, to compel individual citizens to participate in the economy, e.g., by forcing them to buy health insurance. Regardless of your point of view on how the courts have interpreted the Commerce Clause over the years, I felt safe in saying that the lawsuit probably won’t get anywhere.
What we have here is a two part strategy on the part of the Republican Party to scuttle this health care bill. The first part of this attack is legal - the lawsuit filed by 13 Republican Attorneys General. The second part is political. Some members of Congress are vowing to repeal this measure. That is not at all likely. If the U.S. Senate could not bottle this thing up in procedure, the members who oppose this measure certainly have no chance to repeal it outright. There is also the “reconciliation” process the bill must go through; the final form of this bill is still unknown. Congress will hash this out under a detailed set of rules over the next few weeks. I also think that it is unlikely that the bill will change significantly in this process.
Were I still in the political consulting business, I’d tell the GOP to give it up. They lost this fight and they never even put forth a compelling alternative vision. John Boehner should be replaced. Though he has Don Draper looks, he is no Newt Gingrich when it comes to vision, strategy, and tactics - and a heavy dose of vision is what the GOP needs right now.
So while Governor Otter’s concerns are real - how indeed will Idaho afford this - this lawsuit and the reconciliation process are not going to deliver the results he hopes for. What our leaders need to do now is add this issue to the other huge financial and economic challenges facing Idaho. The Boise-Nampa metro region is one of the nation’s worst performing metros - and no one in our state has announced a way forward. So after all the shiny objects - lawsuits, political posturing etc. - go away, we’re still left with that little gem of a fact.
For additional reading:
Brian Murphy over at the Statesman did a nice job covering this story this morning. If you are into reading the legal analysis, the Volokh Conspiracy has several articles by law professors talking about this in detail.
Any day now my good friend Dave Frazier will be going ballistic over on the Guardian Blog about HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 5, which passed the House 57-12-1, and the Senate 34-1. This resolution which will go to a vote of the people this fall would amend Idaho’s Constitution so that Airports can issue bonds without having to get a vote of the people. This is an idea whose time has come as evidenced by the vote. Good on you Senator Stegner for finally designating some authority to jurisdictions other than the state. With luck, this is the start of a new trend.
But there are those who still don’t see the need to devolve power to local governments and other jursdictions. Idaho’s cities and counties (and airports and public hospitals, etc.) have less authority than do the cities and counties in any state west of the Mississippi (see: D, Krane, Rigos N, and Hill M. Home Rule in America : A Fifty-State Handbook. CQ Press, 2000.). Of the 12 Representatives that voted against this measure, half are from urban areas, the other half rural. Thus, the urban rural divide is still in full effect.
I think it is somewhat amazing that anyone from an urban district would vote against this, thus some of these legislators’ votes deserve special attention. Clifford Bayer (R), Boise casts a vote that puzzles me. His district is part of the economic engine of the Valley. The Boise-Nampa MSA is responsible for 50% of state’s GDP. Voting to hamper the airport is no help to this economy or the citizens in his district.
Representative Hartgen (R), Twin Falls is the other mystery here. His vote is interesting first because his own district struggles with urban problems such as providing public transit - so he should be well aware of the need to start devolving authority to the governmental units that can actually solve his people’s problems. Secondly he is a professional economic development consultant. Voting against the public’s ability to provide infrastructure isn’t in any of the textbooks I had on economic development.
Several of the delegation from the CDA area voted against this measure as well, showing that they too do not yet grasp that their region is an urbanized area and also very much needs to have some flexibility to solve regional issues such as the traffic between CDA and Spokane, and also the border crossing to the north. No longer are CDA and Hayden sleepy little mountain towns on the way to nowhere.
Full details on the bill are available over at the Statesman.
Today I woke up to every man’s nightmare: I had been robbed. I walked out into the living room of my house, opened the front door, and there was the evidence right before me. Looking down at the rolled up Idaho Statesman sitting there on my porch I could see the headline, front-page above the fold: “MERIDIAN TAKES A SWING AT THE BOISE HAWKS.”
If you scroll down a bit, you’ll note that I posted on that very subject two days ago. The story stemmed from a public meeting of the Meridian Development Corporation where the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey showing huge public support for a new Hawks Stadium, in Meridian. So why would I allege being robbed by Joe Estrella if this is all public information?
At beer and blog a couple weeks ago, this subject came up between Jess Flynn and I. Jess Flynn represents the MDC and does a bang up job. She mentioned that Meridian and MDC were hoping to attract the Hawks there. I noted that the City of Boise in a design Charette almost three years ago had drawn Hawks Stadium into its 30th street Master Plan. I even pulled the plan up on my iPhone and showed it to Jess.
So - Jess and a couple other people were live tweeting that MDC meeting, and sent links to the Hawks presentation. Here’s one of them from Jess:
So - the 30th Street Master Plan never once came up at the MDC meeting - and Joe Estrella just happened to call the City of Boise about it? Not likely.
It’s especially not likely since according to my search of the Statesman archives, the Statesman has never once covered the 30th Street Master plan.
So I called Joe on it, and I copied his boss. Here’s his explanation:
Chris,
Just wanted you to know that the source for my story was somebody who knows Todd Rahr personally and had spoken to him about the situation.
The 30th Street Plan information came from my conversation with Boise officials who went into great detail, including mentioning that the stadium could be built at another site like the Boise Bench.
And as I’m sure you noticed, my story centered on Meridian’s request for an exclusive arrangement between the two parties in exchange for funding the feasibility study. The sources for that information were an MDC and city official.
I replied to Joe:
Joe: in my view that is a weak explanation for how the story came about. In the first place there is no reason for you to call Boise officials to talk about the Hawks since the Hawks reside on County property in the city of Garden City - you had to have been prompted to call John and ask him specifically about 30th street. Secondly, if you are unaware of the social media conversations that were swirling around this issue for two days that speaks as poorly for you as does the more likely case that you just simply borrowed my analysis and passed it off as your own.
Whatever the case, the Statesman has a long way to go in the social media/new media realm. Your organization simply treats the new social media channels as broadcast channels, and is the ONLY media outlet in the Valley that does so.
I remain unconvinced by Joe’s explanation; I have not yet heard from Vicki Gowler. I think the case is clear. This story emanated from my conversations with Jess Flynn (also recounted on her blog), appeared on my blog two days ago, then magically appeared on the front page of the Statesman.
There’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Hawks stadium recently, mostly coming from Meridian. I have to hand it to Mayor DeWeerd and the Meridian Development Corporation: they have a vision, and a mission and they are going after it.
This morning the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey that showed a vast majority (75%+) of the 300 people surveyed, favored construction of a new multi-purpose sports facility somewhere in the Valley. It turns out that a plurality of people also identified MERIDIAN as the favored location for a new sports facility. I am guessing that this will have a few people at the City of Boise upset.
In January 2007, a design charrette for the 30th District Master Plan in Boise, revealed that the 200 people in attendance hoped that a new Hawks stadium would be built in downtown Boise. The photo below appears on page 185 of the 30th Street Master Plan, available on the City’s website.
Hawks Stadium envisioned as part of the 30th Street Neighborhood
So what say you, City of Boise officials? Are you working up a deal to make the stadium a centerpiece of a new 30th Street Neighborhood? The implementation plan for 30th Street says that within 1-3 years Boise City and CCDC will:
Identify where land assembly, land acquisition and/or development partnerships would help implement the development concept for each subdistrict. Initiate conversations with property owners to determine their level of interest in selling property, land assembly and/or development.
Where are we on this project? Granted the plan only went forward in June 2009, but with Meridian breathing down your necks, it might be time to kick this project into high gear - unless you really like the sound of “MERIDIAN HAWKS.”
This week the news broke that Mayor Phil Bandy of Eagle was resigning, apparently tired of “personal attacks” levied against him for his taking another job (though his Mayor duties are a full time position), and constant battling with City Councilman Al Shoushtarian. The Statesman has the full scoop.
The question in my mind, though, isn’t “who should be the next Mayor of Eagle” but should Eagle even continue existence as a city. Here’s the facts:
- It can’t afford its city hall space
- It has laid off 40% of its employees
- It has reduced its budget by a third
- City hall is closed on Friday’s because it cannot afford to stay open
- The City is borrowing money to stay afloat
This sounds like a city that needs to unincorporate, and get taken over by Meridian.
I say the same thing about Garden City. Ada Sheriff Gary Raney has said that he can provide law enforcement services to the municipality for less than what the Garden City police force currently costs. If I recall correctly too, GC has had problems in the past with making its contributions to Valley Regional Transit. The GC folks haven’t been able to get anything done with the fairgrounds either (though I am not sure there is any local government ready to tackle that problem).
So - Ada County has at least two cities on life support, and regional growth issues coming at us from all sides. That certainly isn’t aided by weak, fractured governments. These cities need to get it together, or give their marbles to someone else.
I’ve decided to go all aggregator today since time is short and news is long. Here’s what’s up:
TOO MUCH HUMAN CAPITAL IN CHINA
In China there are too many college grads and not enough jobs. So much for the theory about just creating lots of human capital.
PAY FOR TRANSIT OR TEAR OUT YOUR DOWNTOWN
So . . . why should we fund the bus system to a greater extent? Well it turns out that the more you reduce transit into the central business district (downtown) the more of your city you have to tear out to build parking lots. Want a more robust downtown? We’re gonna need that local option, yo.
EVERYONE BUT BOISE GETS TIGER FUNDS
It also turns out that the 100 largest cities in the U.S. (BOI is around 84 or 86 depending on who is estimating when and with what data) got 70% of the TIGER funds. Boise, as you recall, got bupkis. Does this foretell bad things? Are we not part of the renewed federal interest in cities?
HIGH SPEED RAIL FROM RENO TO SLC. BOI: NO TRAIN FOR YOU!
Another favorite of mine from this week is the discovery of a new advocacy group - the Western High Speed Rail Alliance. In another shut-out for Boise and Idaho, this coalition has formed to advocate for high-speed rail routes all over the west, including a route from SLC to Reno. SLC to Reno? Boise doesn’t figure in to the planning.
Economic developers and especially politicians love big signature economic development projects because they provide readily recognizable symbols of their supposed effectiveness. But sometimes those projects go awry. Like Olympic Village in Vancouver. Vancouver lost it’s AAA credit rating when it had to bail out the failed hedge fund that financed the Olympic Village project. Word to local governments everywhere . . .
Saw a story last week that said Portland just passed a $613 plan to improve bike infrastructure over the next 20 years. I know it’s apples and oranges, but $60 million for a streetcar downtown seems like a bargain by comparison. Full story in the Portland Business Journal.
For years people have complained about all the “brown boxes” in Boise’s downtown, but no, we’re not the only one complaining about our drab architecture. A gleaming, 54 story glass box now graces the L.A. skyline, the first skyscraper completed in that city since 1992 - and the critics don’t like it. Says L.A. Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne:
As far as architectural ambition goes, though, the building makes a faint, even passive impression, despite the diverting patterns on its facade. It is more focused on operating as a glossy vertical marker for L.A. Live — and the tower is hard to miss from any of downtown’s freeways — than on exploring a fresh or idiosyncratic path for high-rise design in L.A.
Maybe the city of Los Angeles would like to trade L.A. Live for our Grove Hotel?
Read the whole story at the L.A. Times site.
