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Jul. 12th, 2016 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckOne of the city council candidates, Will Leaf, the guy whose petition I signed, seems to think that our city’s first priorities should be roads/bridges/sidewalk and snow removal. I’m not entirely sure I agree. I’m also not sure that his ideas about how to pay for all of that are remotely feasible. He says, for example, that the city is losing money on the downtown parking structures and should sell those off. I’m not convinced. I suspect that relatively cheap parking (about $2.50 an hour) helps downtown businesses immensely.
He also claims that the city can take over sidewalk snow clearing without raising taxes. I’m dubious. I would love the city to deal with that, but it would take a lot of people, a lot of time, and a lot of equipment. Even if the city can pay for it, somehow, I’m not sure that it could be done, city-wide, in a timely manner.
I do agree with him that the city needs to find ways to make the university pay more for city services and infrastructure. When the university and the city grew up together, the city exempted the university from taxes, property and otherwise, but the university has been devouring more and more property, removing it from the tax rolls. The university and the city are kind of jumbled together. The university has multiple centers (I can think of five or six) in various parts of town and runs its own buses between them on roads that the city pays for. I rather think, though, that most people in the city government want to find ways to get money from the university. This is not a problem that’s new or that no one has considered before.
His website explains something that has puzzled us for quite a while, though. When we moved here, almost twenty years ago, there was a Kroger and a strip mall on a particular bit of land. All of that closed down within the first three months we were here and, eventually, got torn down. There was a developer which planned to build there, but the timing was such that the money evaporated. Apparently the reason that nothing has been built there is that the zoning for the lot is extremely specific about what has to be built— If I’m recalling correctly, it’s seven buildings of a particular height and a parking structure of a certain size. No other use of the land is currently legal.
Jason Frenzel, one the other non-incumbent, seems to have a focus on environmental/sustainability issues. His website says we’ve had a large increase in stormwater runoff (he says 45%. I need to check that because I feel like we’re getting less frequent rain than we used to. Possibly, more rain is falling all at once; I don’t know). The picture on his website shows a white guy who’s probably in his thirties or, possibly, forties.
His website is a lot shorter on concrete plans and ideas than Leaf’s is. Frenzel seems content with listing his priorities rather than talking about the how. I’m not going to hold that against him because I’m not sure that offering half baked ideas is better than just saying 'I’m for this.' His background in terms of community activism is focused on parks and wetlands and on locally sourced food. Frenzel’s website has a lot less information than Leaf’s does, though, and he doesn’t talk about much apart from the environment. The only Q&A that he links to is one asking his opinion on funding for the arts which honestly isn’t that high on my list of priorities for city council (considerably more for school board, however).
Sumi Kailasapathy, the incumbent, talks fairly extensively about the policies she has supported and opposed during her years on city council. She focuses heavily on spending millage money on the things that it was approved for (so a millage for sewers would go for sewers and not for anything else. She specifically mentions sewer related public art, so I suppose that's an actual thing that happened because it's a really weird thing to pull out of thin air). She mentions having an interest in making our ward and the city in general safer for pedestrians. She claims to have a strong focus on making city council proceedings public and on making other city affiliated organizations publish things like audited statements. She says she’s trying to get a new ordinance made part of the city charter to establish civilian oversight of the police (I’m not sure how that applies to the university’s security force) as recommended by the HRC’s report in the wake of the death of Aura Rosser. She also addresses some very specific environmental problems that the city is facing at present, a dioxane plume, repeated flooding in certain neighborhoods and the potential repercussions of unwise development in wetlands areas and flood plains, and the growing deer population (I’m not keen on deer culls, but I don’t really see other workable approaches, and that’s pretty much what she says). She doesn’t really discuss the policies that city government has been pursuing in terms of downtown development, and that’s something I would like to hear more about because my general impression is that it’s not being done in a way that makes much sense.
I can’t tell how much of Kailasapathy’s range of subjects comes from her having had experience with city council. That is, I’m not sure if these are simply things that don’t occur to people who haven’t yet tried to do the job. I’d be curious as to what the other candidates would say about those issues. I’m a little surprised that police oversight isn’t mentioned by the other two candidates. No, actually, I’m not. A woman of color with sons (one in middle school and one in community college) is going to take that very, very seriously. White men don’t have to.
He also claims that the city can take over sidewalk snow clearing without raising taxes. I’m dubious. I would love the city to deal with that, but it would take a lot of people, a lot of time, and a lot of equipment. Even if the city can pay for it, somehow, I’m not sure that it could be done, city-wide, in a timely manner.
I do agree with him that the city needs to find ways to make the university pay more for city services and infrastructure. When the university and the city grew up together, the city exempted the university from taxes, property and otherwise, but the university has been devouring more and more property, removing it from the tax rolls. The university and the city are kind of jumbled together. The university has multiple centers (I can think of five or six) in various parts of town and runs its own buses between them on roads that the city pays for. I rather think, though, that most people in the city government want to find ways to get money from the university. This is not a problem that’s new or that no one has considered before.
His website explains something that has puzzled us for quite a while, though. When we moved here, almost twenty years ago, there was a Kroger and a strip mall on a particular bit of land. All of that closed down within the first three months we were here and, eventually, got torn down. There was a developer which planned to build there, but the timing was such that the money evaporated. Apparently the reason that nothing has been built there is that the zoning for the lot is extremely specific about what has to be built— If I’m recalling correctly, it’s seven buildings of a particular height and a parking structure of a certain size. No other use of the land is currently legal.
Jason Frenzel, one the other non-incumbent, seems to have a focus on environmental/sustainability issues. His website says we’ve had a large increase in stormwater runoff (he says 45%. I need to check that because I feel like we’re getting less frequent rain than we used to. Possibly, more rain is falling all at once; I don’t know). The picture on his website shows a white guy who’s probably in his thirties or, possibly, forties.
His website is a lot shorter on concrete plans and ideas than Leaf’s is. Frenzel seems content with listing his priorities rather than talking about the how. I’m not going to hold that against him because I’m not sure that offering half baked ideas is better than just saying 'I’m for this.' His background in terms of community activism is focused on parks and wetlands and on locally sourced food. Frenzel’s website has a lot less information than Leaf’s does, though, and he doesn’t talk about much apart from the environment. The only Q&A that he links to is one asking his opinion on funding for the arts which honestly isn’t that high on my list of priorities for city council (considerably more for school board, however).
Sumi Kailasapathy, the incumbent, talks fairly extensively about the policies she has supported and opposed during her years on city council. She focuses heavily on spending millage money on the things that it was approved for (so a millage for sewers would go for sewers and not for anything else. She specifically mentions sewer related public art, so I suppose that's an actual thing that happened because it's a really weird thing to pull out of thin air). She mentions having an interest in making our ward and the city in general safer for pedestrians. She claims to have a strong focus on making city council proceedings public and on making other city affiliated organizations publish things like audited statements. She says she’s trying to get a new ordinance made part of the city charter to establish civilian oversight of the police (I’m not sure how that applies to the university’s security force) as recommended by the HRC’s report in the wake of the death of Aura Rosser. She also addresses some very specific environmental problems that the city is facing at present, a dioxane plume, repeated flooding in certain neighborhoods and the potential repercussions of unwise development in wetlands areas and flood plains, and the growing deer population (I’m not keen on deer culls, but I don’t really see other workable approaches, and that’s pretty much what she says). She doesn’t really discuss the policies that city government has been pursuing in terms of downtown development, and that’s something I would like to hear more about because my general impression is that it’s not being done in a way that makes much sense.
I can’t tell how much of Kailasapathy’s range of subjects comes from her having had experience with city council. That is, I’m not sure if these are simply things that don’t occur to people who haven’t yet tried to do the job. I’d be curious as to what the other candidates would say about those issues. I’m a little surprised that police oversight isn’t mentioned by the other two candidates. No, actually, I’m not. A woman of color with sons (one in middle school and one in community college) is going to take that very, very seriously. White men don’t have to.
