Planning process vs citizen involvement

Ever feel like you are being "processed?"

Have you felt tike this for some time?

Me too.  For at least 18 years, but most likely more.  There doesn't seem to be much that has changed over time, only a refinement of the processes and dim remembrance of anything different.  The last ditch for anyone who wants to make a difference is to run for mayor or city council, but the pressure to conform to a predetermined agenda continues there too.

I clipped this "In My Opinion" column from the Oregonian, April 9, 1997, and ran across it today while going through some very old files.  I'd like to share it with you before the actual article meets the recycle bin.  I apologize for the poor quality of the images - I could not find the article online, so my photos will have to do.  If the article is unreadable, let me know and I will try again.

A place at the table
The Oregonian, April 9, 1997  Commentary by John Legry
Citizen involvement doesn't mean public hearings to ratify decisions already made

Favorite quotes:

Public process is a mechanical technique used to get people to comment, report their "participation" in findings and, all too often, justify a predetermined decision.  

But, when was the last time anyone asked you to review the land use growth policy for its impact on your life?  

Generally speaking, and despite Metro 2040 discussions, what is considered is the size of the pie, not whether or not it should be baked in the first place.  

The powers that be favor process over involvement.  

The downtown Office of Neighborhoods - not itself slated for a budget cut of any kind - has grown over eight years from $250,000 to an annual budget of half a million dollars, but is predominantly occupied with inside City Hall initiatives: city services outreach, meeting facilitation and public process activities.  

These groups should be considered the first line of Portland's democratic process.  They should be cherished and protected as one of the only real counterbalances to the growth and development industry in existence.  

Urban centers lean left

Kotkin never fails in his insightful, well-researched articles about the trends occurring in our cities and suburbs today.  In this article Kotkin examines how urban centers have become increasingly left-leaning and have ignored and harmed the middle and lower wage earners with liberal political and land use policies.

We don't have to look to San Francisco or New York to see what is going on when we have a close-up view of the chaos in milennial-dominated Portland just a couple of miles north.  "Stop Portland Creep" was the Clackistani battle cry in the last election.  After reading this, it sounds more urgent than ever.

The peril to Democrats of left-leaning urban centers
Newgeography.com  August 11, 2015  By Joel Kotkin

Twenty years ago, America’s cities were making their initial move to regain some of their luster. This was largely due to the work of mayors who were middle-of-the-road pragmatists. Their ranks included Rudy Giuliani in New York, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, and, perhaps the best of the bunch, Houston’s Bob Lanier. Even liberal San Franciscans elected Frank Jordan, a moderate former police chief who was succeeded by the decidedly pragmatic Willie Brown.   

This leftward shift is marked, but it’s not indicative of any tide of public enthusiasm. One-party rule, as one might expect, does not galvanize voters. The turnout  in recent city elections has plummeted across the country, with turnouts 25 percent or even lower. In Los Angeles, the 2013 turnout that elected progressive Eric Garcetti was roughly one-third that in the city’s 1970 mayoral election.


This new urban configuration, notes the University of Chicago’s Terry Nichols Clark, tend to have different needs, and values, than the traditional middle class. Since their denizens are heavily single and childless, the poor state of city schools does not hold priority over the political power of the teachers unions. The key needs for the new population, Clark suggests, are good restaurants, shops and festivals, not child-friendly parks and family-oriented stores. Sometimes even crazy notions—such as allowing people to walk through the streets of San Francisco naked—are tolerated in a way no child-centric suburb would allow.

Such social imbalances are not, as is the favored term among the trendy, sustainable. We appear to be creating the conditions for a new wave of violent crime on a scale not seen since the early 1990s. Along with poverty, public disorderliness, gang activity, homelessness and homicides are on the rise in manyAmerican core cities, including Baltimore, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and New York. Racial tensions, particularly with the police, have worsened. So even as left-leaning politicians try to rein in police, recent IRS data in Chicago reveals, the middle class appears to once again be leaving for suburban and other locales. 

Yet with those battles essentially won, the new urban politics are entering into greater conflict with the suburban mainstream, which tends to be socially moderate, and even more so with the resource-dependent economies of rural America. The environmental radicalism that has its roots in places like San Francisco and Seattle  now directly seeks to destroy whole parts of middle America’s energy economy.

Such policies tend to radically raise energy costs. In California, the green energy regime has already driven roughly 1 million people, many of them Latinos in the state’s agricultural interior, into “energy poverty”—a status in which electricity costs one-tenth of their income. Not surprisingly, those leaving California, notes Trulia, increasingly are working class; their annual incomes in the range of $20,000 to $80,000 are simply not enough to make ends meet.

It’s more than suburban or rural jobs that are on the urban designer chopping block. Density obsessed planners have adopted rules, already well advanced in my adopted home state of California, to essentially curb  much detested suburban sprawl and lure people back to the dense inner cities. The Obama administration is sympathetic to this agenda, and has adopted its own strategies to promote “back to the city” policies in the rest of the country as well.

These radicalizing trends are likely to be seen as a threat to Democratic prospects next year, but instead will meet with broad acclaim among city-dominated progressive media. Then again, the columnists, reporters and academics who embrace the new urban politics have little sympathy or interest in preserving middle-class suburbs, much less vital small towns. If the Republicans possess the intelligence—always an open question—to realize that their opponents are actively trying to undermine how most Americans prefer to live, they might find an opportunity far greater than many suspect.

This piece first appeared in Real Clear Politics.  Read entire article using link HERE.

Next Ad-Hoc Tree Code Committee Meeting

2015 Tree Code Review Project update

You are receiving this email because you signed up or requested to sign up for the 2015 Tree Code Review project listserv. Emails will be sent out on the listserv periodically when there are updates on the project.

The second meeting of the Ad Hoc Tree Committee is scheduled for Monday, August 17. Details of the meeting are provided, below, and a map to the Holy Names Heritage Center is attached. 

2ND MEETING OF THE AD HOC TREE COMMITTEE

Monday, August 17, 2015, from 6-9 p.m.

Holy Names Heritage Center (Marylhurst Campus)
17425 Holy Names Drive
Lake Oswego, OR 97034

The meeting is open to the public and time is allotted for public comment. The agenda and other meeting materials are available at the link below:

Ad Hoc Tree Committee Meeting Information


The project coordinator is Jessica Numanoglu, Senior Planner. She can be reached by email at jnumanoglu@lakeoswego.city or by phone at 503-635-0283.

*

USC Note:  Send comments to Jessica at the email above by this Friday, August 15, and/or come to the meeting and speak to the committee yourself.  All opinions welcome!  

My own comment would be to consider tree codes as they relate to your property.  Too often as citizens we are asked what we would like to see for our community and then have these desires codified into regulations that bind on us all.  

Tree codes should not be a wish list for what we want others to do with their property (their trees), or even what we are willing to do with ours, but by what right should the government have to tell citizens what they can and cannot do.  What are (or should be) the limits of government power, and what is reasonable control over our individual rights and freedoms?

I have heard many times that we need tree codes to prevent or tightly control tree removal - even of trees people planted themselves on their own property, dead and diseased trees, windfalls, stumps, and landscape mistakes or changes.  "If you don't have strict codes, people will cut down all the trees on their property."   Really?  Without requiring residents to plant trees, the city's tree canopy has grown even with about a thousand tree removals per year.   That doesn't sound like a populace that hates their trees.  The fear of what other people might do should not dictate what reasonable people can do without government oversight.  

Sure, some mistakes might be made.  But like any society where free men are allowed to exercise the maximum control over their lives and proprty, we have to allow for imperfection.  Certainly it is preferable to the system we have now whit government looking over our shoulder, peering into our back yards, and the populace in revolt, cutting trees before they reach the size where the government siezes control, or not wanting to plant trees at all.  

What's local about central planning?

More local decisions usurped by ideological regulators 
Orange County Register, August 2, 2015 
Opinion By Joel Kotkin

In hip, and even not-so-hip, circles, markets, restaurants and cultural festivals across the country, local is in. Many embrace this ideal as an economic development tool, an environmental win and a form of resistance to ever-greater centralized big business control.

Yet when it comes to areas being able to choose their urban form and for people to cluster naturally – localism is now being constantly undermined by planners and their ideological allies, including some who superficially embrace the notion of localism.

In order to pursue their social and perceived environmental objectives, they have placed particular onus on middle- and upper-class suburbs, whose great crime appears to be that they tend to be the places people settle if they have the means to do so.

Central Planning 

Nothing is more basic to the American identity than leaving basic control of daily life to local communities and, as much as is practical, to individuals. The rising new regulatory regime seeks decisively to change that equation. To be sure, there is a need for some degree of regulation, notably for basic health and public safety, as well as maintaining and expanding schools, parks, bikeways and tree-planting, things done best when supported by local voters.

But the current regulatory wave goes well beyond traditional methodology. It reflects policies more akin to those central planners, who, as Chapman University researcher Alicia Kurimska suggests, dominated city planning in the once-massive Soviet bloc. There, theorists like Alexei Gutnov, lead author of the influential 1968 essay “The Ideal Communist City,” saw the city as providing “a concrete spatial agenda for Marxism.” Gutnov acknowledged the appeal of suburbia – “ideal conditions for rest and privacy are offered by the individual house situated in the midst of nature,” but rejected the suburban model common in America and other capitalist countries. Gutnov favored high-density development, in part, because private homes might encourage people to focus on their families and their property rather than on the overarching collective dream of achieving socialism.

'Smart Growth' enforcers

Sadly, our fair state, California, has become the new Vatican for a similarly minded approach, this one largely driven largely by environmental determinism. Under the provisions of 2008’s Senate Bill 375, the drive to reduce greenhouse gases will not be advanced through gradual technological improvement but by strangling the suburban preferences of the vast majority of residents. In the process, local priorities now can be sacrificed for the predilections of our own central planners and a governor who has made little secret of his detestation of the very suburban “sprawl” that accommodates some 85 percent of residents in large U.S. metro areas.

In the past, the key decisions about density were left up to localities. Yet today, notes Ontario Mayor pro Tem Alan Wapner, powers once reserved for localities, such as zoning and planning, systematically have been usurped by Sacramento. The state determines policies and then employs, bureaucracies such as the Southern California Association of Governments and the Bay Area Association of Governments, to be its “smart growth” enforcers. “They are basically dictating land use,” Wapner said.

For most of the population, residential high density’s benefits are even less obvious. Los Angeles has embraced ever-expanding density for at least a decade. This has occurred as the balance of power has moved from low- and moderate-density neighborhoods to an unholy alliance of developers and planners, who hope to feed on the city’s declining percentage of homeowners and the eroding suburban character of all but the wealthiest enclaves.

Federal Social Engineering

Ironically, this approach may prove somewhat unnecessary and even counter-productive in terms of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. As McKinsey has noted, there is no need to change the fundamental way people live to achieve continued progress on emissions. But this practical approach will not dissuade planners and their allies from seeking to control how people live. More pragmatic policies such as improved vehicle mileage, tree planting and encouraging working from home can certainly reduce greenhouse gases without seriously impinging the majority’s aspiration.

But rather than being just the latest California lunacy, the demise of local control is now going national. A cascading tide of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations already threatens future developments, particularly those that cater to middle-class homeowners. In addition, regulations from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development aim to force communities into inviting a designated number of poor people to achieve greater sociological and racial balance.

This soft Stalinism will be accomplished by suggesting that current housing patterns, despite no evidence of discrimination, have a “disparate impact” on the poor. HUD’s Julian Castro acknowledges that the real aim is to force middle-class communities into becoming instruments of top-down social justice. The Soviet Union may be history, but Alexei Gutnov would be proud.

This assault on local control could, over time, upset the political balance even in Democratic strongholds. This can be seen, ironically, even in the “greenest” areas, such as Marin County, north of San Francisco, where residents have objected to densification schemes, which, they maintain, would undermine the “the small-town, semirural and rural character of their neighborhoods,” noted one opponent, 

Ultimately, the assault on localism should concern not only free-market conservatives or fans of limited government, but anyone who values the basic ideal of personal choice and the right to pursue your aspirations. Such a struggle fostered the first American Revolution, and might well become a rationale for another, more peaceful grass-roots rebellion.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange and the executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).  His latest book is, "The New Class Conflict."

What makes someone a hero?

On Saturday, a radio program on altruism introduced me to The Carnegie Hero Fund.  The stories of heroism are inspirational.  You can read the stories on the Carnegie a Hero Fund website, but hearing the recipients speak, takes the stories from dry facts on paper to real people involved in extraordinary experiences.  Why did they do it?  What were they thinking?  Download the podcast, "I Need a Hero" from the link below.

RadioLab
The Good Show
If natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another? This week, tune in to your local station for stories on niceness as a scalpel.

 

Carnegie Hero Fund Awards

“We live in a heroic age,” Andrew Carnegie wrote in the opening lines of the Commission’s founding Deed of Trust in 1904. “Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.”

Carnegie’s “hero fund,” administered by a 21-member commission in Pittsburgh, was charged with honoring whom he called the “heroes of civilization,” whose lifesaving actions put them in stark contrast to the “heroes of barbarism, (who) maimed or killed” their fellow man. That the mission of the Hero Fund as set forth by Carnegie is unchanged over more than a century, despite massive upheaval in the social and world order, is testament both to his foresight and to essentially unchanging human nature.

The Commission’s working definition of a hero as well as its requirements for awarding remain largely those that were approved by the founder. The candidate for an award must be a civilian who voluntarily risks his or her life to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person. The rescuer must have no full measure of responsibility for the safety of the victim. There must be conclusive evidence to support the act’s occurrence, and the act must be called to the attention of the Commission within two years.

The Assault on Suburbia -

- threatens the American Dream, and kills it for future generations.  

The article featured here should be read, re-read and shared by everyone who still believes in the American Dream, and those who may have lost hope of achieving it but still want it for themselves and their children.  The message here is important, and the truth needs to be told about what is going on and why.   Use the link to access the complete article.

Read this and pass it on!

Newgeography.com
Countering Progressives' Assult on Suburbs
August , 2015  By Joel Kotkin

The next culture war will not be about issues like gay marriage or abortion, but about something more fundamental: how Americans choose to live. In the crosshairs now will not be just recalcitrant Christians or crazed billionaire racists, but the vast majority of Americans who either live in suburban-style housing or aspire to do so in the future. Roughly four in five home buyers prefer a single-family home, but much of the political class increasingly wants them to live differently. 

Theoretically, the suburbs should be the dominant politically force in America. Some 44 million Americans live in the core cities of America’s 51 major metropolitan areas, while nearly 122 million Americans live in the suburbs. In other words, nearly three-quarters of metropolitan Americans live in suburbs.

Yet it has been decided, mostly by self-described progressives, that suburban living is too unecological, not mention too uncool, and even too white for their future America. Density is their new holy grail, for both the world and the U.S. Across the country efforts are now being mounted—through HUD, the EPA, and scores of local agencies—to impede suburban home-building, or to raise its cost. Notably in coastal California, but other places, too, suburban housing is increasingly relegated to the affluent.

The obstacles being erected include incentives for density, urban growth boundaries, attempts to alter the race and class makeup of communities, and mounting environmental efforts to reduce sprawl. The EPA wants to designate even small, seasonal puddles as “wetlands,” creating a barrier to developers of middle-class housing, particularly in fast-growing communities in the Southwest. Denizens of free-market-oriented Texas could soon be experiencing what those in California, Oregon and other progressive bastions have long endured: environmental laws that make suburban development all but impossible, or impossibly expensive. Suburban family favorites like cul-de-sacs are being banned under pressure from planners.

Some conservatives rightly criticize such intrusive moves, but they generally ignore how Wall Street interests and some developers see forced densification as opportunities for greater profits, often sweetened by public subsidies. Overall, suburban interests are poorly organized, particularly compared to well-connected density lobbies such as the developer-funded Urban Land Institute (ULI), which have opposed suburbanization for nearly 80 years. 

Continued.  

Court of Appeals right but not just

How can something right, be so wrong?  

"Right" is defined by what is legal and what is morally just.  A legal argument may win, but people know when something is wrong by the sour taste it leaves in their mouths.

The Oregon Court of Appeals denied the Save Our Village and Evergreen Neighblrhood Association appeal of the LUBA decision which affirmed the city approval of the Wizer Block development.  By relying on only one aspect of the code, Evergreen Group (Patrick Kessi and investors) was able to sidestep the East End Redevelopment village character policy and scale back their monster development.  Policies and intent matter.  Or they should.

 Vanquished 

 (Or is there one last gasp?)  

The small village was threatened by the big

metropolis in the next county.  Smalltown USA was being overrun by financiers from the big city - one in particular - who saw their green pastures and cozy town center as a great place to build their next block of apartments, opening the door to more intensive development in the future.  The townsfolk wouldn't know what hit them.  And once it was built, it would be too late.

When this project was finished, the bloom would be gone from this small, quaint town, and crass commercialization could continue without the pretense of the developer pretending to care, and without the citizen resistance this one attracted, and the rest would be easy money!   

The Townsfolk hired a defender and they pinned their hopes on him.  Could he do the job against such a rich and powerful foe?  The villagers' homes and lives were at stake, so they all pitched in to help pay the little they could to fund the fight. 

The battle began. It was long, it was bloody, and it tore the town apart.  Each side had much to lose - the Investors had a lot of money at stake, and the Townsfolk their homes and lives.

Back and forth the battle went. Great damage was done on both sides.  Many people would lose the investment in their homes, and some fled town to avoid what they knew was coming.  This was a sad time for Smalltown, but no one except those who were being hurt seemed to care. What was morally just and what was legally right were on divergent paths.



The Battle of the Court of Appeals dealt a deadly blow to the Villagers.  The people's arguments were strong, but the High Court Judges did not deign to explain their decision.  As the bulldozers drew closer to the project site, the People wondered, was it over?

But now another fight was beginning.  At the Smalltown Farmers' Market, the Investors were going to be celebrating their victory with a booth where they would hand out trinkets to villagers, trying to cement their place in the town they had invaded - make it seem like they belonged, and that their monster project was no big deal.  Tee-shirts anyone?  How about a mug?

Neighborhoods matter

Rich or poor, neighborhoods matter.  

Stability of home ownership and occupancy matters.

This is the foundation that establishs the social network 

and identity of a neighborhood and it's inhabitants.

This is what Lake Oswego has traditionally been known for.  Lake Oswego is a suburban community of single-family homes where families come to raise their kids, and where those kids come back to raise theirs.  The proportion of rental homes to owner-occupied homes -- generally, but not always, apartments to single-family homes respectfully -- has been low, 29% to 68%.  (US Census)

Why is this important?   

Here is are excerpts from the Portland Tribune, July 30, 2015, By Peter Korn

Gang disorder, part of gentrification blues, moves east 

The majority of Multnomah County gang violence still takes place in inner North/Northeast Portland, according to police.  But the split between gang crimes committed in North/Northeast vs. East Portland is nearing 50/50.

Ironically, [Erika] Preuitt recalls working as a probation officer for gangsters in the '90s and talking to families who felt threatened by the violence erupting in inner North/Northeast.

"They would say, 'I have to get out of North and Northeast Portland, I'm moving to Gresham,'"  Preuitt says, recalling that she encouraged the moves.  Now the gang violence is catching up to some of those families, especially those who settled in some of the more dangerous apartment complexes.  

"When you have a neighborhood -- as opposed to apartment complexes -- there's a structure, there's a cohesiveness.  There's a pride there, an identity with the neighborhood you grew up in," Preuitt says.  "There's a lot more movement in apartment complexes.  There are people who aren't there for 30 year, but for five years, or two years.  For many people it's not a permanent destination."

* 

Of course, there are a lot of causes of gang violence, but that last paragraph can be applied to any neighborhood anywhere, and it doesn't have to do with just safety.  When neighborhoods are disrupted, stability goes down, and apartments can contribute to neighborhood instability.  This is not even to say that apartments are bad for a community, but the key is to keep their size small so people feel an ownership and pride about where they live and will want to make it their home.

Keeping the neighborhoods strong will keep the quality of life high in Lake Oswego.  Stability, predictability and support for neighborhood needs and goals is critical. 

Portland's Most Dangerous Neighborhoods

http://m.golocalpdx.com/news/portlands-most-dangerous-neighborhoods
List of the top 50 most dangerous neighborhoods in Portland:  http://s3.amazonaws.com/art.golocalpdx.com/News/Most_Dangerous_Neighborhoods_2014.amended.pdf

USC NOTE:  Lake Oswego does not report crimes by address block so pinpointing criminal behavior and trouble spots is impossible for citizens. This should change - like years ago!  With a spiffy new 911 call center, will this public safety information made available online like in other cities?  

Neighborhoods work.  Let's keep them strong and livable!  

Lost or found on the PTC

I finally got around to seeing the movie, Wild.  The movie is based on the autobiographical story of its author, Cheryl Strayed, as she tackles the Pacific Crest Trail - alone.  At one time this sounded like a romantic, lonely adventure that many aspired to, but few actually accomplished.  From the looks of some recent photos of life on the trail, it seems to be considerably more popular today than when I (we) were younger.

I highly recommend the movie, though what I got out of it was something different than the person sitting next to me.  If you watch this movie ($1 at Redbox), tell me and other readers what you thought of it.

I then went looking for maps of the PTC and came across this one accompanied by a video of a hiker and video journalist, who chronicled his own transformation along the trail in selfies taken every mile of the 2,660-mile trek.  While watching the man morph into a tougher and wiser version of himself, the background of the California/Mexico desert, the high Sierras and the Pacific Northwest Cascades takes the viewer on a wild ride through a vast, rugged wilderness.

The video journey takes about 4 minutes.  Have fun - without the effort - or the reward.  The map at the bottom of the webpage is interesting also.

Planning meeting dates for your calendar

Even if you can't get to all the meetings you would like, try to pick a couple of issues, or just one, and write to the committee in charge, to the appropriate board or commission, or to the city council with your opinions.  

We all need to help one another - no one wants to think they are shouldering the load by themselves - the burden is too great.  Our community operates best when many people share the responsibilities of government, and it is up to the people who want to be our leaders to make sure this happens.

These 4 planning projects have the potential to improve or disturb the character of Lake Oswego neighborhoods and change how the city functions.  The Stakeholder Advisory Cimmittees represent only a few parties and their own interests.  If you wanted to be on a committee and didn't know that it existed until it was too late, or the committee was selected by staff and you never had a chance, will your opinion matter now?

Do these Advisory Committees represent YOU?

How do you know?   

Southwest Employment Area (SWEA) 
August 18.  Time and place TBD.  
Check project website for more details.
The Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) will be meeting to review citizen inout from their open house held a few months ago.  The meeting is open to the public with opportunities for public comment.
http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/planning/southwest-employment-area-plan-pp-13-0002

Boones Ferry Road Project: Open House
September 24, 6-9 PM, Lake Grove Presbyterian Church
What are the options for turn lanes and intersections along Boones Ferry Rd?  Come to the Open House and leave your ideas behind.   Check project website for updates and information.
http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/bfp/

Lake Grove Parking Management Plan 
Stakeholder Advisory Committee Meeting TBD
Meeting estimated to be end of August to first of September
A revised Draft Plan will be distributed to committee members prior to the meeting where particulars will be discussed.  Interested parties should contact Project Manager, Jordan Wheeler (Deputy City Manager) for copies of the Draft Plan.  The meeting is open to public.
PP 13-0007
http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/citymanager/lake-grove-village-center-parking-management-plan

Ad Hoc Tree Code Advisory Committee
TBD City Hall 
Second of four meetings of the committee to be in August.  Meetings are open to public and there is time for public comment.  See project website for details about this committee and now to give your ideas to the committee and City Council.
http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/planning/pp-15-0003-2015-tree-code-review

Bowerman pleads with residents to participate

City Councilwoman, Karen Bowerman, has resigned her position on the City Council as of the end of August.  The July 30 Lake Oswego Review has a Citizen's View column by Bowerman giving her thoughts on issues facing the city and a hint about why she is leaving Lake Oswego.

Bowerman: 'Viewing Lake Oswego through the front window, not the rear view mirror'

Lake Oswego Review, July 30, 2015  Citizen's View by Karen Bowerman

The commentary is an important piece for all to read.  In it, Bowerman goes into detail about why citizens are frustrated and angry with city government, and how the city is losing the quality of life that people moved here to enjoy.  From codes to budgets, from citizen involvement to failed planning policies, she discusses systemic problems that need to be addressed and suggests some places to start.

Unfortunately, Bowerman is not sticking around to finish her 4-year term as City Councilor to assist her constituents in achieving hers and their goals.  Why not?

The answer, I believe, can be found in one sentence in her very long piece.  While she urges citizens to "respond to the call of action," she follows with the very personal question we must all ask ourselves: "What will we do with the moments of our lives that still lie ahead?"  Her answer is to move away from a deteriorating vision of what the city was, and how the city is changing for the worse.  In her post-retirement years, it seems logical that she would want to enjoy life and not be in a persistent battle with those who want to see the city turned inside out for monetary or political gain.

But while Bowerman is heading out the door, she calls back to the rest of us to do what she cannot: Stay the course.

In my own semi-post-retirement years, I am facing the same calculus.  How long and how hard does one fight the good fight, while neglecting the things that make life worth living?   Especially if, as Bowerman opines, the City Council ignores citizen input. "After days of citizen testimony, a motion is quickly made and seconded and the vote taken, often opposite the content of testimony given, with no discussion about views presented." 

“This is a plea to our residents: Never, ever let such a city or council response be reason not to participate. This is even greater reason to respond to the call of action! 

In spite of Bowerman's plea, the question for my family will be: What will we do with the moments of our lives that still lie ahead?

A special Thank You to the Planning Commission / Commission for Citizen Involvement.  This group of hard-working volunteers has taken to heart it's commitment to engage eneighborhood associations and assist in finding ways to preserve the character of the neighborhoods and the city at large.  

Science certitude is oxymoronic

In spite of its political overtones, the commentary here is being posted as an example of the scientific divide between climate-change "true believers" who are committed to "the science is settled" stance, and skeptics who are not convinced all the science is in, and that some facts have been intentionally obscured.  Is the world hurtling toward certain doom?  Will changing human behavior change our fate?  Do we even know if, to what extent, and why climate change is occurring?  

Knowing the truth - the science of climate change - will impact the amount of government control we will have - or allow - over our private lives.  Is this control even necessary?  We had better know for certain before we lose our freedoms, and it doesn't seem that we do.  

Wall Street Journal: Commentary (Excerpts)
By John Steele Gordon.  July 31, 2015

The Unsettling, Anti-Science Certitude on Global Warming
Climate-change 'deniers' are accused of heresy by true believers.  That doesn't sound like science to me.

Are there any phrases in to­day’s po­lit­i­cal lex­i­con more ob­nox­ious than “the sci­ence is set­tled” and “climate-change de­niers”?

The first is an oxy­moron. By de­f­i­n­ition, sic­ence is never set­tled. It is al­ways sub­ject to change in the light of new ev­i­dence. The sec­ond phrase is noth­ing but an ad hominem at­tack, meant to evoke “Holo­caust de­niers,” those peo­ple who main­tain that the Nazi Holo­caust is a fic­tion, ig­nor­ing the over­whelm­ing, in­con­testable ev­idence that it is a his­tor­i­cal fact. Hillary Clin­ton’s speech about climate change on Mon­day in Des Moines, Iowa, in­cluded an at­tack on “de­niers.”

The phrases are in no way ap­plic­able to the sci­ence of Earth’s cli­mate. The cli­mate is an enor­mously com­plex sys­tem, with a very large num­ber of in­puts and out­puts, many of which we don’t fully under­stand—and some we may well not even know about yet. To note this, and to ob­serve that there is much con­tra­dic­tory ev­i­dence for as­ser­tions of a com­ing global-warm­ing cat­a­stro­phe, isn’t to “deny” any­thing; it is to state a fact. In other words, the sci­ence is un­set­tled—to say that we have it all wrapped up is it­self a form of de­nial. The es­sence of sci­en­tific in­quiry is the as­sump­tion that there is al­ways more to learn.

Sci­ence takes time, and cli­ma­tol­ogy is only about 170 years old. Con­sider some­thing as sim­ple as the ques­tion of whether the sun re­volves around the Earth or vice versa.

The Greek philoso­pher Aristarchus sug­gested a he­lio­cen­tric model of the so­lar sys­tem as early as the third cen­tury B.C. But it was Ptole­my’s geo-cen­tric model from the sec­ond century A.D. that predominated. It took un­til the mid-19th cen­tury to solve the puz­zle de­fin­i­tively.

As­sum­ing that “the sci­ence is settled” can only im­pede sci­ence. For ex­am­ple, there has never been so settled a branch of sci­ence as New­ton­ian physics. But in the 1840s, as telescopes im­proved, it was no­ticed that Mer­cury’s or­bit stub­bornly failed to be­have as New­ton­ian equa­tions said that it should.

It seems not to have oc­curred to any­one to ques­tion New­ton, so the only ex­pla­na­tion was that Mercury must be be­ing per­turbed by a planet still closer to the sun. The French math­ematician Ur­bain Le Ver­rier had tri­umphed in 1846 when he had predicted, within one de­gree, the lo­ca­tion of a planet (later named Nep­tune) that was per­turb­ing Uranus’s or­bit.

Cli­mate sci­ence to­day is a ver­i­ta­ble cor­nu­copia of unan­swered ques­tions. Why did the warm­ing trend be­tween 1978 and 1998 cease, al­though computer cli­mate mod­els pre­dict steady warm­ing? How sensi­tive is the cli­mate to in­creased car­bon-diox­ide lev­els? What feed­back mech­a­nisms are there that would in­crease or de­crease that sen­si­tiv­ity? Why did episodes of high car­bon-diox­ide lev­els in the atmosphere ear­lier in Earth’s his­tory have tem­per­a­ture lev­els both above and be­low the av­er­age?

With so many ques­tions still unan­swered, why are many cli­mate sci­en­tists, politi­cians—and the left gen­er­ally—so anx­ious to lock down the sci­ence of cli­ma­tol­ogy and engage in pro­tracted name-calling? Well, one pow­er­ful ex­pla­na­tion for the politi­cians is ob­vi­ous: self-in­terest.

If an­thro­pogenic cli­mate change is a re­al­ity, then that would be a huge prob­lem only government could deal with. It would be a heaven-sent op­por­tu­nity for the left to vastly increase govern­ment con­trol over the econ­omy and the per­sonal lives of cit­i­zens.

More­over, the re­lease of thou­sands of emails from the Uni­ver­sity of East An­glia’s Cli­mate Re­search Unit in 2009 showed cli­mate sci­en­tists con-cerned with the lack of re­cent warm-ing and how to “hide the de­cline.” The com­mu­ni­ca­tions showed that what­ever the email­ers were en­gaged in, it was not the dis­in­ter­ested pur­suit of sci­ence.

An­other batch of 5,000 emails writ-ten by top cli­mate sci­en­tists came out in 2011, dis­cussing, among other pub­lic-re­la­tions mat­ters, how to deal with skep­ti­cal ed­i­tors and how to sup­press un­fa­vor­able data. It is a mea­sure of the in­tel­lec­tual cor­rup­tion of the main­stream me­dia that this wasn’t the scan­dal of the cen­tury. But then again I for­get, “the sci­ence is set­tled.”