Archive for the ‘Platform’ Category

Renewable Energy

Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Today is Earth Day, a day to reflect on our impact on the environment and propose ways to lessen that impact. The City Council of Berkeley, CA with the help of UC Berkeley has pioneered a unique way to solve the financial hurdle involved with getting homes and businesses to install solar panels on their property. They created an Energy Financing District which allows the city to finance the installation of solar panels by private property owners and businesses. The financing is repaid over a set number of years through a “special tax” or “assessment” on the property tax bill of only those property owners who choose to participate in the program. The financing is secured with a lien on the property. There is little or no up-front cost to the property owner, and if the property is sold before the end of the repayment period, the new owner inherits both the repayment obligation and the financed improvements. Over two decades, the special assessment would be the same or less than what property owners would save on their electric bill. The property owner would remain eligible for federal and state credits for installing these green technologies.

When setting up our own Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, we must be careful not to place the lien in a superior position to the mortgage on the property. The Federal Housing Finance Authority prevents us from doing so. We must also resolve the legality of the special assessment against our new constitutionally imposed property tax caps.

I propose that instead of bonds, we use the new taxes generated by the fossil fuel oil wells within the city limits to kick off our PACE program. The program once launched is self sustaining, and no city revenue would be lost in the long run. It would be an excellent way to encourage Vigo County residents to choose to live inside the city limits rather than continue to push out into the metro area, and we’d be helping out the environment as well as our pocket books.

Be sure to check out UC Berkeley’s Guide to Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Financing Districts For Local Governments.

Posted in Energy, Green, Platform, Technology |

Supporting Science in Our Own Backyard

Saturday, April 16th, 2011
Many people don’t know it, but Terre Haute has an observatory. It’s owned by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and sits just east of campus near the end of Heritage Trail. 

Rose doesn’t offer a major in astronomy but it does offer a minor in it. Those students brave enough to stay up for countless nights, often in the dead of winter without heat (as heat would affect the telescope glass), get papers published in major astronomical journals each year. Their work got even harder recently due to the new development on IN-46. You can see Wal-mart’s glow from miles away on I-70, so imagine how this affects these students’ studies of the night sky?

It’s called light pollution, and there are steps we can take as a city to curb it. Any new city lamp posts installed should utilize semi- or full cutoff lighting fixtures which direct light wholly downward instead of horizontally, and existing non-cutoff lamp posts should be surveyed to ensure that they are not overly consuming electricity or overly contributing to light pollution. In many cases, the most efficient design that balances these two concerns for the non-cutoff lamp posts where they are placed close together will be simply turning every other one off.

In addition to the design of the light post, we can switch to a different type of light bulb to help reduce light pollution. If we switch to low pressure sodium (LPS) light bulbs in all city light posts, we will not only help with the light pollution but also with our city electric bill as these light sources are 4x or more energy efficient than standard incandescent bulbs. The city of San Jose, CA has been using LPS bulbs since 1980 and many other cities throughout the country have since jumped on board.

New development is important for the growth of the city, but it need not overshadow existing qualities of the community. If we are to truly control light pollution, we need our businesses to adjust their lighting practices as well. I propose that we pass a city lighting ordinance which at a minimum requires the use of LPS bulbs in private parking lot lighting fixtures.

Posted in Energy, Green, Platform, Science, Technology |

Infrastructure & Government Transparency

Sunday, April 10th, 2011
Locust St Potholes

The city stopped by to fill these potholes several times towards the end of this past winter. I saw them out working on them three times myself. It would rain sometime after and the patchwork was so shoddy that the rain would literally wash the fill away. Talk about government inefficiency.

One of the best ways to bring government costs down is to shine a light on government spending. A good, recent example of this was Obama’s Recovery.gov project. This website allowed citizens to hold their government accountable for its spending with easy to understand, geographically-linked information graphics about the infrastructure projects that the stimulus package was funding. It also allowed citizens to report fraud, waste and abuse.

Locally, while it may all be public information, Terre Haute residents have to sift through a variety of sources to attempt to understand where the money is going. Bennett’s State of the City presentation provides some direction, various Tribune Star articles talk about specific projects, but overall it can be difficult to piece together what companies are receiving city contracts, how they were selected to receive those contracts, and then make some sort of comparison against other cities to see if we’re getting our money’s worth.

Starting at the beginning of the process, I propose that we require our city government to post all Requests for Proposals (RFPs) on the city website. Local businesses would be able to more easily see what all contracts are open, and a more competitive bidding process would result. The bidding process could be 100% electronic to minimize costs. Once a company is awarded a city contract, the contract information, including overruns as they happen, should be posted on the city website. The city should not be getting into contracts with excessive term lengths, especially in the information technology sector where things change constantly. And finally, at the completion of the contract’s term, citizens should be able to see if the project came in on time and on budget so that they can comment accordingly.

In addition to posting the information on the website, the city should provide API access for technology developers. Public APIs are revolutionizing the way that citizens view and communicate with their government up and down our coasts, and the technology is often open sourced since it was developed with public funds. Terre Haute could apply for free help from the non-profit Code for America and/or utilize technology from Civic Commons. We have quite a bit of untapped potential at our local universities that we could draw on as well.

Posted in Platform, Technology |

The Problem of the Trains

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

In the mid-to-late 1800s, Terre Haute gained a bit of a reputation as a transportation hub with the establishment of Chauncey Rose’s Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railroad. The railroad served the needs of the community and connected us with our state’s capitol. But flash forward to 2011 and the railroads, now owned by the likes of CSX and The Indiana Rail Road, no longer serve any meaningful purpose to the Terre Haute community. Like most American cities, our industry now utilizes the interstate highway system. And yet the trains have somehow continued to operate within the city limits and even become a considerable nuisance, blocking traffic during rush hour, blaring horns at all hours of the day and night, and causing blight along their combined thirty-two miles of city track. CSX owes the city over $60,000 in fines for this blight but refuses to pay up, and the Republican leadership has provided few ideas. “You can put a lien on the property, but if they own the property forever, what can you do?” says Mayor Bennett.

He formed a committee back in 2008, most recently known as the “Terre Haute Urbanized Area Railroad Corridor Study,” which focuses primarily on relocating the tracks. They’ve received various funds for projects, including a $1,000,000 pledge from the rail companies themselves and nearly $500,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) with Senator Richard Lugar’s assistance. Their current goal is to work on the “preliminary development and screening of a series of independently usable projects that can be incrementally advanced over the next 5 to 20 years.” The plans alone will consume the $500,000 and the city will be left to secure additional funding for actually implementing the plans.

A simple starter project could be to upgrade the all of the railroad crossings to highway-rail grade and ask the FRA to establish Quiet Zones in the city of Terre Haute. These zones have been allowed for by federal regulation 49 CFR Parts 222 and 229 since 2005. A highway-rail grade crossing prevents vehicles from squeezing between or around the crossing gate, as you so often see local drivers doing, and in return the trains only have to sound their horn if they see someone on the track instead of on every approach as they now do. The only costs here are the upgrading of the individual crossings and installation of the NO TRAIN HORN (W10-9P) plaques.

Another low cost option could be having our elected officials work with the FRA and the rail companies to restrict train schedules during rush hours. This would be a preferable solution over utilizing the eminent domain powers of the city to shut down the tracks, as that would quickly rack up the city’s legal costs. And it would serve the community great temporary relief for this “5 to 20 year” period while we address the problem.

How about installing underpasses and overpasses? This is how most cities in the US have dealt with the problem of the trains. It’s a significant investment, but not as much as relocating the tracks could prove to be. On a crossing by crossing basis, the city should evaluate which would be cheaper to put into place. A realistic goal is not to place them everywhere, but make it so that when traffic comes upon a closed crossing gate it only takes x number of minutes or y number of miles to reach a suitable way around the train. The rail companies may be willing to make a bargain with the city that in return for forgiving their past due fines, they close the sections of track for the period of time required to put each pass in place.

And why not push forward with the committee’s plans to relocate tracks? This may sound like it makes sense today, but you have to remember than when the rail lines were installed in the first place they were outside of the city limits. The city grew, and we can count on it growing again in the future. Urban sprawl is a given. By paying to relocate the tracks now, we’re simply delaying addressing the true issue, and wasting money in the long run. Our leaders in Washington are drawing high-speed rail maps today that may make trains relevant to our community again, and we may actually be doing ourselves a disservice if we once again push the tracks towards the outskirts of town.

Posted in Platform, Trains |