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_____________________________________________________________________________
Regional Community Development News – March 25, 2009 [regions_work]
A compilation
of news links about and for regional communities pursuing local and regional
development.
Published
on line since November 11, 2003.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Contents
Top
Regional Community stories … 1. – 9.
U.S. Regional Communities - sub-State,
State or multi-State – news articles …10.01 - .40
Other Regional Community News for Our
Local Planet … 11.01 - .22
Blogging about Regional Communities … 12.01 - .11
Announcements and Regional Links … 13.01 - .06
Financial Crisis …14.05
Custom search: region, regions,
regional communities … 15.
Note: Next issues will be as of April 22 and May 13 to accommodate
early April travel to the Regional Studies International Conference in Leuven,
Belgium and to the American Planning Association National Conference in
Minneapolis, MN, late April. Ed.
_________________________________________________________________________
Top
Regional Community stories
1. EDITORIAL: Tuition guarantee - Northeast
Mississippi Daily Journal -
An innovative education initiative that swept
Eighteen of this region's 31 school districts
will guarantee community college tuition to all high school graduates,
beginning with the graduating class of 2009. The funding will come from a
combination of local government money and private grants.
The cost of the program is relatively modest, since the guaranteed funds kick in only after all other
forms of scholarship aid and governmental financial assistance have been
exhausted. In
It's a given that dropping out of high school
- which is far too common in Mississippi - is a sure ticket to a dead-end job
or no job at all. But increasingly, post-secondary education of some kind is
becoming essential in today's economy. The severe economic downturn has only
magnified the importance of higher educational attainment for individual lives
and the economy as a whole.
Taking the community college tuition guarantee
statewide speaks to a need that extends well beyond the counties that have
already embraced the concept.
Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn, introduced a
bill in the current session of the Mississippi Legislature that would expand
the program to the entire state, but it wasn't successful.
…
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=287443&pub=1&div=Opinion
2. Supporting Integrated Planning and
Decision Making by Joining Up Housing and Transportation - Metropolitan Policy Program Update -
Testifying before a House
Appropriations subcommittee, Robert Puentes examined the linkages between
housing and transportation, calling for increased awareness of these
connections and a federal policy that simultaneously promotes the economic
vitality and environmental quality of metropolitan areas:
Good morning Chairman
Olver, Ranking Member Latham and members of the Committee. I am pleased to
appear before you this morning and very much appreciate the invitation.
The purpose of my
testimony today is to discuss the connections between housing and transportation
and the need for integrated planning as a way to drive decisions that lead to
productive, sustainable, and inclusive growth. In so doing, I would also like
to share some thoughts on how federal policy can strongly influence those
decisions.
...
II. POLICY PROBLEMS
Unfortunately, at the
precise time when the nation desperately needs to prioritize its limited
investments and resources, given the economic downturn, federal policy is only
slowly coming into focus. There are several problems:
First,
the federal government is absent where it should be present on such critical
matters as stimulating metropolitan problem solving or integrated decision
making.
One of the fundamental
issues frustrating efforts to address the global problems of the 21st century
is that the scale of our issues—housing, transportation, global warming,
economic vitality, environmental quality—is a mismatch with our political
boundaries and institutions. And while there was at one time a federally-funded
regional planning network, the funding,
authority, and vigor of that institutional framework has waned. Little federal
funding is dependent on approaches for achieving regional outcomes and where it
is dependent the outcomes and their deadlines do not typically require many
changes from current practice to achieve them.
With the exception of the
strengthening of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the federal
government has mostly withdrawn from its past efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to
actively promote regional planning.14 Few conditions on the award of
transportation, housing, environmental, or other categorical or block grants
provide incentives for the development of more effective regional planning and
governance. And little effort has gone into linking city and suburban leaders
into a national learning network or catalyzing local testing of improved
regional governance models.
Unfortunately, most
metropolitan area leaders do not have the ability to master change and
determine outcomes by themselves. Metropolitan leaders simply lack the
jurisdictional reach to master the vastness of the economic, social, and
environmental currents enveloping them, whether they be
the cross-boundary nature of housing networks or the drift of transportation
problems across city, state, and even national lines.
The weak standing of
metropolitan actors combined with the fragmentation of most
Next,
federal policies addressing housing and transportation are compartmentalized
and ultimately fail to make the necessary connections with land use
In the real world, families know that issues
like transportation and housing and education are inextricably linked. It is in
the specialized, stove-piped universe of federal bureaucracy where these issues
are broken apart and kept separate. ...
___
14 Jim Wolf, Robert Puentes, Thomas W. Sanchez,
and Tara Bryan, "Metropolitan Transportation Planning in the Post-ISTEA
Era: What Happened and What Do We Do Now?"
Metropolitan Regional Planning Networks and
Non-Metro networks: National Association of Regional Councils (NARC) and National
Association of Development Organisations (NADO)
NARC: http://narc.org/regional-councils-mpos/listing-of-cogs-and-mpos-2.html
NADO: http://www.nado.org/aboutnado/membersites.php
Map of
Regional Councils in the
3. Metro
The Metro Atlanta Chamber keeps hoping for a transportation funding bill
to come out of this year’s General Assembly.
At its board meeting Thursday, chamber leaders heard from Tommie Williams
(R-Lyons), president pro tem of the Georgia Senate, who said governance
must come before new funding.
That has been the position of Gov. Sonny Perdue since he unveiled his
plan to change the governance structure of the state’s transportation
agencies.
Under Perdue’s plan, the Georgia Department of Transportation would
become more of a maintenance agency and a new State Transportation Authority
would hold the power and the purse strings.
Metro Atlanta Chamber President Sam Williams said the president pro tem
explained the business community should do all it can to try to get the two
different funding proposals -- a regional approach in the Senate and a
statewide approach in the House -- to conference committee.
…
“The practical view is that
we’ve been at this for the third year in a row with a bill ready to
present, and it just hasn’t been done,” Linginfelter
said. …
Part of the political tension is that Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle is behind the
Senate version, which calls for regions being able to vote a penny sales tax to
address their transportation needs; and that House Speaker Glenn Richardson is
pushing the statewide penny sales tax.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber has just come out this week with a definite
preference for the regional approach.
“We certainly like the idea of the regional T-SPLOST
(Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax),” Linginfelter said. “We know there are alternative
ideas, and we know there will be compromises along the way. But in the end,
local accountability and matching local dollars with local projects is what has
passed across the country. …
RC:
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/03/16/daily92.html?surround=lfn
4. Homeless count up 20% from 2008
- AZ Central.com - AZ,
More single adults,
families and youths are living on the streets in metro
A Maricopa Association of Governments [http://www.mag.maricopa.gov/display.cms]
survey counted 2,918
homeless people throughout the county this year, a 20 percent increase from the
2,426 counted in 2008.
The Homeless Street Count
found 230 families living on the streets, up 370 percent from last year's count
of 49 families. The number of youths living on their own
rose to 139, more than triple last year's count.
Each January, hundreds of
agency workers, police officers, city employees and volunteers hit the streets
to count the homeless. Their findings are used to request federal funding for
homeless services and to improve and expand services for non-profits.
This year's increase in
the homeless population comes after a 15 percent decline a year ago, said Brande Mead, a human-services planner with the Maricopa
Association of Governments.
The count does not
include the number of people living in shelters, which numbered nearly 5,000
last year, she said.
The state Department of
Economic Security is conducting this year's shelter survey; the results could
be available early next week, Mead said.
The bad economy is to
blame for the increase in the homeless population, experts said.
"We're seeing more
elderly, more disabled (homeless)," said Mark Holleran,
CEO of Central Arizona Shelter Services, or CASS, in downtown
…
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/21/20090321homeless0321.html
5. Energy
efficiency - Bluefield
Daily Telegraph -
A new report by the Appalachian Regional Commission
is calling for a bold strategy of energy efficiency by the Appalachian region.
Specifically, the report concludes that the 13
Appalachian states could create thousands of jobs and save billions of dollars
in energy costs by aggressively pursuing a regional strategy of energy
efficiency by 2030.
The 233-page report released Wednesday is
titled “Energy Efficiency in
Meeting the unprecedented energy demand will
require 40 new coal-fired electric power plants and 182 million barrels of oil,
according to the report prepared by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance
for the Appalachian Regional Commission.
The report also suggests a number of energy
saving proposals for the 13-state region, including more stringent building
codes and incentives to retrofit old heating and cooling systems that could
reduce energy consumption by 24 percent in 2030
The report also predicts that the path to
energy efficiency could lead to new jobs — lots of new jobs. It
specifically estimates 16,231 jobs by 2010. That estimate increases to 77,378
new jobs by 2030. This includes architects, engineers, construction workers and
other related jobs that will play a role in achieving energy efficiency.
It is important to note that West Virginia
Gov. Joe Manchin and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine are already taking steps to meet many of the
recommendations included in the Appalachian Regional Commission study to
achieve energy efficiency in the
…
http://www.bdtonline.com/editorials/local_story_078173659.html
PDF report:
http://www.arc.gov/images/energy/Energy_Efficiency_in_Appalachia.pdf
6. JACK
SPILLANE: The 'R' word will take some 'splainin'
around here –SouthCoastToday.com
-
You know that
In
You know how it goes: "I'm from Marion, not Mattapoisett."
Or, "We need a police station in the
But this 2009 economy is no joke.
So elected officials from local cities and towns are
engaging in serious discussions about that previously dreaded word, "regionalization."
The Southcoast Regional Summit held its second
meeting Thursday night at
They've gotten religion this winter since watching their state local aid
budgets disappear into thin air for the second time in 10 years.
…
"You think it's a no-brainer but in reality, when you sit down and
are dividing it up, it's a whole different thing," Dartmouth Selectman Joe
Michaud said.
Everyone thinks sharing services is going to be a good thing when they're
under the impression that their own community is still going to make the
decisions, he explained. It's different when they realize they're going to have
to cede power to another community or communities.
…
But the selectmen, city councilors and state
reps who gathered in
They agreed to fill out forms listing the areas in which they'd like to
consolidate. And they asked the legislators to start thinking of ways the state
could help them regionalize, even being assertive about it.
…
It can only get better from here.
But it's going to be a long road back.
RC: Southeastern Regional Planning and
Economic Development District http://www.srpedd.org/
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090308/NEWS/903080345/-1/NEWS06
7. County
proposes regional office to study townwide efforts
-
More money might soon be available to pay professionals to study the regionalization
of services between
If approved by the Assembly of Delegates in May, the county match would
raise available funds to more than $300,000, enough to hire professional
researchers to delve into services or tasks that the towns believe may be ripe
for regionalization.
The county is quick to point out the initiative will not create a new
level of bureaucracy.
“It will be a coordinated effort involving the appropriate county
departments. There won’t be any single point person – we
aren’t hiring anyone or creating any new department, and the office
itself could turn out to be ad hoc. It may only exist until we get initiatives
in place,” said Sheila Lyons, chairwoman of the board of commissioners.
“Does everyone in the assembly support it? No, but many do,”
she added.
…
“It was during that League of Women Voters forum at
…
While Cape Cod Commission [http://www.capecodcommission.org/ ] would administer grant allocations, the program falls under the authority
of the board of commissioners,
8. Property
value drop trims
Giraffes and children starred in slick ads warning the Detroit Zoo needed
help and voters came to the rescue, overwhelmingly approving a special property
tax last August to fund zoo operations.
With $12 million to $13 million expected in tax revenue this year, zoo
officials are breathing easier. But plummeting property values across the region mean the zoo won't receive as much
money as it had anticipated, forcing officials to trim some ambitions.
... projecting
a 10 to 15 percent decline in each of the next two years in revenue from
initial expectations.
What's to blame? The
That means lower tax bills for homeowners, but also less revenue for
local governments and institutions like the zoo that rely on property taxes,
said Brian Parthum, senior planning analyst for
SEMCOG. Such declines are being seen nationwide, he said.
At Ohio's Toledo Zoo, which has relied on property-tax levies for
decades, an unexpected 2 percent shortfall in tax revenue for operations last
year led to cost-cutting measures, including energy conservation and leaving an
employee parking lot unplowed during the winter …
… Kagan said the Detroit Zoo's operations
are safe for now, an enviable position as many zoos and aquariums across the
country are squeezed by the recession and cuts in government funding. Zoos have
many "inflexible costs" that are difficult to trim, said Steve
Feldman, spokesman for the Silver Spring, Md.-based Association of Zoos and
Aquariums.
"These are living collections. You can't stop buying hay, or food
for the polar bears," he said. "Animal care and welfare can't suffer
and it's a daily occurrence at the zoo."
RC: Southeast Michigan Council of Governments http://www.semcog.org/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-detroitzootax,0,107171.story
9. With state aid dropping, cities, counties explore
funding ideas - Finance and Commerce –
Necessity, as it turns
out, is also the mother of re-invention. Faced with reductions in state aid
payments, to counties and cities, government officials statewide are examining
different ways to make ends meet.
Expecting 2010 local
government aid (LGA) of $54 million – less than half what the
state’s largest city received in 2003 –
The same day, state
Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, announced
introduction of legislation to merge Stearns,
…
Cities also are
battling with falling LGA payments, particularly
…
Revenue-generating
ideas presented to Hodges panel included a “cost-recognition” LGA
concept for cities that are regional centers and have higher police, fire and
infrastructure needs; fees for programs or facilities used primarily by non-residents;
the half-cent local option sales tax; and redirecting funding currently
generated by the Minneapolis Convention Center to the general fund.
However, most of the
above proposals would require obtaining a waiver from the state or legislative
approval – raising doubts about how quickly they can be put in place.
What can the city do
right now?
“I think the
answer is we fight like hell for all the LGA we can get at the Legislature this
year,” Hodges said.
Echoing Hodges was
Councilwoman Elizabeth Glidden: “It’s hard to think about LGA doing
anything except munching around the corner” of city funding needs, she
said. “What’s the way we can adequately support all these regional
and state facilities? We must have special funding mechanisms to support regional and state-wide facilities.”
…
RC:
10.
U.S. Regional Communities - sub-State, State or multi-State - in news articles.
Bold
font words are Google search terms. Bold italic
words considered worth noting. In this and section 11, links to websites of
organizations are added to the news excerpt when this is the first time an
organization has been found. A goal of this newsletter is to find every
regional council in the
.01 Top
Metros of 2008
Site Selection Magazine
Big Oil has long been the big money maker in
http://www.siteselection.com/portal/
Note: begins at contents page.
.02 Forget
Regional Cooperation, City Should Go Global
styleweekly.com
Hallmark hasn’t quite gotten around to
designing the corresponding greeting card, but that hasn’t stopped
perennial Richmond überbooster Rick Tatnall from declaring 2009 the Year of Richmond. If it
sounds like a gimmick, that’s because it is. Tatnall,
best known as executive director of Citizens Against
Crime, has managed to track down more than 80 places named
.03 Order
Creates Economic Partnership
WOWK -
Gov. Joe Manchin signed
an executive order that officially recognizes Berkeley, Hampshire, Jefferson
and Morgan counties as the Western Potomac Economic Partnership (West-PEP).
“This region has so much to offer
http://wowktv.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=54175
.04 Plan
to keep SPSA from sinking would raise tipping fees
The Virginian-Pilot -
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/plan-keep-spsa-sinking-would-raise-tipping-fees
.05
The issue of how cities will be represented on the Coosa Valley Regional Development Commission board has been
resolved until the Committee becomes a regional commission
in August. Each of the 10 counties in the CVRDC was represented during a
Thursday, March 19, meeting in which the members voted to return to their
original bylaws which allow the largest city in each county to have a
representative on the board. The issue came up during the a previous CVRDC
meeting after the governor mandated the state's committees be reorganized into
commissions, according to Rome Mayor ...
http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news954120.html
.06 Census: D-FW adds more
residents than any other
Online:
Metropolitan population estimates
http://www.dallasnews.com/database/2009/CENSUS-metro-estimates.html
.07 Official: Morris 'not an island' when
disaster strikes
Dailyrecord.com -
... since 2001 Morris County has been part of a
planning group that formulates emergency responses for a seven-county New
Jersey area that includes Essex and Hudson counties, and a still-larger group
whose plans concern New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. "
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20090312/COMMUNITIES/903120334/1005/NEWS01
.08 Linda
Koop: Our growing population can't wait for new transit options
Linda Koop is a member of the Dallas City Council
and chair of
.09 Favorable reception to bus service at city-county
meeting
After a presentation by Piedmont Area Regional Transit Director Brent McKinney outlining demand and
usage among the bus service's 10-county region, commissioners and council
members seemed to agree that a basic park-and-ride service is necessary.
Alamance and Rockingham counties are the only ones in the area that do not pay
for or receive direct park-and-ride service. Federal and state grants would
cover 90 percent of the startup costs. The county
would have to provide the rest - about $100,000 to start with.
http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/county_23319___article.html/service_ride.html
.10 SEPTA
is our key to a green future
THE OBAMA administration plan for
http://www.philly.com/philly/living/green/20090311_SEPTA_is_our_key_to_a_green_future.html
.11 Official
will appeal Metro money ruling
The head of the East-West Gateway Council of
Governments said Thursday he plans to appeal a federal agency denial of the
council's 11th-hour attempt to restore Metro bus service cuts. ... The council
had tried to avert the service reduction by asking the Federal Transit
Administration to "flex" $12 million away from a pool of money originally
earmarked for the relief of highway traffic congestion. ... But the federal
transit agency rejected the request, contending that the proposed new bus
routes do not comprise new transit service, as required under federal rules.
...
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/688066.html
.12 Hinds
fighting for road funds
Jackson Clarion Ledger
-
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20090314/NEWS/903140342/1001
.13
During the 2007
Under Act 812 of 23007, the Southeast Arkansas
Economic Development District, Inc. (SEAEDD) was
appropriated $250000 of General Improvement Funds. In order that the funds be distributed as equitably as possible across SEAEDD's service area, the SEAEDD board voted to allocate
the grant money by house district. ...
http://www.ashleycountyledger.com/articles/2009/03/15/news/h16f071g3b.txt
.14 Despite
Distance,
Political and business leaders from
http://www.memphisdailynews.com/editorial/Article.aspx?id=41378
.15
Metromode Media - metro
http://www.metromodemedia.com/devnews/bellevilletaylorypsilantiaerotropilis0107.aspx
.16 Buddy
up, schools
The Plain Dealer -
cleveland.com -
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson again broached the
topic of regionalism and education in a recent
Cleveland City Club speech. Good for
him. Greater Clevelanders have a deep attachment and loyalty to their local
school systems and neighborhoods. But the business
model of
http://blog.cleveland.com/pdopinion/2009/03/buddy_up_schools.html
.17 Q&A
with Tom Sparkman, chairman of the
Q: A lot of your members chuckled at a recent
meeting when discussing Gov. Rell’s offer to
help towns that practice regionalization.
Why?
A: I think the governor may be encouraging what
we’re already doing. We help each other. I know when we used to do our
own spring cleanup, we would have trucks come in from
places like Sprague and
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