Death knell, part 2

I left before the FNSB Assembly had voted — in fact, at least an hour before public testimony had finished — but word has it that Ordinance 2011-32, a soft-pedaled version of a zoning ordinance defeated 4-4 a few months ago, was defeated by a vote of 6 to 3.  Voting against were Natalie Howard, Michael Dukes, Matt Want, Tim Beck, Joe Blanchard, and Diane Hutchison.  Voting for were Nadine Winters, Karl Kassel, and Mike Musick.  I give my thanks to those last three.

I do not feel civil this morning.  I fear that Fairbanks is a damned town, again and again making itself a less fit place for a civilized person to live.

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The death knell of downtown’s revitalization?

I am angry and heartbroken tonight.

By a 4-4 vote, the Borough Assembly just failed to pass Ordinance 2010-09, which would have created two new zoning types: a “retail hot spot” and a “supporting commercial district”.  These new zones — which would have been merely codified, not even applied — were one of the key governmental tools for encouraging businesses to invest in quality retail building downtown.  And now it’s fucked, thanks to Michael Dukes, Matt Want, Natalie Howard, and Joe Blanchard — none of whom owns a god-damned square foot in downtown Fairbanks.  (According to the FNSB Assessing property database.)

I can’t get into the particular arguments the detractors used — I’m too heartbroken right now — but I do want to thank Assembly members Nadine Winters, Diane Hutchison, Karl Kassel, and Mike Musick, for their “yes” votes, as well as Mayor Luke Hopkins for putting the ordinance forward, David van den Berg of the Downtown Association for his ongoing work with downtown business owners and the revitalization effort, and everyone who testified in favor of the proposed ordinance, including the near-unanimity of downtown business owners who supported it.

No doubt the detractors are comforted by their free market and anti-government ideology.  My curse on them is that all their cars break down, and then they can see how much they like their WalMart shopping and their living out on Chena Fucking Hot Springs Road.

It’s enough to make me want to ditch this Borough, this un-community, for a place civic-minded enough to say, “We will take these restrictions on ourselves and impose them on others who may sometimes be unwilling, because public will is sometimes more important than some individual jackass who might want to stand in the way of 100% consensus” — and then to torch this fucking place on my way out.  (Please understand, I do not mean the “torch this place” thing literally.  It is an expression of my disappointment and my feeling of hopelessness for Fairbanks’s future.)

Vivat communitas!  Stadtluft macht frei!

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“Getting out the vote” and public discourse

Tomorrow (Tuesday, October 6) is a day of local elections in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.  I’ve done a little work on one campaign, enough to make me sad for the state of electoral politics.

I spent one evening and one morning recently (in separate weeks) working for a particular local candidate.  (I’ll say that he’s male, because it makes the pronouns easier.)  On the first occasion, I was “phone banking”: doing voter identifications from a list of registered voters.  We were to find out whether each voter supported The Candidate or not, and, if not, whether the person would like more information about The Candidate, or whether they supported another person.

Having done voter ID calls on an issue campaign before, the tactic seemed familiar to me: we wanted to figure out whom to call on election day with a reminder to get and vote, and whom to leave alone (with the hope that they’d forget).

On the second occasion of helping The Candidate, I did a “literature drop”: leaving leaflets about The Candidate on people’s doorknobs.  Again, I worked from a list of registered voters.

There shouldn’t be anything remarkable about targeting voters.  But what troubled me was that our lists were already targeted: at least one major party affiliation was entirely absent, and our job as phone-bankers or lit-droppers was to narrow it down further to those not hostile to The Candidate, and ideally only those likely to support him.  These people we would hit with more literature and phone calls, so that as many of “our” people would get out and vote as possible.  Thus would The Candidate win: by getting out his supporters in greater numbers.

What’s so wrong with that? you ask.  How else are candidates supposed to win?

Well, it’s not the idea that a candidate should get his or her supporters to the polls in greater numbers that bothers me.  It’s that, from a pretty early stage, we were targeting voters and focusing only on those most likely to support The Candidate.  Where, I asked The Candidate on day two, was the place for people to discuss what the important issues were and whose solutions were best?  There was nothing in what we were doing that was meant to convince people of the urgency of our issues or the suitability of The Candidate to address them better than any of the others.  “Right,” The Candidate chimed in.  “Where’s the public discourse?”

The problem, he said, was that there wasn’t much of that going on anyway, so we were stuck with “get out the vote” tactics.  The candidates get to answer a questionnaire that’s published in the News-Miner, and there are a handful of radio appearances and candidate forums where they may get a two-minute opening statement and then forty-five seconds to answer any questions.  There really is no chance for substantive debate or discussion.

So, here’s a question for everybody: in an age when political strategizing has been reduced to “getting out the vote” (of those who already support your candidate), how do we foster public discourse around elections?  Given a number of candidates about whom we may know little to nothing, how do we learn meaningfully about their views and intentions?  How do we discuss the issues in a way that leaves us open to learning and persuasion?  And whose responsibility should it be to see that this civic discourse takes place?

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Up for election are: Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor; FNSB Assembly seats A, F, and G; Fairbanks City Council seats A and B; North Pole Mayor; North Pole City Council (two vacancies); FNSB School Board seats A, B, and G; three Borough-wide bond and ballot measures; and two city-wide ballot measures.  Read the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner‘s 2009 Municipal Election overview for stories on the candidates and their answers to the News-Miner‘s questionnaires, and on the ballot measures.

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How “the government” spends money better than I can

Today’s challenge: Can you think of five ways that government spends money better than you could?

There is an oft-used conservative talking point — or rhetorical flourish — that we (the “taxpayers”) know how to spend our money better than “the government”.  It is a talking point that masks selfishness and reeks of anti-civicism, and it deserves to be challenged whenever it is brought up.

First, I should say that “conservative” is a woefully imprecise word.  A person can be conservative about any number and variety of things, and “liberal” (its presumed opposite) about any others.  It is an injustice to the endless variety of human thought to put each person into one of two camps.  Nonetheless, those well-known politicos who claim that “you know how to spend your money better than the government” tend to fall into the political camp that gets called conservative — so, for lack of a better and well-accepted term, I’ll use that one.  By no means am I trying to demonize those who call themselves conservative or attempting to categorically dismiss “conservative” values (whatever they may be).

The first thing I dislike about such a viewpoint is that it presumes a divide between the people (or “we the people”, as many like to say when affecting a patriotic idiom) and their government.  It presumes that “the people” and “the government” are two separate entities, with conflicting agendas.  Now, I agree that institutions often make self-preservation and self-aggrandizement their primary missions, and that they do not always serve their constituencies with perfect selflessness or efficiency.  Yet I don’t think that means we have any call to take an adversarial posture toward government.  In fact, just the contrary: an entrenched adversarial posture toward government will only incline people to pay closer attention to its shortcomings and abuses and to ignore its many advantages and triumphs.  It will incline them to disengage from the political process, rather than to put their energy toward its improvement.

My wife and I both enjoy the married life: in both the short term and the long term, we receive advantages.  Although at times we feel constrained by our mutual obligations, there are plentiful opportunities we can pursue because we have each other’s support.  When conflicts arise, we often feel the urge to withdraw from each other and avoid whatever difficult topic got us into trouble in the first place.  However, our experience (and that of countless others; I’m not pretending to be unique) has been that engaging with our difficulties helps us to become “re-enfranchised”, while disengagement only allows problems to fester and lets us continue believing the worst of each other.

Whether you believe government is “us” or believe government is “them”, you’re taking part in a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Unfortunately, since the belief is held individually but the effect on government only comes from large collective action, it’s easy to be convinced of your own powerlessness and to take the government-as-adversary stance.  Collectively, we have the power to prove ourselves right — though only in the long haul.

The second thing I dislike about the position that “you know how to spend your money better than the government” is the excess to which people take the idea of “their” money.  I am all in favor of private property and private enterprise.  But too often people are of the opinion that, because something is “theirs”, they (1) are not indebted to others for it and (2) have no responsibility toward others with regard to its use.  This is a philosophical question that I don’t have time to address adequately here.  Suffice it for now to say that those who hold the extreme form of this belief suffer deficits of gratitude and social responsibility.

The third thing I dislike about that belief is that it is just plain ignorant.  There are absolutely scads of things that “the government” (that is, the people acting collectively) can accomplish better with “my” money than I can.  Here are five:

• Mail delivery.  For all its faults, the United States Postal Service does a marvelous job of delivering letters and packages with good speed.  I cannot deliver all my mail by myself — who has the time? — and private industry would exclude many small, out-of-the-way places, or charge exorbitant fees for mail delivery to or from Fairbanks.
• Public transportation.  Helping people get from home to job to shopping to recreation and back home is a fantastic investment in economic development.  If I had to get everywhere on my own, I would spend extra hours each day between work and home, or spend extra hours’ worth of my labor to afford the private automobile to take me back and forth in a timely fashion.  Private enterprise would try to make ridership as expensive as possible, thus shutting out the young and the poor.  Of course, even a private auto is worthless without…
• Transportation infrastructure.  The buses I enjoy — or, in other cities, the trains, trams, and other means — would go a lot slower over trees, rocks, and mud, as would our private automobiles.  Do you think that private industry would do so well at laying down and regulating streets, roads, and tracks?  Do you think I could do it on my own?
• Safety regulation.  One relationship that I think is naturally more adversarial than that of citizen and government is that of employee and employer.  Businesses showed for too long (and they continue to do it!) that they would imperil employees to no end while it resulted in corporate profits, absent the regulation by and sanctions from government.
• Disease tracking.  I shudder to think what levels of disease (or other public health hazards) might ravage our communities without the information gathered and processed by the CDC.

The above have three things in common: (1) I couldn’t do them on my own.  (2) Private industry could not be relied on to do them.  (3) Were there non-profits in charge of providing the same, high-quality services, and were they reliant on voluntary donations, they would flounder.  Fall flat.  Perish.  People are too short-sighted to give voluntarily and sufficiently to all the agencies that would do them and their societies good.

Can you think of ways that “government” can spend “your” money better than you can?  Go on — just name five.  Let them be large or small.  Have fun with this!  If you approach government with an attentive mind and a grateful heart, it shouldn’t be hard.

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Questions for local candidates: your input needed

This October 9, we’ll elect a new mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, three members of the Borough Assembly (seats A, F, and G), and two members of the Fairbanks City Council (seats A and B) .  I’d like to make some endorsements — but I’ll need your help, first.

It may be naïvely hopeful, but I’d like to put out questionnaires to the mayoral and assembly candidates, asking their philosophies, knowledge, and goals about issues addressed in this blog.  I would publish the results and make endorsements here; I would also try to publicize these results in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.  As I say in my “About this blog” page:

The Fairbanks Pedestrian is a discussion of community-building, social capital, downtowns, neighborhood culture, city planning, domestic and civic architecture, public and private transportation, and the pleasures and difficulties of city living in Fairbanks, Alaska.

On that page, I also lay down five ideas central to this blog; you may want to refresh yourself.

Here’s an example of one possible question:

Social capital, which is written about most notably by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, is considered a source of personal and social wealth.  It is measured by the density of an individual’s and a community’s social connections, by the degree of organizational membership and social or civic participation.  Greater social capital is linked with greater health, increased public safety, improved educational outcomes, and less corrupt, more efficient local government.  (More here.)

What have you done, in a political capacity, to foster social capital?  And what will you do as [mayor / assembly member] to foster the growth of social capital in the Fairbanks North Star Borough?  Please refer to actions within the purview of the [Mayor's office / Borough Assembly].

So… What else would you like to know about your local candidates?  What would you want to ask them, with regards to civic life, city planning, urban architecture, transportation, neighborhoods, public space, and rights of the car-free?

The filing deadline is August 17th.  I would like to have list of questions ready by then.  Let hear them!

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Vision Fairbanks lives to fight another day — but just barely

A quick news flash, because I’m tired: Jerry Cleworth’s resolution, which I think would have kneecapped the downtown revitalization effort,  failed — though only through a tie-breaking vote by the mayor.  The final vote: For, Cleworth, Roberts, and Stiver; Against, Bratcher, Gatewood, Eberhart, and Mayor Strle.  (News-Miner story here.)

As I posted Saturday, City Councilman Jerry Cleworth proposed a resolution (no. 4353) that would have halted the use of city funds for the conversion of Cushman Street from one-way to two-way.  This conversion, however, was the linchpin of Vision Fairbanks, according to the city planners hired to draft downtown’s revitalization plan (Crandall-Arambula of Portland, Oregon).

From the start of Citizens’ Comments on Monday evening to the final vote, four and a half hours passed.  At least three of those were spent on public testimony, including a little testimony on another other resolution before the Council.  The testimony was largely in opposition to Cleworth’s resolution — though not so overwhelmingly as it was in favor of Vision Fairbanks’s passage at previous meetings.

Despite the good case that existed in favor of the resolution — and Mr. Cleworth seemed to make that case beautifully — it seemed plain to me that most of the citizens testifying in favor had not attended any of the original visioning meetings, had not read the final plan approved by the Borough Assembly, or had heard only spotty details through the newspaper or word of mouth.  Of course, you could also say that most of the supporters had merely drunk the Vision Fairbanks Kool-Aid and that their testimony didn’t address the meat of Cleworth’s concerns either.  Frankly, I was tired enough when he finally spoke that I couldn’t keep all the pieces together.

There was a relatively brief grilling of Fairbanks Public Works director Mike Schmetzer, City Engineer Bob Pristash, and Donna Gardino of FMATS (the Fairbanks Metropolitan Area Transportation System).  They covered the history of certain appropriations and projects, and discussed the sources and allocation of various monies.  It’s probably not over my head in principle, but it felt like it at 10:45 at night.

Councilwoman Vivian Stiver had what I thought was the most sensible suggestion of the evening: postpone the vote on the resolution until Wednesday’s work session and later public meeting with Crandall Arambula.  If we can present our concerns to them, she reasoned, they may have a good explanation of how various projects will work, or at least convince us of the utter necessity of this current project.  Cleworth was the only other person to support her, so it failed.

Some comments made by Stiver and Chad Roberts concerned me: they both seem to think Fairbanks’s chance of attracting major retail downtown is low to nil.  They seem to think that, since the explosion of big-box chain retail outlets at Steese and Johansen, the City of Fairbanks has missed the boat.  Of course, attracting a major anchor store on Cushman Street is supposedly critical to Vision Fairbanks’s success.  If they’re right, then the plan is largely screwed — I hope not irredemably.

(This makes me wonder: Why, when V.F. was before the Council earlier, did they cower in fear at its suggestion that one regulatory tool of encouraging downtown retail might be to restrict big-box retail development elsewhere for a time?  Why did their resolution’s otherwise tepid language condemn the inclusion of such a suggestion in the plan?)

I should mention that some of the City Council members seemed genuinely torn about what to do, most notably Bernard Gatewood and John Eberhart.  And, when I talk about Jerry Cleworth “kneecapping” or “deep-sixing” Vision Fairbanks, that’s not really being fair to him.  I think he’s a responsible public servant with a clear understanding of the budget, and he has responsible stewardship at heart.

My only real distrust — and this just as far as a vision for vibrant civic and commercial space — is for Chad Roberts.  He seems genuinely to believe that downtown is just fine as it is.  Also, during the Council meeting ten months ago, he expressed an admiration for the free market that seemed to preclude a community’s having any power to say what it wanted in a city center.  Whatever his other virtues, he seems to disagree with me that communities have a right of collective self-determination that, where city planning is concerned, should usually supersede the right of the individual to build whatever civic monstrosity he likes.

I’m happy for now that Vision Fairbanks lives to fight another day.

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The perils and the seduction of self-sorting

I’ve just finished a book that leaves me troubled over the future of civic engagement in the United States — and puzzled over whether it’s even worth worrying about.

Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort: How the Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008) has one central thesis: since the mid-1970s, Americans have been voluntarily sorting themselves, physically and socially, into like-minded communities.  Members of these communities have an increasingly difficult time reaching any consensus or common understanding with those of different opinion, and it has rendered our politics ever more rancorous and ineffective.

Exhibit “A” for Bishop is a pair of electoral maps, from 1976 and 2004, that break down the presidential popular votes for those years by county.  But, instead of two categories (Republican and Democrat), he uses three: (1) Republican landslide victory (20 or more percentage points), (2) Democratic landslide victory, and (3) competitive race (within 20 points).

On a national level, the popular vote was very evenly split in both elections.  But the big difference is that, in 1976, the United States was full of competitive counties.  In 2004, competitive counties were few and far between: almost every county was a place where the electorate was overwhelmingly of one opinion or another.

Not only that, but 2004 saw far fewer places with Democratic landslides than with Republican landslides.  Since the races were close on a national level, that means that those few places with Democratic landslides had a tremendous concentration of population.  Democrats, largely, have moved to the cities, while Republicans have moved to the suburbs, exurbs, and farmland.  (The pattern is ubiquitous, but not universal: in some places, Democrats prefer the suburbs.)

Bishop finds that we have segregated ourselves not only by counties, but by cities and even by neighborhoods.  And not only by place, but by churches and other civic organizations.  If we are, say, Methodists, we no longer simply attend our local Methodist church; instead, we drive to the gay-friendly (or gun-friendly) Methodist church across town, where we feel at home because the people are just like us.  Rather than belong to broad-based civic groups like the Loyal Order of Moose, we are far more likely to join issue-specific groups like the NRA or the ACLU — where we can find easy consensus and be uncompromising in our goals.

One positive side of this is that, among our groups of sameness, we’re much better able to agree on goals and work together to meet them.  With such a high degree of comfort, we’re able to make more strong connections with people.  The down side of this, of course, is that so many of the decisions our society has to make — on a city, county, state, or national level — involve working with groups not like us, and, if “they” are just as polarized and uncompromising on their principles as “we” are, then the lot of us will have not only a hard time agreeing on what actions to take, but a hard time just agreeing on what the basic issues are.

As Bishop points out, we usually don’t cluster ourselves this way out of some conscious desire to eliminate difference from our lives.  We do it because the community we’re considering moving to just “feels right” — maybe we like the wide, open spaces between people’s houses, or the bustle of activity in the downtown, or the availability of public transit, or the friendly people we meet.  It just turns out that, when we select a place for a good “feel”, we’re unconsciously selecting it for its politics.

I don’t know what to think about this.  On one hand, it saddens me, because it signals a collapse in the potential of civic discourse.  It heralds the extinction of a sense of the common good.  And that means, ultimately, a loss of cohesion in our states and in our country.

On the other hand, I want to live in a community where buses and light rail are valued, where people appreciate public space and civic art, and the vision of the good life includes meeting your neighbors regularly on the street.  As much as I love Fairbanks, I get tired of feeling like some kind of pervert for thinking private goods should carry a high premium when they infringe on public goods.  I get tired of the emotional struggle: God, do I have to tell these people again why the Steese-Johansen shopping complex is a civic monstrosity? I yearn to go someplace where they’ve already come around, where it’s easy — don’t we all?

Well, since Americans are so mobile, most of us really have that chance.  And what should stop us?  The sense of some abstract “greater good”?  That seems like a 300-million-player game of the prisoner’s dilemma: Maybe society will be better off if we all stay put and work out our differences, but, since everybody else is relocating, wouldn’t I be a sucker not to do the same?

Against the backdrop of mass migration and communities of increasing like-mindedness, what possible argument could you make to keep people where they are?  Why should they?

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Thinking gratitude

At a very happy dinner party on “Thanksgiving Eve”, each of us was invited in turn to name something he or she was grateful for.  It would have been rude of me to hog the floor for the sake of being thorough, so I kept mine fairly brief.  I’m going to expand on it here.

I think it’s common in Fairbanks — probably in the entire country; I’m unsure about other nationalities — to believe in the ideal of the self-made man.  In comments on the News-Miner website, people often deny the need for social programs (or even much sympathy) for the unfortunate, since the most difficult of circumstances can be gotten through by those of good character: certainly they pulled through tough times by their own grit, without help from anybody.

Hogwash.

Did you hitchhike?  You can be glad for the kindness of those who picked you up.  You can be glad that the car’s construction was built to some government standard of safety.  You can be glad for the civil engineers who designed the streets and roads.  You can be glad for traffic laws, as well as for both those who create them and those who enforce them.

Did you scrounge food from the refuse of a restaurant?  You can be glad that there are regulations about how the food-service industry must operate to provide safe food.  You can be glad for the agencies that exist to enforce those standards.  You can be glad for the medical and other scientific professionals from the present to back ages past for the research underlying the standards.

Did you sleep in an abandoned building?  You can be glad that the building was built to code — if not up to current code, at least it was probably built to some code — elsewise you might imperil yourself each night, if you even found the building standing.  You can be glad for building inspectors.  You can be glad for the work of the architects and engineers who have hammered out these codes over decades, if not centuries.  (Though I recognize that the study of architecture itself has been around since time immemorial.)

No, no, you don’t get away with saying you’ve done it all yourself and live in no man’s debt unless you’ve lived off the grid since your youth: fashioning your own tools, building your own dwelling, and hunting and harvesting your own food, all without any of the goods and services civilization brings.  (Even then, you might be glad for smokejumpers.)  But, more likely, you are in everyone’s debt, as we all are, omnes omnibus.

I’ve certainly never had to live such a spartan life: I’m lucky to come from a family well enough off (as most are), and to eke out enough of a living (as most can), to embrace the city’s material goods, like plumbing and electricity, and its cultural goods, like schools and libraries.

One of the civic goods I’m grateful for is the bus system — part material good and part cultural, I suppose.  Fairbanks is widely spread out: not only do many people choose to live far out of town where a car is every day required, but even in town I doubt there is any one neighborhood where all life necessities and civic needs can be met on foot.  (As I’ve said before, car ownership is our own unofficial citizenship tax.)  Without the bus system, many would be cut off from job prospects, church attendance, access to government, and even grocery shopping.

My own circumstances are not so dire.  Through a series of gratitude-worthy causes that I won’t recount here, my wife and I are lucky enough to own one car and to have use of another through the cold half of the year.  We can pay the citizenship tax, though we’d have less of the “scraping by” feeling if we didn’t have to.  So when I’m grateful for public buses, I’m grateful for a luxury (though it’s perverse that we should have to consider buses, not cars, the luxury).

Particularly:

• Though my wife and I continue to pay monthly insurance on both cars, we are spared nearly all the cost of gasoline for one car.  Plus, there’s less risk of getting in an accident and needing car repair.
• I get twenty to twenty-five minutes of down time each way.  Most of the time I read, but I’ve been known simply to think, and sometimes (especially on the way home) to snooze.
• Watching the variety of company is fascinating.  Like most people, I see a fairly homogeneous group of people at work, at church, and among my friends.  But bus ridership cuts across professions, religions, and subcultures.  I enjoy the window into how other people live and think.

So I’m glad for the drivers — both for the training and skill they bring to the job, and for their having a temperament that allows them to do that work.  The vigilance they exercise every day, in driving safely and in making their scheduled stops as promptly as possible, would exhaust me.

I’m glad for the work of the Borough Transportation Department.  Their staff has to train drivers, designate the routes, budget for all the services, maintain and repair the buses (and other vehicles in the department), and keep a comfortable, dignified transit center.

I’m glad for the City of Fairbanks Public Works Department, for street-sweeping, snowplowing, and all manner of street maintenance and repair.

I’m glad for the Borough Assembly, which approves budgets for the Fairbanks North Star Borough and allocates money to fund transit operations.  For FY 2009, the Assembly allocated over 5.7 million dollars to the Transportation Department, under the critical eye of the often tax-averse Fairbanks-area public.

I’m glad for the property-tax-paying public, who for FY 2009 are shouldering nearly seventy percent of the Borough’s budgetary burden.  Of course, this includes most people, since even renters indirectly pay some portion of their landlord’s annual assessment.

It is true that many people would like to have their property tax lowered or eliminated, or would like to have their civic contribution steered toward something other than public transit.  Therefore, I’m glad I live in a culture where — more or less — cooperation is valued, public goods are embraced though they may not benefit each individual, and caring and kindness are considered not only personal virtues, but public virtues too, and are part of our civic mandate.

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The passage of Vision Fairbanks

As I reported earlier, and as readers of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner may may have read, the Vision Fairbanks downtown revitalization plan passed the Borough Assembly 8-0.  While this seems like a stunning coup, I have worries.

First, some highlights (or at least points of interest):

Dozens of citizens testified — and just about all in favor.  In fact, nobody said, “I think this is a bad plan and will result in nothing but a waste of money.”  I believe that as many as five people may have had negative or challenging things to say about it:

• Carl Benson, a long-time member of the Borough’s Transportation Advisory Commission, questioned the wisdom of tearing down the existing bus station, which was completed only a few years ago,  to build the public square at the center of Vision Fairbanks’s “retail hot spot”.
• Jerry Colp, a City engineer who built his house several years ago in an area designated by the plan as the site for a grocery store, said that the plan would have to be flexible enough to accommodate existing land-owners who did not want to move.
• Another man suggested that we should have some major private investors lined up to support this before making it law; he was not aware of any private parties that had committed money to this project.
• Two (apparently) mentally handicapped women voiced their concern about the proposed removal of the bus station.  They were worried about losing their only means to reach their jobs, their shopping, and their health care.

As far as I could tell, everybody else loved it.  Even people who had seen other downtown improvement efforts in Fairbanks fail, said, “I’ve been against scads of half-baked city improvement schemes, and I don’t have much regard for planners generally.  But these Crandall Arambula folks are the real deal.  This plan is the most exciting prospect I’ve seen for Fairbanks in decades.”

(A sound recording of the hearing, in mp3 format, can be found on the Borough’s Assembly Meetings page, under August 21.  The hearing on the Vision Fairbanks ordinance starts on Track 2 at 6:55.  My testimony starts at 19:24.)

Here’s where I have reservations about what was passed.  Mayor Jim Whitaker introduced the winning ordinance (no. 2008-30), which specified, unfortunately, that the Vision Fairbanks amendment was advisory only and should not have the force of law:

The Vision Fairbanks Downtown Plan may be modified in the course of implementation decisions and it should not be interpreted as restricting the Assembly’s ability to accommodate the actual development of the downtown core area and the changing needs of the community.  It is a set of recommendations that should be considered in future land use determinations including requests for future zoning changes, development, and public investments in infrastructure inthe downtown core area.

(Ordinance No. 2008 – 30, Attachment 3)

Assembly member Luke Hopkins proposed a substitute ordinance, which struck the language saying that the Borough was under no obligation to follow it, and replaced it with much stronger language:

Rather, the Vision Fairbanks Downtown Plan will, however, require that future proposals relating to land use in the downtown core area be analyzed for consistency with the Vision Fairbanks Downtown Plan.

(Proposed Substitute Attachment 3 to Ordinance No. 2008-30)

The Hopkins version also specified that the plan would have to be regularly reviewed and updated.  It said that the plan could be changed as necessary.

To my mind, the Hopkins version would have been much preferable.  The plan would have had the force of law, and any projects determined not to conform to it would have had to go through a more rigorous public process to be approved.  This is something I suspect the Assembly didn’t fully understand: while a “codified” (binding) ordinance would have made it harder for changes to be made, they could still be made — just with a more deliberative process.  It would have given private investors a kind of security: the knowledge that the conditions that existed and helped them prosper today would very likely be in effect and help them prosper tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the Hopkins version failed, 2-6.  (And the only person besides Hopkins to vote for the substitute was Bill Stringer, who seemed to have a fuzzy understanding of the proposed ordinance.) So we have an “advisory” plan.

A few Assembly members took their turns to speak about the Hopkins version.  But when Bernardo Hernandez, Director of Community Planning, was called, he got an awkward public silencing.  Mayor Whitaker took the floor instead and said, essentially, “While you’re welcome to ask Mr. Hernandez any questions you need to, I will represent the position of this administration, and I have already done so.”

As Chad Roberts commented a few days ago, there’s nothing technically out of order for the mayor to speak for the administration, or to dictate who may speak.  But it seemed plain that Mr. Hernandez intended to advocate for the passage of a codified ordinance.  This was confirmed for me by someone who went to the Assembly work sessions prior to the public hearing: Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Whitaker openly disagreed about the need for a binding amendment.  The Assembly knew full well what Mr. Hernandez thought; he was just not allowed to voice those thoughts at a public hearing.  Too bad.  Their disagreement raises the question, Why is the mayor advocating for something his expert staff tell him is a bad idea?

I’m disheartened about the plan’s future, not only because of the language of the approved ordinance, but because of who supported it.

During the Assembly’s discussion, Assembly member Randy Frank recalled his recent visits to Duluth and Minneapolis, in whose downtown streets he could not see anything interesting going on. He had to be directed indoors, to where the (evidently secret) fun was.  (This off-street, indoor fun was called something like the “Minnesota Underground”.) He seemed to think that this lack of street life was praiseworthy. He said it made those places unique, and he’d like Fairbanks to be unique, too.

To me, that suggests that Mr. Frank is hostile (or at least indifferent) to the idea of active street life, which is central to the spirit of Vision Fairbanks.  The fact that he would vote to approve the mayor’s ordinance, when he shows so little regard for one of the plan’s central virtues, suggests to me that he is not threatened by this non-binding ordinance, and is confident that the Assembly could disregard it when convenient.

I could be wrong about Mr. Frank.  Maybe he only meant that Duluth and Minneapolis had one kind of distinctiveness, and he was for distinctiveness in general.  Maybe he was really enthusiastic about Vision Fairbanks, and had a very subtle way of expressing it.  But it seemed like the subtlety of a person who has to seem supportive of something he doesn’t care for, and it worried me.

So, fellow downtown-loving Fairbanksans: we’re going to have to be vigilant.  We’ll have to have somebody at every meeting of the Planning Commission, every meeting of the Assembly, watching for potential corruption of the plan.  We’ll need to keep each other informed when something comes up.  And we’ll have to keep the pressure on, always reminding the commissioners and Assembly members: This was unanimously approved!  This was the overwhelming will of the people!  Be faithful to it!

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Freedom, coercion, and community: The people’s thing, part 2

This post continues thoughts begun in “The people’s thing?” about three weeks ago.

(If you’re wondering where my fuller report is on the Vision Fairbanks public hearing before the FNSB Assembly, it’s coming.  This is now a little more timely.  And it’s what I feel like writing about today.)

As I said in “The people’s thing?”, there was a local candidate for office whose principles — according to his web page — have everything to do with individual liberty and with government creating a place where individuals can thrive, but nothing to do with community, common goals, shared fate, mutual obligation, or even duty.

This person is Schaeffer Cox.  He garnered over 37 percent of the vote in the Republican primary for House District 7 — not enough to unseat incumbent Mike Kelly, coming in at just under 50 percent.  While I don’t care for his opinions on the role of government in strengthening community or the insufficient attention he pays to mutual obligation and social justice, I bear him personally no ill will.  By all accounts, he is intelligent, accomplished for his age, well versed in the U.S. and Alaska constitutions, able to point to particular legislation he agrees or disagrees with and not just fall back on vague promises, and both ready and able to discuss politics at the drop of a hat.  While he was out-raised and out-spent by Kelly, he had twice as many individual donors, according to the News-Miner.  The fact that he made it so close to an elected office at the age of 24 is admirable.

After posting, I e-mailed Mr. Cox’s campaign and invited him either to reply directly on The Fairbanks Pedestrian or to address concerns of community and related issues in the “Principles” section of his website.  While he did neither of these, he did e-mail me a few days before the primary with (1) a reply, (2) permission to post the reply here, and (3) an invitation to call him at any time to ask other questions.  Here is what he wrote:

Why I do not talk specifically about community on my website?

Short Answer: Governments fail miserably at producing community while individuals succeed beautifully.  It is the legislator’s job to uphold justice and defend individual freedom.  This provides an environment where the individuals are able to do their job of creating and sustaining community, friendship and brotherhood.

Long Answer:  Community and the brotherhood of man is a good thing, but it must be done by individuals on a person-to-person level, not by legislators through the government with the use of law/force.  One must understand that law is force.  The job of a legislator is to write laws, determining where the use of force is appropriate.  Every human being has an inherent, natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and a corresponding right and, I dare say, obligation to defend, even with force, against encroachments upon that right.  Defense is the only proper application of force.  These same principles that guide the individual are to guide the group of individuals organized into a government.  Government is the collective extension of the individual right to self-defense.  It would be wrong for me as an individual to promote a good thing by force.  It would be wrong for me as a legislator to promote a good thing by force.   And since the implementation of law, and therefore force, is my concern as a legislator, the principle of community is absent.

I have a few responses to this:

Mr. Cox asserts that “Government is the collective extension of the individual right to self-defense.”  To me that seems a bleak and lonely view.  I prefer to see governments as the people acting together out of collective interest.  I see no reason that people should collectively pay for an organization whose sole goal is to enable them to meet individual, selfish desires.  Individuality must be protected, to be sure.  But it scarcely needs promotion.  Humans are a selfish enough lot that, with enough help, we’ll take our individuality to an isolating, antisocial extreme.

I suppose he’s right that, when push comes to shove, government amounts to force.  I prefer the term coercion, though, since force to me implies the application of physical force, while coercion increases the number of tools at a government’s disposal.  But, whether governments “force” people or “coerce” them, the key words are “when push comes to shove”.  The fact is, if government is done well, it rarely has to come to the level of outright coercion or brute force.  Governments are able to provide incentives both subtle and gross to encourage people to act in one way or another.  With skill, they will encourage people to act toward common goods.

For an example, let me take the public library (a brilliant idea that would surely be shot down if it were first thought up in today’s individualistic climate).  An educated populace is a social good.  Fortunately, public libraries have been with us long enough that people recognize them as a tremendous bargain, and most people are happy to fund them with their property taxes or whatever public funding.  Nobody has to be “forced” to pay for them.

Okay, if you really hate public libraries and you start shorting your local property tax payment by the proportion that would fund your library, you’ll ultimately lose your house — but that’s only if push comes to shove.  There is no reason it should, if a fair government is run.  Everybody should get something out of the bargain; everybody should feel that he’s come out somewhat ahead.

Mr. Cox states, “Governments fail miserably at producing community while individuals succeed beautifully.”  I take issue with this.  First, individuals, by definition, cannot produce community.  They may make beautiful paintings, hunt trophy moose, run record distances, and pen prize-winning novels — as individuals.  Community requires people to suppress their perfect individuality to become something more.

I admit, that may have been verbal sophistry.  I suspect Mr. Cox really meant that people succeed better at creating community when they are free to act with no government coercion.  So we have to wonder, what kind of coercion should people be under in forming community?  If the answer is “none”, then that community will never arise.  When people feel perfectly free to opt out of every situation, they have no cause to settle differences and arrive at conventions that will (more or less) please all.

Second, Mr. Cox seems to be implying that governments attempting to “produce” community are trying to force it into being.  This would be an absurd aim, one that I hope no public official endorses.  Governments cannot force community into being any more than I can force grass to grow.  However, just as I can offer that grass water, sunlight, and fertile soil, governments — again, the people acting together out of collective interest — can create circumstances under which community will thrive.  Like Aristotle, I believe that man is a social animal.  Most of us will tend toward lives of collaboration and co-nurturance if given the chance.  But to suppose that individuals will create community on their own without creating favorable conditions is like supposing that a sack of grass seed will turn into a lawn without water, light, or soil.  The governments we constitute are the agents by which we create those conditions.

A quick example: I believe that one of the requirements of community is that people sometimes spend time together.  (I may get into the benefits of this another time.)  They cannot do this without common space.  (There is no meaningful right to free assembly when the people have no place to assemble.)  What’s more, that space must be attractive and interesting enough to lure them from the the familiarity of the private sphere.  Thus, if public interest is served by people sometimes spending time together, then public interest is served by fostering quality public places.  In a sense, the government must create “infrastructure” of a kind, to allow and foster collective action.

My last complaint about Mr. Cox’s statement (and most of what’s on his “Principles” page) is that it too perfectly and too rigidly adheres to a single ideal: freedom.  I appreciate freedom.  I enjoy freedom.  But it is not the only virtue — it may not even be the greatest virtue — and it is incapable of doing all the moral “work” that many demand of it.

I’ll close with a quotation that has recently become a favorite of mine:

Justice is a denial of mercy, and mercy is a denial of justice. Only a higher force can reconcile these opposites: wisdom. The problem cannot be solved, but wisdom can transcend it. Similarly, societies need stability and change, tradition and innovation, public interest and private interest, planning and laissez-faire, order and freedom, growth and decay. Everywhere society’s health depends on the simultaneous pursuit of mutually opposed activities or aims. The adoption of a final solution means a kind of death sentence for man’s humanity and spells either cruelty or dissolution, generally both… Divergent problems offend the logical mind.

(Schumacher, E. F. A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977, 127.)

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