big government

When it comes to logistics and preparedness, the mode of thinking needs to be logic and reason — not emotion. Pretend you’re an interstellar alien, we’ll call him Spock (or her Spockette, if you want to be equal opportunity), evaluating our relationship with central Federal bureaucracy from outer space.

Two pertinent points: First, when an entity has failed, over and over and over, to accomplish goals timely and accurately, is it logical to keep depending upon it, or to demand from it what it has repeatedly foot-dragged and failed to deliver? Spock(ette) says: No. Highly illogical.

What is that entity? Distant, detached, massive, red-tape-ridden, impersonal, faceless Federal bureaucracy. I’m speaking of the whole entity, as a large, bloated mass, not individual right-minded people inside it who are trying to improve things, mostly in futility.

Epidemiologists have been warning of a pandemic like the one ongoing, for over a quarter of a century. Yet through multiple D and R presidencies, multiple D, R and split Congresses, this is the result. Blaming only the current people (while they deserve just the latest few years’ share of it) is purely partisan, shortsighted, ignorant of history, and emotional — not logical, not reasoned.

This scenario has been warned about for DECADES, with only token, window-dressing action. Such longstanding foot-dragging in preparation for what has been an inevitable pandemic is just one example of such lack of foresight and attention to low-probability (in any one year), high-impact events that will happen some year. This is such a year.

Those who expertly predicted it for the last few decades have every right to say, “I told you so, why didn’t you listen to me and prepare?” And they are entirely reasoned and logical in asking such a question. Spock(ette) would approve.

This is why foreseers and visionaries get disillusioned: government bureaucracy — too debt-ridden and bloated from generations of exceeding its literal Constitutional authority in many areas — is too focused on the here and now and the pork-barrel pandering that doesn’t lend itself to accommodating accurate expert farsightedness. This is objectively demonstrable in the lack of preparedness in numerous crises — not just this coronavirus. And when it comes to logic and reason, objective evaluation is what matters.

Is it logical to expect quick deployments and resolutions when, as only a mild exaggeration, it takes 37 layers of approvals and nine months to unlock a door latch? Spock(ette) says: no. Highly illogical. We see it over, and over, and over, from slow hurricane response, to days/weeks wait for Federal deployment on wildfires, to the CDC bungling of this virus disaster, to weekly politicization of nonpartisan issues.

Yet I see so many people demanding more involvement of the very same thing that keeps failing, over and over and over: Federal “help”! That’s not only illogical, but irrational, unhealthy, toxic! And also: Sisyphean.

Second: Disasters really are local. This is because individuals are affected.

States (especially for their resource/economically poor rural areas) and major cities need to learn to prepare as if they essentially will get zero help from above in a timely way. Quite often, after all, that’s the brutally honest truth. This way, if help does arrive, it’s a bonus, a relief.

Dependency on big, inefficient, untimely, unreliable Washington is really a form of unhealthy codependency — akin to a neglectful, often gaslighting, sometimes abusive personal relationship, but wrought on a broad scale.

Think about this, please. Relate to it. Would you tell your friend in such a relationship to stay the course, stick it out, trust the abuser/neglector will somehow, someday reform? If you have been in such a relationship personally, you will get what I’m saying. Why encourage such relationships of cities, counties and states with Washington, who has and will let them down, gaslight, neglect, attach strings, token-“help”, or even trample them as often as fully assist?

Abusive relationships don’t just arise from individuals, but also…see encircled. The question isn’t which of these federal government has done at some point or another, but which it *hasn’t*! It’s not hard to find historic examples of every pie piece above.

If you still don’t understand the concept of betrayal by centralized DC bureaucracy, and how systemically destructive that can be, ask our native American Indian tribes.

Exactly as we correctly advise friends in toxic relationships, states and cities need to learn to get out of that bad relationship with Washington and go it on their own, with years to decades of advanced planning for every sort of disaster that could befall them. Spock(ette) would see this through the lens of history and say, “That’s imminently logical.”

In 2016, Norman voters overwhelmingly rejected a new storm-water utility. I was one. Yet mayor Lynne Miller and most of the city council either misread the results as the opposite of what they were, or just as damning, deliberately ignored them, with statements of brazen Orwellian doublespeak such as this quoted in the linked story: “…citizens have moved way far down the road in understanding the need for a stormwater (sic) utility.” Wrong! The citizens did not see a need for it, hence, the vote against it! Duh…

A year and a half passed and along came yesterday’s city council elections, wherein most candidates with a position on the matter expressly or implicitly favored such a new utility — and by extension, higher effective taxes paid by the citizenry in the form of its inevitably additional sets of fees. Credit one of those candidates, Joe Carter from Ward 2 (not my ward), for at least having the guts to solicit input, even as he seemed to favor the idea in a Facebook post. My initial response (edited lightly for grammar, usage and typos, addition for your benefit in brackets):

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Here is the problem: that is a new bureaucracy, with its own structure and overhead, its own managerial ladder and administrative lattice, in parallel to an existing water and sewer utility, itself with an administrative ladder and lattice, under whose umbrella storm-water management can and could function with less overhead and greater efficiency.

That, along with some ridiculous treatment of the relatively minuscule coverage of impervious surface in the rural majority of Norman’s land area (as if it were urban), caused the resounding downfall of the storm-water utility in the referendum.

Do it better if you’re going to sell the concept, because as it stands, the majority of us aren’t buying the sales pitch.

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Again, to his credit, he responded to my comment by asking for my ideas. Folks who know me understand well that I most certainly will offer lots of ideas unsolicited; when you solicit them…well, be careful what you ask for, lest you get it. Here’s the feedback I provided:

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So you’ll know, for background: I’ve been living here off and on since August 1985 (with stints in Miami and Kansas City). Because I work rotating shifts, including a lot of night shifts, I’m afraid I cannot reliably serve on a citizen’s board or council (at least until retirement). So these ideas are freely provided for you and anybody else to put to use until such a time as I can put more direct effort into advocating for and executing them. I hope it’s not necessary, because it will have been done by then!

This is long and will be delivered in two parts, because the issue is not as simple as the referendum made it seem, and needs to be attacked two ways.

PART 1: Need for separate utility bureaucracy?

Short answer: Not necessary. Keep it all in existing water/sewer department. Add a wastewater division.

Long answer: It’s water. Thematically, it fits in the existing administrative and physical-overhead latticework of water/sewer. An entirely separate, parallel bureaucracy, with its own separate tree of administrative salaries and physical overhead, is overkill, and not a streamlined and efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

Instead, waste-water drainage should be, at most, a division within the water/sewer department, sharing computational resources, office equipment/supplies, top-level (highest-salary) managerial oversight, and physical office space. This is in order to run more economically and efficiently, and to promote better collaboration and cooperation through physical collocation.

If the existing office space is insufficient to expand slightly by introducing a new division, it probably won’t handle any future growth of the water/sewer department as Norman itself grows, regardless. Therefore leasing larger space through competitive lease-bid processes would be forward-thinking and cheaper than waiting 5-10 years to do what will need to be done at some point, anyway. Think 3 or 4 chess moves ahead! As for any eventual billing to pay for waste-water improvements: itemize it within the existing water/sewer bills using the same overhead and resources.

PART 2: Solutions for analyzing use and assessing storm-water fees

Short answer is not possible. See long answer.

Long answer: It’s physical and logical folly to treat rural Norman the same way as urbanized Norman for the sake of storm-water drainage. Urban (and much of suburban) Norman drains off larger aggregated concrete areas per square mile, largely into storm sewers that vector water rapidly into the river with almost no time for natural settling and filtration. Rural Norman drains off far less concrete per square mile, into a mix of surrounding ground and creeks. The land uses are not the same. The collective imperviousness is not the same. The drainage is not the same. Therefore the per-square-foot storm-water assessments must not be the same. If we are to fairly pay for storm-water mitigation, it should be done on one of two bases, or a combination of both:

* Presence or lack of storm sewers draining the plat. If storm sewers drain the property, higher cost per square ft of surface area.

* Percentage of property covered by impermeability (instead of absolute amount). Rates are paid on a sliding scale so that (for example) a concrete-covered parking lot with only a strip of curb grass pays the highest rate, whereas a rural acreage with just a house and gravel or dirt driveway pays far lower. Obviously undeveloped land pays bottom. There’s incentive here to reduce impermeability, if that’s a goal, but it does not unfairly penalize the rural landowner. [Concept: A 2500-square-ft house surrounded by 5 acres unpaved land (with just a driveway) will offer less roof runoff to the river or lake than one on a small city lot emptying straight into storm sewers.]

Also, for either or both solutions, grandfather in existing development at a rate substantially less than new development built after the effective date of the statute. This encourages smarter, more permeable newer development.

Yes, this is more complicated than the original referendum and will require explaining, probably with a flow chart. But it is fairer to all and more taxpayer-friendly.

Thank you.

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Now these ideas are not some 137-page impact-assessment report chock full of statistics, figures and bureaucratic bingo-lingo. Yet they represent a fairer and more thoughtful way of dealing with the matter of dirty and noxious runoff than an entirely new bureaucracy that just is not necessary.

Now let’s see if Joe Carter (who won in a landslide) and others are willing to take serious note of the concerns of the “no” voters, and not ignore or whitewash them. In a municipality of over 100,000 that doesn’t install right-turn lanes on newly rebuilding major intersections, still hasn’t synchronized its traffic lights citywide, 40+ years after some other cities around the nation — and which has not installed a smart-light system to adjust traffic signals fluidly for traffic volume, trains, events, and flow patterns — I am highly skeptical of its competence of city planning in all areas.

Governmental Dependency as a Toxic Relationship

Norman: Keep Rejecting Storm-water Utility