city planning

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.

A scientific colleague and I recently exchanged correspondence about our experiences in Savannah, where the AMS Severe Local Storms Conference was held last fall, and where I was able to get out and do some fun photography during off-time. What a neat and lively little colonial era city that is, one with well-preserved architecture, plenty of green space, safe walking environment, a prospering riverfront area and proximity to some great beaches. I hope it stays out of the core of a major hurricane!

For purely selfish reasons (i.e., access to observable supercells) I wish the Great Plains states had little cities like that – with plenty of parks and squares, compact but uncrowded spaces and ease of movement, shops and markets close enough to not need a car to get to them from most given dwellings. [Full disclosure: I live in the country but within 4 miles of downtown, almost as “close-in” as my inner-city proximity to downtown Dallas as a kid, and much closer than suburban commuters in big cities.]

Unfortunately, our (plains states) cities are too recent, too young, in that the era of built-to-last architecture and thoughtful urban planning had passed (in favor of the automobile era) by the time all but small core areas were built. I like the automobile as a means of movement; but I also miss riding DART buses and trains, and the White Rock Lake bike trail.

There are islands of livableness in some of the bigger cities, like Dallas, Kansas City, Denver or even OKC, and a few of them even have been reinvigorated magnificently out of their former states of slum and blight (parts of the cores of Dallas and Denver). But you still have to go through the sprawling morass of suburban sameness and current or future slums to access them.

I go back to one such pleasant enclave within Dallas often — ironically, the very same 1910s/20s era neighborhood in which I grew up, an area now deeply gentrified and much safer and cleaner than when I was a kid. In the 1970s and 80s, parts of the neighborhood began to look and feel like a slum, sirens wailing much of the night, occasional gunshots heard, broken beer bottles littering sidewalks, unmistakable gang activity, exchanges of small and partly filled plastic bags for money on street corners. Able-bodied, aimless and shirtless men who should have been working instead hung out idly in the middle of weekdays on porches of what used to be grand old two-story Colonial style houses, paint peeling and support beams sagging. Yet enough of the 1950s era businesses, stores and restaurants remained to keep alive a thread of sanity and safety, and police patrols were heavy enough to keep the situation from getting hopelessly out of control (as in parts of L.A. and Detroit).

Now the area is an island of tranquility amidst a loud, busy urban cauldron. You still can walk from any house in that neighborhood to almost any kind of shop, restaurant, market and your choice of 5 different bus lines in 20 minutes or less. But it’s expensive to live there now…little old tudors and bungalows that were rat and roach infested and on the verge of being condemned when I was a kid (including one duplex I lived in for 8 years) now are going for $300K or more, and that’s in a weakened housing market in a low-cost, non-coastal city. It shows that people have a deep desire to live in such a setting, if it’s safe to do so. Now and there, it is…for the right price.

My old neighborhood, and others like it in cities that have revitalized sections around the country, went through this cycle:

1. Build on virgin land just outside downtown sometime late 1800s/early 1900s, parks and small commerce abound

2. Young families move in, WW2 happens, returning vets have and raise kids

3. Kids move away, residents grow old while radial sprawl away from the area sucks out educated talent and economic vitality

4. Houses fall into disrepair as the old folks gradually die off…low-renters (we were in that category) proliferate, crime/drugs/rats/roaches common

5. Yuppies moved in, renovated and formed neighborhood associations while the city (under great pressure from the associations) made an effort to clean up the crime

6. Gentrified, expensive area that again is a pleasant place to live if you could afford it

7. National economy goes into toilet (today)…effect uncertain

I was raised during the end of item 3 through most of 4, and went off to college right at the start of 5. So it has been great to see 5-6 going on. What’s next in stage 7?

Of all the smaller to mid-sized Plains cities I’ve visited, Rapid City seems closest to being able to maintain or regain such a way of being. Too bad it’s at such a cold latitude. Lawrence seems to be trying too. That they’re both college towns probably isn’t a coincidence. Boulder has done a lot of things right planning-wise, but that town is a sociopolitical insane asylum, an over-regulated nanny-fiefdom in many respects, and hopelessly expensive. [How ironic it is that such a pompously leftist and “socially conscious” place conveniently erects a financial Berlin Wall to keep out the poor, in the form of exorbitant housing costs. “Help the poor, but not next door!”] Surely those asphyxiating side effects don’t have to be the inevitable result of good city planning and foresight, do they?

Ft. Worth and Tulsa are trying to invert decayed residential areas now, but is it too little too late? Kansas City wants to be more livable, but is irreparably split through the middle at the intersection of two states and 5 counties…too many stinkin’ jurisdictions with their own agendas. OKC, Wichita, San Angelo, Lincoln, Bismarck, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Amarillo, Omaha…they don’t seem to give a flip yet (all talk, too little obvious action).

Norman, on the margins of a mid-sized city at just over 100,000, has lots of potential. Its cost of living is quite low, public schools adequate (albeit too easy on the kids academically), its people better educated than in most of Oklahoma, along with being generally friendly and helpful. However, 23 years after my first such complaint call to the traffic department as a college freshman, it has no more synchronized signal lights now than then (about five, on one stretch of one street). Despite the fact that any city can control growth patterns (through zoning), Norman resoundingly has failed to do so smartly. By smartly, I mean using a simple concept called foresight: supporting infrastructure planned and put in place before development, instead of during and after. There is no effective and citywide mass transit, nor interconnected greenbelt/walkway system. Norman still thinks “bike friendly” means you slap up a bunch of Bike Route signs on dangerous, narrow, shoulderless roads with blind hills and without bike lanes, tout the resulting “100 miles of bicycle paths” in C-of-C literature, and the problem is solved. Suuuuuure!

Savannah is a great town. I’d like to spend some more time down there on future sojourns. The mid-size cities I named in the last two paragraphs could learn a great deal about livableness from its example. It’s just much too far from the Plains and the dryline! If only I could just erase most of urban Norman (except the OU area) and plop that Georgia town down in its place…Savannah on the (Okie) savannah!

Norman: Keep Rejecting Storm-water Utility

Ever a Savannah on the Savannah?