The problem with this analysis--and, as a geeky poli-sci major have
long understood this even before Mr. Overton "invented" it--is that,
in the context of Madison, the window of political inevitability for
action on ped/bike/transit/anti-sprawl is at the top of the
yardstick. Right here & right now. The people are ready for action.
But our political leadership--even the ones who supposedly understand
these issues--simply won't go to bat for their own constituents. The
Madison citizenry understands. The Madison Common Council members do
not. And that is across the board.
It isn't as if the residents of the 5th or the 2nd, or the 6th or the
19th aldermanic districts are out in the streets chanting, "Hey, hey,
Ho, Ho, More & More highways, BIG Highways, Right now! Hey hey, ho,
ho, bike paths have got to go!!" In fact, the contrary has been
communicated to them endlessly by their own constituents.
Unfortunately, these council members are so determined to go along to
get along that they rubber stamp every big highway that comes their
way.
And now they want to slash bike funding and raise bus fares.
I mean, if witnessing all of the car-oriented neighborhoods of the
city tank by 7% isn't enough to get them to change the
transportation/land use paradigm, nothing will.
It is time for a wholesale makeover of the council before they break all of us.
Get ready folks: With the burbs tanking, this council will have to
ratchet up the mill rate, meaning all of you who live in more
reasonably scaled neighborhoods* (where values held, thanks to
location efficiency) will see a hefty hike in your property taxes to
make up for all of the value this council destroyed by building
crappy places out there where a) no one wants to live and b) no one
can afford to even if they did....
Why are the burbs tanking? Because they are accessible only by car,
the most energy inefficient mode of transportation ever contrived.
The residents of those places had 2 choices: pay the mortgage or fill
up the SUV. Guess what they did? For an answer, check out the
foreclosure/bankruptcy pages in the Wisconsin State Journal.
The worst irony of it is, thanks to the dynamic between tanking
property values and the mill rate, the folks out in car-land won't
notice much of a change in their property tax bills at all. Heck,
they might even get a discount. Meanwhile, the people biking, busing
and walking will be footing their bill. And our council members
still won't go to bat for us. Jed Sanborn isn't the problem.
Republicans can't help being ignorant. The real problem: Our
"friends" on the council who should know better.
The big question is why this council keeps voting--unanimously--to
build crappy places no one wants to live in. Places that are placing
burdens on the financial future of the entire city.
-Mike
*Yup, it'll trickle down to you renters, too!
***********************************
At 9:59 PM -0500 10/8/08, Matt Logan wrote:
As a postscript to the city budget discussion earlier today, I thought I
would share a web link I found that explains the phenomenon that seems
to be preventing our elected leaders from acting wisely when it comes to
alternative transportation funding:
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7504
What I take away from this article is that nobody should be discouraged
by getting an unfavorable outcome when engaging the city on bicycle
issues. With repeated reinforcement, the currently politically
impossible will become politically unavoidable. The trick as I see it
is to identify which message needs to be delivered in order to push the
Overton Window most rapidly in the direction of sanity.
In my opinion a lot of bikies (including myself) at public hearings tend
to overestimate how much of the logistics of bicycling the general
public understands. In this respect, comments like those made by Thuy
Pham-Remelle Jed Sanborn, the Rotarians I mentioned earlier, or even
Vicki McKenna can be a great tool to use to identify the bridges of
understanding we need to build for the public and our elected leaders so
they can comprehend our perspective.
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