Lincolnite

Lincoln needs to cover an estimated $9 million budget gap for 2007-2008. Where are we going to find the money?

1. Exploit the fact that people can't resist throwing coins into water by installing dozens of fountains (or even just buckets of water labeled "Wishing Well") all around town.
2. Reopen Robber's Cave for one month, and advertise it as "Your last chance to relive your childhood memories!" Charge by the minute.
3. Set up a dunking booth featuring Mayor Seng, the City Council, and Mike Spadt. Charge $5 per ball.
4. Instead of paving the Antelope Valley Roadway with concrete, use gravel.
5. Rename it the Lincoln Children's Museum and Sweatshop.

Welcome to the world, Samuel Michael! Little Sammy was born a plump 9.5 pounds at 5:40 tonight. See ya tomorrow, Sam!

I don't usually do this sort of thing, but beerorkid tagged me and, well, he's a good friend of Lincolnite, so what the heck. Here's the game: I have to tell you six things you may not know about me. Here we go...

1. My middle name is Curtis, after my uncle who died shortly after he was born. According to my grandma the doctor screwed up and baby Curtis was strangled by the umbilical cord. Today he probably would have lived, but he would have been severely handicapped. Several months ago The Missus and I acquired my grandma's piano. Come to find out, my grandpa bought her the piano as therapy after Curtis died.
2. Although most people perceived me as a goody-goody in high school, I could cause a bit of trouble now and then. I even had two run-ins with the police, both of which I talked my way out of, and once I was chased by a man with a shotgun. My crimes in each case? TP'ing, trespassing, and setting off a firework. Nothing to keep me from the presidency. Stupid teenagers.
3. Back in the day I was known as Dr. Rudy -- a takeoff of Dr. Ruth -- for my ability to offer counseling and relationship advice to my friends. My parents gave me the nickname Spud for my love of potatoes.
4. I have all sorts of physical weirdnesses, mostly the result of a particular genetic anomaly shared in 150+ forms by as much as .07% of the population. To name two, I have no tear ducts and two toes on each foot are webbed. There are lots more. On the plus side, I have been blessed with a very high tolerance for pain. I even sat through an oral surgical procedure during which a portion of my mouth wasn't fully deadened.
5. Alcohol and caffeine are the only recreational drugs I have used, though I support a person's right to drink, inhale, or inject anything he wants into his own body. I have only been drunk once, the night of my bachelor party. Nobody believes me, but I remember the entire evening. I spent much of the following morning puking. My body has rejected alcohol ever since that day; I get nauseous before I even take a sip. I consider that a blessing.
6. If I ever face the death penalty, my last meal will be: meatloaf; mashed potatoes with meatloaf gravy; green bean casserole; red (cinnamon) pickles; homemade rolls with butter; chocolate layer dessert (something like this); and milk (1%).

I suppose I have to tag a few people. Mr. T, DMB, you're up. I'll pick on Neal, too, but only because I'm hoping for cartoons depicting his six items. And you know what? I'm going to tag Gary and Sue as well. They mentioned "that Lincolnite guy" on the air one time, so I know they check in now and then.

The good news is ... well, no, there isn't any good news. The bad news is Lincoln's budget gap for 2007-2008 is projected at $9 million. Yeouch. Most of the easy answers have already been used in earlier budget cycles, so Lincoln may have to pull out the heavy artillery in order to close the gap. That'll be especially interesting this year, an election year in which four City Council members are up for reelection and one is running for mayor. If anybody seriously proposes a tax hike, you can bet it won't be one of those five. I suspect the bulk of proposed solutions will involve covering the $9 million with nickels and dimes across the budget. That's one way to go, but I don't think it's likely to be successful. Rather, I would like to see some proposals that sacrifice a sacred cow or two. Let's take a serious look at some vertical cuts. Axing entire programs or services is almost never popular, but by discussing the idea I think the community will get a better idea of where we stand. And if finding the $9 million in a few big chunks is too difficult to swallow, then we can go back to the nickel and dime idea. But let's not start there.

Lincoln's website helped Lincoln rank second on a list of top digital cities as ranked by the Center for Digital Government. And it's true, InterLinc offers a lot of services, several of which I use regularly. The folks behind InterLinc should be applauded. If I had to recommend changes to InterLinc to make it even better, I would offer three. First, the organization of information starts to fall apart as you get deeper into the site. The first couple layers of the site are easy enough to navigate. The problem tends to begin with individual departments. Data are not organized consistently within a department's site, and they are not consistent across departmental sites. Fixing the problem won't be easy and will require a certain amount of standardization (which is rarely popular), but it could be done. Second, the quality of content could be improved. At the very least, somebody should edit content before it goes live. Typos and odd grammar don't help city government's image. Beyond that, information could be more descriptive and more complete. Third, and most critically, the entire site needs an accessibility overhaul. The current site is not nearly as friendly as it could be to various assistive technologies (such as screen readers). The City should consider having an accessibility audit conducted to ensure the site meets all state and federal requirements. If it doesn't -- and I don't think it does -- the City could, at some point, face legal action. There is also the 1998 design of the site to consider, but that doesn't bother me all that much. Content comes before design, and for the most part InterLinc does a good job getting the content right. Still, a visual overhaul while working on the third point above would make a lot of sense.

It's a busy busy time of year at 625 Elm Street. Here are some miscellaneous updates: The Missus makes excellent desserts throughout the year, but the holidays are especially fruitful for the sugar queen. I swear, one of these days she is going to have to open her own shop. I'm not just saying that; she would love to bake for a living, and, though I'm not an unbiased observer, I have to think her odds of success are pretty darn high. For example, one of her desserts earned the name FGBs after a friend exclaimed "These are [darn] good brownies!" upon eating one for the first time. Robbie is at an adorable age right now. He will be seven months old on Saturday. He is sitting up very well, but his real favorite activities are standing and walking. (Yes, walking!) Give him a finger from each hand to hold onto, and he's happy as a clam as he meanders around the room. He is on the verge of a crawling breakthrough, so we need to go on a childproofing overhaul. This week we will hit an important milestone with Robbie: he will have been with us for six months. That means that our adoption agency can give the appropriate paperwork to our attorney, who can then file with the courts for finalization. We hope to get a court date in late January. In other baby-related news, I just received an e-mail from my sister. She is going to go to the hospital on Thursday to have her water broken. My nephew Sam (after his great grandfather) should be here by Thursday night.

Lincoln Police are investigating a series of attempted sexual assaults and a few similar incidents while trying to discover if one or more potential sex criminals is on the loose. If you or somebody you know sees anything resembling the pattern of incidents the police are looking at, try to observe as much as you can about the individual and call police. On a related topic, note that the offenses (and potential offenses) illustrate nicely how sex offender zoning restrictions are not likely to deter sex crimes to any substantial degree. First and foremost, there is no evidence that the perpetrator(s) live anywhere near the locations of the incidents. Second, as Police Chief Tom Casady said, sex assaults by strangers "are very, very rare". Most sex assaults are committed by persons known to the victims. I wish a solution to the problem were as simple as boxing sex offenders into a corner; unfortunately, reality shows that will do little more than give us a false sense of security.

Lincoln's Near South neighborhood has been a frequent target of small revitalization and preservation efforts for years. Now that the City is conducting a blight study of the historic neighborhood, maybe it will get the TLC it deserves. My one concern, as I have expressed several times before, is the amount of area being declared blighted across Lincoln (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for questionable reasons). How much energy can the City put into any of the blighted areas if so many areas are declared blighted? Or phrased another way, are we better off doing as we're doing now, and trying to offer incentives for redevelopment in a bunch of areas all at once? Or should we focus our efforts on only a couple areas at a time?

First night of finals week at UNL.

Lincoln may or may not be a difficult place to do business. But if you want to know why some people say Lincoln can be a bit of a pain in the rump, Mayor Seng's call today for a "do-over" in the Verizon RFP is one example:

Mayor Coleen Seng said Monday she will throw out the "request for proposals" the city issued for a 100,000-square-foot office building that turned out to be for Verizon Wireless. In a move reminiscent of the RFP process when the city purchased seven new firetrucks, Seng has concluded the bidding process should begin anew.

::sigh::

I sure hope the fact that the bus drove right by me without stopping this morning isn't a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the day. If I would have had a raw egg, I would have chucked it at the side of the bus as it drove by. Grrrr.

Please tell me you caught the Husker volleyball team's thrilling come-from-behind victory on Saturday. Please tell me you didn't miss one of the greatest matches in Husker volleyball history. Please tell me you were with a large group of Husker fans, perhaps at a local bar, cheering and clapping and high-fiving as the team orchestrated a near-miraculous comeback. The path to the National Championship in Omaha won't be easy with three very talented Pac-10 schools standing in the way. But man, after a match like Saturday's, it's hard not to feel like the Huskers have a few friends in the pantheon of volleyball gods. Go Big Red! Oh yeah, anybody have any tickets they would like to part with?

Want RSS from the Journal Star? Bernie will teach you how you can get it. Thanks, Bernie! By the way, no word yet on if our letter will be published in the letters to the editor.

Cindy Lange-Kubick wants to know what you would do with $20 you came upon by chance. Here are five things I might do around Lincoln with 20 bucks:

1. Leave an especially large tip for one of my favorite waiters.
2. Buy a gift for a child from a giving tree.
3. Buy rides for kids on the carousel at Gateway or the train at the zoo.
4. Pay bus fares for anybody who needed it.
5. Buy cookies from The Cookie Company and hand them out to passers-by.

Poor Robert. The kid tries to be cute and bubbly and happy, but it sure is tough when you have a nose infection. (Not a sinus infection, according to the doc.) He is all plugged up, and his drainage causes a terrible sounding cough, the kind that makes you wince in empathy. He can't sleep very well when lying flat, so I have spent portions of a few nights this week sleeping with him and propping him up. Last night he made it through most of the night in his swing. I celebrated not having to get up by sleeping terribly and having bizarre dreams. I hope his weekend goes better for him. The weather is supposed to be nice, so maybe getting outside for a walk or two will help. He has had a cold or illness of some sort for several weeks in a row. I know that's relatively normal for a baby's first winter, but it sure would be nice to give him a couple days of perfect health here and there.