Lincolnite

Here's an interesting factoid: Apparently in Lincoln there are currently about 3 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. That comes out to roughly 131 square feet per person, or an area 11 feet by 12 feet. Quick, go claim the best tract! In the future, that figure could drop to about 1 acre of parkland per 1,000 residents. Again, that's roughly 43.5 square feet per person, or an area 6 feet 7 inches square. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand Lincoln has a pretty decent parks system going right now. There's plenty of space to be shared, but there's "too much" in the sense that we can't manage it all. So if we can't -- or rather, aren't willing to -- take care of what we have, then less seems like a good idea. But boy, saying "We don't need greenspace or recreational opportunities" makes you cringe, doesn't it? On a related note, Lincoln's future may hold more spraygrounds and fewer pools. That'll make a lot of people flinch. Spraygrounds $7,000 to $10,000 per year to operate; pools comes in at $30,000 to $40,000. The argument is that spraygrounds are more financial viable. I don't follow the math. In order for a $7,000 sprayground to be a better deal than a $40,000 pool, the pool would have to bring in $33,000 or less per year. Let's say that pool is open 80 days per year. (I'm figuring June, July, and August, minus rainy days. It's a rough guesstimate.) That means the pool needs to bring in less than $412.50 per day for the sprayground to lose less money than the pool. But how hard can it be to average $412.50 per day at a pool? That's about 125 regular price youth admissions. Are there really that many low-income admissions or that few pool users that a pool can't bring in 400 bucks worth of admissions and concessions? (That's not a rhetorical question. I haven't been to a public pool in decades so I don't really have a good feel for the numbers.) It's hard for me to understand how public pools aren't making it. As my extremely rough calculations show, it doesn't take all that much for a pool to break even. If they can't even do that ... well, either we keep subsidizing or we try something else. Do public pools have advertising banners on the fences? I don't recall seeing any, but that's not saying much. Surely there's a few grand to be had there. All of this is a long way of saying: fewer (or smaller) parks and fewer pools ... is that where we want Lincoln to head? Perhaps we do. Perhaps we have a glut of parkland, and perhaps public pools are an anachronism. I might (reluctantly) grant you the latter proposition, but I whole-heartedly reject the former. I'm eager to see what Lincolnites think about all this.

Yesterday's primary election wasn't something to get excited about for most Lincoln residents. Only a couple races mattered; everybody else was automatically on their way to the general election. It was such a yawner I even forgot to write something about it yesterday. Oops. In one of the races that mattered, Deena Winter was knocked out of her City Council bid. Jonathan Cook and Travis Nelson move on. Ms. Winter probably has more name recognition than Mr. Nelson, but Nelson comes packaged with a party affiliation. Still, Winter came pretty close. I doubt we've seen the last of her in local politics. Speaking of party affiliation, I have to suspect that party line voters played a role in Tammy Buffington's strong showing. And yes, in her case I'm calling 33% "strong". Ms. Buffington has demonstrated almost zero leadership potential and I have yet to meet a person who thinks she would make a good mayor. The best I've heard so far is "She's not that bad". Lukewarm praise. Not that Chris Beutler has earned himself a ticker tape parade, of course, but he has performed well overall in his role as mayor. The Antelope Valley Project is progressing well; his support for the Haymarket arena was vindicated by voters; a new building is finally under construction in the old Star Ship 9 location; and he has done about as well as can be expected with a very crappy budget situation. Mayor Beutler may not be Mr. Excitement, but he's getting the job done. Oh yeah, there was an Airport Authority vote, too. I ... I've got nothin'. Thanks to those of you who voted. Next up: the general election.

Why is it that governments have to ensure their employees' wages are comparable to the wages of workers elsewhere? It's something I've never quite understood. Can anybody explain it to me? The question arises because of a bill before the Unicameral that would allow Nebraska's cities to compare wages with local businesses, rather than "similar" cities. Comparing locally rather than, say, with Sioux Falls seems a little more sensible. But still ... why compare at all? Isn't it an employer's prerogative to pay its employees any wage it chooses? If the city pays crummy wages, it'll get crummy workers. If the city pays phenomenal wages, it's more likely to get phenomenal workers (and outraged taxpayers). It seems like natural pressures will keep wages more or less in a reasonable range. And yet both current law and the proposed one use external sources, which may be of questionable relevance, to set pay rates. What are the best arguments in favor of letting those external sources have a say in a city's pay rates?

Most of you have figured out by now that Lincoln isn't really in the midst of some grand scheme to bring fiber to every home thanks to Verizon and oodles of public and private partners. Some of you sniffed out the gag right away; others -- including Mr. T, who contacted darn near every IT person in the City-County Building to try to get more information about the awesome project -- took longer. For what it's worth, I wrote that post not just as a gag, but also as a real thought piece. What would happen if Lincolnites got together to wire up every location in town with some of the speediest, unfiltered, and unthrottled internet connections in the country? What if educational institutions like UNL and LPS participated as part of an effort to ensure each and every one of their students had inexpensive (or even free) and reliable access to online educational resources? What if internet access were a public utility in Lincoln, with Lincoln Internet System joining Lincoln Electric System and Lincoln Water System as a provider of a public good? The "what ifs" go on and on. Don't get too hung up on the details of my post. Think instead about what might happen if folks around the city decided to use the internet as a tool to increase Lincoln's competitiveness, and to provide residents, business, and organizations with easy and affordable access to incredible resources. Or if the internet isn't your thing, think about other sorts of tools we could put to work. What would happen if all those groups came together to solve an absolutely huge problem, Lincoln's own trip to the moon? Or maybe that's too much fantasy for such a cool, blustery day.

So Lincoln didn't win the opportunity to host Google's new ridiculously-fast fiber network. That goes instead to Kansas City, Kansas. A bummer for sure, but not the least bit surprising. Many communities were vying for the opportunity. Although Lincoln has a lot going for it, our odds were never very high. That's the bad news. The good news is Lincoln is getting a city-wide high-speed fiber optic network all its own. We're just going to build it ourselves. I was first contacted about this possibility a couple months ago. I brushed it aside because, frankly, Lincoln has enough things on its plate already. Surely City officials weren't working on something as huge as this while also dealing with Antelope Valley, the arena, budget problems, and all the other goings-on in town. In fact they have been working on it, and they're set to make a formal announcement early next week, probably Tuesday. Here's what I know. The effort is a big, multi-organizational effort. And by "multi" I mean it: the City; Lancaster County; UNL; Nebraska Wesleyan; Lincoln Public Schools; Nelnet; Union Bank; and many others. It's an absolutely huge public-private partnership; Haymarket Park ain't got nothin' on this effort. The colleges are on board to help provide students (on and off campus) with new learning opportunities; LPS is there to help get all of its students online; the corporate partners are participating for a variety of strategic and competitive reasons (as you might imagine). And the tech partner? Verizon. That's right, Time Warner can go jump off a cliff. The network Verizon is going to build is the coyote that finally obliterates Time Warner's Road Runner. Many questions remain unanswered for me, and I'm sure even next week's announcement won't fill in all the gaps. As it turns out I know several people involved, at various levels. Considering how many partners there are, you probably know your fair share as well. I suggest you start badgering them. It took me a lot of prodding to get any information from the folks I know. But they're excited, and over the weeks I got a couple of them to tell me bits and pieces. Their excitement is contagious. From what I understand, the target date for completion of the network is 2016. A long time from now, sure, but this is a huge project. I can't imagine all the logistics that need to be dealt with. The first areas to go online will be those nearest downtown and the campuses of the participating colleges. That's similar to how Road Runner was first rolled out; back when it first came to town I was able to get connected at my apartment on 23rd and T long before my parents (35th and Old Cheney) could sign up. I'm thrilled about the implications of this move, sure. But you know what excites me more? I'm positively ecstatic that local government, corporate, and organizational leaders are coming together to do something truly historic. That's where we benefit most. Lincoln was recently named second-happiest city in the U.S. by Gallup. I suspect next year we will have moved up a notch.