Lincolnite

Mr. T and I are both really digging the new Google+. Whereas I never really got into Facebook, G+ seems to feel more at home for me. Who knows if it'll stay that way as the product matures, but for now it's a fun toy. Unfortunately, Google+ is pretty empty right now. That diminishes some of its value. It looks like you don't need an invitation any more to get in, so if you need another distraction in your life, come on in. Be sure to throw me into your "Awesome People I Would Pay $1 Million To Meet" circle.

I'm a little fuzzy on rules associated with liquor around here. Let me see if I've got this straight. If you put other peoples' lives at grave risk, you won't lose your liquor license as long as you're a nice guy who is pretty well respected in the community. If, on the other hand, there are some pictures on a website you operate of boobs exposed in a public place, you cannot get a liquor license. To recap: boobies = bad, drunk driving = good. Let that be a lesson to all you kids out there.

Long-time readers know that The Wilsons dine out pretty much every Wednesday evening. It's a Date Night tradition The Missus and I started years ago, and which we have continued even now that we have kids. It wasn't so bad when it was just Robbie, but with three kids now it's trickier to stick to a budget while still getting a decent dining experience. Fortunately we have found a few places that don't break the bank. Last night I took the family to El Chaparro on 13th and F. I've been there several times but the rest of the family were first-timers. It's not a kid-centric restaurant by any means but we made it work by sharing meals and tweaking our order just a bit. It worked out great. Our bill for the evening: just a hair over $20.00. Our favorite Wednesday night destination is Grandmother's at 70th and A. Grandmother's is good any day, but on Wednesdays kids 12 and under eat free from the kids menu. That means we can order all of the following and leave with a bill at or under twenty bucks, plus a tip: five entrees; three milks; one or two pops; and three desserts. You can't even eat that much fast food for that price. What are some of your favorite places to eat with a crowd?

Pedestrians, stay away from 25th and O Streets. It's not safe, even on the sidewalk. In the linked situation a car veered off the road and crashed through a bus stop shelter. A mere thirteen hours earlier I saw a two-car accident at the same intersection in which one of the vehicles left the road and crashed into a utility pole. Clearly the intersection is cursed.

Fans of Chartroose Caboose will be happy to know that it's coming back to town. Sort of. PepperJax Grill, owned by the former owners of Chartroose Caboose, is opening a location just south of SouthPointe, near Chipotle and Noodles & Co. I've been eager to see PepperJax open a Lincoln location for a while now. Unfortunately, these days I don't eat meat very often so I won't likely eat there very often. I'm sure they'll do just fine without me. I just hope they don't harm the locally-owned Cheesesteak Grille nearby at 16th and Old Cheney.

Nancy Hicks says the South Beltway isn't dead after all. Yeah right! I'll believe it when I'm cruising over it in my flying car.

I don't think I have commented on the Keystone XL pipeline yet. It has taken me a while to figure out what I think about the plan to build a giant tube across the state for the purposes of transporting oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea. Yet something keeps nagging at me. Something like the nagging feeling that a worst-case scenario spill would be far worse than TransCanada has suggested, for example. There are a couple caveats here, of course. For one thing, the very notion of what constitutes a "worst-case scenario" can be pretty controversial. Some so-called worst-case scenarios are so ridiculously unlikely that worrying about them simply isn't worth the energy. I don't have the expertise to know whether or not that's happening here. A second caveat is that I don't know if John Stansbury, the UNL water resources engineer who has questioned TransCanada's assertions, is any more or less biased than TransCanada itself. He could be a hyper-militant eco freak for all I know. Well, probably not. Mr. Stansbury is likely a stand-up guy, and I'm inclined to lean toward the "Holy Crap!" interpretation of worst-case scenarios because, well, that's how humans tend to think. Besides, the Japanese were prepared for a worst-case scenario earthquake and look how that has worked out for them. Even the most prepared among us get caught with our pants down sometimes. Furthermore, it doesn't help that TransCanada is in the same industry as BP. I naturally lump the two together in my mind, fair or not. Long story short, I can't get excited about having this thing cut across Nebraska. At the very least I would demand huge -- and I mean record-setting -- amounts of "oops we screwed up" insurance from TransCanada. If the risk of accidents is as low as they say it is, then the insurance won't cost them much. And they should have to agree to a wicked, punitive fine structure for accidents. The purpose of hitting them in the pocketbook is simple: give them every incentive to build the best, most state-of-the-art pipeline in the world. Many pipeline supporters talk about all the jobs and economic development it'll create. Meh, maybe. If we're going to create jobs, let's kick off some serious sustainable energy incentive programs. More wind turbines, more geothermal, more switchgrass and other non-food ethanol sources, more turning NU research into reality. All that stuff has problems too, but they're significantly less destructive problems. Anyway, I'm not rabidly anti-pipeline, but it's hard to get excited about the construction of a possible horror movie across the state. I'm curious where you folks come down on this.

We all knew this was coming and now it's official: Mayor Beutler is asking for a 2.8 cent property tax levy increase to help cover the city's $9.3 million budget gap. The property tax increase joins this list of cuts (my comments appear in brackets):

• The reorganization of Library staff, the closure of all libraries for one-half day and reduced Sunday hours. [Unfortunate, but not a death sentence.]
• The reduction of StarTran Saturday hours from 12 to eight. [As if StarTran weren't already irrelevant. Now folks can't even get both to and from work for an 8-5 job! I'm an idiot, see below.]
• The end of Aging's Retired Senior Volunteer Program. [Hopefully this gap can be filled somehow.]
• A reduction in the City match to the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development. [Psh, Lincoln doesn't need economic development.]
• A reduction in the Healthy Homes Minority Outreach program. [I ... I don't know anything about this program.]
• The elimination of Police response to non-emergencies. [This was clearly a "nice-to-have". It'd be nice to have it back, but now isn't the time.]
• The closure of Air Park Fire Station as part of an overall station relocation effort. [I read that this station averages one call per day. Why was this reorganization not done long ago?]
• The loss of one Forestry position. [I'm still not convinced whether this is a good or bad idea.]
• The elimination of winter hours at the Pioneers Park Nature Center. [Not good, but at least it's just winter hours.]
• A cut to Public Works and Utilities General Fund. [Look for your utility bills to increase as a result.]
• The reorganization of public safety and the Finance Department. [Reorganizations always worry me. Sometimes they result in savings, and sometimes not. Think LFD becoming LFR.]

All in all the cuts are more or less tolerable, as is the property tax increase. Anti-tax folks will be up in arms over the increase. To them I say: put up or shut up. That is, show us a plan that'll eliminate the tax increase and sustain Lincoln's quality of life. I hate taxes as much as anybody, but I'm out of ideas. I'd rather pay my extra $3.50 per month than sacrifice more local programs and services. Fair enough if you disagree, I suppose. But honestly, if you do have reasonable ideas for eliminating the property tax increase, you should have been speaking up for the past few years. It's a bit late now. Better late than never, I guess. Before I close I need to point at the StarTran cut one more time. StarTran is already hamstrung by many problems. And now we're going to completely eliminate the 8-to-5 crowd from the already short list of riders? Even many K-12 students are going to be SOL if they're involved in any before- or after-school activities. We may as well eliminate the service altogether! I'm eager to see how StarTran proposes to deal with this. I'm an idiot. I missed the word "Saturday". Do you know how many times I've looked over this list of cuts, both in the City's press release and in the LJS? And would you believe that not once did my brain process the word "Saturday". Yeesh. My son starts kindergarten this fall; I may join him for the parts on reading comprehension. What say you, fair Lincolnites? Is this budget the best we can do?

Clearly the best way to deal with toxic soil is to stir up the dust so we can all breathe in and coat ourselves with the residue. This tale, from Kevin Shinn (aka Mr. Bread & Cup), is both frustrating and funny.

Most of you have seen by now that Lincoln's beltways are dead, at least over the course of the next 30 years. That's right: according to the latest plans, we're going to be stuck with our current crappy methods of getting across the south and east sides of the city until at least 2040. And all those truck drivers? Yep, we get to continue to torture them by making them drive through town with the rest of us suckers. Regular readers know that I've been a huge fan of the South and East Beltways since ... well, shoot, I don't know. It's been at least a decade, hasn't it? And no, my fandom isn't derived from some sort of allegiance to the road construction industry. The beltways are a genuinely good idea. Lincoln needs new and better transportation options, and completing a loop around the city -- Highway 77 and I-80 make up the west and north components -- is one of those options. It's not just about getting where we're going more quickly. There are oodles of other facets to this discussion. Safety, for example. Wouldn't it be fantastic to get truck traffic off of Highway 2 and 84th Street? I live right next to Highway 2 so I'm very familiar with the frustration we put truck drivers through. There are two inevitable results: trucks clog up local traffic; and annoyed truck drivers give the finger to red lights as they cruise on through the intersection. There are financial implications as well. The beltways would open tons of land to development, and adjacent land would be perfect for use by many industries. That's all I'm going to say about this for now. There's no point in getting too worked up over the death of the South and East Beltways because there are myriad budgetary fish to fry first. But don't forget about these roads. They are extremely important to Lincoln's future. We can't afford to ignore them for 30 years.

The following has nothing to do with Lincoln... I dream a lot. I always have. Some nights I don't have any dreams (or at least none that I remember), but most nights are filled with dreams. I've had some weird ones over the past two nights: I dreamt I was tapped to teach Sunday school alongside a girl -- well, woman now -- I haven't seen in 15 years. I dreamt I watched an incoming storm with my boys and we didn't seem particularly concerned about the nearby tornado. I dreamt Javier Colon got fourth place on American Idol. I dreamt I was floating in the flooded Missouri River and I had a heck of a time getting out. The water tasted of salt and chemicals. I dreamt I was umpiring baseball again. And then my favorite. This one happened last night. I dreamt that I was running through a multi-building elementary school trying to keep Robbie safe from a semi-tame / semi-hungry tyrannosaurus rex that was following close behind. Even though some of them are stressful, in general I love that I dream so much. I never know what I'm going to get when I close my eyes. OK amateur dream analysts, what does this collection of dream summaries say about my psyche? What have you dreamt lately? (Aside: My spellchecker is angry about me spelling it "dreamt" instead of "dreamed". I prefer the pronunciation "dremt" rather than "dreemed" in this context, hence the spelling.)

Nebraska's child welfare system has many flaws. Many, many flaws. Oh god the flaws... But let's not get sidetracked by trying to name them all. I want to focus on one specific allegation: that one of the reasons Nebraska spends so much money on child welfare and yet still needs considerably more money to get the job done is that the State intervenes far too quickly and aggressively in many cases. That is, too many kids are being taken away from parents, and once they're taken away they're kept away for too long. Maybe that's true. Can anybody show me proof that it's true? I hear a lot of generic accusations (such as this one), but I'm not familiar with specific instances of this type of error by the State. (Again, I'm familiar with many other flaws in Nebraska's "Families Matter", child welfare reform, and so forth. I'm looking for evidence of one particular type of flaw.) On the flip side, I hear all kinds of stories from around the country (like this one) where the child welfare system doesn't act quickly enough, if at all. I would love to learn more about "too much / too quickly" cases if they're out there. I'm sure there are examples. Can anybody point me to some?

It's nice to see LFR getting some positive press, in this case because their response times have improved. Of course, improvement was the only option after many months of poor performance back in 2007 - 2009. And consistently responding within eight minutes is the minimum standard for accreditation. There's plenty of room for improvement. One has to wonder what effect response times will have on Lincolnites' thoughts about closing Station 11 in Air Park. That station doesn't take many calls but the area it covers is relatively remote. Filling in the gap left behind by the station's closure won't be easy. This morning's LJS article doesn't mention the station's possible closure, but it's not unreasonable to assume that discussion had something to do with the timing of this article. Have you ever had to call 9-1-1 for emergency medical services? I have on several occasions. The only time I personally made the phone call was when I was managing a fireworks tent that collapsed in a wind storm. A pole snapped and whacked a woman in the side of the head. A fire truck was on the scene within ... I don't know, three or four minutes. It was very quick. The longest I've ever had to wait was when a boy broke his ankle while playing indoor soccer at Abbott Sports Complex. (There was no foul; he planted his foot and snap.) I didn't time the responders, but it wouldn't surprise me if it took 15 minutes. However long it was, it was way too long for that poor kid. I've been around for a few other soccer-related incidents -- not a single one of them caused by a foul -- and I'd guess all the rest were handled within 6-8 minutes. (As an aside, my favorite place to call 9-1-1 -- if there can be such a thing -- is Crete. You end up with what seems like two dozen volunteers arriving over a 20 minute span. Just when you think they're done, here comes another pickup.) I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I neither like the thought of an inefficient LFR station, nor the thought of escalating response times. Can we convince folks to start a construction boom out in Air Park so that the station out there more easily justifies itself? No? Well, then I'm out of ideas.