Who does your taxes? and why?

This is April 15, the traditional deadline for filing income tax returns. Various places which are seasonally rented by income tax preparers will be shutting their doors and the workers therein returning to their other jobs.

Many of these outfits have advertised, often garishly, now they can not only get your tax return prepared but let you have a loan [often, if not usually, with huge fees and at high interest] on your expected income tax return.

Minnesota municipalities have established zoning restrictions on currency exchanges and pawn shops. There is a feeling that a concentration of them in a neighborhood reflects that the neighborhood has a lot of poor people and detracts from the business opportunities elsewhere on their streets and on the residential properties in the area.

For similar reasons many neighborhoods try to avoid having a proliferation of used car dealerships, particularly the ones advertising easy or no credit necessary.

So why, now that the season is over, don’t we look at these tax outfits, especially the ones who seem more intent on offering refund loans than on filling the blanks correctly?

Let George do it

George Johnson was to be honored Wednesday night at District 2 Community Council’s December Board meeting/ Holiday Party. I was unable to be there, but assume that it all went well. I do know that our city council voted that day to honor him and I am assuming that Councilmember Bostrom was on hand at D2’s festivities to relay that commendation.

I first met George Johnson during the summer of 1988. District cleanups were new then, having been city funded in 1987 for the first time and still being funded as one-time-only events. I was the president of Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council then and the late Paul Gilliland, who held the similar position for District 2 suggested to me that perhaps we hold a joint cleanup at the now-gone Phalen Shopping Center. In the course of planning the joint cleanup he introduced me to a hydrologist named George Johnson who was the chairperson of his board’s committee which was planning the cleanup and who had the idea of working with Ramsey County and combing the joint cleanup with a hazardous waste cleanup. I immediately sensed by what seemed to be his true-believer approach to the matter.

That cleanup went well, too well really. The cleanup drew traffic lined up on Johnson Parkway back onto Seventh Street almost to White Bear Avenue. The Police Department had to do significant reassignments to handle the thing. Fortunately, both districts managed to get enough volunteers to work the event. For some of the volunteers finishing up did not come until dusk. I don’t remember the exact numbers of how many came or how much was collected, but I doubt if the numbers have ever been really topped. And I remember George Johnson, moving about confidently and unflustered as crisis after crisis [or what we thought were crises at the time] came about.

[There were others whose deep involvement in this effort merit commendation, including Mr. Gilliland and District Five’s counterpart to Mr. Johnson, Roger Hallman, but this is a post about George Johnson.]

That was twenty years ago. Cleanups have gone on since and District Councils have started to think of them as entitlements and city staff to think of them as a comparably inexpensive technique for removal of junk. George Johnson has been organizing his district’s cleanup every year and sometimes even advising and/or helping out at others. Several years ago when District Five was undergoing a staff change and temporary shorthandedness, he helped us do ours.

George’s cleanup work was specifically cited in the City Council action Wednesday. But a full accounting of his contributions should include mention of his other contributions. I don’t know them all, but I feel that I should mention some of what I know.

He has served on the Board of Directors for District 2 for [as far as I aware] the entire time since shortly before that 1988 cleanup, serving as its president for a few months in 1990. [Full disclosure statement: I was a D2 employee at that time so he was my supervisor then.] He also has served for many years on the Saint Paul Planning Commission, including a spell [2004-2006?] as its Chairperson. He succeeded his wife on that commission.

And somehow as he has done all this he has raised a couple of sons and maintained a house and kept employment and all the other things that other people do.

The City Council praises several people each year this way. There are many people who deserve such commendation and they get some of them. There is a certain “hit-or-miss” factor involved in this, but this commendation seems well in order and I wish to add my own praise also.

Ohio is looking at us and Ohio need glasses

I have recently had a Cleveland Plain Dealer article called to my attention. It compares the potential of Cleveland’s Opportunity Corridor with the development of our Phalen Corridor and Phalen Boulevard.

I do not know Cleveland. I suspect that it has the problems of many older, northern cities, maybe worse than ours because it is an older city.

The article speaks well of Phalen Corridor and Dan Bostrom. That should not be too surprising since both have plenty of good things to be said about them.

It is in error, however, when it asserts that Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council had opposed the Boulevard’s construction. I surmise that the writer reached that conclusion from an incident in which the District Council opposed an off-road proposal, the one to remove all the housing between the Boulevard and Case, 35E and Edgerton to develop something more upscale.

I should know. I was chairing the Council’s Community Planning and Economic Development Committee at the time.

But I do find it refreshing that people from other cities are looking at our story and its successes and I do wish the people in Ohio well.

And the whole thing reminds us that obtaining and maintaining livable communities is an ongoing thing, like medicine, education, or barber work.

ECBD? What's that?

Does anybody remember something called the East Central Business District [ECBD] bypass?

No, you cannot remember the bypass itself. It never happened. But maybe somebody remembers people talking about constructing it.

Four bypasses around the city’s Central Business District were planned. These were never planned to be free-way type streets, but wider streets which would remove the need to actually drive through downtown for people whose destinations were on the other side. Three of the four have been [more or less] completed.

The North CBD bypass includes Pennsylvania Avenue. The West CBD bypass is Marion/Kellogg/Chestnut. I believe that this one did not develop the way originally planned, but it is close. The South CBD bypass is Shepard/Warner Roads.

The missing link is the bypass on the east. The East CBD bypass [which was later shortened even more to ECBD bypass] was to run from Warner Road from almost underneath the Lafayette Bridge to connect with I-35E at Pennsylvania.

Its forthcoming completion was supposed to be one of the reasons that the state accepted a truck ban for the Practice Freeway segment of I-35E. Trucks could use Shepard/Warner Road and the ECBD bypass as a routing instead. As it is now, they have to cross through downtown on Jackson/Sibley.

It has been over twenty years since I served on a city-established task force to advise on the preparation of the draft Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] for the realignment of Shepard east of Randolph, Warner Road west of Childs, and the ECBD bypass. I was serving as the representative of Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council and my purpose was primarily to make sure that whatever alignment for the ECBD bypass connection with I-35E did not make the connection for the road we now call Phalen Boulevard more difficult to obtain. Most of the people participating [besides the engineers and public works people and planners] were high-ranking shirts representing businesses [such as West Publishing and Anchor Hocking -- remember them?] with Shepard Road concerns. I did feel a bit out of place among such exalted company, but stuck to why I was there and nobody else seemed to oppose me in what I was there for.

Well, the draft EIS was done and it showed no reason to not build the bypass. But it never got done. Somehow it has never been funded.

Even though I never thought I would live long enough to see it, Phalen Boulevard is done, so we don’t have to wonder whether that connection can be established. Ironically, when I was serving on a task force considering Phalen Boulevard road design, including the bypass became a concern for building it.

And there is still no bypass. I am a bit ambivalent now about the whole matter now. I have no direct interest in how many trucks drive on Jackson or Sibley. But if I had an interest in Lowertown property or development I think I would like to know what’s up.

And I wonder if my posting this may double the number of the people [to ten] who even are aware of this thing.

What to do about Sober Houses?

The City Council is about to pass an ordinance defining “sober houses” and establishing spacing and other requirements for some of the larger ones. There are a lot of them in our City. Merriam Park and West Seventh seem to be the most desired neighborhoods for sober house landlords to set up shop in. After pressure from District Councils and other community groups the city did authorize the Planning Commission to study the matter and submit suggestions. Simply speaking, that is why the Council is looking at this ordinance now.

The issue gets tricky for several reasons. Application of the Federal Fair Housing Act has stated that recovering alcoholics are protected from housing discrimination as disabled people. Nobody seems to know just how many of these places there are or how well the “clients” are doing in their recovery. Neither does anybody seem to know how many automobiles the residents need to park in the neighborhood and nobody seems to know what other problems the residents may have.

Local and/or state land use regulations and/or funding requirements control treatment facilities, but nobody receives any treatment at a sober house. These facilities have various requirements that they need to meet, including spacing requirements. One reason for spacing requirements is to avoid creating disability-concentrated, ghetto-like areas.

The advocates for this housing speak of creating new “families” of recovering people and seem to think that those who oppose them are either near-sighted, bigoted, or both.

But when a family lives in a house, they just sign one lease and send one check to the property owner. In other cases where each individual sends his/her own check to the landlord, they are covered under Boarding or Rooming House licenses. These are licensed by the city for safety, spacing, and consumer protection reasons.

The owners also use the analogy to housemates who share living units. This analogy breaks down for some of the same reason that the family argument does, that there is only one lease and one check. And the law specifically limits housing units in this city to four unrelated adults. Following this train it seems that the sober house advocates seem to feel that being a recovered alcoholic [or actually just a teetotaler] gives one rights that others do not have.

So it seems like under present rules and regulations that if I were a landowner that I could rent a large house to any number of unrelated adults at monthly rates of a few hundred dollars each. If the renters are willing, it may be free market capitalism, but exactly how free the market is is debatable, since many recovering people have seriously compromised financial situations as a result of their problem[s]. If I can get five or six people to pay $400 each it might beat having a group pay $1200-$1500. And if it turned out that one or more of the folks got tipsy and disruptive, it could be passed off as some poor soul who misstepped. I am not a treatment provider so it would not be my direct worry.

The proposed ordinance is pretty mild. It only affects larger houses and imposes minimal spacing and distancing requirements. The distance is 330 feet. For reference note that the spacing requirement for Community Residential facilities is 1320 feet [one-quarter of a mile] and the average city block is 330 feet by 660 feet [street rights-of-way included.] It also allows for some fire and safety codes and inspection thereof for the larger houses.

It is interesting that as I watched the replay of Wednesday’s City Council public hearing that I did not detect any testimony from doctors or treatment professionals saying that their clients needed this kind of housing. Testimony seemed to be primarily from landlords and people representing them.

I understand that the city is limited in what it can do and do suggest the Council pass what they have in front of them if they are afraid to be more aggressive in protecting both recovering clients and their neighbors, but seriously wonder why they cannot move the spacing requirements up and the minimum number of residents defined as a sober house down.

You may send your comments telling me how much of a bigot I am.

Earlier postSober Houses, Neighborhoods, and Planning [2/24/08]

Poor planning strikes agian, this time on Cedar Street

I commented recently on the long-term planning effects of various things involved in planning. Over the years, some of our mistakes have become pretty obvious. Platting 60-foot right-of-ways on section line streets is one I had not mentioned, but Maryland Avenue is an example of that decision’s shortsightedness. Even if nobody had ever pictured the invention of the internal combustion motor vehicle, this street’s inevitable ability to draw traffic should have been more visible.

Now we have another example. Central Presbyterian and St. Louis Catholic churches are being threatened by the proposed Central Corridor light rail boondoggle. [So is Minnesota Public [sic] Radio which recently was helped to move closer to the site with government assistance.]

So who ever allowed the churches to locate there in the first place? What colossal blunderers they must seem now!

It is hard to weep for the MPR folks, especially since their people seem to be folks more sympathetic to rail transit than the general public and their decision on location is so recent. [And I suspect that somehow Bill Kling will find a way to get more money from taxpayers for the suffering he has partly brought upon himself.]

And it is hard to find very many tears for Commissioner Ortega who apparently just found out that his mother attends mass at St. Louis. He has been one of the boondoggle’s biggest advocates.

I do find myself feeling a bit sorry for the communicants/parishioners of the two churches, but I know that I need to fight that feeling.

After all, what made them decide to build there in the first place? Didn’t they have any idea that 21^st century pols would want to run their choo-choo past them?

An Observation on City Planning [from a long, really long-term perspective]

Sometimes I wonder which crazies have been making the planning decisions for our city.

We have chased people out to allow more space for suburban scum [a redundancy, I know] to commute.

We have built handicap apartments and then closed the street which serves their building.

We have allowed railroads to wreak their own will pretty much anywhere they want to and have allowed polluters free use of so much property that we have later had to find a way to clean up that it is pathetic.

We have through zoning, funding sources, and enforcement allowed some areas to become disproportionately occupied by economically disadvantaged people and then wonder why we have schools and neighborhoods in stress.

Political, corporate, geographical, and social decisions from every level and numerous perspectives over many decades have brought us the city we have.

I have lived in two cities in my lifetime. The other is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

We are dry. They aren’t – and won’t be for a long time.

When we have floods, we have to vacate some business properties, but downtown stays open and almost nobody has to leave his/her home. We have been smart or lucky enough to build on the bluffs and not at the river level. A repeat of 1965 or 1997 or 1969 [even a few more] or any of those good years cannot bring us the kind of distress happening there.

So let’s thank our geography and the planning which has happened since the mid-nineteenth century for the blessings we often overlook, even if we question the thinking or motivation of how it happened.

Another Voice on Central Corridor

Sometimes as this "Central Corridor" has moved on towards its seemingly inevitable and certainly destructive end, I have felt like the only person concerned with the “little person” on University Avenue, the only one who was thinking on the right track about light rail on that street. Even Governor Pawlenty's veto [referred to in Grounds for Hope on Central Corridor? 4/7/08] seemed to be only a minor impediment.

I just read an article by kitkat on mnblue which helps make some of that sense of loneliness evaporate.

I don’t want to get too carried away with agreement. Kitkat seems to be a believer in transit which I still believe a tool of economic segregation [Cf. Transit and Taxes, 12/7/07] but he/she does see the injustices of the University Avenue proposal and points out its anti-progressive nature.

Kitkat notes that business ownership is one of the few means through which poor people can accumulate wealth and that University Avenue provides three things which can lead to profits for people who don’t have wealth to start out with – high traffic, affordable rent, and frequent public transit which comes within a block of the business.

Bringing through a train which stops at one-mile intervals and cutting busses back to half-hour intervals would damage those business not near the stations severely and make rents or purchase prices near the stops prohibitive, kitkat notes.

Making the neighboring businesses and residents suffer for some planner’s idea of progress still does not seem fair. As I noted in another December post, [Moving the Train, 12/16/07]

It beats me how a train that doesn’t stop and pick up people can have more riders than one which does, but leave the wonks [who, of course won’t be riding the thing themselves or trying to run businesses on University Avenue, or sleep in a house on Sherburne or Aurora] to come up with some kind of explanation.

Kitkat has put more work actual footwork into this matter than I have and seems to have reached similar conclusions on this particular project and I commend his/her post [which will be seen by a lot more people than the dozen or so who look here] to your attention.

Sober Houses, Neighborhoods, and Planning

A media release from the city of Saint Paul:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 19, 2008

PRESS ADVISORY
Panel Discussion about Sober Houses in Saint Paul

WHAT: The Neighborhood & Current Planning Committee of the Planning Commission will host a panel discussion to gather public input on the recently released draft of the Saint Paul Sober House Zoning Study. The panel will include representatives of district councils, the sober house operator community, and sober house residents.

WHEN: 7:00 pm 8:30 pm Monday, March 3rd 2008

WHERE: Martin Luther King Recreation Center
271 Mackubin St .
St. Paul , MN 55102

To request a copy of the City staff Zoning Study or submit questions for the panel, please contact:

Luis Pereira, City of Saint Paul
651-266-6591
luis.pereira@ci.stpaul.mn.us

Mail: Sober House Panel Questions
Attn: Luis Pereira
25 4th St W
1100 City Hall Annex
St. Paul , MN 55102

According to an article in the [Mpls. Star[-Journal and] Tribune, Councilmember Stark has said, "Defining what a sober house is and who's responsible if a problem arises is important," This seems hard to argue with, not that anybody is trying to argue.

But the same article goes on to note that study advises against licensing sober houses or notifying neighbors.

I haven’t seen the report yet, but it seems to me that not recommending that neighbors and district councils be notified about proposed sober houses is a major disappointment. The city notifies district councils on a variety of other matters which seem less exciting, like a variance being requested to build a fence two inches too high or somebody wanting to put up newer, more energy-efficient windows in a historical district. The county even notifies them of applications for family foster care. Certainly allowing notice of the possibility of a house which would be the abode up to a dozen or so challenged people does not seem out of order.

I am not denying that sober houses are needed. I would suggest that spacing and saturation regulations are a good idea and I do believe that neighbor notification should be a must and further suggest that if done correctly should minimize possible future conflicts and misunderstandings between the houses and their neighbors.

Central Corridor again

Governor Plenty says that we need compromise to reduce the scope of the Central Corridor Light Rail.

We need to eliminate the hookup to the Union Depot or the University campus tunnel or both. And we certainly cannot add stops at places where they might be useful.

I have a suggestion:
Eliminate the whole thing.

Earlier posts: Moving the Train [12/16/07], Transit and Taxes [12/7/07]

Randolph and Lexington OR Where can a Starving Yuppie Find Nutrition

Today the Planning Commission is scheduled to approve a rezoning request to permit a retail development on the southwest corner of Randolph and Lexington to allow what a large retail development, the primary tenant of which has been described as an upscale grocery store called Trader Joe’s.

I don’t really know much about the store. I know that they recently opened a Trader Joe’s store in Woodbury which was accompanied by gratuitous [free?] news storied in the DPP.

I suppose the location would be fine for this kind of store. After Summit Hill, Mac-Groveland, and Highland Park can all come there easily, along with whatever sufferers of affluence live in West Seventh. It’s not even a bad shot for Merriam Park and the yuppie part of Summit-University.

But it looks like they will be putting an awful lot on a small place.

And when you have Kowalski’s, Whole Foods, and Lund’s, how much more can the market bear?

Is it impossible that you won’t soon have a big commercial site begging for a new user, possibly even seeking public assistance to make the conversion?