Lori Boyer's response about the Fee Reductionatorium vote

[Ocklawaha]

CHESHIRE CAT, STEPHENDARE AND THELAKELANDER, I'm going to suggest metrojacksonville should buy a dozen or so copy's of the infamous "FLYING FICKLE FINGER OF FATE AWARD" which was given out by Rowan and Martins 'Laugh-In' TV show in the late 1960's. Something like a Darwin award, the FFFF is for STUPID PEOPLE, STUPID IDEAS and well... I believe Richard Nixon had one! We might get some real mileage out of such a stunt. Perhaps we could even start a tradition or a movement. One thing for sure, nobody that got one would EVER forget that mistake!

[Noone]

How about the broken chair award?

[Cheshire Cat]

Lakelander:
Internally, I believe we've already decided we want to grow MJ as a hyper local media site and one that empowers individual residents to engage in tactical urbanism.  That is to utilize the site's reach to launch your own individual advocacy groups to improve the city without relying on city hall to make the first move.  Examples of this, include Preservation SOS, Jax Truckies, Transform Jax and individual advocacy efforts such as what Doug Skiles has been doing. By our nature of being a media site, we're not always going to have a seat at the table.  I've come up against this several times in the past on things I've advocated for, including this particular issue.  It's imperative that residents from all walks of life and professions get engaged and advocate within their various networks and working relationships.

So for anyone desiring a political entity to fight for certain issues, please don't sit on the couch and wait for the few people operating MJ to make the first move.  We simply don't have the manpower to take up every cause impacting the community head on.

I think this is the clarity I was looking for Ennis and perhaps what readers and posters needed to understand about the role Metrojacksonville and it's principals can and will take regarding any given circumstance.  In the instance of the moratorium extension the site went from making folks aware of the issue to having some members involved in actively opposing a piece of legislation through action and presence at City Hall.  What I guess was not clear to many wishing to oppose the moratorium was whether or not the entity of Metrojacksonville (i.e. it's leadership) were opposing the legislation as a collective.  I think this is where a advocacy group for the site to deal with issues the site wishes to take action on may be a good idea.

A form of hyper media that encourages citizens to mobilize is more than needed and perhaps it will be the clarity of that understanding that will help others step up and take action. Which of course is the part of the equation that is always more difficult to get people to embrace due to the time, effort and cost of such undertakings.  I think in some ways people have assumed the site will take a lead as a sort of default position.  What you are in essence saying to readers is get off your chairs and do something about the issues you have a passion for.  I agree with that sentiment and have taken said action for decades myself.

[Cheshire Cat]

Ennis and I are in agreement.  But there are worse things to have available than a very well read media source with the type of factual and creative firepower that this huge group of advocates and professionals has at its disposal.

That said, I also agree with Diane that we wouldnt be badly served by organization, meetings, and some ground rules of engagement.

Weve toyed with the idea of creating a Fellows Program, and weve definitely campaigned and organized for long term projects over the past seven years, very successfully.

But they have been individually led and driven by a passion.

Diane, and anyone who feels like pursuing these types of things.

We have public meetings every tuesday night for a reason.  Join us, and help do the work of planning these things.

Citizen advocacy means just that.  Jacksonville has been ill served by letting select groups of people do all the work and leaving it up to others to be responsible.  Its a dangerous thing to do, with proven terrible results, even when the people are as awesome as all of us are.

Step up to the plate.  You will find yourselves with assets that most advocates in most other cities only dream of having.

Yes Stephen, ground rules or rules of engagement would be extremely helpful in my view, especially in light of the fact that there will be times the Metrojacksonville principals will want to take a position on a particular issue to the point of activism at some level.  People need to know the ground rules before they can embrace them.  It might also be helpful to have a sort of "sticky" notice that shows up at the top of the site stating when and where you have your regular Tuesday meetings.  You are getting a lot of newcomers who will not know this.

As someone who has been active via social media and having had a politically based forum/website as a back up to the very physical job of research, documentation and advocacy for a variety of issues, the importance of involvement beyond discussion cannot be over stated.  Unfortunately for me I have been dealing with a difficult physical illness for years which has reached the point that it has become hard for me to get out and about the way I used to all of the time.   That does not mean however that my ability to get info and intelligence has been hampered.  Just the latitude to return repeatedly to city offices for meetings and data collection.  That is why I am so heartened by the fact that this site has grown the way it has and serves as a mechanism to inspire public involvement even beyond discussion. 

Part of what I was asking also has to do with how to get the many fantastic ideas often discussed here regarding planning, development, transportation and the like go from discussion into implementation.  This is where Bob's ideas about films and the like may be quite helpful in getting certain points across. In any case the easier it is for folks to understand an issue, the more readily they can get behind it.  Unless the reader or poster has a relative working idea of how planning, development and city processes work, trying to both understand them and take action can be overwhelming. 

However, the reality of getting many of the points and ideas most important to Metrojacksonville  from discussion to implementation requires political inroads and leverage.  It is this point that may need further discussion of the board.  For instance, does the Metrojacksonville entity want to take a leadership role when it comes to screening and questioning political candidates, most particularly those running for the seat of mayor of city council? 

The fact of the matter with political issues is that as you have seen on this board in the past, when the candidates start running for office, either they or their supporters will find their way to this site and forum to speak.  Perhaps this would be the time to see which candidates can and will support the issues most important to the founders and readers of Metrojacksonville.  We really have a void when it comes to an alternative political voice here in Jacksonville.  Folio is no longer the Folio of old and it is unclear whether or not TU will continue handing politics going forward the way they have in the past which has for the most part been unbalanced in coverage culminating with candidate endorsements that are often ill thought or shortsighted.

[Cheshire Cat]

Ock:  How do I see this Cheshire Cat?  First, I don't see it as "OVER", not in 18 months, 12 months, or today, there is a crack in the door that will allow both sides to push for "further adjustments," and you can bet they'll be leaning on the council and the council members purse strings to make things to happen in their favor.

This is very true Ock and this issue and the Metropark sound issue may require some clarification of action and advocacy going forward to get the desired fairness out outcome. 

[tufsu1]

Politically I think the next logical step is to educate the builders on the huge mistake they've made by throwing the streetcar out with the fee. I will be talking to the builders and should perhaps have a core group attend with me for Q AND A about the benefits of streetcar on their developments. We can also touch on Skyway and Commuter Rail, but NOTHING will move this city's real estate developers from old south suburban tracts, to high dollar urban properties like streetcars will. They (the builders) literally begged, borrowed, lobbied and paid to eliminate the Mobility Plan that stands to make many of them millionaires.

that's the problem Ock...many of these "developers" are in fact land speculators....and streetcar sure won't help them....if it is successul, it in fact hurts them as their exurban property will be worth less

[thelakelander]

tufsu1 is dead on about the land speculation situation.  The incentive structure that encourages infill development meant nothing to them because they want to get bailed out on properties purchased before the recession. Unless we're building a streetcar on Kernan or New Berlin Road, the speculators (umm, developers) that pushed for the moratorium won't see a benefit with their far flung purchases.

[tufsu1]

feel free to ignore what us urban planners say...clearly we have no idea what we're talking about

[tufsu1]

never claimed to represent the entire field of urban planning....but Lakelander and I seem to agree on this, which was my point.

btw, so glad you can remember what I may or may not have said in 2007

[Ocklawaha]

I understand how that could be the way it plays if the process of buying, development and selling was static, but being a fluid process I think the guys sitting on a few acres off of Kernan, Pumpkin Hill or Westlake will quickly smell the opportunities being created along the streetcar, Skyway and commuter rail routes. With the opportunity to buy now, though we already have a pretty good fix on where each of the lines is going, then selling high, or developing and selling higher will be more irresistible then the urge to smash transit plans so they can make the old standard markups. What I want to present to them is a whole new world of real estate and development heretofore seen only in places like Dallas, Charlotte, St. Louis, Albuquerque, Portland, San Diego and Los Angeles/Long Beach.

Sitting on the status quo, when there is clearly a better way to make more money, faster, with a benefit to all comers might work for a Forrest Gump, but anyone with a bit of business savvy from local mom and pop construction companies to St. Joe and Flagler should be able to grasp the greater opportunity. For this purpose, I think it might be wise to recruit our core team and members to launch this educational effort.

One of the best indicators we have in this is our completely open discussion on this matter, including the speaking engagement. If we were trying to sneak something past someone we sure as hell wouldn't be doing it here. Fact is these opportunities to RETHINK JACKSONVILLE, real estate - transit - profit are in the open because they are big enough for everyone to benefit from them.

I want those builders to be telling each other, "Damn Mac, I know your just trying to make some money, but these guys with the streetcars are showing us how we can all be rich." "Well Shazam, DAMN man!"

EXCERPT PORTLAND:

Some transit experts argued that more bus routes would be a better, lower-cost alternative to the streetcar. But buses are hardly the catalyst that major property owners and developers want when it comes to investing to revitalize a community, Gustafson said. “They wanted a demonstration of commitment by the city to the area. They wanted the permanence of rails,” he said. “Creating a streetcar was part of an emphasis on making mixed-use work.”

In several cities, the streetcar has been living up to its end of the bargain, Condon said. “It changes the quality of a neighborhood so dramatically in a beneficial way,” he said, “that the intangible benefits of the introduction of these systems is quite enormous.” The construction of a streetcar line, with the permanence of its rails, Condon said, has spurred growth in housing and mixed-use buildings and shifted some city dwellers’ dependence on cars to transit, biking and walking.

What’s more, streetcars can protect the environment. “If you have clean electrical energy sources and feed them into the tram system,” Condon said, “it is greenhouse gas zero.” That combination of smart urban development and eco-friendly transit, he said, means more sustainable cities by 2050. “The real benefit of thinking about trams is not the vehicle itself,” Condon said, “but rather how the whole city works and how you move from place to place in a way that’s elegant, comfortable and greenhouse gas zero.”

Building the future

Portland has proven a positive test case, Condon said, on how a streetcar system can improve and protect an urban area. Since 2001, Gustafson said, more than $4 billion in investment has come to the area, including 10,000 new housing units. “We turned it around and made it the hottest growth area in the region, rather than vacant land,” he said, adding that developers wouldn’t have made such an investment without the streetcar. In renewing an industrial wasteland into a liveable urban community, Gustafson said, planning by developers and the city focused on amenities including parks, underground parking and affordable housing.

EXCERPT DC:


VALUE ADDED!

But a streetcar is much more expensive to build than a bus. The Office of Planning report on streetcar land use concludes that streetcars can generate more economic benefits than they cost. But all corridors are not created equal. Some can support more economic benefits than others. The best ones are those that can accommodate a lot of redevelopment.
Neighborhoods: Want a streetcar? Help pay for it.

Property owners could agree to a "value capture" system, where if their property increases in value as a result of the streetcar, some of that extra value goes back to the streetcar to pay for construction.

The Office of Planning report estimates that capturing some of the real estate benefits of the streetcar could pay for 40-60% of the cost of building one (page 68). But it also says, "The increases in real estate values and development that the streetcar could spur over a ten-year periodâ€"looking only at land within a quarter-mile of new routesâ€"would exceed the projected cost of creating the system by 600% to 1,000%" (page 7). Therefore, even greater value capture, and picking corridors willing to agree to greater value capture, could fund even more of the system.

Our experiences with building Metro provides an analogue. Arlington planned higher-density urban villages next to each Metro station, while preserving the surrounding neighborhoods a few blocks away. That gave Arlington tremendous growth without increased traffic, putting it in a very strong fiscal position for a long time. Streetcars won't be able to support densities as high as Metro, but the principle is the same.

[Cheshire Cat]

I understand how that could be the way it plays if the process of buying, development and selling was static, but being a fluid process I think the guys sitting on a few acres off of Kernan, Pumpkin Hill or Westlake will quickly smell the opportunities being created along the streetcar, Skyway and commuter rail routes. With the opportunity to buy now, though we already have a pretty good fix on where each of the lines is going, then selling high, or developing and selling higher will be more irresistible then the urge to smash transit plans so they can make the old standard markups. What I want to present to them is a whole new world of real estate and development heretofore seen only in places like Dallas, Charlotte, St. Louis, Albuquerque, Portland, San Diego and Los Angeles/Long Beach.

Sitting on the status quo, when there is clearly a better way to make more money, faster, with a benefit to all comers might work for a Forrest Gump, but anyone with a bit of business savvy from local mom and pop construction companies to St. Joe and Flagler should be able to grasp the greater opportunity. For this purpose, I think it might be wise to recruit our core team and members to launch this educational effort.

One of the best indicators we have in this is our completely open discussion on this matter, including the speaking engagement. If we were trying to sneak something past someone we sure as hell wouldn't be doing it here. Fact is these opportunities to RETHINK JACKSONVILLE, real estate - transit - profit are in the open because they are big enough for everyone to benefit from them.

I want those builders to be telling each other, "Damn Mac, I know your just trying to make some money, but these guys with the streetcars are showing us how we can all be rich." "Well Shazam, DAMN man!"

I am with you Bob.  Education of the benefits of properly planned transport/streetcars is sorely needed.  Watched a special about San Francisco last night and was again reminded how the presence of streetcars has gone a long way toward making the city easy to traverse while having fun.  The same is true in many places across the globe.  If folks truly understood the money to be made they would be far more likely to support and move toward streetcar, skyway and commuter rail. 

In Brooklyn we see a great opportunity to expand the skyway which has already been discussed however remains in a state of limbo and has for years.  It is past time for Jacksonville to turn it's biggest white elephant into a swan. Until now no one has shown the guts to do so.  We hear talk about a 50 million score board for football, but improving the Skyway, no one want's to spend another dime.