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Posts tagged with Oregon

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2:13 PM

October 23, 2010

A Study in Contrasts

(or Why You Should Vote Republican)

As Republican-Independent-Libertarian-Constitution Party Oregon State Senate candidate Marilyn Kittelman emphatically declares, “The Choice Couldn’t Be More Clear”:

(emphasis mine)

That settles it for me, I’m voting against that burgling, raping, home invading, career politician Floyd Prozanski (or as some like to call him, that Democrat Floyd Prozanski).

I’m not actually, influenced politically by this mailer sent to my home on a Saturday afternoon.  I’m kind of befuddled though.  Doesn’t Marilyn’s campaign know the “tough on crime” meme is most effective when you give the criminals a name, a la Willie Horton?

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2:06 PM

March 7, 2010

Earthquakes and Structural Integrity

It isn’t every Winter that two incredibly powerful earthquakes shatter major cities in the Western hemisphere, and my bet is that this makes people take special notice to just how much they take for granted in the world we live. I’m not talking about any grand spiritual notions of fleeting time on earth or the temporal notion of reality.

I’m talking about buildings that don’t fall down when they aren’t supposed to.

Living on the West coast and growing up in the Midwest, natural disasters have held a sort of omnipresent though not dominating place in my consciousness. When a tornado struck in Missouri or Iowa or Illinois, it was always the shoddy, hap-hazardly constructed trailer parks that were shown leveled on the evening news. Rarely were densely populated areas decimated nor were the affluent suburbs reduced to the tattered remains of a landfill. In my apartment now, with its sinking corners, cracked windows, and wobbly floorboards, I know where exactly to take refuge when and if a earthquake hits (in the level, sturdy 6 ft long hallway that connects the bathroom, bedrooms and kitchen).

But I’m also not terribly worried about the house or apartment complex next door collapsing into mine. I’m also not worried about the building that I go to school in falling in on me in such a scenario. But maybe I should be.

In recently publicized and proactive campaign by West-coast states, public buildings and public schools are being allocated the funds they need to complete much-needed, overdue seismic retrofits. From a recent AP story by Alicia Chang:

Oregon has 1,300 schools and public safety buildings that are at high risk of collapse during a major quake. The state recently doled out $15 million to two dozen schools and emergency facilities to start the retrofit process. State law requires that all poorly built public safety building be upgraded by 2022 and public schools by 2032…

…Chile and the Pacific Northwest are part of several seismic hotspots around the globe where plates of the Earth’s crust grind and dive. These so called subduction zones give rise to mountain ranges, ocean trenches and volcanic arcs, but also spawn the largest quakes. The magnitude 8.8 Chile quake occurred in an offshore region that was under increased stress caused by a 1960 magnitude 9.5 quake – the largest recorded in history, according to geologist Jian Lin of the Woods Hols Oceanographic Institution. The temblor destroyed or badly damaged 500,000 homes and killed more than 700 people.

Similar tectonic forces are at play off the Pacific Northwest, where the Juan de Fuca plate is diving beneath North America. At some point, centuries of pent-up stress in the Cascadia subduction zone will cause the plates to slip. Scientists cannot predict when a quake will occur, only that one will…

…The Pacific Northwest “has a long geological history of doing exactly what happened in Chile,” said Brian Atwater, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington. “It’s not a matter of if but when the next one will happen.”

As an student of architecture, I know for damn sure that new buildings (particularly public ones) employ a whole host of incredibly innovative solutions to withstanding seismic loads. But they do this because the law dictates they must. Such restrictions on the freedoms of builders to cut corners are entirely necessary and forever the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile will stand as evidence of that necessity. It will be only a matter of time until every facet of our built environment will necessarily live up to that standard (including our travel infrastructure and the rest of our built environment that the state does not own). But this will not happen unless it is the government (state and federal) who are directly enforcing and support such policies. Haiti has no building codes. The central government exerted zero concern for the well-being of their citizens within their own homes, and such disaffection from the concern for their citizen’s well-being is the primary reason why a natural disaster displaced millions of people from a densely populated urban area in the year 2010. Chile, while being hit by an even more powerful earthquake, bore lesser consequences on the human scale because of the minimum standards adopted by their government; such a tragic contrast must be learned from and cannot be ignored in considering the path forward toward rebuilding and redeveloping.

I’m very heartened that the state of Oregon, even with its budget shortfalls and revenue losses, can place priorities on necessary actions to be taken by the state. This is particularly so, when that action is the ensuring that our cities, schools and workplace will not fall out from beneath our feet one day.

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12:32 PM

February 15, 2010

Victims of the Recession : Utah Schools

Every so often, school districts face budget shortfalls. They either decide then, to hold a referendum or bond measure, or to cut back in order to work with their revenues.  But in this recession, a budget shortfall is no matter of small consequence.

In Utah, the latest attempt to rectify the state’s budgetary woes comes at the apparent expense of students attending public high school. The latest proposal, seeking to lessen the pain of a 700$ million budget shortfall, calls for the elimination of the 12th grade. Rather, it toys with the idea of eliminating the 12th grade, either fully or through an opt-out sort of arrangement.

Sidenote : the legislator who proposed this is none other than State Sen. Chris Buttars, who so callously opined that he considers gays and lesbians “the greatest threat to America going down,”. But moving on from that…

His proposal also calls for the elimination of bus service for high school students.

Seems to me, as a former public high school 12th grade, bus-riding student, that this proposal is impulsive and short-sighted. If Utah sets the precedent that budget shortfalls can be met by hacking away at the public school system, our country will be in trouble. Public school is not an entitlement, not a spending program, not social welfare and not expendable. Proposals such as this one should be called out for what they are – opportunist and disinterested.

I highly doubt that any legislator who proposes the whole-sale cutting of an entire grade has any interest in improving the public school system. Further, I highly doubt that any legislator who proposes this as a means to rectify a budget gap caused by a nationwide recession should be taken seriously as anything but an ideologue.

But then again, it may be too early to see if anyone actually takes this seriously. Things like this make for great controversy and really stir up the pot, but will it solve any problems? No. It will create a whole new slew of problems, the so-called slippery slope of selling-out Utah’s students. Because if 12th grade is dispensable, why not 11th? Why not just do away with free school lunch programs then too? Or what is to stop these partisans from just cutting all funding for school districts in time of budget shortfalls?

One thing is for sure though. I take pride in my state, Oregon’s, ability to prioritize its public schools above their corporate benefactors. We passed a tax increase, the largest one in Oregon’s history, to ensure that our budget shortfalls do not hurt the public school system and its benefactors (ie, children, students everywhere). Our state legislature passed the tax increase last year, as our 2011 budget was hinging upon the increased revenues from this increase, but it was forced to undergo a ballot referendum because of the anti-tax, Nike lobby. Even within that narrative though, common sense and the common good prevailed when a majority of Oregon voters chose their public schools over their measly 10$ minimum corporate tax rate.

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9:57 PM

February 11, 2010

Change : Street character

As I was walking home today, I was beginning to step across a street when I heard someone playing the violin. It caught my attention even amongst the cop’s siren and a loud lunch-rush jamming the parking lot.

I was leaving my house later that day and was greeted, when stepping outside of the door, by the same violinist I had heard trolling the streets earlier. She was across the street, carrying on without regard for her audience. I was struck by the way this simple gesture completely changed the character of the street and the neighborhood around the lone violinist. It was a melody that fit perfectly into the breezy, cloudy, Oregon atmosphere of February, reminding me of the blooming crocus I’ve noticed along the sidewalk each morning. The wonderful thing about this whole scene was the backdrop. There was a 15′ tall, 100′ long gray wall punctuated with street trees, and she walked along a sidewalk that undulated with the bulk of the tree roots pushing up beneath it.

We’re all conditioned to think so linearly about improving urban environments : there are lots of buildings in cities, so the solution must be in the form of a building (or in the form of no building), we think. But that mentality will just lead to a state of constant building and development, rebuilding and redevelopment, when in fact a more simple alternative may exist.

Our built environment is calling for musical accompaniment.

One caveat though: in my mind, accompaniment means live music (no loudspeakers, thank you).

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9:57 PM

February 8, 2010

Victims of the Recession – Schools

Whether it was the recession or the years before the recession, our public schools are not in good shape. The latest from the NYTimes, states are reeling from the exhaustion of stimulus funds, and many face budget shortfalls that translate to budget shortfalls for schools due in large part to decreased tax revenues.

20 states are listed as having already allotted for all 100% of their stimulus funds to be spent during this school year, among those states California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia and Washington (13 others as well!). For some of these states, that fact may mean more cuts to public school budgets; but for Oregon, thanks to the passing of Measures 66 & 67, their budget/stimulus shortfalls will not effect the education of their state’s children.

Oregon is, however, facing an estimated 182$ million budget shortfall even with the tax increases in measure 66 & 67. That will mean, according to the local NPR affiliate broadcast, the curbing of some tax-credit for the state’s green energy program. Ah, the woes of a recession, but in all honesty – it could have been much worse. The next year’s budget for the state of Oregon includes over 900$ million in stimulus funds. We can sacrifice a tax credit.

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1:18 PM

February 5, 2010

Where are the student groups?

The plan for starting to fix the exorbitant costs of college tuition was laid out by President Obama in his SOTU. It included, most notably in regard to student loans (some 10 million loans were taken out last year while the amount of students who defaulted on their loans increased 30%), “limiting a borrower’s payment to 10% of his/her income and forgiving remaining debt after 20 years” (Whitehouse.gov). Such changes would drastically alter the nature of how the college student (or prospective student) makes decisions about their schooling – I would venture to guess that more would choose to seek advance degrees earlier in life (because with the loan forgiveness clause, no school debt by age 45 is a great incentive).

The House actually passed a bill that includes these exact reforms this past September. To see for yourself what it includes, check out the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act H.R. 3221. The president made a specific point to prod the Senate about catching up to the House’s impressive legislative accomplishments this past year, so all we wait upon for the most progressive education reform in decades to become the law of the land – is the Senate.

Trouble is afoot though. Trouble in the form of lobbyists for the nation’s largest private lenders, including Sallie Mae (who originated 22$ billion in student loans last year). These folks are just looking to protect their “sweet deal” as Arne Duncan calls it. “They’ve had a sweet deal. They’ve had this phenomenal deal that taxpayers have subsidized, and that’s a hard thing to give up.” (NYT 2/4/10)

So where are the student groups and parents who would benefit greatly from this reform? Why aren’t they getting sit-down meetings with Senators who are on the fence? Why aren’t college presidents writing editorials and calling Senators? Where are the teachers unions (who recently claimed huge electoral success in campaigning against big businesses like Nike for tax increases in Oregon)? There isn’t any logical reason for Senators to deny help to the millions of families and students who need it most, especially when there is a plan that does so at great lengths – all at no cost to the taxpayer. The claims made by big lenders that this legislation would cause more jobs to be lost is unfounded as well – the plan calls for incorporating the existing lending centers into an improved and more accessible customer service outlet.

It has been too long that students and families have bore the extra burden of college tuition rates that rise at nearly triple the rate of inflation. I’m calling my Senators.