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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > October > 09
Friday, October 9, 2009
Kevin Riley: Swedish visitors impressed by Dayton
A group of officials from Sweden visited Dayton last week, traveling halfway round the world to find out about the Miami Valley’s waterways.
The Swedes met with folks involved with caring for and planning for our rivers — and even spent a little time paddling down the Mad River in kayaks.
Watch a video of their trip down the river
So why exactly were they here?
The group included representatives of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, local governments and farming industry.
In their part of the world, there is great concern over pollution of the Baltic Sea, they said.
Sweden has a long coastline along the Baltic. The unique nature and geography of the Baltic make it especially vulnerable to pollution. Matters are further complicated because at least nine different countries border the sea and five more countries are within the Baltic Sea’s watershed.
The Swedes believe they must find innovative ways to protect the water’s health.
The Baltic’s oxygen levels — and ability to sustain marine life — are being damaged by discharges and runoff from wastewater treatment plants, agricultural operations and other industry.
We have similar challenges in the United States in important watersheds — the Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico or Great Lakes, for example.
It’s an issue long ago recognized in the Great Miami River Watershed, and the Swedes were here to understand a program we have in place to protect the water through cooperation of the interests involved — and a free-market system.
The system is called the Great Miami River Watershed Water Quality Credit Trading Program. OK, it’s a mouthful — and I didn’t ask how you say that in Swedish.
It’s also a little complicated to understand — and you can pass over these next few paragraphs of explanation, but still get the ideas behind the Swedes’ visit.
Obviously the local program is getting international attention. It works like this:
- The goal is to reduce overall pollution “runoff.” Much of that runoff comes from farmers’ fertilizer and manure that gets into rivers and streams.
- Farmers agree to change their operations to reduce runoff; they get the money they need to finance the changes.
- The money comes from wastewater treatment plants downstream from the farmers. The plants receive credit for expected reductions in pollution.
- By getting credit for the reduced pollution, wastewater treatment plants hope to spend less money to upgrade equipment needed to treat the wastewater and meet government standards.
- The farming changes provide better environmental results over a larger area and in more rivers and streams than the wastewater treatment plant improvements would provide.
The Dayton-area program is considered a big success. Part of the trick is to get people working together when they’re not used to it.
For example, farmers — often independent sorts, suspicious of government and regulators — can believe they bear too much of the blame for environmental problems.
Wastewater treatment plant operators are reluctant to invest large sums of money in equipment that will only provide a partial solution.
According to Dusty Hall, of the Miami Conservancy District, the Swedes’ agenda had them spending time with the EPA, government officials, farmers and the people who run wastewater treatment plants.
They also met folks at the University of Dayton’s River Institute, a unique program that seeks to engage students with the region’s rivers.
A highlight of the visit was a kayak trip down the Mad River from Eastwood Lake to downtown, courtesy of Whitewater Warehouse.
The Swedes were chatting as they paddled down the river, clearly impressed by both our waterways and our methods for protecting them.
Almost on cue at one point during the trip, a great blue heron glided over the group as one member fumbled with a camera, hoping to get a picture.
As Linda Karlsson of the Swedish EPA put it: “You get a whole different view from the water.” The group saw things about us that we sometimes overlook.
Karlsson said she came away with a positive view of Dayton, and said the Rivers Institute concept was one the group would take back to Sweden.
“We’re impressed by the community … how everyone is working together on improving the rivers,” she said.
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Martin Gottlieb: Dayton candidate nights not exactly town halls
2009 ELECTIONS
In New York City last week, they finally managed to give the proverbial election to which no one came. In scores of districts (out of 6,100), literally nobody voted.
At stake citywide were the Democratic nominations to jobs called public advocate and controller. It was only the primary, but in New York City, that’s the big election.
This event is mentioned here with an eye on the pending election in the city of Dayton.
Mainly, Mayor Rhine McLin is being challenged by neighborhood activist and first-time candidate Gary Leitzell.
The best bet is that some people will, indeed, vote. And yet anybody who has seen some of the “candidate nights” has to wonder if maybe the poll workers should bring something to read on Election Day.
Candidate nights are those well-intentioned events — frequently held at schools — where voters are invited to see the candidates in person, to hear their spiels, to ask them questions. It’s a chance to size up the candidates when they are next to each other, and to do so without the media intervening. One never knows about those media people, after all.
Sometimes, media people do come, too. In such cases, they are the ones in the least pain: At least they’re being paid to be there.
Don’t picture anything like those town hall meetings about health care that you’ve heard so much about. We’re talking about excruciatingly dull recitations. The recitations come one after another after another — if the organizers have decided to combine all the races on the ballot into one evening.
The candidates are given a few minutes to introduce themselves. Then a question is asked, the answers to which are likely to consume 20 minutes or more, which isn’t necessarily so bad, depending on the question.
But the question is likely to be something like, what would you do to make Dayton better. In that case, the audience squirming starts at about five minutes.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth speakers have to compete for attention with the audience’s thoughts about escape. Suddenly aware of how uncomfortable the seats are — and that there’s no way to exit without becoming a spectacle — people become fascinated with their watches.
Sometimes a teacher brings a bunch of kids, which must seem like a good idea at the time, but ends up causing others present to fret about a whole new generation being turned off to democracy.
Turnout at some neighborhood candidate nights this year has been slight. The candidates, their friends and relatives come close to outnumbering the neighborhood people (really).
One has to wonder if the explanation for low turnout is that the word didn’t get out about the event, or that the word did get out about how boring these things are.
The blame for the boredom shouldn’t be put on the organizers. They’re just pitching in, doing their civic duty when most others won’t, making decisions about format that seem to make sense at the time.
If a race is dull, it’s just dull. If candidates don’t strike a chord — don’t grab the audience — what’s an organizer to do?
As mid-October approaches, turnout might improve at these events. Differences might sharpen. Interesting things might happen. But it’s getting late.
Conventional political wisdom would hold that the pattern so far is good news for the Democratic incumbents. An uprising against incumbents is what brings life to local campaigns.
The county’s Democratic organization can, presumably, get a certain number of the people to the polls. In a low-key, low-visibility race, that’s typically enough.
If the incumbents are, indeed, coasting in, that wasn’t to be taken for granted at the beginning. The circumstances seemed right for an uprising, given Dayton’s economic problems. But the city government hasn’t fed those circumstances through major embarrassments — scandals, obvious screw-ups, whatever. And, anyway, nobody was well positioned to take advantage. There was no obvious challenger, and there’s no real two-party system.
So Leitzell — though he surely started with a hard-core anybody-but-McLin base — had an uphill battle to gain credibility and generate enthusiasm.
It’s not clear, however, that he has even generated curiosity.
The Democrats can’t assume that everything one needs to know about how the election is going can be known from a look at the candidate nights. But from their perspective, there are worse things than boredom.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
Editorial: Miller, Thomsen, Anderson best picks for Springboro schools
2009 ELECTIONS
Springboro’s voters have not made life easy for their school board.
Four consecutive levy defeats have put an ever-tightening squeeze on the district’s finances, forcing the board to make very difficult choices among not very good options. The board, to its credit, has mostly made the best of those tough calls, especially in the last year.
On Nov. 3, two incumbents are among four candidates for three seats.
The incumbents — Don Miller, a civil service finance manager for the U.S. Air Force, and attorney Ira Thomsen — deserve re-election. For the third open seat, bank manager Scott Anderson is the best choice.
Kelly Kohls, an expert in nutrition who runs a business offering wellness services, is also a good candidate. She has some good ideas and has leveled some fair criticisms at the board. Mr. Anderson’s resume is stronger for school board.
Springboro is one of a class of Ohio school districts caught in a school funding trap. State funding increases have primarily been directed toward low-income urban and rural districts, leaving suburban areas that have high average incomes on their own to keep up with inflationary costs through local taxes. On top of that, Springboro is a high-performing district that attracts new families and ever-growing enrollment, which only adds new costs.
Yet voters have been skeptical. Critics say the district is not aggressive enough with its belt tightening. They point to administrative salaries and perks.
There are some areas where some additional savings could be made. Ms. Kohls points out, for instance, that Springboro pays not only the state-mandated equivalent of 14 percent of each administrator’s salary into a state retirement fund, it also pays an additional 10 percent that is intended to be the employee’s share. That costs about $178,000 each year.
Board members point out that administrators have been in a pay freeze for two years, and every other Warren County district also covers the employee’s share for retirement. They say Springboro needs to keep up to be competitive.
In good times, that might be true. But in financial crisis, it seems more than fair to ask administrators to pay their share of a very generous retirement. In fact, other Warren County districts ought to follow the same example. Ms. Kohls has a fair point.
Mr. Anderson’s big concern is busing. Eliminating bus service for homes within two miles of a school has saved Springboro $371,000. Anderson thinks bus service should be restored for safety reasons. School officials say efforts to arrange carpools have fallen flat, which they believe suggests that only a few kids are having difficulty either finding transportation on their own or walking to school.
For a district with a $42 million budget, big cuts require bold moves. The board made such a move when it followed the state auditor’s advice by closing an elementary school. This wasn’t an educationally sound idea, but it became a financial must when the last levy was defeated.
All told, Springboro has cut more than $6 million, a big bite of its budget. Mr. Thomsen (who has done some legal work for the Dayton Daily News) and Mr. Miller have been key players in those tough calls.
Mr. Anderson, who is leaving city council to run for this seat (as his wife runs for council), should bring a sensible new voice to the board. He is in step with the need to address the fiscal realities facing the district, but he also wants the board to do better at engaging the community and to reconsider the impact of some cuts on students.
Ms. Kohls has potential. Hopefully she will continue to get more involved in district affairs, which could lead to a greater role down the road.
In this race, Mr. Thomsen, Mr. Miller and Mr. Anderson are the best picks.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott, Suburban Communities
