A few things to know this week: July 17, 2020
Happy Friday, friends! Every week we collect some of the best things that members of our Verdunity team read, watched, or listened to over the course of the week—plus anything new from us.
New on the blog:
Emerging Stronger: Making Meaningful Progress with the Resources You Have
Verdunity’s founder Kevin Shepherd talks resource constraints and resource-conscious solutions at the local level in his latest piece for the blog.
This week’s things to know:
Few state governments adequately track the state of their infrastructure and cost of maintaining it (Brookings)
Few states are tracking the condition of their infrastructure or the true cost of maintaining it. The authors of a paper presented at the 2020 Municipal Finance Conference propose 10 things state government should do to quantify, communicate, and close the infrastructure funding gap. These concepts could be adapted for local governments as well. – Kevin
Shari Davis: What if you could help decide how the government spends public funds? (TED)
If you caught our latest podcast episode, you heard Shari Davis, Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, talk about the role of budgeting processes in more fully realizing a participatory democracy (she was joined by Derrick Braziel of Cincinnati-based MORTAR). And just yesterday, Shari’s official TED Talk went live—garnering more than 300,000 views in 24 hours. It’s ten minutes well worth your time. Give it a watch and then share it around! – Jordan
Reconciling Experts and Development Work (Development: The Unending Story)
This article is from my friend Sam Hodges, who I went to school with at LeTourneau University. Now he is getting his graduate degree, and earlier in his career he worked overseas to help get clean water in developing countries. He tackles some very important questions in this article - if you are an 'expert' in a particular field, but your expertise comes in conflict with the people you are trying to help, how should you proceed? In our Verdunity context, Sam's questions are particularly poignant as we believe that our expertise runs contrary to what we call 'business as usual'. I hope you will read this and glean how he balances providing expertise with truly listening and getting buy-in from the communities you provide your expertise to. – Tim
A conservative case against cars (Washington Examiner)
Building communities for people should not be a politically divisive subject. I'm encouraged that more conservative voices are starting to speak up about the negative impacts of autocentric development, but also the myriad of positive outcomes that just about anyone would agree they'd like to have in their neighborhood. This op-ed from Tim Carney articulates just a few reasons conservatives should get behind the movement to prioritize people over cars in our communities. "If you love family and community and dislike big government, you ought to look around yourself and ask: Is this built for people or for cars? Then ask: What can we, as a community, do to make things more people-centric?" – Kevin
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This guidebook produced by the City of Baltimore along with their community and neighborhood-oriented teams shows the possibilities of what social infrastructure can look like in the future while keeping social distancing in mind. The context examples that are available in the document outline implementation options at different entry cost levels ranging from low barrier of entry to high-cost infrastructure like micro districts and street organization and redistribution. It is promising to see cities and organizations rally around their communities in trying times to make the most of what they have to offer their residents. – Ryan
Heat Action Planning Guide (RAIL Mesa)
As we learn more about the Coronavirus, we are learning that moving a variety of activities outside is becoming can keep us safer and healthier. However, in the south, this can be a challenge in the summer when not only is the weather hot, but our built environments magnify the heat and make being outside harder. This article from RailMesa outlines some strategies that communities have created for themselves to make being outside more bearable, especially for those on a bike or on foot. For me, it bears to mind how the definition of infrastructure should be expanded—in the same way that we care about curb cuts, slip lanes, and turn radii in roads, we should think even more about shade, dust reduction, and water in our more pedestrian areas. – Tim
Mayor Cooper's proposed budget includes 32% property tax increase (News Channel 5 Nashville)
The Mayor of Nashville just proposed a 32% property tax increase for the city's next fiscal year budget. You read that right...32%. Nashville took some hits from a recent tornado and is navigating the COVID pandemic, which are the main reasons cited for the increase, but the Mayor is also attempting to get his city caught up with what is realistically needed to serve and maintain the city and years of kicking the can on deferred maintenance. This is a conversation that's going to be happening in many more cities in the coming years. It's just a matter of when, not if. – Kevin
Here's the standard disclaimer: We always encourage our team members to freely share their thoughts and opinions, both in these newsletters and elsewhere. Given that, opinions expressed by any one member do not necessarily represent the views of the company as a whole.
Want to learn more about how fiscal analysis can help you make your city stronger financially?
We created a new sister website showcasing how we use math, maps, and money to help cities communicate your resource gap and explore ways to increase tax revenue and improve service efficiency without necessarily raising taxes.
Hey, friends in local government:
Have thoughts on any of the links above? Think we missed something essential? We’re discussing these topics and more over on our brand-new online community, exclusively for local government employees.* Sign up for the Community Cultivators Network and join the discussion!
* The network is currently only for those wonderful folks out there who work in local government. If you’re not currently working for a city, town, or county, we still love you (and are sure many of you would add value to the community), but we want to keep our commitment to making this a community focused specifically on our friends working in local government. Thanks for understanding!
