The Rancho Cordova Post » David Lukenbill

American River Parkway Preservation Society: Regional Parks Tax Increase Proposal

David Lukenbill — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:00:30 +0000

A proposal was presented to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors this month by the regional parks department, with support from some Parkway advocacy groups, to consider adopting one of three strategies to provide money for regional parks.

Each strategy calls for an increase in taxes requiring a two-thirds vote for approval.

Each strategy uses the American River Parkway as the lead park for the marketing of the tax increase for all regional parks.

While appreciating the concern the supporters of this proposal have for the Parkway, this is a direction that could actually cause more harm than good. Potentially, this could divert resources and attention from strategies which have a chance of becoming reality and promise more long term funding sustainability. There is a better way.

Raising taxes to pay for parks is not an equitable approach, as those who do not use parks, or realize an adjacent property benefit, would be required to pay an additional tax for something they do not use or benefit from.

Those who live adjacent to the North Sacramento area of the Parkway are already burdened by neighborhood crime and habitat degradation caused by the illegal camping of the homeless. These citizens will see no value in having their taxes increased to continue failed policies.

There is a better way, and it can be found in the funding success of other signature parks, such as the Central Park Conservancy and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

Seek support for the American River Parkway through the non-coercive method of philanthropy tied to nonprofit daily management and Joint Powers Authority governance (see http://parkwayblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/arpps-article-published.html ).

Based on the deep love the regional community has for the Parkway, a philanthropic strategy offers more promise than a tax increase.

Broken Windows Policing, Homelessness, and the Parkway

David Lukenbill — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:24:49 +0000

Even though our economy is going through a very rough period right now, and at first glance it may appear that our economic troubles justify allowing the legal creation of a tent city encampment that will congregate crimogenic populations, at the same time we are reducing public safety expenditures; we should resist that urge, and do what we can to strengthen public safety on and near the Parkway rather than reducing it.

Our community is currently involved in a very serious policy debate about whether to legalize a homeless encampment, and the issue is one of major concern to our The American River Parkway Preservation Society, as it is quite possible, that if this policy is approved, the encampment will be close to the American River Parkway, continuing the Parkway camping by the homeless that has had a degrading impact on adjacent communities to use their part of the Parkway safely for several years.

It will also render moot—in Sacramento—the concept underlying the hugely successful policy of broken windows policing by legalizing the very conditions broken windows references in its policing focus.

We have referred to the broken windows form of policing where even minor infractions like panhandling, illegal camping, (or broken windows) are vigorously policed because a disorderly environment creates more disorder; in respect to the long-term policy in our area of essentially allowing illegal camping by the homeless in the Parkway, increasing crime and reducing public safety in the Parkway and surrounding neighborhoods.

The movement to create a permanent tent city near the Parkway was blogged on in January of this year, here and here.

One article about homeless camping, from November 2008, offered 25 tips for surviving out there, with #14 concerning the Parkway, noting: “It’s a half-mile from Tent Town to the American River, where the hard-core, chronically homeless hole up in the dense foliage leading up to its banks. The level of depravity increases the nearer you get to the water…” .

For its successful efforts—with its Safer Cities Initiative—to reduce the crimogenic degradation unrestricted homelessness creates, Los Angeles was recently ranked as the meanest city in the nation, as reported by the LA Daily News.

This story from City Journal reveals a horrifying look at what had been happening in Los Angeles’s Skid Row before the Safer City Initiatives were implemented.

The mean city ranking came from this report which also mentions Sacramento on page 77—and the folks who created it are working to decriminalize aspects of controlling homelessness that most communities demand as public safety measures, and as Sacramento struggles to come to terms with its homeless population, the resources included are valuable for the insight they provide into the various strategies being played out across the country around the issue that has such strong local resonance.
This article reports on recent research proving broken windows policing works.

Here is an excerpt.
“LOWELL – The year was 2005 and Lowell was being turned into a real life crime-fighting laboratory.

“Researchers, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work – clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded.

“In the remaining hot spots, normal policing and services continued.

“Then researchers from Harvard and Suffolk University sat back and watched, meticulously recording criminal incidents in each of the hot spots.

“The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated “broken windows” theory really works – that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.

“In traditional policing, you went from call to call, and that was it – you’re chasing your tail,” said Lowell patrol officer Karen Witts on a recent drive past a boarded up house that was once a bullet-pocked trouble spot. Now, she says, there appears to be a solid basis for a policing strategy that preemptively addresses the conditions that promote crime.

“Many police departments across the country already use elements of the broken windows theory, or focus on crime hot spots. The Lowell experiment offers guidance on what seems to work best. Cleaning up the physical environment was very effective; misdemeanor arrests less so, and boosting social services had no apparent impact.

“Such evidence-based policing is essential, argues David Weisburd, a professor of administration of justice at George Mason University. “We demand it in fields like medicine,” Weisburd said. “It seems to me with all the money we spend on policing, we better be able to see whether the programs have the effects we intend them to have.”

“And this particular study, he said, is “elegant” in how clearly it demonstrated crime prevention benefits.

“The broken windows theory was first put forth in a 1982 Atlantic article by James Q. Wilson, a political scientist then at Harvard, and George L. Kelling, a criminologist. The theory suggests that a disorderly environment sends a message that no one is in charge, thus increasing fear, weakening community controls, and inviting criminal behavior. It further maintains that stopping minor offenses and restoring greater order can prevent serious crime.”

George Kelling, in a recent story in City Journal writes about the larger changes that accompanied the stimulus of broken windows in reducing crime in New York City.

Sacramento County Approves JPA for American River Parkway

David Lukenbill — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:08:03 +0000

The Need for an American River Parkway Conservancy Via Approved Joint Powers Authority

Last month, the Sacramento County Recreation & Park Commission approved a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) Agreement for consideration by the respective jurisdictions of Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Sacramento City, and Sacramento County.

ARPPS applauds the short-term purpose of this approval which: “is to formalize the cooperative working relationship of each of these jurisdictions”; however, ARPPS does not approve the long-term goal which: “would be to impose a Benefit Assessment District for the American River Parkway” (Recreation & Parks Commission, June 25, 2009, Agenda Item 2, p. 2, Retrieved July 12, 2009.)

ARPPS noted in a January 18, 2008 press release, that the concept of a benefit assessment district and subsequent property tax increase was not a good idea for an already over-taxed public, and a better method is to raise funds philanthropically.

What would allow the JPA to raise substantial supplemental funding would be for the JPA to create a nonprofit conservancy, the American River Parkway Conservancy is our suggested name, dedicated to the management and funding of the Parkway.

The ability of nonprofit organizations to raise funds for worthy causes, even in a bad economy, is well proven.

Last year over $300 billion was raised by nonprofit organizations nationally and 75% of that came from individual donors.

Creating a nonprofit organization and raising money philanthropically is the strategy taken by other signature parks, such as Central Park in New York City, where the Central Park Conservancy manages the park and raises funds, raising 85% of needed funding.

While there may be little to compare between Sacramento and New York City, we can compare the significance of Central Park to New York City, to the significance of the Parkway to the Sacramento region, and from that perspective learn valuable innovations about sustaining and enhancing our beautiful resource.

In addition to learning from others, it is also crucial to ensure that the executive management of a future Parkway Conservancy is a nonprofit management professional adept at raising funds in all of the ways necessary to be of significant financial help to the Parkway.

In addition to the ongoing strategy of social enterprise, there are many methods of fundraising:

* Annual giving programs such as direct mail, events, internet-based new media/direct response, telemarketing, and volunteer-led solicitations.

* Major giving programs such as corporate support, cause-related marketing, grants from foundations and government, major gifts from individuals, planned giving, and capital campaigns.

The well managed nonprofit that needs substantial amounts of money, like a Parkway Conservancy certainly would, will need to conduct all of these efforts throughout the year, while keeping the ongoing fundraising creative and vibrant to ensure the continued interest and loyalty of funders.

In the trying economic times our region has been dealing with, any discussion of increasing taxes is counter-productive; but the love our community has for the Parkway is very evident and, given professional nonprofit management and fund raising leadership, an American River Parkway Conservancy could be relied on to rally that love around preserving, protecting, and strengthening the Parkway long into the future.

David H. Lukenbill, Senior Policy Director
American River Parkway Preservation Societ
2267 University Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95825
P: 916-486-3856 E: Dlukenbill@man.com
W: www.arpps.org B: www.parkwayblog.blogspot.com

History Punctuates Change & Parkway Funding

David Lukenbill — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:17:54 +0000

There is no doubt our state and regional governments are in terrible difficulty—with disagreement as to the cause—but difficulty, yes.

Sacramento County financial woes bode ill for the Parkway—another article about less money for the Parkway is in the Sacramento Bee today, but it is also a moment when great opportunity could be at hand.

Our proposed strategy is to form a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of local governments to provide base funding for the Parkway and the JPA then create a nonprofit conservancy to develop supplemental funding and provide daily management, which can be read about on our website, Section V of our strategy page.

The relationship between nonprofit organizations and government is essentially a compatible one, with the nonprofit providing independent issue advocacy and fundraising when needed, while remaining a public issue oriented private institution that arose in American society like in no other.

De Tocqueville speculated that the American tendency to associate in nonprofit organizations to advocate for large causes was partially responsible for the American sense of equality:

“It often happens that the English execute very great things in isolation, whereas there is scarcely an undertaking so small that Americans do not unite for it. It is evident that the former consider association as a powerful means of action; but the latter seem to see in it the sole means they have of acting.

“Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common and have applied this new science to the most objects. Does this result from an accident or could it be that there in fact exists a necessary relation between associations and equality?” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2000 translation by H. C. Mansfield and D. Winthrop. p. 490)

Among nonprofit organizations and government, social entrepreneurship and its innovation and risk-taking are exemplified nowhere else as fully as they are in America and nowhere else in America as fully as they are in California.

Paul C. Light, the renowned nonprofit organizational author, wrote in a recent article:

“Opportunities for grand change come in waves…There is good evidence that socially entrepreneurial opportunities arise during specific punctuations, or focused periods in history. During these periods, the prevailing wisdom weakens, revealing the failure of the status quo to solve problems…Today, the world appears to be experiencing a punctuation of opportunities, which is drawing new funders into the field of social entrepreneurship. No one knows for sure how long these punctuations last—a few years, a decade, or more?—but we do know that these punctuations produce a wave of activity that feeds on itself.” (Social Entrepreneurship Revisited, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2009, Volume 7, Number 3, pp.21-22)

This could very well be applicable to the current situation with our beloved Parkway and the difficulty it will be facing during the next several years, compounded by that which it has been dealing with for the past several.

While it may be difficult to consider innovative ideas regarding the funding and management of the Parkway during these trying times, it is also perhaps the best time to do so, when what has been tried now for so many years no longer works as well as it once did, (“failure of the status quo to solve problems”) and entrepreneurial risk may not be such a risk after all.

_______________________________

David H. Lukenbill, CFO & Senior Policy Director
American River Parkway Preservation Society (ARPPS)
Preserve, Protect, and Strengthen the American River Parkway,
Our Community’s Natural Heart
2267 University Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95825
Phone: 916-486-3856
Email: Dlukenbill@msn.com
Weblog: http://parkwayblog.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.arpps.org/

Guest Commentary: Parkway Plan Update

David Lukenbill — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:47:12 +0000

David H. Lukenbill, Senior Policy Director
American River Parkway Preservation Society

In the December 1985 American River Parkway Plan, an element of the Sacramento County General Plan, ratified by Sacramento County, the city of Sacramento and approved by state legislation: The Urban American River Parkway Preservation Act, California Public Resources Code Sections 5840, there was a mandate to review and update the plan every five years to allow for changing circumstances.

When I learned—during a term as president of the American River Natural History Association in 2001—that the Parkway Plan had not been updated since then, I was very concerned, as it was obvious that many of the issues troubling me about Parkway management and funding had not been addressed in a structured and organized way for quite some time.

One of the major items we worked on during the initial planning period for the formation of a new nonprofit advocacy organization—the American River Parkway Preservation Society— in 2002, was to encourage the planning update process to be conducted.

Soon after, the update process finally began and now is reaching completion—for which we are very happy—and the community should feel a certain sense of pride in the work that has been done.

The crucial piece of the completion is to ensure that in the future, the update process sticks to the original five year sequence of review and update, as new issues will evolve requiring new planning.

As of this writing the current schedule for wrapping up the plan’s review and vote—Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted to approve on August 27th— is:

· Sept. 15: Before Rancho Cordova City Council at 5:30 p.m.

· Sept. 18: Before Sacramento City Planning Commission at 5:30 p.m.

· Oct. 7: Before Sacramento City Council at 6 p.m.

· January 2009: Approval required of state Legislature.

However, what has still not been addressed adequately in this updated plan are two of the key issues that threaten the Parkway.

The American River Parkway is the most important recreational area in our region and it has serious financial and public safety issues not being dealt with effectively.

Sacramento County has been running about $1.5 million annual ($1,514,787 in the 2005/2006 budget *) Parkway maintenance deficit for years—not to mention their current county-wide deficit—and illegal camping by the homeless in the lower Parkway has created unsafe conditions for legitimate Parkway users. (* Retrieved September 11, 2008 from http://www.sacparks.net/our-parks/american-river-parkway/financial-needs-study/docs/ARP-Financial-Needs-Study-Update-2006.pdf (page vii)

The maintenance deficit impacts the entire Parkway, reducing the ability to keep trails properly cleared, facility repairs and replacements updated, and general clean-up on schedule.

The illegal camping and related crime in the lower Parkway is a serious issue, and it has gotten so dangerous that Parkway directors have recommended people not go there alone—a sad reality long accepted by the adjacent communities of Midtown and North Sacramento—who have been unable to use their part of the Parkway safely, especially if alone.

Though the updated plan does prioritize the response to illegal camping, there are insufficient funds to accomplish this and the only funding response proposed is to increase taxes and fees.

Our solution is twofold:

For financial stability: Create a public/private partnership with a nonprofit organization to manage the Parkway—which could also raise funds philanthropically—via a contract with a Joint Powers Authority of Parkway adjacent cities and the county. This management and fund raising model is being used successfully by the Central Park Conservancy, under contract with the city of New York, and the Conservancy provides 85% of the funding for Central Park. www.centralparknyc.org

For illegal camping by the chronic homeless: Conduct regular sweeps by the police through the Parkway to eliminate the illegal camping, accompanied by homeless advocate and treatment organization representatives, ensuring that warnings are given before the sweeps, any confiscated personal property of the homeless is properly stored for reclaiming and needed services can be offered to the homeless.

We wrote extensively on this issue in our research report from 2005, The American River Parkway Lower Reach Area: A Corroded Crown Jewel: Restoring the Luster @ www.arpps.org/report.pdf (pages 25-42)

Also, a press release from May 12, 2008 is posted at www.arpps.org/news.html about the homeless issue, and one from January 18, 2008 (same page) about the financial situation.

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