An online ad promoting that electric bicycles don't face rising gasoline prices, Murf

 

The boring stuff: government job pensions | Boring but an obligation that overwhelms many governments

San Diego went bankrupt over pension liabilities.  Chicago keeps doing budgetary dancing wrt their pension liabilities ("Chicago's Pension Debt Decreases $1.3B in 2024 to $35.9B," WTTW, "A new bill would force Chicago Public Schools to pay into municipal retirement fund," Chalkbeat), as does the State of Illinois.  As part of getting DC out of bankruptcy, the federal government took over the city's pension obligations.  Etc.

To get away with not necessarily paying market rate wages for jobs, government agencies have provided good benefits packages including lifetime pensions.  But mostly cities never put away enough money to cover fully these obligations and now pension overhang is a serious problem in many cities ("What a $1.48 trillion pension gap means for cities and states," SmartCities Dive).

Oddly, Philadelphia, not known for being best practice in municipal management, is on track to have its pension obligations fully funded ("A decade ago, Philly’s pension fund looked like it could sink the city. Now it’s on pace to be fully funded by 2032," Philadelphia Inquirer).

A decade ago, the pension fund was only 45% funded and appeared to pose a significant threat to the city’s fiscal health. But a series of reforms carried about by successive mayors, state and city legislators, and municipal labor leaders have fostered a remarkable turnaround.

The city’s pension system pays for retirement benefits for city workers. Benefits vary based on when employees were hired. About 35,000 people are currently receiving benefits, according to the pension board’s most recent newsletter. That includes retirees, their beneficiaries, and disability claimants.

“The fiscal health of the Pension Fund continues its relentless upward climb since many reforms were put in place 10 years ago,” Brady, who sits on the city Board of Pensions and Retirement, said in a statement. “We’ve made smart investments, doubled our assets, reduced investment manager fees — resulting in a large reduction of the overall liability for taxpayers."

The reforms included increasing annual contributions from the city budget to the pension fund beyond the minimum amount required by state law; negotiating union contracts with higher employee retirement contributions; moving away from high-fee investment managers; and dedicating revenue from a 1% sales tax in Philadelphia to the pension fund.

Basically, they used all the tools at their disposal to make it work.  They made it a priority.  And the priority stayed a priority even as Mayoral administrations changed.

Drinking Water Utilities Climate Risk Index

 It's an index that's been calculated, but isn't an online calculator ("Tapping into risk in America’s drinking water" Carnegie Mellon University, "Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities," Nature)

By cross-referencing 1,455 medium and large water utilities across the country with what those utilities reported in their bond disclosures (financial documents that show investors the risks associated with lending money to these utilities), the study finds a gap between the actual climate risk and the risk reported in their disclosures.

Utilities serving 67 million people were rated as high risk, but more than a third of their bonds (36%) do not mention climate change, leaving communities exposed to potentially unsafe drinking water during extreme weather events and investors unaware of hidden financial liabilities. The municipal bonds studied represent $39.3 billion in debt, most of which will mature within the next 20 years. Of that total, $9.2 billion was issued by utilities identified as having high risk to climate change, but with limited evidence of climate risk awareness.

Interestingly, in Utah there is a bill pending in the legislature calling for a tax on water use to fund big new water infrastructure projects, but the projects haven't been vetted in terms of overall water use planning ("Utah bill to address water infrastructure needs advances, but not everyone's happy with it," KSL) and they presume future water supplies which may not come to fruition, given Western drought.   

Utah has amongst the lowest water rates, because they are in part subsidized by property taxes.

‘The Lake, directed by Abby Ellis, details the precipitous decline of the Great Salt Lake.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

And while not related to drinking water, but to use of water overall and the impact on the shrinking Great Salt Lake ("‘An environmental nuclear bomb’: documentary examines fight to save Great Salt Lake," "Great Salt Lake’s retreat poses a major fear: poisonous dust clouds," Guardian), the state seems to be seeking the federal government out to be the savior.  

But the federal government has negligible additional powers to act--the state has plenty ("Trump promises to work with Utah to make its salt lake ‘great again’").

From the Guardian:

The lake, often called “America’s Dead Sea” (though it is, in fact, four times larger than its counterpart in the Middle East), hit a record low in 2022, having lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area from excess diversion for agriculture and other water use.

The new film [The Lake] warns, in no uncertain terms, that going over the edge would spell catastrophe for the state’s public health, environment and economy.

Toxic dust clouds laden with mercury, arsenic and selenium from the desiccated lakebed would increase pollution for a city whose air quality is already worse than Los Angeles, provoking a respiratory and other cancer-related issues. Birdlife and recreation on the lake, already disappearing with its surface area – now less than 1,000 square miles, down from three times that in the 1980s – would vanish completely. The lake’s disappearance would inflict billions of dollars of economic damage on the region, imperil the lucrative extraction of minerals from the lakebed, and threaten ski conditions at the numerous resorts in the nearby mountains (including the slopes of Park City, looming over the film’s premiere).

Three years ago, Abbott, along with more than 30 other scientists, co-authored a report warning that absent major intervention, the 11,000-year-old Great Salt Lake would disappear within five years.

State of Utah Long Term Risks report

I was struck by the book The Fifth Risk, in its discussion about the Energy Department during the Obama Administration, and their emphasis on identifying and managing risk.  From the ReadyRoom blog entry "Risk Management Book Club #2: The Fifth Risk":

The book's title comes from MacWilliams's assessment of the risks faced by the country at the time of this transition: nuclear accidents; nuclear attacks from North Korea and Iran; an attack on the electrical grid; and project management, "the fifth risk." MacWilliams, a professional risk manager, believed the seamless transition of responsibility at DOE was key to its ability to protect the country.

In a post, I argue that a city's elected officials and stakeholders should see themselves as risk managers ("Town-city management: "We are all asset managers now"," "Learning the wrong lessons from risk management: GFC, Boeing (+ deregulation)"), and how like with large settlements because of police department misconduct, that's an indicator of a failure to manage risk ("Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department," "Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?").

So the fact that the State of Utah Legislature's Auditor General has produced a report on the long term risks faced by the state, High-Risk List" Identifying and Mitigating Critical Vulnerabilities in Utah – 2025, is quite interesting. (The report is modeled after one produced by the Government Accountability Office at the start of each new Congress.) The top ten risks are:

1. Meeting Utah's water needs 
2. Aging water infrastructure 
3. Education pathways to in-demand professions
4. Insufficient behavioral health capacity 
5. Planning effective transportation 
6. Public workforce shortages 
7. Improving housing affordability 
8. Utah's energy policy 
9. Threats to cybersecurity and data privacy 
10. Federal revenue diversification

In fall 2022, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest water level since record keeping began. The lake’s elevation sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average. Photo: C. Yamane

I'm surprised the possible dissipation of the Great Salt Lake is not listed separately ("‘Last nail in the coffin’: Utah’s Great Salt Lake on verge of collapse," Guardian, "The Great Salt Lake Is Drying. Can Utah Save It?," New York Times, "The Great Salt Lake is shrinking. What can we do to stop it?," Science News).

Nor the impact of Climate Change and the Environment--a state that emphasizes outdoor tourism in particular skiing ought to be thinking about the long term effects of less snowfall, especially with the possibility of Utah being the permanent site of the Winter Olympics ("What will it take to save the Great Salt Lake by the 2034 Winter Olympics? It depends on whom you ask.," Salt Lake Tribune). 

And air quality, especially in the winter--I'm amazed that the EPA gives the Salt Lake Valley a pass on this ("Booming Utah’s Weak Link: Surging Air Pollution," "‘We Can’t Let the Kids Go Outdoors’: Our New Reality on the West Coast," NYT).  

I hope "agricultural priorities" is an element of water needs. Air quality ("Booming Utah’s Weak Link: Surging Air Pollution," "‘We Can’t Let the Kids Go Outdoors’: Our New Reality on the West Coast," NYT)  The face is 80% of water use is for agriculture, and half that goes to alfalfa production which is mostly shipped overseas for cattle feeding.  So China basically is getting Utah's water for cheap.  From the NYT:

While climate change has contributed to extensive water shortages in the Southwest, the Great Salt Lake’s decline is mostly human-caused. Agriculture uses 71 percent of the water that would otherwise flow to the lake, and cities use around 17 percent, according to research compiled by the Great Salt Lake Strike Team, a group of climate scientists, policy analysts and state regulators.

Climate change also poses risks to households ("Climate change makes "ordinary living" a lot more risky," "Planning for heat/climate change | Public health," and "Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers"). Also see "The New American Inequality: The Cooled vs. the Cooked, and "Homeless and Burning in Phoenix, America's Hottest City," New York Times.

I don't see how Utah's energy policy is deserving of a call out and the more general issue of Climate Change and the Environment is not.

Chevron refinery at night.

Utah as a petro state.  I haven't fully read the report, but for a few years I've argued that Utah is a petro state, that the concept of nations as petro states ("The Petro States of America," Bloomberg) can be thought of sub-nationally.  

There are five refineries in Salt Lake and North Salt Lake, refining oil from Utah and Wyoming. Much of it is sold to markets outside the state.  And the state is getting approval for a railroad on federal lands to ship out crude oil for refining overseas.

Except for California, policy in petro states in the US and Canada favors fossil fuels, although Utah is gambling on nuclear energy ("Utah unveils plans to bring nuclear hub to Brigham City," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Another element of a petro state is its place within the automobile economy.  Utah doesn't have any auto manufacturing plants, but two of the ten largest car dealership groups are based in the state, adding their voice too fossil fuel supremacy.  

And road building, more than transit extension, is the top priority of the Utah Department of Transportation.  

The State Legislature even goes to the extent of trying to prevent "traffic calming" initiatives in Salt Lake City ("Bill giving UDOT veto power over some SLC street projects moves to governor’s desk," Salt Lake Tribune).

Technically, Utah is more of an extractive resources economy.  25% of the state budget comes from taxes on copper mining--but the state is second to Minnesota for copper production.  The oil thing is just a chaser.  Coal is an element that's up there too ("Mining is big business in Utah — to the tune of billions of dollars per year," Salt Lake Deseret News).

No takers.  An EV charging station in Moab, Utah.

Yet from the air quality and Olympics angle, were I state leaders, I'd push for the concept of EV only sales of automobiles by 2035 ("US Senate votes to block California 2035 electric vehicle rules," Reuters), the year after the Olympics, as a way to shift away from fossil fuels and to improve air quality and limit the impact of higher temperatures brought on by climate change.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) New home construction in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020.

I'd say sprawl/urban development form--the Salt Lake Valley is the epitome of the sprawl, despite all you read about Utah being ahead of the pack in environmental planning ("The Utah Model: Lessons for Regional Planning," Brookings)--is also a risk in terms of water use, energy use, air quality, climate change and the environment, etc. ("More suburban sprawl won’t fix Utah’s housing affordability problem," "Utah launches all-out push to build thousands of new ‘starter homes’ that you might be able to afford," "Many Utahns ‘stuck’ with hourlong commutes amid housing crisis," Salt Lake Tribune).

I'd also add the risks of continual tax reduction and political homogeneity.  The state prides itself on growth--expecting to add 2 million more residents by 2065.  The legislators constantly cut taxes, saying "we need to share the benefits of growth" when the fact is, growing places need to spend more on creating new infrastructure and replacing aging infrastructure*, not less.  A city and county risk is frequent interference and law preemption by the State Legislature.

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Flickr photo by Steven Vance.  It's a nice park....

* One example is the park I'm on the board of--one building in dire need of replacement is 61 years old.

We have tens of millions of dollars in unfunded capital improvement projects.  One source of funds we'd normally rely on, won't happen until 2029, because it needs to go on next year's ballot, and after a ballot failure last year, the County Mayor is postponing it to the next cycle.

Budget cutbacks mean a bunch of projects we intended to start in 2027 won't be funded, as the County looks to increase property tax by 20%--the first property tax increase in 6 years--and of course, people are up in arms ("Salt Lake County mayor proposes nearly 20% property tax increase," KUTV).  And our park is but one site in an array of hundreds that have serious capital needs.

Planning for heat/climate change | Public health

Yesterday, I really wanted to check out some parks in South Salt Lake, and I went for a bike ride to do so when the temperature was 106°.  

Not too smart (did help me lose some weight).  I was struck by how this one playground facility in Fitts Park was the only one I've ever seen with shade screens.

I doubt it was to deal with the heat specifically.  

More for design aesthetics probably, but increasingly these kinds of measures should be taken within parks and place planning, to make places more resilient wrt heat and sun. 

Las Vegas Boulevard, May 25th, 2017.  Photo: Richard Brian, Las Vegas Review-Journal.

For example, in bike planning, I keep mentioning misters. But misters probably should be deployed more widely as a matter of public space management.

I've discussed a few times, Heat Wave, the book by sociologist Eric Klinenberg which studied the impact of a heat wave on the vulnerable in Chicago, and the conditions and characteristics between neighborhoods with similar demographics concerning the poor and less resourced, and how these conditions shaped outcomes positively or negatively.

-- "Documentary -- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code | PBS Independent Lens"

There's been been writings recently on Phoenix especially, with summer temperatures over 120°, the impact on vulnerable populations, and their response ("As Phoenix swelters, the nights are even worse than the boiling days," "Unhoused in Phoenix’s perilous heat: ‘If I don’t keep cool, I’ll die’," Guardian).

Phoenix was one of the first cities to appoint a "heat officer," to coordinate municipal action and response on the issues ("Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers").

The Washington Post has three articles today on the topic:

-- "U.K. braces for record temperatures as ‘heat apocalypse’ hits Europe."  As Europe has experienced rising temperatures over the past 20 years, institutions are taking more measures to reduce the negative impact.  For example, 75% of housing in France doesn't have air conditioning.  French nursing homes are taking measures to provide for "extreme" cooling in the face of extreme heat, etc.

-- "Climate change is pushing hospitals to tipping point."  From the article:

Each of the organizations that signed onto the pledge — which included public hospitals, health-care centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical-device makers and suppliers — are expected to develop climate-resilience plans for their facilities, including plans to support individuals or communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

According to Ebi, any plan should mention what she called the “low-hanging fruit,” including:

• Understanding your patient base, and how it could shift with climate change
• Outlining community vulnerabilities to global warming (for example, care centers that are based in a flood plain)
• Planning personnel schedules around forecast weather events, or rescheduling surgeries to ensure anticipated surge capacity
• Providing opportunities for patients that benefit their health and the environment, such as a garden to supply fresh food for the cafeteria

-- "A Texas meteorologist warned of power outages. Then the lights went out." This has to do with managing energy demands in the face of extreme conditions.  It's interesting that as part of weather forecasting, television meteorologists report on electricity availability. 

Increasingly, Texas' energy generation system is stressed whether it's hot or cold.   But it's not just an energy production and regulation issue, it's a matter of public health.  

-- "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"

For example, Texas public water systems were damaged by the power outage in the extreme cold, health facilities and their ability to provide services are affected, and of course, the weather-related deaths, which arguably totaled in the thousands.

Also see "Heat impact calculator: Not all neighborhoods suffer equally," Orange County Register.

===

Plus there are other climate change risks, like wildfires, flooding, etc.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people: if that's the case, we need to restrict people's access to guns

Was a slogan, coined I think by the NRA, to misdirect attention away from gun control proposals of various sorts.\

If people, not guns, are the problem, then we shouldn't be making it so easy for "people" to buy guns without adequate checks, and to buy assault weapons that are more appropriate for theaters of war.

Many states, including Texas, are legalizing gun carrying without permits being required, limited checks on purchases, limited restrictions on people buying guns who have "issues," few if any restrictions on high capacity weapons, etc.

Yesterday's incident in Uvalde, Texas is beyond horrific, with 19 children and 2 adults dead, killed by a troubled and once bullied 18 year old, who was subsequently killed by law enforcement ("Texas shooting: How a sunny Uvalde school day ended in bloodshed," BBC).

Somehow, he was able to buy two rifles just the day before.

It's insane that people have to worry about being shot when they go to church or temple ("One dead, multiple injuries in Laguna Woods church shooting"), a supermarket ("Gunman Kills 10 at Buffalo Supermarket in Racist Attack," New York Times), shopping center, nightlife district ("3 alleged gang members charged with murder in Sacramento mass shooting," ABC News, "FBI releases final report on investigation into motive behind Dayton mass shooting," WLWT TV), or school ("Victims, parents of Oxford school shooting victims sue school employees," ABC News).

I've been thinking lately, in response to all the incidents of mass shootings, certainly multiple events every week, that we are reaching "peak gun," and there are so many incidents because of "the nexus of guns, perpetrators, and people."

The Second Amendment is supposed to ensure gun access wrt use in "organized [community] militias," not wanton access to guns in ways that reduce public safety rather than enhance it.

Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department

Fullerton Police Department.  Fullerton's police department completely revamped its use of force, training, and other practices after police officers beat Kelly Thomas, a homeless man, to death in July 2011

While the city paid out a big judgement to his family, rather than accept what happened as "an accident," the City of Fullerton evaluated various police processes and changed them, to reduce the likelihood of injury and death in interactions between the police and the public ("Here's how Fullerton police have improved since Kelly Thomas' death." Orange County Register).

The changes in practice were not limited to dealing with homeless people or people in mental distress, but in how all of the city's police officers interact with the public and how they are trained.

The police department has set a goal of being one of the best police departments in the country for its size, and measures its success through annual independent reviews.  From the article:

The study offers a half-dozen recommendations – compared with 59 in its first review – that range from striving to use the least force necessary to more cautious foot pursuits. 

... Four years ago, OIR Group recommended that officers – when safely possible – employ less force by increasing time and distance, using cover and concealment, creating barriers, and calling and waiting for backup.

“The department,” the document says, “has substantially addressed many of the shortcomings we noted in our 2012 report.” 

First, a new training room was built for officers to practice lesser-force techniques. Then, a video-based interactive training system was installed. It offers more than 200 bad-guy scenarios, and each one can be altered with the touch of a screen. 

“These upgrades in training facilities,” the report concludes, “allow trainers to emphasize the importance of tactical alternatives to force, particularly deadly force.” 

The training may be paying off. Citizen complaints have dropped from a high of 36 in 2014 to a low of 24 last year. 

Still, the new report offers new suggestions. They include requiring incident reports to check off threat perception, least-use-of-force efforts, and adherence to reporting policies. 

The process in Fullerton is appears to be a national model, unlike the whitewashes that seem to be happening in most other cities when it comes to evaluating police departments and officers in terms of excessive force and deaths at the hands of police officers.

--  Fullerton Police Department: Audit of Force Reviews and Internal Investigations, August 2016, OIR Group

Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies kill a homeless man in San Clemente, September 2020 ("DA clears deputy who shot and killed homeless Black man in San Clemente," Orange County Register). 

Officers from the homeless liaison unit !!!!!!! confronted a homeless man who was jaywalking.  In the struggle that resulted, they determined he reached for one of the officer's gun, so they shot and killed him.

The DA cleared the officers, saying he was reaching for the gun, but that is disputed.  Amazingly, the DA said that the man wasn't jaywalking (although they said he was crossing against a green light giving them still the reason to stop him).

Process redesign.  It's so obvious the officers in San Clemente mishandled this, and is just as egregious as the actions of the West Valley Utah Police Department in their apprehension and subsequent killing of a man in mental distress, which was documented by the Salt Lake Tribune ("A West Valley City police officer killed a man inside the police department. It was his third shooting") and later featured in a Frontline documentary, "Shots Fired."

It happens over and over and over again because police departments, their "overseers" -- the fact is that true oversight is minimal -- elected officials and the public see such killings as routine, maybe unfortunate, but not as an indicator of process failure.

For example, I argue that the high rate of settlements for police misconduct ought to be seen as an indicator of system failure ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Instead, rather than get fired, the West Valley police officer serial killer got a commendation.  And the family just got a settlement "West Valley City settles lawsuit with mother of man shot, killed while handcuffed in police station").

Why is Fullerton's police department such an outlier?  This is something I need to track down.

Get vaccinated

 In a comment on a Washington Post article, the person wrote that the rest of us shouldn't try to impose vaccination on a "small minority."  I commented that 33% of the population is 109 million people.  That's not small ("As Omicron Spreads and Cases Soar, the Unvaccinated Remain Defiant," New York Times).

Chart from Statista.

Hospital systems and public health departments never thought they'd have to plan for 33% of the population actively refusing vaccinations in the face of a pandemic and the consequences that would result--an overwhelming of ICU and emergency care departments.

The hospital systems in the Cleveland region put an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer calling on people to get vaccination ("Ohio hospitals urge COVID-19 vaccinations in powerful ad," NBC Today).

It's hard to say what's going on with the virus.  Omicron appears to be better at evading the power of the vaccine unless you are boosted ("Omicron is a game-changer for Covid-19 vaccines," CNN).  It's much more contagious, but less deadly.  Even so, people who are vaccinated are much less likely to experience severe symptoms, the need for hospitalization, or the likelihood of death.

I am totally unable to process how 33% of the population could be so fundamentally bad at calculating risk.

Policing and city risk and reputational management: Ocean City, Maryland | Create beach ambassadors to deescalate visitor management

The Washington Post writes, "Ocean City boardwalk: Violent arrests of unarmed young men raise questions about policing," about a bunch of violent policing episodes in the beach section of Ocean City, Maryland.  

The city has rules about "vaping on the boardwalk" and the crowds get more unruly as the night goes on and people become more inebriated. 

The need to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.  It's a particularly good example of the need for rearticulating how to deal with public safety in a broader and more nuanced fashion ("The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented"). 

Police often escalate even the mundane.  It occurred to me while reading the article that there is an element of "police escalating a situation" that hasn't been adequately identified in all the recent analysis of overpolicing, warrior policing, "defund" etc.

I had a few experiences with cops in my teens and 20s that left me negatively disposed. 

My sense was that because police officers mostly deal with criminals on hard things: 

(1) they tend to believe that everyone they deal with is a criminal.  (At least that's the way I perceived my interactions.  That's how I felt I was treated.)

(2) they escalated the situation(s) almost immediately, not violently with tasers or guns, but "socio-emotionally" by immediately assuming the worst of the situation and the people they encountered, and communicating this in everything they said and did.

I'm a pretty nondescript white guy as were the people I was with.

This form of escalation hasn't been identified as an issue, but it likely contributes to escalation of the many incidents that quickly become violent.. 

Policing and risk management.  And a good example that elected officials don't look at policing as a risk management issue, and such incidents should be seen as indicators that there is a problem that should be addressed ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?").

Tourism as an invasion, and the attack response?  Ocean City is a town of 7,000 people year around--90% white, but grows by at least 250,000 week by week throughout the summer, and 40% or more of visitors are people of color.  

The police department isn't huge, and augments its force every summer with "temporary officers."  Most are white.  And the article describes a number of troubling incidents, not limited to the temporary officers.

A town that grows 300x every week throughout the summer must feel like an invasion to many of the residents and the city more generally.  

Other cities face the same issues.  Either with Spring Break or other special events ("Police chief: End truck meet -- 300 police officers trying to control 50,000 visitors," Dayton Beach News-Journal) or more generally like Amsterdam ("'Don't come to Amsterdam.' Dutch capital tells rowdy tourists to stay away," CNN), Barcelona ("Can Barcelona Fix Its Love-Hate Relationship With Tourists After the Pandemic?," TIME Magazine), and Venice, and are trying to take special measures to reduce the impact.  

Thinking of this as an invasion may well carry over into the attitude of the police officers and how they interact with visitors.  And frankly, some of the incidents might cause them to feel that way (" Maryland Men Charged With Setting Car On Fire, Shooting Into House Of Women They Met At Seacrets, Ocean City," CBS Baltimore).

The boardwalk sits between the sand of the beach and the long strip of businesses -- hotels, retail, taverns, rental shops, etc. -- facing the ocean.  Photo: Julia Hatmaker, Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Vaping on the boardwalk the equivalent of traffic stops as opportunities for escalation?  A number of incidents have been around vaping, as smoking and vaping is forbidden on the beach and boardwalk.  

It reminds me of the really great discussion lately about traffic stops and how they are used by police as a way to initiate "stop and search" ("WHAT TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT POLICE COULD LOOK LIKE," The Appeal; "Traffic without the police," Stanford Law Review, 73: 2021).  

As part of the "defund"/rearticulation of public safety discussion, traffic stops are being brought up, that they should only be made for true traffic violations, not as an excuse to create the opportunity for an arrest.

Smoking or vaping on the beach, like traffic stops, is an opportunity for escalation and for things to go awry in unexpected ways with terrible consequences.

Lifeguard station in Ocean City.  Image from the city website.

Lifeguards for the water, beach ambassadors for the sand.  I hate smoking, so have no problem with the ban.

But like how lifeguards are hired to manage people in the water ("Ocean City Beach Patrol Works Hard, Rescues 557 Swimmers This Summer," OCNJDaily, "n Ocean City, another lifeguard season begins — two minutes early," Baltimore Sun), from the perspective of rearticulating how public safety is defined and delivered, I'd create positions--beach ambassadors--to manage the sand side of the beach in a similar way, shifting from the more coercive approach of police officers.  

Beach ambassadors in Virginia Beach wear bright yellow shirts.  Photo: WAVY-TV.

It turns out Virginia Beach already does this ("Beach ambassadors: They don’t police, but they play a role in keeping Virginia Beach safe," Norfolk Virginian-Pilot) as do other communities.  From the article:

“We’re not here to police,” she said. “We’re here to basically bring calm and reassurance.” 

Beach ambassadors are stationed on every block in the resort area and are roaming at other city beaches. The city has a $1.2 million contract with IMGoing for the service, which likely will continue through Labor Day weekend, Deputy City Manager Ron Williams said. The money is coming from the Tourism Investment Program fund. 

According to their job description, beach ambassadors are to serve as a “welcoming committee” for visitors. They are to remind people of the beach guidelines, which are also posted on signs along the beach and the Boardwalk.

Ocean City calls the lifeguards the Beach Patrol.  They can include beach ambassadors within the same program.   From the Sun article:

“They’re the ambassadors down here,” he said of the lifeguards, new and old. “They've been trained on how to talk to people.”

Some communities, with smaller crowds, and fewer order issues, have volunteer beach ambassador programs.  But cities dealing with large crowds, like Ocean City or Virginia Beach, need more formal programs.

The "beach ambassadors" would manage the beach and boardwalk the way that lifeguards manage the water.  And they should not just be drawn from Ocean City and the surrounding county, which are predominately white, but also from communities like Baltimore or Harrisburg where many of the young visitors originate.

Recommendations to Ocean City.  (1) Ocean City ought to be addressing public safety from a risk management and tourism reputation standpoint and manage it accordingly. 

Although probably a lot of visitors reading articles like the one in the Post blame the people "served" by the cops, and won't change their plans to visit.

(2) Hire a crew of police officers more reflective of the demographics of summer visitors rather than the demographics of the permanent residents who are 90% white. 

(3) The police need to be trained super well in terms of the likely issues, crowd control, and especially de-escalation. 

(4) Create a crew of Beach Ambassadors to provide softer management of the beach and boardwalk, tot de-emphasize coercion and police presence, but with police as back up as needed.  

Conclusion: create a community safety partnership for the beach.  In some ways, the tourist "invasion" should be seen as a nuisance, and managed proactively and professionally ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)").  Business improvement districts and the way they provide extra-normal services including public safety management are one example of how to do it.

Documentary -- Cooked: Survival by Zip Code | PBS Independent Lens

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, premiered on the PBS Independent Lens documentary series a couple weeks ago.  

It's being repeated on PBS World Channel as well as stations, and is still viewable online.  (World Channel is carried by many PBS stations as one of their HDTV channels.  Unfortunately, it's not available in the DC area.)

The program is about the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, which killed more than 700 people, which was chronicled in the dissertation and later a book by sociologist Eric Klinenberg.

-- "Denaturalizing disaster: A social autopsy of the 1995 Chicago heat wave," Theory and Society, 1999, original journal article by Klinenberg, free to download

The documentary is about "natural disasters" that are in fact the logical outcomes of social disparities.

The filmmaker, Judith Helfland, is struck by the oddity of how the US emergency management and disaster response system is focused on catastrophic events -- earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. -- and not the kinds of socially determined "disasters" that are the result of economic, racial, and class disparities of the kinds that resulted in the heat related deaths in Chicago.  

According to the film, there are about 3,200 premature deaths each year in Chicago that for the most part, result from poverty.

-- Social determinants of health, CDC

What happened in Chicago was that poor people, mostly older, with fewer resources, in communities with fewer resources, died from heat-related causes as the temperature exceeded 100° for multiple days in a row in July 1995, while wealthier communities pretty much got through the heat wave unscathed.

One of the interesting findings in Klinenberg's book is that communities with the same kinds of demographics, but positive differences in social capital, community organizations and institutions, didn't have the same high rates of death.

The shaded areas in this map of Chicago neighborhoods show the high poverty neighborhoods, which pretty much track other high rates of negative indicators (health, low educational attainment, etc.).  They also track the neighborhood redlining maps from the 1930s.

Steve Whitman/Sinai Urban Health Institute.  One of the people featured in the documentary is epidemiologist Steve Whitman.  At the time of the heat wave he was a Deputy Commissioner of Health for the City of Chicago.  He left the city in 2000 to start the Sinai Urban Health Institute at Sinai Hospital.  He died in 2014 ("Steven Whitman, social epidemiologist, 1943-2014," Chicago Tribune).

SUHI conducts community health surveys and aims to address chronic health conditions and disparities resulting from poverty.

-- Improving Community Health Survey, 2004, SUHI

They published a book, Urban health: combating disparities with local data, which outlines the "Sinai model" which is based on the idea that by collecting health data at the scale of neighborhoods, effective responses can be developed to reduce health disparities. 

Interestingly, footage showing Mayor Daley at press conferences during the heat wave shows the same kind of blockheadedness demonstrated during the nation's most significant public health disaster--the response to covid19.

Daley downplayed the deaths, blamed the victims, etc.  The city does have a regularized response program for heat waves, so they don't experience the same level of premature death that they did in 1995, but they haven't extended the approach to poverty or chronic health conditions more generally.

I've written about this general issue in "More communities need to integrate health care and public health programming: Prince George's County, DC, etc." (2020).  It builds on a series in 2017 and follow ups, taking a "transformational projects action planning" approach to rebuilding the United Medical Center in Southeast DC, in a manner that would link public health and hospital care with a focus on addressing chronic medical conditions that tend to be a problem in low income communities.

The Sinai Urban Health Institute is another best practice program that should be incorporated into that concept.

Disaster response as a root of federal social welfare systems.  The documentary also interviews Stanford professor Michele Dauber, who's written The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State.  That's another book I need to track down and read.

The thesis is that FDR's New Deal used the long time examples of federal response to disaster and disaster relief as a way to justify the creation of social welfare programs like Social Security.

This lecture from 2013 outlines the arguments of the book.

For want of a nail etc. | Fallout from Flint water disaster continues

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

This proverb is often quoted in regard to failure in battle and being unprepared.

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Like with how police officers don't have to pay when they lose lawsuits over misconduct--instead the city or county pays the judgement, e.g., Chicago pays out tens of millions of dollars each year ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?"), government officials rarely pay the costs of their failures, instead, tax paying citizens pay.

This comes up with the debacle over lead in water in the City of Flint.  The city shifted from "Detroit water" to local water in an effort to save money.

But for whatever reason, the officials in charge of the water system, even though they knew it was required, did not add the suggested chemicals necessary to deal with the difference in water acidity between Detroit water and water from the Flint River.

For whatever reason, contrary to law the state agency overseeing water matters did not require the city to add the chemicals.  And the city didn't have the money to pay for the equipment they needed to be able to add the chemicals anyway ("Why didn't Flint treat its water? An answer, at last," Detroit Free Press).

As a result, pipes corroded and lead leeched into the water.

The State of Michigan just agreed to pay $600 million to people disproportionately affected by the water problem ("Michigan to Pay $600 Million to Victims of Flint Water Crisis," New York Times).
.
There are other judgments that have been paid out also.

According to the Free Press, the cost of the necessary chemicals was $150/day, about $3,000/month.

That's a lot cheaper to pay out than $600 million.  Even with some additional costs for new equipment.

While there has been a lot of discussion about how what happened is an illustration of the need to invest in infrastructure, and that's true ("Flint’s water crisis highlights need for infrastructure investment and innovation," Brookings Institution), the problem here is much simpler.  Just basic failure to do the most basic requirements in your job.

Just because the State water agency failed to order the city to treat the water, the water officials in Flint understood that they needed to add anti-corrosion chemicals, because of the change in water source.  But because they weren't ordered to do so, they didn't do it.

It's also an illustration of the failure to adopt modern risk management practices in government.

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Dams.  Also see, regulatory failures concerning dams in Michigan costs hundreds of millions of dollars in damage after dams were breached ("Midland, Michigan, failed dams, floods caused $200M in damages to 2,500 buildings," Bridge; "Displacing a problem doesn't solve it: an example of how restrained regulation can cost millions of dollars | Flooding in Mid-Michigan from a dam break").

Aerial photo of flooding in downtown Midland, Mich., Wednesday, May 20, 2020. (Photo: Kelly Jordan and Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

Associated Press photo.

Explosive materials in the Port of Beirut.  In recent memory, perhaps the biggest example of risk management failure to protect public health is the recent explosion of impounded fertilizer at the Port of Beirut.

Fertilizer, in the right conditions, can act like a bomb, and this was almost 3,000 metric tons of fertilizer ("Why Beirut's ammonium nitrate blast was so devastating," Nature).

A ship carrying the cargo had been impounded.  The Port Authority wanted the fertilizer moved, but despite multiple entreaties to the country's courts, nothing happened, for 6 years.  Evidentally, the courts did not understand the dangerous conditions created by the cargo impoundment ("Blame for Beirut Explosion Begins With a Leaky, Troubled Ship," New York Times).

Image from video by Agence France Press.

Apparently a nearby fire likely triggered, the fertilizer, and the explosion killed more than 200 people, injured more than 5,000, left 300,000 people homeless and destroyed thousands of properties.

It led to massive political demonstrations and the fall of the national government.

It's an epic fail(ure) example of poor risk management.

Although after the explosion, ports elsewhere were motivated to determine whether or not they also have risk issues around fertilizer ("After Beirut explosion, ports around the world searched for ammonium nitrate," Washington Post).

More on police misconduct as a risk management issue

Following "Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?" and "How to incentivize better police conduct: pay settlements out of police officer pension funds".

Could the City of St. Paul sue Minneapolis, because of their being collateral damage in the damage fueled by unrest after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis? Probably not, just as states and others suing China over the coronavirus won't go anywhere.

Additionally, Alex B. points out that the US Supreme Court has given police officers wide discretion and the ability to evade responsibility for their actions in what is called "qualified immunity" ("The Supreme Court Broke Police Accountability. Now It Has the Chance to Fix It.," Slate).

In this case, pictures are worth 1000+ words

According to the comments on this Minneapolis Star Tribune article, "Buildings damaged in Minneapolis, St. Paul after protests," listing damaged buildings in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and elsewhere in the Minneapolis metropolitan areas, the damage is much worse.


Seen from Hiawatha Avenue, a large fire burns on E. Lake St. during a third night of unrest following the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody early in the week. David Joles, Minneapolis Star Tribune.


The Family Dollar Store at Lake Street and 10th Ave. burned early Friday morning May 29, 2020, in Minneapolis, MN. David Joles, Minneapolis Star Tribune.


St. Paul firefighters battled fires at Sports Dome and other businesses near the Midway Center on Friday in St. Paul. Elizabeth Flores, Minneapolis Star Tribune.


Police officer pepper spraying demonstrators, Minneapolis. Mark Vancleave, Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Minneapolis 3rd Police Precinct was set on fire on Thursday night. Carlos Gonzalez, Minneapolis Star Tribune.

How to incentivize better police conduct: pay settlements out of police officer pension funds

Yes, police officers and other emergency workers put their lives at risk. This is often used as a justification for particularly generous pensions and retirement policies ("Amid Funding Shortfall, Lawmakers OK Pension Boost for Cops, Firefighters," New Jersey Spotlight; "Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal," Orange County Register)

In the previous post, "Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," I forgot to mention my idea on how to "better align incentives for optimal police officer conduct" by making police officer pension funds responsible for paying out settlements for police misconduct, and concomitantly reducing pension payouts as required.

Granted, that comes at the expense of already retired officers, but then again, what better way to align incentives?

Then again, in the heat of the moment, a police officer isn't likely to think about his pension or the pensions of fellow and retired officers.

OTOH, police unions would likely agree to significant changes in training.

For example, in the UK, police officers have to get special training and ongoing certification in order to carry a gun, and it is a much more difficult and involved process compared to US police training requirements. From the wikipedia entry on Authorized Firearms Officers:

Candidates are required to gain approval from their superiors before embarking on a series of interviews, psychological and physical fitness tests, medical examinations and assessment days, before permission to commence firearms training is given. There is no guarantee of success; candidates can be returned to their previous role at any point in training if they do not meet the required standard.

Once authorised, AFOs must pass regular refresher training and retests in order to maintain their authorisation. Failure to meet the required standards can result in the officer having their firearms authorisation revoked. Health or fitness problems can also result in temporary or permanent suspension from firearms duties.

Imagine if US police officers had similar requirements. Although, like with the recent incident in Minneapolis, and past incidents in New York City, Baltimore, and others, people can be killed by use of force other than a gun.

Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?

Again, I have not yet read the new book published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions: Managing and Envisioning Uncertainties, although it's in my pile of "to read."

Officials and stakeholders as managers of the city's identity and "brand." In 2005 I wrote a piece about commercial district revitalization making the point that if we think of ourselves as "destination managers" we will make places great for both residents and visitors.

In 2008, I extended this concept to city elected and appointed officials and stakeholders as a community's collective of "brand managers" responsible for the brand promise of a community:

... elected officials need to take their responsibilities as stewards and managers of a community's image very seriously:
Just as the study team believes that “we are all destination managers now,” elected and appointed officials in particular and in association with other community stakeholders serve as a community’s “brand managers”—whether or not they choose to think of their roles in this manner.

That means that decision-making on land use and zoning, business issues, infrastructure development (roads, sewers, water, utilities, transit), technology (broadband Internet, etc.) and quality of place factors (arts, culture, historic preservation and heritage, education, public schools and libraries, urban design, etc.) must be consistent and focused on making the right decisions, the decisions that collectively achieve and support the realization of the community’s desired vision and positioning.

In 2015 I extended this argument further, that officials and stakeholders need to see their roles as the managers of a community's assets.

For awhile now, I've been meaning to do this around risk management too, although I have written about that in the context of lawsuits around policing.

Police misconduct settlements can be costly. For example, Chicago spends many tens of millions of dollars every year in settlements for police misconduct  ("Chicago spent more than $113 million on police misconduct in 2018," Chicago Reporter).

Add to that the cost of legal representation, often on outside counsel ("A hidden cost of Chicago police misconduct: $213 million to private lawyers since 2004," Chicago Tribune).

And that this might have to be financed in a way that adds to a city's long term debt ("How Chicago's financing of police-misconduct payouts adds hundreds of millions to the tab," Crain's Chicago Business).

Shouldn't settlement costs be seen as an indicator of a system failure that must be addressed?  You'd think that elected officials would take that as an indicator of a problem with the police department, and look at the need for management, process, and policing reforms, rather than merely as the "cost of doing business."

When I take on planning engagements, I look at outcomes in terms of what is desired and what in fact occurs.

When desired outcomes aren't produced as a matter of course by the system of processes that produces them, that's an indicator of a need to work backwards through the processes, to identify why things aren't working the way that's desired, and make changes.

In the case of policing, it's a clear need for different strategies and tactics and more robust training ("Policing: escalation vs. de-escalation," 2014).

Protesters hold signs outside the precinct building. Stephen Maturen / Getty Images

Police misconduct can lead to social unrest.  Another potential cost derived from police misconduct is rebellion and riot.

That's happening this week in Minneapolis after the release of a video showing the death of George Floyd as a result of police use of force in his arrest ("Man dies in MPD custody, 4 cops fired; protesters, police clash," Minnesota Public Radio; "George Floyd protest turns deadly; Minneapolis mayor requests National Guard," NBC).

For example, the 1965 riots in Watts, the 1967 riots in Detroit, and the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969, were each the response of fed up publics to what they considered to be unreasonable, oppressive, over-policing

More recently the same is true of Ferguson/St. Louis after the death of Michael Brown in 2014 and the development of the #Black Live Matters movement and riots and ongoing unrest in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray in 2015.

And these costs in both St. Louis and Baltimore are ongoing, 5-6 years afterwards.

Ted Rall editorial cartoon.

Police unions focus on protecting police officers not improving outcomes. One of the problems in all of this is police unions. First, these unions tend to be pretty involved in local politics, funding campaigns, etc.

 Second, they work very hard in collective bargaining negotiations to provide lots of protections to officers in cases of charges of misconduct, in ways that can make it very difficult to discipline undesirable behavior.

-- "The unjust power of police unions," The Week
-- "Our Police Union Problem," New York Times
-- "The Impact of Unions on Municipal Elections and Urban Fiscal Policies," University of Pennsylvania

Fullerton California as a counter-example:  completely revamps use of force, training, and other practices after the after a police officer beat to death a homeless man.  After the fatal beating of Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic (the city paid a big judgement to his family) rather than accept what happened as "an accident," the City of Fullerton evaluated various police processes and changed them, to reduce the likelihood of injury and death in interactions between the police and the public ("Here's how Fullerton police have improved since Kelly Thomas' death," Orange County Register).

The changes in practice were not limited to dealing with homeless people or people in mental distress, but in how all of the city's police officers interact with the public and how they are trained.

The police department has set a goal of being one of the best police departments in the country for its size, and measures its success in part   The OCR article reports on the most recent review:

The study offers a half-dozen recommendations – compared with 59 in its first review – that range from striving to use the least force necessary to more cautious foot pursuits.

.. Four years ago, OIR Group recommended that officers – when safely possible – employ less force by increasing time and distance, using cover and concealment, creating barriers, and calling and waiting for backup.

“The department,” the document says, “has substantially addressed many of the shortcomings we noted in our 2012 report.”

First, a new training room was built for officers to practice lesser-force techniques. Then, a video-based interactive training system was installed. It offers more than 200 bad-guy scenarios, and each one can be altered with the touch of a screen.

“These upgrades in training facilities,” the report concludes, “allow trainers to emphasize the importance of tactical alternatives to force, particularly deadly force.”

The training may be paying off. Citizen complaints have dropped from a high of 36 in 2014 to a low of 24 last year.

Still, the new report offers new suggestions. They include requiring incident reports to check off threat perception, least-use-of-force efforts, and adherence to reporting policies.

The process in Fullerton appears to be a national model, albeit a one-off that hasn't been adopted elsewhere, unlike the whitewashes that seem to be happening in most other cities when it comes to evaluating police departments and officers in terms of excessive force and deaths at the hands of police officers.

Britain. A commenter in one of the many articles on the George Floyd killing mentioned watching the BBC tv series, "Our Cops in the North," (episode one) and made the point that it showed how the officers were very good at dealing with conflict, arrests, etc., without guns and in a manner that didn't escalate conflict, attributing this to the level of training and usually being unarmed. I thought that was an important point.

Contrast that to reality tv shows in the US like "Cops" which show the widespread use of militaristic approaches and tactics to policing here.

Racialized social control as a structural feature of urban police departments.  I have mentioned before the biggest issue probably in the US wrt policing besides the fact that policing is the leading element of what Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness calls "racialized social control" ("Racialized social control and risk management: Baltimore," 2020).

Typically, urban police forces tend to have a majority of white officers and often they don't live in the communities they patrol.  But even in cities where a police chief may be black, like Minneapolis, or in places where a preponderance of officers are people of color like Baltimore or DC, there are still issues.

A man poses for a photo in the parking lot of an AutoZone where a fire broke out.

Video showed the AutoZone with broken windows and spray paint. One bystander was warning people against damaging the business, saying it had nothing to do with Floyd's death.

— Carlos Gonzalez / Minneapolis Star Tribune via AP

Take a risk management approach.  Regularly producing outcomes of death as a function of police processes is an indicator of an endemic, systematic, structural problem, not a series of one-off problems.  It can only be addressed through significant changes in training, hiring, and management.

By this time, most cities have an "Office of Risk Management" or a similar function as a standard element of public administration.  But probably too many communities haven't given this function the ability to think creatively and expansively.

From the report Risk Assessment and Management in Local Government Emergency Planning, by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction:

The following statement captures the essential elements in dealing with risk:

• risk is the possibility that harm may occur from an identified hazard;
• risk analysis is the process of evaluating the frequency and consequence of the hazard;
• risk control uses methods of reducing the frequency or consequences of a hazard; and,
• risk management is the ongoing process of daily decision-making given the existence of an identified hazard and that all practical and reasonable measures have been taken to
minimize any potential impacts it may have.