Canton is probably a good spot for you. Property prices track heavily with public safety

I hope so.

I don't think that's accurate. Hamden started out with pretty little rent which attracted a lot of antique dealers which then went to a lot of bars and restaurants taking advantage of the foot traffic.

"it's just standing on the shoulders of giants in the scientific field, not original!"

this is how things have been going in the US. if you can foment enough fear to make a headline, it does not matter if something is actually safe or abnormal. people are not rational and they don't trust experts.

at this point, the damage is done. that building is already toast. what we need is some ordinances to prevent demolition by neglect.

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https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hendler+Creamery/@39.2913727,-76.6008777,139a,35y,270h,39.53t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c8048409ff594b:0x9ce88e0d7212ac49!8m2!3d39.2915729!4d-76.6019607!16s%2Fm%2F05h57q0

surely there is security camera footage of this.

hmm. could send them an invoice for services rendered. if they don't pay, go to small claims court.

311

yes, a basic sanity check should happen with every citation.

involving the city and issuing a citation is fundamentally different from a person taking another person to civil court. the city is going to have to be liable for the claims of random people, so it should have a bit more scrutiny. but like I said, it does not need to be very many spot-checks in person in order to be a significant deterrent, AND help the city be less open to lawsuits in the future for not doing due diligence. .

if a city employee has to physically be there to check every report, then there is no point in having a citizen reporting mechanism. if the city employee isn't there, then the image can be faked. if you had a city employee show up to SOME, but not all, citizen reports, then it could deter people from committing fraud because there is a real risk of getting caught.

the photograph and report isn't what is being used as evidence to give them a ticket currently, just as the reasoning for the city worker to show up. the city employee then documents it and tickets.

this would be problematic photoshop.

maybe a better way to go would be to just put some of those city-watch cameras (or whatever they're called) along the bike lanes and let the parking enforcement people "patrol" 10s of miles of bike lanes in seconds. give those remote operators a small bonus for every ticket. they'll watch like a hawk. they can do double-duty as parking enforcement and crime prevention.

though, I suppose there could be some significant fine for people who are proven to have committed fraud with the photo uploads. that may deter false reports. you would just need parking enforcement to occasionally double-check on the reported cars to make sure people are not committing fraud

I don't have strong feelings about Zeke, but that's SO much better than Mosby.

horse shit. the logic is fine. if someone cares about the city, there are plenty of jobs in the city where they can work aside from city council, many of which pay incredibly well. if six-figure jobs are not enough to entice someone to be helpful to the incoming council member, then they don't care about the city.

there are also highly paid consultancy positions that many companies and governments pay in order to get institutional knowledge from people who have left or retired. the institution knowledge argument is the one has no logic.

if they're that easily bought, then we didn't want them as councilmembers. that's why the "but what about the institutional knowledge" argument does not work.

either

1. they care about the city, they will take a (well-paid) job that allows them to still assist incoming members. or
2. they don't care and were just in it to make money, in which case WE WANT THEM GONE.

what we really need is an open primary where the top 3 go to the general election, regardless of party (so you can have more than one Dem, similar to what california does). then ranked-choice with the remaining 3. having primaries be the only election that matters is a flawed way to do things. then, keep synched up to presidential cycle to increase turnout.

I actually do like the term limits. the "institutional knowledge" argument is horse shit.

if you're on the city council and you actually care about the city, your institutional knowledge won't be lost because you will take a job as either staff for a particular elected individual, or you will work some other role in the city government and maintain availability to answer questions and advise council members. Lawrence Rashad Anderson, Scott's Chief of Staff, makes $142k per year. if a councilperson refuses to get paid $142k for the sake of maintaining institutional knowledge, then they never cared about the city in the first place and we don't want them advising anyone.

craigslist or facebook marketplace ad. offer $10 for someone to come haul it to the dump. you're not supposed to sell used mattresses (ordinances to prevent bed-bugs in most places), but if you pay someone to haul it away and they keep it, there is no way for you to know.

which is why I said we should dedicate up to 7% of our street space to them. protected bike lanes + baltimore drivers = safe.

did you read my comment?

>the lights should be timed to however it makes the various bus/light rail networks of the city run smoothly.

what works optimally for buses may not be what works optimally for cars.

the lights should be timed to however it makes the various bus/light rail networks of the city run smoothly.

we shouldn't be giving priority to people sitting in a private, enclosed, perfect-temperature, lazy-boy on wheels, while they are listening to their favorite music.

you aren't experiencing the infrastructure problem while you're in your car, you ARE the infrastructure problem BECAUSE you're in a car.

if this city set aside 7% of the street/sidewalk space for bikes, it would have a bike network like Amsterdam or Copenhagen and people would find that being on a bike is WAY less stressful than being in a car, and those who still need to drive would find WAY less traffic.

for a given situation, a car is a big improvement to an individual's life and a small penality to those around them.

we can make up a point scale to illustrate the problem. a car is like a +1000 happiness to the car user, and a -1 happiness to those they drive past (pollution, noise, danger to kids, reduction in green space for parking, etc.). that seems like a great trade-off from the individual perspective... until you get a large number of people all selfishing looking at that trade-off. you get more than 1000 cars in a neighborhood, then everyone is getting +1000 then -1001... so a net -1. you make it 10,000 cars and now everyone is at +1000 -10,000 and everyone is at a -9000. if one individual gives up their car, they move from -9000 to -10,000, so individuals selfishly don't want to take a step backward. the solution is that we have to form a social contract with each other where we recognize that more cars and faster cars in front of each of our houses, parks, schools, businesses, etc. isn't for the best, and we need to give other things higher priority. bike lanes and buses may each not be a +1000 to the individual, but they are a much smaller negative to everyone else. you look at cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen and they're quiet, pleasant, and poor people can own a viable mode of transportation for a couple of hundred bucks that will outlast a car if given 1/10th as much maintenance. same with transit. a tram going past every 5min is not as much of a negative as dozens of cars. if you're a bike/transit oriented city, then everyone gets a +500 happiness and a -0.00001 happiness for each person using those modes, so when you have 10,000 people using those modes, it's +499 to each person.

fair point. cheers.

>a safe place for the culture to thrive

you assume they ride dirtbikes through random routes of the city because they have nowhere else to ride. that is false. if that were true, they would never joyride through the harbor, but they're out there all the time in the summer.

their hobby isn't riding dirtbikes. their hobby is stunt-riding to be seen. the more dirtbike culture is supported, the more will ride on busy streets. the only advantage of a bike park is that it removed the excuse of "there is nowhere else to ride" so that police can get them to stop riding dangerously through busy places.

but really, why should the city spend so much money on a bunch of assholes when there are people starving? a few weeks ago I had to give a guy my coat because he was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt and shivering like crazy while it was 35 degrees outside. if we had that much flexibility with the highway-to-nowhere funds, we could set up low income housing or community gardens so that people in the neighborhood can feel a greater attachment to the area and want to fix up more houses. dirtbikers should be at the bottom of the list of people the city bends over backwards to help.

it is even questionable within corn-producing areas, if memory serves. there are a lot of energy inputs just to grow a crop, then you have the energy of converting it to ethanol.

wooden power line poles are called "hydro poles" in canada because they are associated with hydro-electric power.