The British Can Admit It - Will We?

Major food price rises are all but inevitable. Philip Clarke, the chief executive of Britain's biggest supermarket chain Tesco, has admitted as much to the British press. Tesco, was heavily implicated in the recent horse-meat scandal, has said that rising global demand means the historic low prices to which British consumers have become used are now unsustainable. This is tantamount to the CEO of WalMart or Kroger admitting that they can no longer commit to keeping prices low for all Americans.

Any one who has been shopping lately can attest to the fact that the “invisible grocery shrink ray” is at work in our local markets. The packages may be rising slowly in price but the quantity in the package is smaller over all. The organics and locally grown stuff is characterized as for the elite and other who want to be upper class.

Is Kentucky (or America) that far behind this time? A recent poll, commissioned by the Prince's Countryside Fund to mark National Countryside Week, reveals that a majority of British consumers would be prepared to pay more for food if they knew the extra was going to farmers rather than to supermarket shareholders. With the recent introduction of the “Udderly Kentucky” milk program by the Secretary of Agriculture, James Comer, is he seeing the same sentiment from Kentucky shoppers?

The “Buy Local First” movement seems to be making headway and local farmers markets are establishing themselves in more locations every year. Still, the primary comments are that they are out of the reach of many residents. Sadly, such costs are reflective of the unsubsidized production costs for local entrepreneurs.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization forecast last month that global food prices could rise by as much as 40% over the next decade. Much of this as a result of a growing middle class in countries such as China and India. With the prospects of America's middle class waning and poverty moving to our once booming suburbs, this global rise will hit Americans very hard.

Usually, supermarket bosses (British and American) have proved extremely resistant to admitting economic pressures would affect the cost of groceries. WalMart has recently committed to its sourcing more locally produced fruits and vegetables without discussing whether price differences will be kept to a minimum. One way the WalMart has kept their prices low is to require the producer (or middleman) to do more preparatory work so that their “associates” don't have to.

What comes to mind next is WalMart's (and possibly the federal governments) definition of locally produced. Generally, the range of 500 miles is sufficient for most programs and for Lexington that means as far away as Central Michigan or the Gulf Coast. Local could them mean about 2/3^rds of the Eastern U.S. National brands and the monoculture farming of agri-business can still dominate our food choices at that rate.

I can see that a growing number of Kentuckians (and Americans) are awakening to the reality that many of our corporations are (and have been) leading us astray with phrases like “supermarket to the world” while importing more and more under “trade” treaties. With all of our corporate farming debacles, many countries will not accept our exports for reasons like GMO's or processing concerns.

America's food system has become unsustainable and there is more than enough blame to cast in all directions. The big question is, can it be turned around in time to prevent it from crashing like a house of cards?

Larger stores and bigger selections may have helped get us to where we are but simply reversing those trends will not be a solution. Our seasonal treats of yesteryear have become the culinary mainstays of the declining middle class. Farmers who took great pride in their goods on the farm now see disease and pestilence introduced in the processing and packaging plants. Corporate marketing gurus have persuaded us that only the perfect looking fruit or vegetable is worthy of purchase. These trends also need to be altered.

The way it is major food price rises are all but inevitable, which leaves us with only one good option – to change the way it is.

Energy Security Or Food Security, A Choice?

Here is an interesting item from The National, a daily newspaper from Abu Dhabi. 

The Arab states are becoming concerned about food security, since the region imports more than 50% of their food needs. Some of their poorer countries import even higher amounts. While the Gulf states can afford to pay the cost of importation, the others cannot.

America has just begun to really worry about oil security and how we would cope should supplies be really cut off. Could we live within the limitations of what we drill and pump? Can we be energy independent? Some think that we can, but it would be a tremendous change for us all.  And it would include food security too.

Food security exists when a nation, state or region can feed itself with local agriculture and not need the imports of the global market. Food insecurity will begin, for many of us, when the price of oil reaches such a point that transporting food cost more than raising it. For many in America that means reverting to the seasonal occurrences of fresh fruits and many vegetables. Many of our large agri-businesses will have to decentralize and maybe depend on local farmers a little more. The distance between the farm and the table will have to become shorter.

Oil and energy security have become reason for war. Our leaders don't come right out and say so, but we all realize it anyway. We fabricate alternate stated reasons but we don't involve ourselves too much if there is no oil in the picture. How long will it be until our (or somebody else's ) food security is the real reason that we are fighting? Will we fight for fresh fruit shipped in from Argentina or Chile? How about fish from off the coast of Russia? Will we defend our lobsters in the Grand Banks?

I believe that most of us civilized folks will say that food should not be used as a weapon in an economic battle and great famines are rare in this country, but if an oil starved/food rich America can fight for oil then an oil rich/food starved Arab region can fight for food.

Situations are bleak in multiple parts of Africa and portions of Australia are suffering drought conditions as well. Could we be closer to the brink than we realize? Should we plan for better food security as well as energy security? 

My answer is yes but what do you say?

Raw Milk Could Become Legal In Kentucky

In my interest concerning the availability of good local foods and my passion toward raw milk, I have learned that one of the pre-filed bill for the next legislative session is about the legal sales of raw milk. I know that not everybody shares my love of raw milk but I and my family have come to believe that drinking it has kept us healthier and for those lovers of local foods, it just makes sense.

Local foods is a mantra which has been taken up by many, as is sustainable farming and food security on the local level. That may be what is behind this bill in tis initial form.

The bill, 12RS BR 294, is labeled as “AN ACT relating to milk.” and amends KRS 217C.030 which deals with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the part of state government that has control over the production and sale of milk. I have no idea why this is not dealt with in an agricultural department but it is not.

The bill is simple enough, it just adds a new section talking about the legal sales of raw milk and its “permitted" producers. It sounds like something that I have been hoping for for some time now. But, there are always one of those around, anytime you have a simple allowance of something, government bureaucracy will find some way to foul the initial intent.

The first place that convolution can begin to rear its ugly head is the definition of “permitted” producer.

The normal producer of raw milk is, of course, the cow and I don't think that they need a permit but the dairy where the cow lives and the dairyman who milks her probably will. A dairyman is normally also called a farmer and farmers have been the backbone of American agriculture since colonial days. Farmers have supplied their families and the local villages with milk since Medieval times if not before. I believe that it is only since the middle of the last century, when large industrial dairies began to “produce” dairy products and relegated the farmer to the role of “supplier” that permitting became an issue.

The local farmer today, really wishes to grow and sell a good product and allowing an inferior product to leave the farm or potentially harm the consumer is the last situation that they want. Industrial farmers just need to move as much inventory as they can, because it is all about filling the contract and not feeding your friends and neighbors.

Under this new bill, any permitted producer may legally sell raw milk to the end consumer as long as it is at the farm where it is produced. That sounds good but I doubt that many of the industrial dairies would like for the average shopper to see the conditions in which the cows live. It is sometimes vastly different from the bucolic images shown of happy cows and verdant pastures. Some cows never see the light of day or green fields.

On the other hand, the permitting requirements placed upon the local farmer(dairyman) may be so onerous that attempting to comply would entail a full time staff of dozens. This is far from the concept of a small time farm family that conquered the wilderness of America.. Farmers with small or medium sized herds may not be able to meet these currently unwritten regulations.

Given the history of the inspectors of the Cabinet of Health and Family Services and their past demonstrated dislike of the dairymen with cowshare programs, the possible new regulations could surely create problems for the small dairyman.

The proposed new law also requires that all packaging be labeled in such a way that could subtly imply, through wording and “warnings”, that raw milk is inferior to the usual commercial offerings. It has been the experience of those of us who like raw milk, that we need to search out that which we feel is superior and will go the extra mile to get it. Of those I know in the cowshare “families”, we trust our dairymen and realize some of the inherent risk in the bottling process, yet others trust the government inspection system and its highly publicized and all too frequent failures.

Lastly, the bill reiterates that the raw milk may only be sold or sampled on the farm which produced it which puts the smaller sized dairymen at a significant disadvantage compared to industrial dairies and their convenient sales and delivery systems.

There is much to like in this proposed law. It brings to light the increased desire to consume raw milk and the rise in the re-localization of our basic foods. It show a desire on the part of a legislator to legalize what should be freely available, similar to the farmers market expansion we are currently watching happen. It helps bring Kentucky closer to the regulations of other enlightened states concerning local foods. It does many good things but it also falls somewhat short.

There is much to be done which will make this bill better.

Comments On The Rise Of Food Prices

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has raised the alarm on rising food prices.

"We must act now, effectively and cooperatively, to blunt the negative impact of rising food prices and protect people and communities," she said at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome.

The U.N. estimates that 44 million people world wide have been pushed into poverty since last June because of rising food prices, which could lead to desperate shortages and unrest. Clinton said the world could no longer "keep falling back on providing emergency aid to keep the Band-Aid on."

She called for countries to adopt better policies and "to encourage everyone to respond to rising food prices not with failed policies of the past but with a sounder approach."

Some of those “failed” policies may include the following: During the 2008 crisis, the world's biggest rice producers — Thailand, Vietnam and India — curbed rice exports to protect domestic supply, leading to record high prices. The price of wheat, meanwhile, shot up last year when Russia imposed an export ban after severe drought damaged harvests. Ukraine, another major grain exporter, also imposed export quotas because of the drought.

Time magazine has reported the a major cause of rising food prices may well be the much discussed “climate change” that the world is undergoing.

The hidden story of 2011 has been the record-breaking rise in global food prices. Global corn prices April 2010 and April 2011, while wheat prices are up some 60 to 80%. Exactly why food has gotten so expensive in recent months is the subject of an ongoing debate

Some of the causes may be simple inflation or that the competition for food grains by the biofuel production process which has not lowered local gas prices in any appreciable measure. Natural disasters, like the recent rains and subsequent flooding, which are plaguing the Mississippi Valley currently along with the growing world wide consumption certainly do play a big part. But maybe the largest part is just the greater and greater distances that food has to travel to get to our family tables. The distances and methods of travel which require fossil fuels, the same fossil fuels which are accused of aiding the global “climate change”.

Most all of us realize that locally produced food is better for us and is better for the local economy, but usually carries a premium on price due to the volumes that individual producers can generate. Factory style farms will win out on economies of scale yet temper that victory with reductions in health benefits from crop monoculture, increased processing to combat bacterial or germicidal contamination or just the forced completion of the natural growth cycle to comply with the shipping schedule. Unlike the winemakers who used to advertise that “ they would sell no wine before its time” many fruits and vegetables are today picked in an unripe state and chemically treated so as to arrive on the store shelves looking like “just picked”.

Research and better farming practices have increased crop yield lately throughout a majority of the world but we are now seeing “climate change” or rising temperatures during the growing season begin to reduce some of that. Combined with the greater use of petroleum based fertilizers or genetically modified seeds or insecticides / pesticides allowing for the overuse of many historically rich farmlands and the documented rise of herbicide resistant “superweeds”

Might these also fit into the category of “failed” policies and the more sound approach to food production be a more localized and sustainable methods which got us to this point? I would much rather have lamb from Kentucky than the ones that come from New Zealand. It has to cost less to grow and slaughter here. Milk production should cost less if you removed all the processing involved with replacing the desired qualities that were eliminated through pasteurization. Farmers should be able to sell for less if the costs of hybrid or GMO seeds and chemical fertilizers could be decreased through natural methods. These possibly failing policies which were once alternatives and are now requirements.

Growing Old In Lexington?

I grew up in one of Lexington’s streetcar suburbs. The old mule cars ended a route just two blocks(and a hundred years) from my front door and in their heyday the streetcars went down the middle of my street. Progress marches on and the tracks were rerouted a little farther out in the expanding subdivisions but they were never more than a block from the house. Sadly, I came along 12 years after they ended their run and I never saw them.

Many of my neighbors did see and used them to get from home to downtown and some of the other destinations at which they stopped. It was one if the reasons that they bought in the area. Houses close to shopping, entertainment and recreation. It was also a neighborhood where folks could grow old and still easily get the necessities of life. With the streetcar they could get downtown to major shopping or they could walk to the local market or pharmacy, get their hair cut or meet friends at the local eatery. It was a neighborhood designed for multiple generations to live together, a real social network.

As a young fellow, I knew all of the families on both sides of the street and the people on the other side of the block. I knew where the kids(what few there were) lived and which of the houses were home to the sweet old ladies. I watched as couples aged, the husbands retired, the widows followed their spouses and the houses sold to others or became rentals. Even lost friends as their parents moved to the suburbs, but that was the way of the world in those days.

My next-door neighbor was a retired high school teacher whose eyesight was failing her. She had taught at the high school just a half a block from our house. She rented out a room to another lady who helped care for her, but we all kept an eye on her. As I recall, she lived there until about 6 weeks of her death.

On the other side, on the corner, was a retired doctor and his socialite wife. He was friendly to us kids but she never took time to talk to us, unless it was to shoo us away from her husband while he was working in the yard. The drove their late model Cadillac to Florida every winter and back in the spring, till that one year of the accident on the way back. Their estate sold the house for apartments soon after.

These stories are repeated, house by house, as you go around the block. The retired State highway engineer (where I saw my first old drafting equipment), the retired antique dealer, the retired preacher, and so on and so on. These people bought in this neighborhood, not as an investment but, as a place to live and grow old. These folks bought for the long term.

These are also not the type of subdivisions which have been built in the past 60 years. Today’s suburbs are built for the automobile. Nothing is really as close as a few blocks, especially when those blocks feature many cul-de-sacs and winding roadways. A 5 minute walk to the store is not the same as a 5 minute auto trip when you’re up in years, just ask the lady who drove into the grocery on Romany Road a while back.

The reality of today’s suburban living is, that it is for the children of the “Baby Boomers”. Children who chose not to live like their parents, in modest sized cottages, just like their parents who chose not to live in the old Victorians I the old town sections. Status usually led us to want more land and a bigger house, which now is more than most of aging population can take care of. Then there is the mobility, the constant mobility, moving for job, for family, for downsizing. Retire to where the grandkids are, except the aren’t in just one place, they are all over the country. My grandparents houses were stable, all through my younger years. So was my parents place, right up until my dad died and my brother and I took it over. Forty-five years in one place, just like it was designed for.

These are the types of residential subdivisions we need to see more of, don’t you think?

November's Campaign Begins

The fall mayoral campaign began tonight, right in the middle of Jim Newberry's victory speech.

I think that it is safe to say that the gloves are off and it is down bare knuckles at this point. Mayor Newberry is pictured as a mayor that makes mistakes and Gray as a supposed visionary who has done nothing.

Both of these men say that they have a vision (or in Gray's case WILL have a vision) for how Lexington is to move forward in the future(read next four years). Right now we are mired in the lagging efforts of an economic recovery while being finally forced to live up to commitments made by previous administrations. Not a very comfy environment to spend any time in.

Both men also seem to look toward a time when we have fully recovered and we can get back to business as usual. Lexington and the United States have been through recessions and depressions and we HAVE recovered, but these post depressions/recessions times have not been "business as usual". Post economic calamity times have always been very different from before and this one will no doubt be likewise.

I, like some of my fellow bloggers, believe that the availability of cheap energy sources is a thing of the past and government statistics are beginning to reflect that. Federal agencies are starting to urge social changes to accommodate such a scenario from as high as the Cabinet level, although meeting somewhat stiff resistance(claims of social engineering). As energy affects just about every aspect of our lives, the results of more and more expensive energy touch us all. I would like to see what each of these candidates thinks is in store for Lexington and how they plan to deal with it, or prepare us for it.

We have seen it in the water rates and the price of gasoline and we all say that there is not much that we can do. We will see more in electric rates and natural gas in the future and still not have much say about it. But some of the decisions that we make about land use and transportation options today can go a long way toward mitigating the effects of rising fuel costs among other things. A simple limiting of parking (and not just in the downtown) as other cities have considered would encourage mass transit and more localized shopping and services. Perhaps the situation at the Polo Club Chevron the other day was an omen to those living in suburbia that fuel for your auto could quickly disappear and you could be stranded.

There are many other topics and possibilities of future changes that could be considered and all in the realm of probability. I want to know where these guys stand and if they are thinking about the future of Lexington, or just the next four years.

Gray Keeps It Local???

The other day our friends at Lowell's Under the Hood referenced this site and the question I asked about Vice Mayor Gray's campaign web site. I have followed Rob's diatribes on planning and the supposed failures of the downtown projects both, announced and started, along with his unrelenting support for Mr Gray. Now, maybe, Mr Morris would like to take on the real reason as to why he supports Mr Gray so heavily.

As mayor, Jim Newberry has failed to improve Lexington's downtown planning efforts

The latest Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2007, after the Downtown Master Plan (DMP) was completed, and references the specific principles as outlined in the DMP. The whole document was not included as an element of the Comprehensive Plan for various reasons. The Urban County Council does not adopt the Plan under Kentucky State law but they do set the goals and objectives of the Plan. Several principles of the DMP have been earmarked as items to be studied or initiated at a later date, though none have been as yet.

Is this what they are calling failure?

All downtown projects in the works or announced have complied with the rules and regulations currently in force. Mayor Newberry has brought no requests to study or initiate any of the previously referenced principles (maintaining the status quo) nor has any of the council members, presently or formerly. If this is failure, then the blame should be spread across all parties involved. If this a campaign issue, then it is an issue for all.

As mayor, Jim Newberry has allowed the complete destruction of a whole, historic city block

The Herald Leader was probably the first to fly this flag, yet they were also the banner bearers of all the Urban Renewal projects, the Lexington Center and any Webb project announced. In the "70s and "80s, anything purported to be a downtown development was deemed to be progress. When will those responsible for that be vilified? Has the Herald Leader apologized for their "rah-rah" behavior toward what is now considered the destruction of downtown?

As mayor, Jim Gray will give direction and focus to Lexington and its future

This all sounds good if there were any evidence to support it.

We have all seen Mr. Gray's efforts to influence public opinion about some local controversy, but usually after someone else has done all the legwork and heavy lifting. CentrePointe, the airport and the library are the first to come to mind. Vice Mayor Gray, for all of his insight, has NOT been at the forefront of the investigation on any of these.

From all the accounts that I have heard(these are probably rumors of some sort) concerning the Infill/Redevelopment Committee and others have been slowed in their work by the antics of mr. Gray. I am sure that this will be construed as him going up against the staid "old guard" of complacency and striving for better planning but I don't think it comes across that way to the others involved.

Then, there is the constant touting of the 21C hotel in Louisville. Is that it? He has done more for Louisville, in terms of downtown redevelopment, than he has for Lexington? The only building that he has renovated here is his own and that it. He did do the new Kentucky Eagle Beer building to LEED standards, not Platinum or Gold or even to the more stringent European standard, so setting the bar high is not something to write home about.

I am not that enthused about any of the candidates, but of the top three, Mr Gray still needs to show me something more.

Lets Get An Answer To This

Has anyone heard of a group called Crossroads Campaigns Solutions?

They are a PR firm that seems to specialize in political campaigns. National, local, all kinds of campaigns. You should go to their website and check their client list.

Is this the type of candidate that we want leading our city? I am all about the re-localization of our food sources and other necessities of life. But shipping our election campaigns out of state steps a little too far.

The Questions Not Asked

I have not been able to attend any of the Mayoral forums as of yet but I have kept up with how they went through all the reporting and the Twitter logs available. It seems that I and Steve Austin are in agreement in the notion that - so far all the questions have been about things that are already water under the bridge.

We are going to be selecting a person the lead the city into the future, not worry about how it should have been handled last time. The problems looming on the horizon are much more worrisome than whether there is full disclosure about some private business project in downtown. What I want to know is- How are we going to handle thing like "Peak Oil", climate change, or some of the other situations coming down the road but not yet fully manifest. These are questions that our young, "creative class", social media savvy bloggers and reporters have avoided completely.

How will our future leaders solve the dilemma of the residents of our outer suburbs when the price of fuel is out of reach to the common person? Our edge subdivisions are not being served by mass transit and the idea of regional transit is not on the radar. How do they plan on feeding the masses when transportation costs could be roughly 1/2 the going price in the stores? Where will the tipping point be when the agricultural land is more valuable for food crops than equine crops? That may be real value of the PDR program.

I have seen how some of these "progressives" have brought in officials from other cities ,where there has been some modicum of success, to explain their methods. The situations and conditions are never the same in all cities, even during good economic times, so the results will always be different. It is the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" in action. Those same officials, operating in differing cities, would not have fared as well as a general rule.

Our city leaders of the past few decades(especially from the '70s) have failed to secure the infrastructure and facilities to ensure the basic necessities of life; sufficient potable water, locally generated energy or alternative power sources, locally available food sufficient for all residents... and we have known that the day is coming. As we have seen with RWE and now E.on, the divestiture of the global corporations controlling utilities (and probably soon with food) is coming.

Where will these new leaders take us in this "Great Reset"? That is the line of questioning that should be taking place. Had I sent them in by social media, they would not have been asked and had I been there in person, I would have been considered as "off the wall" as Skip Horine.

A New Follower And The Local Growers

I want to welcome one of my latest followers John's Custom Meats, from down in Smiths Grove, Ky. I sure do wish that I was a bit closer to western Ky(or that they were a bit closer to Lexington) so that I could enjoy some of their product once in a while. I guess that I will have to make do with another Kentucky Proud supplier that I located on the net today. One that is closer to Lexington.

Better Beef is an outgrowth Lone Tree Cattle Co. LLC. of Paint Lick, Ky. with a local outlet in Berea. Finally, a local grass-fed, no hormone, grown, raised, finished and processed in Kentucky supply of reasonably priced meat. This is definitely a place that Mrs. Sweeper says that we will give a try. These people currently deliver to Lexington and say that they will soon add Louisville and Danville. Between our cowshare program, which supplies us with milk, eggs and cheese, a good local meat supply and the Good Foods Co-Op, we may be eating some of the best meals in the country.

I am going to have to add a Locavore/Slow Foods links list soon in order to keep up with all of this.

Thoughts For A Friday Afternoon

“A commonly quoted statistic from the Small Business Administration (SBA) is that 65% of all new jobs are created by small businesses” so says an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. It also gives the general definition of a small business as “any business employing 500 people or fewer.” Although I wonder if that includes subsidiaries of large multi-nationals whose start-up costs are covered while an entrepreneur’s are not.

The author goes on to reveal that “99.7% of all companies in America meet the SBA's definition of small business”, again, what portion of that are the multi-national subsidiaries mentioned earlier.

His logical conclusion was that “the remaining 0.3% of American companies—big business—create 35% of all new jobs in this country”. We have now run the gamut from any business (regardless of any financial connections) through all companies in the nation to only American companies. Not just apples and oranges, but sliced and diced fruit.

It appears from this that any job creation bill from Congress should focus on our big businesses, those with the ability to properly accomplish this task. After all the SBA says that 56% of all start-ups fail in the first few years.

The current Senate jobs bill, which Sen. Reid says he wants to simplify over this next weekend, is estimated to cost $52 billion and the House version from December was $155 billion. The Senate bill relies on tax breaks and construction projects while the House’s one was construction and state aid packages. That is a lot of our money but it pales in comparison to the funds already held by big business.

Bloomberg is reporting that “A majority of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index increased cash to a combined $1.18 trillion while simultaneously reducing spending, keeping a jobs recovery on hold.” These are S&P’s, not the Blue Chip, big boys. 256 of these companies added about 4 times the House bill’s cost to their cash reserves in the past year. Does the Senate need to give more incentives when they have socked away nearly the National Debt?

Where did these companies get this money? Why we gave it to them. We the consumer and we the government. We gave it to them for products sold and for services rendered, since every business need to make some profit. That works out to about $1,600 per person that we gave them last year alone and just over $3,800 in all. $1,600 is just under double my Federal Income withholding for last year. And this is not the big guys. This is also money that is NOT going for job creation.

This is money that is not going for investment in alternative energy exploration (a job creator), or high speed rail, or re-localization of agriculture, or recreating our ability make things for ourselves, all good job creators. This money is also not just setting around doing nothing, it has become the plaything of our financial institutions and we saw what they did with such playthings in the past years.

Job creation is not something that the Federal government should pay for.

Happy New Year?

Happy New Year

The oughts are over and we are entering the last year of the decade. Despite what the TV announcers have been saying, this is NOT the beginning of a new decade. A decade is a ten year period and the year 2000 was the last year of the 20th century.

Now, what are we going to do to cap off this wild and crazy first decade of the new century?

We started off riding hell bent into the future and riding a wave of economic boom times that some said was unsustainable, and we seem surprised that they weren't. We, as a city, continued to put off doing some of those inconvenient tasks and some of those promised enhancements, just because they got in the way of someones personal gain. Don't we hate it when the buzzards come home to roost.

I was asked last week, during a holiday party, my opinion on the upcoming election, how will it play out with Newberry and Gray. My comment was, that it will be so ugly between the two Jims, that we may just see Ms. Issac again, but that in any case Lexington will LOSE. My sister said that she thought that it looked bad for Newberry, given the strong support for CentrePointe and its troubles.

I reminded her, that as Mayor, when a private property owner proposed a $250 million project for a city, a project that was intended to bring jobs and investment, that I would expect that Mayor to be supportive of the development regardless of any personal preference toward the project. I would expect Mr. Gray to do the same, were he to be in the position of mayor someday. Any development just for the sake of development is not always a wise choice, but driving away development and hoping for something better, especially during a dearth of any economic progress downtown, is even less wise.

She asked about the loss of property tax revenue on the demolished block and the loss of jobs in the area. Again I pointed out that all the jobs had been relocated within a few blocks of the original location(well, maybe not the Buster's jobs but they are doing much better where they are now) and that the property taxes will now be paid on a value which is 5 times the assessment
of last year, and that will only go up.

We both agreed that Mr. Gray has not brought forth any economic development proposals of his own despite his being touted as a planning and development visionary and working with the Downtown Development group and the Infill/Redevelopment Committee. He does seem to jump on the bandwagons for various proposals, some for and some against, depending on the number of activists available as voters. I am very interested to see just what Mr. Gray does endorse in the coming campaign.

Mr. Newberry's "Horses, High Tech & Health Care" platform of four years ago has shown very little High Tech and absolutely no comments in the national debate on health care reform. Horses, in the form of the World Equestrian Games has consumed massive resources and discussion for what many consider a "ho-hum" event. Very similar to the NCAA Final Fours of the mid '80s ( men's and women's), something that we spent hours preparing for and then they were gone, and so very few of us have something to show for it.

The horse industry, which we proudly claim as our "signature" industry, is showing signs of fleeing to greener pastures. Is there more that we can do to salvage what so many of us enjoy yet so few of us can attribute any major benefit to our own well being? Will expanded gambling be a factor in salvation or another nail in the horse industry's coffin.

What I don't see coming out of this election is, any solutions for the real problems on the horizon. Subjects such as Peak Oil, the coming economic reset of priorities, the need for a relocalization of food production or the loss of a "signature" industry(something that other cities have and will continue to deal with). These are just as real as Global Warming and Climate Change. I don't see the local government working with others in a regional transportation network, or pressuring the state to advance some sort of statewide passenger rail system, because as I have said before, I don't see the electrical grid being able to withstand electric autos nor the general population being able to afford them. The mobility of people, goods and services may well be compromised if we do not plan for the coming situations.

The Council and Mayoral elections will not be the only things in transition in the coming year but they will be the major things. And I will be looking out for some of my other favorite subjects along the way.

Chamber Trips To A Black Hole

Much has been talked about the recent Commerce Lexington trip and its follow-up visit by Rebecca Ryan, a Madison consultant, but we are not the only ones to have controversy about these types of "Chamber trips". Mary Newsom, on her blog "The Naked City" had a review of Charlotte's visit by the Minneapolis/St Paul Chamber of last week. Apparently, one of the questions brought up by some of the participants was whether the visited city had audacity while the visitor was considered ambivalent.

How does this translate into the Lexington experience? Does Madison, Wisconsin take on the mantle of audacity while we here in Lexington sit back in our ambivalence and cruise through on our southern hospitality, college basketball and horse industry? Some of you will think Lexington needs to show a bit more audacity and promote itself more on its aspects that are far removed from those that I've already listed. Some will maintain that we should take on more of how other cities do things and yet not look like Anywhere, USA. I think that we should look at other cities, not for just what works but also how it works(and I don't mean the mechanics of it working) and why it works. What are all the pieces needed to allow it to work rather than forcing it to work in spite of lacking key elements? The true success to gathering ideas of others is that it is not a buffet, to pick and choose parts, but a jigsaw puzzle which need all the pieces to be give the complete picture.

Often the best part of these types of blogs are comments made by the readers and this one is no exception. One commenter went so far as to read the agenda, notice that the topics were things that normal readers heard little about and asked why this information, freely given to those from other cities, were kept from the average Charlotte resident.

Trips like this may be useful to those taking them(or so they say) but also may be becoming fewer and farther between with the demise of cheap oil. And some of these junkets are(or have been) simple excuses to visit other cities' night life(i.e. gentlemen's clubs etc...), have expensive meals or visit tourist sites at no charge. We have all read about these kinds of things lately haven't we?

The point is, that there is only so much of the economy that can be split between the various communities without stealing from others. We don't need to steal our portion of the economy, we need to grow our own. I have a feeling that in the coming economic reset that there will be the need to do more of everything for ourselves, even a lot more local food production and material fabrications. Our wresting of a larger portion of the economic pie from the larger cities would be like retrieving matter from a black hole after it has passed the event horizon.

What is the catalyst that will make Lexington an economic black hole and start to draw from other areas without copying them?

Lexington's "Spatial Fix"

I finally got to read the article by Richard Florida that I printed out from the March issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. His idea is about how the crash will reshape America. I feel that this "crash" is but a minor fender bender in what is really heading our way.

The first parts dealt with the financial markets and a brief history of earlier recessions/depressions and the shifting landscapes that their major centers endured. It is what he says about the rest of the country which concerns me. His comments on the resiliency of New York City are based on the diversity AND density of its population and he cites the argument of Jane Jacobs that jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. So, could that mean that for our innovative, creative young people to be sucessful, we need to increase the density of our downtown population? Just how well will that mesh with our preservation of the historic properties and districts?

He goes on to explain what will happen to the cities that used to be the manufacturing centers, how with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. or even the relocation to the southern states, our aging "Rust Belt" cities are trying, unsuccessfully, to reinvent themselves. Then there are the "Sun Belt" cities that had little going for them save their cheap land, easy credit and service sector jobs which got caught in the housing bubble and sub-prime loan fiasco. I am not sure Lexington has dodged this bullet completely yet.

His solution for cities, is for a new "spatial fix" for after the crash. His definition of spatial fix is:

The physical character of the economy—the way land is used, the location of homes and businesses, the physical infrastructure that ties everything together—shapes consumption, production, and innovation.

And he states the suburbanization was the fix for the industrial age. Industrialization brought on mass production, which brought on prosperity and mass consumption. Prosperity and Federal policies brought on more home ownership, which when subsidized by the highway construction and Interstates, led to a suburban lifestyle. No more depression era penny pinching, this was the era of expanding credit and an ever increasing need for home ownership. With that need came the newer, riskier financing strategies and an ever expanding supply of housing choices, it was just that these choices were standardized and farther away from the city centers.

Housing and transportation costs now make up a substantial portion of all household budgets. Local governments are obligated to provide services to the farther flung residences without an adequate return in tax revenue (i.e. these places don't pay for themselves) and as people in the areas of highest foreclosure rates have found out, home ownership is not all it is cracked up to be.

Home ownership, lately has also made our populace just a little less mobile than it was. There was a day when, if the job opportunity presented itself, Dad could pack up the family and go. Now they will have to sell the house, worry about Mom finding a job, will the kids fit in to the new schools and will the new house cost more than it does here. Now that opportunity must a substantial one.

There are several things that Lexington can do and Florida has laid them out in his concluding paragraphs.

In part, we need to ensure that key cities and regions continue to circulate people, goods, and ideas quickly and efficiently.

and

Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity.

A denser, more diverse, more mobile Lexington will invite more ideas and allow for more innovation through more interaction with a greater cross-section of our population in closer quarters than we now see. We will also need a greater effort to re-localize our manufacturing and food production because this is just the beginning.

Community Farm Alliances

Mrs Sweeper and I attended a local chapter meeting of the Community Farm Alliance last Thursday evening. I was hoping that we could find out more about the farms of Fayette County who are participating in the farmers market movement that has burgeoned in Lexington lately. Hopefully, there would be farmers offering their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs for this year. I wanted to hear about how more farmers were growing more organic foods locally.

I was disappointed.

I met a small number of young people, mostly students, who have great intentions, massive amounts on enthusiasm, and farm experience. These were the "local organizers" of the programs of the CFA.

I heard about their "fresh stop" efforts, their Community kitchen efforts and a "stone soup" program centered in the downtown area. There was mention of a report which identified a "food desert" in Lexington. A food desert is an area which lacks grocery stores and restaurants serving healthier items than "junk food". I did learn about their teaching opportunities such as "farm to school" and the community gardens being set up on the BCTC campus off Leestown Rd.

There are many other places to create "community gardens" and I've heard of one town where an activist has, on her own, arranged for those who wished to garden, to meet those who had backyard space for a garden and where each party benefited.

I was just hoping for more than what I found. I would like to find that some of the many ten acre lots that were created in the past 25 years could be moved from large residential lots to small farms and used to feed the local residents as they once were.

Weekend thought for a slow weekend

Mrs. Sweeper and I have been talking about what we can do in our little backyard in the way of urban gardening and we have concluded that some raised beds would do the trick. We are now preparing to construct the same as soon as we can acquire the proper materials. The other night, while she was perusing a seed catalog, I ran across this new twist on Urban Farming. It has some really different ideas.

There is also a movement around the country for keeping chickens in the back yards in urban areas. Vancouver, Canada is now considering allowing the practice while New York, Seattle and Portland among others apparently never outlawed it. I can just see how the idea would play out in Lexington. Could we again see live chickens being sold at the Farmers Market? Could you take them home if you went to the market on the bus?

This would be a large step toward re-localization of agriculture.

A preview of the plans for the East End were released to the newspaper and the whole plan will be unveiled tomorrow night. That means that the easy work is done. Now the hard part, getting the implementation work started with little or no stimulus money.

Stimulus Watch shows that the $250,000 wish list entry has 80% of 35 votes saying that it is not a critical project. The Lyric Theater and the Issac Murphy garden are on the list and both are garnering a lot of negative votes. (The Lyric will proceed due to a previous government commitment). The Issac Murphy garden is supposed to be a Legacy project for the World Equestrian Games, so they had better start on that soon. I have also heard that there is some question about legal ownership of the property.

There is the $2 million Race Street Shotgun House Redevelopment project that does not have a description and the @250,000 renovation of the Charles Young Center, both of which are gaining negative votes. The only other project on the list is a rebuild of the signalized intersection for $200,000 and it has 2 positive votes.

The consultant has said that the people have spoken, but these are not wealthy folk in a time of recession so there will be a lot of hard work ahead of them.

Destination 2040: Part 5

Picking up on the discussion of the Destination 2040 report, today I will look at Aspect 3 Economic Expansion. They describe Lexington as a fertile field of opportunity, where taking advantage of key strengths and exploring creative new endeavors will benefit all its people. That has long been the case but what they do not mention, or see the prospect of, is that it does not benefit all people equally. By simply reading the statement, one could imply that all will benefit equally, but that has NEVER been the case.

The community elements of Economic Expansion are:

New or Existing Business Expansion
Stable Employment / Adequate Wages
Agricultural Industry
Workforce Training and Education
Stabilization of Government Revenues
Regional Cooperation
Institutes of Higher Education as Economic Engines
Business Recruitment Strategies/Methods
Entrepreneurship and Innovative Partnerships/Programs
Generation of New Markets or Products

In this aspect, the ranking do not show any great need for any one to be ahead of any other as the all may be equally valid. I do question the first one, as to whether It should better read Existing and New Business Expansion, but that is just quibbling details.

This time the report re-arranges the order of the elements and starts with number 2 Stable Employment/Adequate Wages.

To further enhance business, government, and non-profit job expansion efforts toward both high wage skills-based workplaces and high-income knowledge based workplaces… sounds like an admirable goal, but that should hardly be first in a long line of actions. This action will, in the long run, increase the revenue collected by the local government, but we need to enhance the abilities and wages of the lower classes first. When we ensure a living wage for the common workman AND ensure that the so called “high-wage “ positions are not in the realm of the “New York financiers” that we have heard of lately, then we can gain more opportunity for both ends of the economic scale. The worker training opportunities are(or will be) there, what is not there is the ability to attend, due to pressing needs to provide for a family. Assure a living wage and reduce the economic pressure and people will advance themselves.

We do have an active cultural arts scene. It may not be as active as Danville/Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts, but there is a cultural scene going on. We have two fine university concert halls, one publicly owned venue and a number of smaller sites. There is no reason why Lexington should not have concerts and shows of the caliber of those presented almost weekly in Danville It is curious the both universities are left out of the list of initiators for this action. There is a nice arena for other concerts and events in our Rupp Arena, the unfortunate reality is that what plays well there is not considered cultural enough for the upper echelons of cultural society. Country music concerts and monster truck shows are all cultural events.

The action to create permanent school based personnel to facilitate job placement come too close to a Big Brother society for my tastes. We already have school counselors which cannot seem to correctly assess the real problem students in order to provide real help, otherwise we would currently be reaching the intent of this goal.

Community element 1 Existing and New Business Expansion has seven action statements with such broad reaching, generalized meanings that each and every one of them could be working a cross purposes with any of the others. Mostly, what I get out of them is a sense of doing here the same that has been done elsewhere and had brought this country to the brink of financial collapse. Our need is to return to the basics and let the people do what they have done before the global economics got in the way.

Element 3 is our treasured Agricultural Industry and by that we mean the equine industry( plus some of those food farmers) since we have lost the tobacco market as a major money mover. The actions all have something to do with our “signature” industry and have nothing to do with our sustainable agriculture that was predicted in the opening section of the report. The industry of thoroughbred horses will not feed the families of the high-paid high-tech workers that we apparently will have, nor will it support the well paid health care workers and scientists housed within Lexington’s boundaries. What is needed will be acres upon acres of re-localized, truly sustainable food production, supplemented by greenhouses of non-local species plants. Even agriponics is not out of the question.

Once again, in Element 4 the action statements do not follow the form of the element heading. Workforce Training & Education actions are all about education and very little about training the real workforce. If the past 30 years is any evidence, then one would realize that the real workforce is not the highly educated, but those that do the bidding of the educated elite.

The first action of setting and reaching a top tier in U.S. education still puts us somewhere near 16th or 17th globally, which is a far cry from the top. The second action desires a nebulous number of “free scholarships”to local schools of questionable reputation which is like getting free gas without asking about quality. Action three tells me that if we throw enough money at education, then we will have the highest paid teachers graduating the same quality of students as we are presently. Fifteen years to raise the standards but five years to over pay the teachers. The last three actions will continue to display efforts that have done "sooo well" in the past.

I , myself see very little coming from these actions that is not already being done.

Next time I will tackle one of my favorite topics the Cultural Creativity of our creative class

Railroads and the economy

I was directed to a link the other day in relation to transportation issues and found an entry about freight railcars. The author uses another story from much earlier in the year to explain how the railroads are not shipping as much goods as the once did and that thousands of railroad cars are sitting idle somewhere in the wilds of Montana. This is to show that the economy is not as robust as it once was.

As one who tries to keep up with what is going on in railroading, I have seen many posts from others asking about cars that are stored in various places in Kentucky. There times during the year that some autorack cars are stored, for weeks at a time, along the Norfolk-Southern tracks near Waller Ave. I can even recall, when the tobacco industry was strong in Lexington, that Southern used to store boxcars in the fall, in order to be ready to transport the leaf to the cigarette plants elsewhere. It makes good press, to say that approximately 1.5% of a railroads entire fleet is in storage, but I think that it is just standard industry practice.

Hunter Harrison, president and chief executive of Canadian National Railroad, recently in a keynote speech to the third annual Canada Maritime Conference, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, explained his views on the future of American railroading. He sees the need for an expansion of freight rail and the need for moving more freight, from trucks, to rail. Fuel economy and reduced emissions are only a few small points where efficiency may be gained.

• “If only 10 percent of North America’s (road) freight moved to the rails it would save $1 billion in fuel and give a big reduction in emissions,” he said. “Fuel savings, fewer emissions and reduced highway congestion: We are on the right side environmentally.”



• Harrison said rail carriers can move one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of fuel. “Imagine your car giving you that kind of performance.”

Harrison and Canadian National have made a big difference in railroading in the last ten or so years, so he may be on to something here.

The second part of this story, is the need to expand our manufacturing base here in America. By making more of our own goods and shipping them by rail, we could reduce our dependence on a global economy and re-localize our lives.

We, as a nation, are doing ourselves no good deal if we import dangerous, possibly lethal goods, pay shipping by inefficient means, then ship back recalled goods and finally, discard or destroy the contaminated refuse at our expense. Is it any wonder that our balance of payments is so out of whack?



Lexington's largest beer wholesaler is in the process of moving to an expanded location, and while they are currently adjacent to a rail line and will be along side the same rail line in their new location, they do not receive any product by rail. It would not be a major undertaking to make a siding at either of these two locations, yet they choose not to. Big Ass Fan Co. could also ship and receive by rail but don't. Should we ask why?

Sometimes you can be ahead of the curve

I was looking at the December issue of Planning, the monthly magazine of the American Planning Association (APA), and saw the article about some alternate uses for the ubiquitous front loading garage. The author is suggesting that they be used for some type of storefront of a home-based business. Shades of Homer Simpson, when he decided to make money by being a marrying preacher, and ran a marriage chapel out of his attached garage. Was Homer ahead of the curve?

The term "bedroom community" has been around for a while now and has been used to refer to smaller suburban town some distance from the main city, but this is the first I've heard of drive-through sleeping quarters. The author implies that a majority of people buy large houses, with big yards (although a lot of them are on postage stamp sized lots), just to spend very few hours in them, mainly just sleeping. The actual living is done elsewhere. There are some families that do not even use their front door. The come home, drive into the garage and shut the automatic door.(Unless the garage becomes the storage space for something other than the car)

Under Suzan Tobin's scenario the garage could become like the old "live above the store" concept that has survived in the rest of the world for centuries. This would just be live beside where you work or walk to work while serving the neighborhood. Its done in many small towns all around the world. A local merchant peddling his wares to his neighbors and buying what he needs from them. One of them a baker, one a candle maker, one who makes soap, etc. Other vendors would also be there with products and services like books cafes and specialty grocers. It sounds a whole lot like some of the self contained Orthodox Jewish communities near New York

This also sounds like a recommendation of my fellow "peak oil" blogger I mentioned earlier this month. Her letter containing the ideas is found here and this would be number 14. By having the goods and services within walking distance the use of fossil fuels is reduced and the community becomes more sustainable. By allowing neighbors to interact in a social setting the community becomes safer. Is my friend also ahead of the curve?