Beating Vegas

By Doug Page | Thu, July 3, 2008, 11:22 AM

Hang on to your OSU cap, Bucky.

Ohio, particularly the Miami Valley, may be a national leader in something positive. There’s a shocker.

After being near the top of the list for foreclosures, bankruptcies, manufacturing job loses, obesity and sweat index, it appears we’ve got something people want.

Water.

Las Vegas, for instance, was growing like a young pig in a corn crib. Home prices were going only one way, up. Folks were taking their gambling out of the casinos and into the housing market.

Census figures put the median price of a home at $137,300 in 2000. Six years later, it’s $309,800.

Now the bottom has fallen out of the housing market, especially in Lost Wages. Good thing, too.

Earlier this year, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego calculated there was a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead would run dry in six years and a 50 percent probability it will be gone by 2021.

Lake Mead, a Colorado River impoundment, provides 90 percent of Vegas’ water. Its water level is dropping about as fast as Vegas home prices.

Home prices will go back up. The lake’s water level, not so sure.

And once those home prices start going back up, developers will start throwing up more. And the lemmings will buy them. Then the water runs out.

We here in flat-growth, flyover country don’t have that problem.

In the Miami Valley, we are sitting on 1.5 trillion — 1,500,000,000,000 — gallons of water. That’s about the same amount in Lake Mead.

Our water is in the Miami Valley Buried Aquifer. It’s been there since the glaciers receded. And, if we have any kind of smarts, it will be there for generations to come.

Places such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and any other dry-land oasis all have water authorities. They dole out the water. Agriculture gets so much. Industry gets so much. And houses and swimming pools get so much.

The Colorado River once flowed all the way to the Gulf of California. Now it peters out as California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and others suck it dry.

Here in the Valley, we really don’t have anything like a water czar. We do have the Miami Conservancy District, our only real regional agency.

The district keeps a weather eye on the health of the aquifer.

The district also keeps watch on its levees and dams.

Ask our friends in Iowa and Missouri how important that is.

At some point in the near future, some really smart folks are gonna figure out that living where water is getting scarcer and scarcer — no matter how gentle the winter climate — isn’t the best long-term investment.

They are gonna start looking for a place with water.

But not so much that every rain fills the basement.

Industry is already figuring that out.

So come on over to the Miami Valley where we have water to drink and levees that don’t break.

And as an added incentive, we may even put in a couple casinos for you Las Vegas refugees.

Worried about the winter weather?

We never said it was the Garden of Eden.

Just a whole lot better than where you live.

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Fighting the squirrels and losing

By Doug Page | Thu, June 26, 2008, 12:25 PM

It towers over much of the Ohio landscape.

Its wood is prized by cabinet and fine furniture craftsmen. Squirrels and man compete for its distinctive nut meat.

So why are some so upset with the black walnut tree?

To many urban dwellers, the black walnut is just a messy tree.

Our first house in Ohio backed up to a beautiful — or so we thought — black walnut tree across the alley.

While it never shaded our yard, it softened the glare of the near-setting sun. The little girl across the alley loved grabbing a lower limb and hoisting herself ever upward.

It was the typical urban black walnut: great climbing tree, lousy lumber tree. To be of use for lumber, loggers look for the black walnut grown among the ash and oaks. Those tend to have the branchless trunks that rise 80 to 100 feet skyward before starting their canopy. Backyard black walnuts like to stretch out horizontally, rather than vertically.

Perhaps they wish to be better shade and climbing trees; to be something cherished and valued to balance out their messiness.

When the little girl and her mother moved, another family moved in. They convinced the landlord the tree needed to go.

And they offered to take it down.

But this was a big black walnut. It probably was planted when the house was built some eight decades prior.

It took them most of the summer to remove the tree. They had to rent a lift bucket to get to the upper reaches of the 60-foot tree.

But they finally cut it down. The wood went to the landfill.

They wanted the tree down because the walnut fruit kept falling into their small above-ground pool.

It probably would have been quicker and cheaper just to move the pool to the other side of the backyard.

Cutting down the walnut left a huge hole in the western skyline. The summer sunsets were more intense — more glare and less green-golden.

By the next summer, we had moved.

There were no black walnuts to shade us from the sunset. But there was a line of ash to the east and one long-trunked black walnut.

And its limbs draped gracefully over the garage roof and driveway.

Which meant summer was punctuated with the thonk of falling nut meeting shingle.

Which was fine until the falling golf ball-sized nut met the top of my head.

The pain was followed by triumphant squirrel chatter. I maintain the squirrels purposefully dislodged the walnut.

My wife claims it’s the trauma talking.

Or she did.

I opened the back door one day to find my wife shooing away the backyard squirrels from the cat food.

As I congratulated her on her backhand follow through with the broom, two thonks were heard.

Not the normal falling-nut-on-shingle thonk. No, this was a falling-nut-on-metal thonk. The metal being the hood of the wife’s almost new car.

The twin dimples seemed to please the squirrels in the black walnut tree. They spent the next 5 minutes in high squirrel hilarity.

“Do you remember when I told you you couldn’t have a pellet gun?” she asked. “Well, I may be changing my mind.”

While our black walnut remains safe from the predation of man, the same cannot be said of the squirrels.

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Trotwood tasing: What’s next?

By Doug Page | Wed, June 25, 2008, 02:29 PM

The jury’s not guilty verdicts last week is not likely to end the saga of the tasing of Valreca Redden.

A civil suit over the November 2007 confrontation between Ms. Redden and then Trotwood police officer Michael Wilmer is a good bet.

The jury’s verdict on misdemeanor counts of obstruction of official business and resisting arrest would seem to indicate that Redden’s lawyer Brian Penick convinced the jury Wilmer was in the wrong. Wilmer was fired for violations of Police Department policy separate from the Redden confrontation.

During that confrontation, Wilmer restrained Redden when she tried to leave with her 1-year-old son, took her to the ground and tased her in the neck. An internal police investigation faulted Wilmer for striking the 7-month pregnant woman in the neck with his Taser.

During the two-day trial last week, the city argued Redden came to the police department to “dispose” of her 1-year-old and refused to answer any questions from Wilmer. Wilmer said he believed the child would be harmed if he left with his mother.

Penick argued Redden came to the department seeking help. And for that she was tased.

Redden did not testify in her criminal trial.

For its part, Trotwood has done the best it could with a bad situation. Officials inside and out of the department have been forthcoming with information. Officers have been disciplined. Procedures tightened. Nothing, to my knowledge, swept under the rug.

Expect something to happen shortly.

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Fun with numbers

By Doug Page | Wed, June 25, 2008, 10:14 AM

The yellow limousines are off the roads for the summer, which is a good time to look ahead to the fall.

Doesn’t take a genius, or a benighted columnist, to know that all our transportation costs are higher than a cat’s back.

Likewise, we all are trying to make do with what we’ve got.

We don’t go out to eat as often.

Fish sticks have replaced salmon.

We buyer cheaper beer and play less golf.

We ride the bus or bike.

Doctor and dentist appointments are less frequent.

We do without.

That’s because fuel prices are sucking away the money we use for our day-to-day expenses, not to mention our savings — if we are among the lucky minority to have any.

School districts are in the same boat. Those fuel costs are sucking the life out of their general fund, the money they use for those day-to-day expenses.

We — this isn’t a shocker — expect our school districts to do without too.

Here’s a little exercise that may challenge the basis of that expectation.

One way for school districts to do without is to bus at the state minimum. That would mean no busing for high school students and busing only those elementary students who live two miles or farther from their school.

Suppose you have a high school student. Suppose you live 4 miles from school. Suppose your vehicle gets 25 mpg, and gas is $4 a gallon.

Now suppose you drive the supposed kid in the supposed car to the supposed school each of the 178 school days.

That’s going to cost you $227.84 in gas.

That’s the equivalent of 7.4 mills of new property tax for the owner of a $100,000 home. It might be cheaper to pass a new tax levy.

But that only applies to those who have high school students. It’s their kids, let ’em pay for them, some might say.

Let’s make some more assumptions.

Assume you are interested in making this country less dependant on oil. And assume a 70-passenger school bus gets 6 mpg.

Also assume the school bus is half full, 35 students.

That would mean the yellow limousine gets 210 miles per gallon per student.

Try that in your hybrid. That’s a lot of gas not getting used.

Here’s another.

Assume it costs $4.47 (the average 2006 cost of Northmont, Trotwood and Brookville districts) to run a 70-passenger school bus one mile.

Also assume that school bus is half full again, 35 students.

That would mean is costs 12.8 cents a mile per student.

The IRS figures the cost of operating a car at 50 cents a mile.

Are we seeing a pattern here?

Cutting student transportation may save money in the short run.

Its long-run economic costs makes it a bigger loser for all of us. It makes about as much sense as not funding public education.

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Busing woes

By Doug Page | Tue, June 24, 2008, 11:17 AM

Whatever happens with the price of diesel, Bob McClintock wants Northmont parents to know one thing:

“We’ll get kids to school safely every day,” the school district’s business manager said.

His sentiments are echoed by other school leaders in northwest Montgomery County. All are looking for ways to cut costs, but there is only so much the districts can do. The state promises to increase its transportation aid by 1 percent for the coming school year.

Falling behind “The state share is going up,” McClintock said, “but not as fast as costs. We’re falling behind.”

For Northmont, the cost per mile has gone from $3.69 in the 2004-05 school year to $4.67 for 2006-07, an increase of 26 percent. At the same time, state reimbursement per mile has dropped 15 percent from $2.24 to $1.90.

Trotwood’s cost per mile is up 33 percent over the three school years, while state reimbursement is down 23 percent.

The exception Brookville breaks the trend. The district’s costs have dropped 2 percent, while state reimbursement rose 4 percent.

That’s because the district cut busing starting in the 2005-06 school year to the state minimum: no high school busing and K-8 busing only for those living two or more miles from school.

The district needed to cut $1 million from its operating costs after a levy failure. Transportation took most of the cuts.

“We went from using 32,000 gallons of diesel to 16,000 gallons last year,” Superintendent Tim Hopkins said. “Fuel consumption for this year will be interesting to see. I don’t think fuel costs will be very different. And that’s a very good thing.”

Deadly diesel The price of diesel is a budget killer. Joe Poe, transportation supervisor for the Trotwood-Madison district, remembers when $30,000 would cover his fuel bill for the year. Now, $30,000 won’t last two months.

John Blessing, Northmont’s operations director, had budgeted $208,000 for diesel this school year. He had to find an additional $22,000, spending $230,000.

“I may need a bake sale to finish out the year,” a laughing Blessing said.

According to the federal Energy Information Administration, diesel ranged from $2.40 to $2.60 a gallon during the 2005-06 school year; from $2.50 to $2.90 the next; and from $3 to $4.90 this past school year.

“And people tell us to live within our budgets,” Hopkins said. With the state covering a lower and lower percentage of transportation costs, the percentage paid by local taxpayers either has to increase or service curtailed.

In part, that is what Brookville did. By reducing busing, eliminating one bus mechanic and cutting the supervisor’s hours, Hopkins said the district did not have to make any direct classroom cuts.

Smart routing Gone are the days of separate buses for different teams. Northmont’s McClintock said athletic departments are getting smarter, scheduling varsity and junior varsity against the same school the same day.

“We just bunch up our athletic trips,” Blessing said. “One team just has to wait on the other.”

In addition, Northmont suspended “free” field trips several years ago. Now each building is responsible for finding the money to pay for a field trip, either through a PTO or fundraising.

According to McClintock, the going rate this year was $2.15 a mile — based on $3.95 a gallon diesel — and $16.75 an hour for a driver.

“We’re obviously going to have to raise that price next year,” he said.

Brookville’s Hopkins wondered whether the days of the single-bus route were coming back. Most districts use two buses for a route: one for the high school/middle school, the other for elementary students.

“Perhaps it’s time to think about using one bus to pickup all the kids on the route. It might start to make economic sense,” he said.

New-bus blues The state also has cut back on its assistance in purchasing buses. The vehicles start at $70,000.

“Now, we’re lucky to get one-third of a bus,” said Trotwood-Madison’s Poe. In the 2005-06 school year, the district received $27,412.92 in bus-replacement aid. This school year, the district got $19,405.76, a 41 percent decrease.

The district does not have a schedule for buying buses. It bought seven buses in 1999 when it had the money, Poe said. It bought one this year

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