The Lede: New York City unveils Citibike, its bike share program. Can you guess the sponsor? (A hint: Vikram Pandit was at the unveiling.) Cali’s high-speed rail must be built very quickly. Freight moves through Chicago very slowly. Chicago aims for no pedestrian deaths by 2022. American manufacturing clusters, NYC is number two in tech, and Boston’s waterfront thrives. Half of New York City’s public schools are more than 90 percent Black and Hispanic. Charlotte slows plans for Wi-Fi in its schools. Marijuana dispensaries have positive externalities for schools. Detroit gets a CFO, Mayor Emanuel unveils his plans for pension reform, cities cede power to states. Beers for votes in Grand Forks. No beer for Ocean City on the Jersey Shore. Dream cities of the Middle East.
Transportation and Infrastructure
Economy and Development
Housing
Education
Budget
Energy, Environment, and Health
Public Safety
Labor
Mayors and City Councils
Immigration
International
Culture and Other Curiosities
Transportation and Infrastructure
Atlanta’s airport expansion opens this week, betting on international travel:
Now as in 1971, however, the future of international air travel is uncertain. The terminal, planned a decade ago and beset by delays and cost increases, opens amid global economic jitters and high fuel costs that have already prompted international flight pullbacks by airlines including the terminal’s biggest user, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.
The city gets an extra 13 years to upgrade its sewer system.
Transportation for America provides recommendations for the House-Senate reconciliation of their very different transportation bills. The reconciliation process began slowly and involves negotiations about the Keystone pipeline (via Streetsblog).
The price tag of California’s high-speed train is now at $6 billion:
The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included — the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.
Chicago slows down the entire country:
Shippers complain that a load of freight can make its way from Los Angeles to Chicago in 48 hours, then take 30 hours to travel across the city. A recent trainload of sulfur took some 27 hours to pass through Chicago — an average speed of 1.13 miles per hour, or about a quarter the pace of many electric wheelchairs.
NYC goes big on bike share. New Yorkers approve. Citigroup is the sponsor of Citibike. How the bike share program works. Where a bike-share may have had too much grease. San Francisco has already gone big on bike lanes. And it might just let bus riders board via any bus door!
The Economist reviews Chicago’s Infrastructure Trust:
[E]xperience with public-private partnerships shows that cost-benefit estimates can sometimes prove wildly optimistic. When projects go bad—leaving half-built roads and schools—they become a public problem. Private investment might well end up being recouped in higher user fees.
Mr Emanuel is well aware that other cities are watching this experiment with interest. The mayor is a hugely ambitious man, who is undoubtedly keen to leave a lasting legacy, and who some believe may want to remain as mayor for a period of Daleyian proportions. He, of all people, will want to build something that other cities will want to copy, not avoid.
Chatter of a Midway privatization surfaces. Where public-private partnerships don’t go.
By 2022, there will be no more traffic fatalities in Chicago, Chicago hopes.
Where aged cabs roam.
Economy and Development
This morning the Horseshoe Casino opens in Cleveland as one of the city’s largest employers. Voters there, in 2009, overwhelmingly gave it their yays. But voters a tad north may not be pleased:
Detroit’s hard-pressed treasury can expect to take another hit as Ohio opens four casinos that’ll be in direct competition with three in the Motor City, according to a consulting company.
The treasury stands to lose up to $30 million in annual casino tax revenue by 2015 as some gamblers switch to the neighboring state’s casinos, says a report from the global management company McKinsey & Co. Detroit already has lowered casino revenue estimates for the coming fiscal year.
In Illinois, Gov. Quinn dismisses casino chatter.
The bill to keep the Vikings Stadium in downtown Minneapolis finally stumbles over the end line. All that’s left is a stamp of approval from the city council:
The package approved by the legislature calls for the city of Minneapolis to contribute $150 million in stadium construction costs and about $7 million a year in operating costs, with funds derived from an already-existing citywide sales tax and downtown hospitality tax. Eventually, any additional tax proceeds beyond construction costs and the $7 million annual operating-cost contribution can be used by the city for Target Center renovations, though some have argued the city has had control over the $60 million generated annually by those taxes all along, and hence didn’t need a stadium bill to help with Target Center renovations.
Neighboring St. Paul made out sweetly in the deal, too—it gets $2.7 million a year, for 20 years, to pay off its debt. To a convention center. Columbus starts some NBA chatter.
Everything you wanted to know about the Wolf’s Point skyscraper. Mayor Emanuel cuts red tape for Chicago businesses. NATO, NATO, NATO: Places are closing. Museums are not getting money back, so sorry, and a bunch of other things are happening.
American manufacturing clusters in metro areas. NYC is the nation’s number two tech city:
The report, “New Tech City,” found that a combination of factors, including strong support from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have helped New York pull ahead of Boston to become the nation’s No. 2 tech center after Silicon Valley. Local entrepreneurs have launched an estimated 1,000 startups since 2007, the report estimates, with 486 of them receiving angel, venture capital or other seed funding.
Mid Market, San Francisco gets a boost. The Boston waterfront comes alive:
That’s right: 47 miles. The waterfront stretches from the southernmost tip of Dorchester through South Boston, to downtown, the North End, Charlestown, and finally to East Boston. Eighty-five percent of the shore is pedestrian-friendly, part of the groundbreaking public way known as the HarborWalk. New apartments and condos are popping up everywhere, notably in South Boston, but also, hopefully, East Boston. And the list of attractions along its course is staggering.
Upward mobility is greater in the North than it is in the South. Wages aren’t rising as fast as job gains in Miami-Dade. The Miami City Commission approves a $50 million investment into a blighted neighborhood. D.C.’s development subsidies have been more successful than not over the past decade.
Housing
San Francisco shakes up its historic preservation standards:
Currently when property owners or developers want to make changes to buildings that are designated landmarks or fall within a historic district, such as Jackson Square, Liberty Hill or Alamo Square, they must conform to strict preservation standards that dictate such things as design and materials. Under the proposal, developers of affordable housing or property owners with limited funds would work with the city to find less costly alternatives.
A proposed five-story apartment complex is St. Paul gets NIMBYed to death. Withholding rent to protest apartment conditions backfires on Little Havana residents in Miami. An NYC co-op board turns down the prime minister of Qatar, and his $31.5 million.
Seattle Housing Authority’s proposal to rebuild and expand its WWII-era subsidized apartments raises eyebrows:
The $290 million vision for a dense, vertical, mixed-income neighborhood is unprecedented in scale and “untested anywhere in the United States,” according to Matthew Gardner, a land-use consultant hired by the city. It overstates demand for housing and office space at Yesler, in Gardner’s opinion, which calls into question the authority’s ability to complete the dramatic makeover in 20 years as proposed.
Georgia receives federal permission to make some changes to the foreclosure relief program HomeSafe. Homeowners in Detroit must get their houses up to code, like, now. The New Orleans City Council gets some details on the status of blight reduction and demolition efforts after two months of waiting.
Education
Half of NYC’s public schools are more than 90 percent black or Hispanic (via Daily Intel).
Suspensions and revocations come down for those implicated in Atlanta’s cheating scandal. Even as Fulton County Schools becomes Georgia’s largest charter system, a nationally-recognized Atlanta-area middle school is denied a charter and may go private to stay open.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools slows plans to launch Wi-Fi access in all schools. Seattle abandons an earlier bus-pickup schedule for next year due to parental backlash. The New Orleans Recovery District declares its new central enrollment system a success.
High-tech v. low-tech in two D.C.-area private schools:
The independent pre-K-to-12 schools are able to make such stark choices because of the flexibility their private boards and budgets allow them. And though they may represent the extremes, their experiences offer touchstones for parents and educators unsure about the promises of learning through technology for this ultra-connected generation.
In a trial program, five Columbus schools will open healthcare clinics over the summer.
“Why I want a marijuana dispensary near my kids’ school” (via SFist).
Budget
Maryland’s “doomsday” budget could mean furloughs for Baltimore school employees. State legislators in Pennsylvania want to redirect gambling money from tax relief to school budgets. Mayors are once again looking to tax-exempt institutions to help fill budget gaps. D.C.’s budget process is not transparent.
Detroit now has its first CFO, an appointed budget-fixer who was serving a tenure as one of the state’s emergency managers. He will arrive as the city weighs turning its health department into a public institute, sans city dollars:
Though other cities have set up similar institutes, Detroit’s would be the first conversion from a public health department to an institute in a major American city, according to Vern Davis Anthony, a former Michigan health department director and a consultant on the project.
Mayor Emanuel unveils his new pension plan: hike the retirement age and halt retirement hikes. Suburban mayors are in his corner. Labor unions? Not so much.
The ongoing battle over New Orleans property tax penalties. The Austin City Council vows to re-examine tax-incentive policies.
Energy, Environment, and Health
After a dispute, Atlanta’s food truck park reopens. Ocean City, New Jersey – on the Jersey Shore mind you – votes to stay dry.
Public Safety
A massive kickback scheme taints the retiring Baltimore police commissioner’s legacy. The NYT editorializes for better oversight of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy and an end to police confiscating condoms from women suspected of prostitution. Data from traffic stops in Milwaukee show the police stop a lot more black folks. (And the city’s police department has a bit of a nagging problem.)
Turns out, cops in Minnesota did hand out pot to Occupiers as part of a drug treatment program. The city is running away from this tidbit as quickly as it can.
Sign of things to come: Seattle institutes safeguard for drones in the city and runs up against the deadline to reply to the fed’s recommended fixes for the police department.
The latest fashion trend in Houston: concealed weapon carriers:
“These pants aren’t just for the SWAT guys, they’re for soccer moms and your everyday superheroes – those high-speed operators that suddenly need to defend themselves and their family,” [inventor and veteran Houston police officer Brian] Hoffner said.
D.C. Mayor Gray re-ups Police Chief Cathy Lanier for another five years.
Labor
Do Mayor V.’s budget cuts target women?
If approved, the job cuts would follow a pattern set two years ago, when women made up less than a third of the city’s total workforce but constituted 54% of the layoffs called for by Villaraigosa, according to records. Dozens of child-care workers and library employees were among those let go.
New York City’s largest employer is the nonprofit sector (via Runnin’ Scared):
“To the extent that budget cuts fall in the social services and healthcare delivery areas, this will adversely affect an important source of employment for women and persons of color,” said James Parrott, an economist with FPI who prepared the study.
San Francisco teachers voted overwhelmingly to support a strike Thursday night, with 97 percent saying yes in what was the first of two required votes.
“Last night the teachers of San Francisco sent a message loud and clear to the San Francisco Unified School District,” said Dennis Kelly, United Educators of San Francisco President, in a statement after votes were counted Friday. “It is time for the district to stop seeking unilateral cuts and sweeping program changes, and to start treating the teachers and paraprofessionals with respect and to recognize what we have done to keep this district afloat.”
So, too, might healthcare workers in the Twin Cities. Chicago teachers, always tiptoeing around a strike, aren’t happy with the latest city deal.
A councilman in Indianapolis wants to ban hotels in the city from hiring through temp agencies.
Activists want better working conditions in Seattle’s Amazon warehouses. D.C. employees are steamed over a little-noticed provision in a passed law that decreases the number of unused leave days they can roll over into the following year.
Mayors and City Councils
Dude (via City Pages):
The North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation is investigating a downtown Grand Forks bar’s promotion of rewarding voters with a free beer.
…The investigation includes the involvement of Tyrone Grandstrand, a candidate for Grand Forks mayor in the June 12 election. The promotion by Gilly’s Bar and Grill, a popular bar for young adults, awarded customers with a free drink if they displayed an “I voted” sticker. On Friday, Gilly’s provided bus transportation from the UND campus to the county office building.
Cities are ceding their political oomph to states. What Rich Miller told Rahm about Springfield. The mayor is happy.
Amendment One passes in North Carolina, and the Charlotte City Council plans to offer same-sex benefits for employees next month anyway. Gov. Perdue: “We look like Mississippi.”
Atlanta Mayor Reed heads to Paris for the New Cities Summit.
Immigration
On immigrant detention, Milwaukee county is turning away from ICE. The Census shows record growth for foreign-born residents.
International
Some hope in Ciudad Juarez. Urban farming in London.
Culture and Other Curiosities
Changes in design, ideology since the 1960s. NYC is attacked by Red Admiral butterflies.
Dream cities of the Middle East:
At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, I saw it for the first time. It was there in Cairo at the old Ibn Tulun mosque as well. It was clearly visible in bomb-cratered Beirut in the 1980s, in the spaceport skylines of Kuwait City and Jeddah, and at the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The tangible, structural features of these streets and buildings were not what the people of these places saw when they looked at their cities. Instead, everywhere in the region, I found invisible cities of spiritual memory and passionately embraced prophesy, in a vivid architecture of the imagination.