As a longtime observer of the interface of politics, commerce, and environment stewardship and as a former City Planner, I have gathered a few ideas to improve our region that are working elsewhere and that I believe could work here, but only if implemented regionally.
I believe that we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically improve our standard of living and assure our children’s future by adding jobs for all, cleaning the environment, and fixing our built infrastructure. Three concurrent events have aligned our stars for the first time: passage of the ARPA and BIP legislation and the pledges from COP26. Couple these with two young leaders who are willing and able to work together, and I have more hope for our future than I have had in years
Federal leadership is taking a “whole-of-government” approach to fixing our natural and built environments, and our region can do likewise if County Executive Bello and Mayor-elect Evans work together. The city and county have good ways and means to reduce environmental impacts and improve our economy, and each has a plan in place and activities underway. But both could benefit from coordinated planning and implementation made possible only through intergovernmental cooperation.
Many, if not all, of the actions needed to improve our way of living will create jobs, especially for youth, and youth employment is a primary goal of both the County Executive and Mayor-elect. A secondary benefit is that more wealth will be kept local, as chief sources of climate changing pollutants are fossil fuels purchased from outside the region.
Electrify everything
Upstate New York has some of the greenest electricity in the nation, produced by hydropower, by three nuclear plants and by wind and solar farms. We can optimize use of these resources and greatly cut dependence on fossil fuels by electrifying buildings and vehicles. We’re proceeding with the latter but have hardly begun on the former. The City of Ithaca’s common council just voted unanimously to electrify all buildings, public and private, by 2030. The model for doing this is established and available and is being used in NYC. Electrification will open new jobs, especially in the electrical and HVAC trades and wind and solar development. With ARPA funds, the City proposes to create a sustainability institute and the County proposes workforce development programs. Monroe Community College is well suited for educating youth for this transition.
Growth management
Though state laws thwart efforts to manage and control growth beyond the boundaries of a municipality, countywide coordination of development would have many environmental and economic benefits. Among these would be to reduce driving miles, optimize use of public services, limit length of roadways, sewers, water lines, power lines, etc., reserve farmland and woodland, and enhance public transportation. Our regional population has been flat for decades, so a nearly fixed number of taxpayers must cover the costs of growth. Few taxpayers understand this, though, and a role of government is to educate its constituents. If told about the costs of unmanaged growth, taxpayers will be more likely to accept growth limits. By calculating taxpayers’ costs and benefits of a development may show that certain projects cost more in public dollars than can be generated through taxation. Significant work on this issue was done locally in the 1990s, and many of the lessons are accessible.
Transportation funding coordination
The makeup of the Genesee Transportation Council nearly assures that federal and state transportation money is spent to support our existing automobile-centered lifestyles by spending on highways and roadways. Couple this with the fact that electric vehicles are no panacea to climate challenges (electric vehicles are only about 25% more energy efficient over their lifecycle than gas-fueled vehicles, and even if all vehicles were emission free, enormous emissions will still come from the process of constructing roads and bridges), and it is clear that the private automobile is not part of the climate solution. Ranking the more densely developed areas higher in the scoring matrix could lead to more funding of low-carbon alternatives like public transit and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. With ARPA funds, the County proposes spending on sustainability and transportation alternatives.
Coordination between City Planning and RCSD
These two entities plan independently yet have tremendous impacts on each other’s constituents and neighborhoods. While neither the County or City control the RCSD, they could pressure the RCSD (and NYS Ed) to coordinate planning. Decisions by RCSD cause school buildings to close suddenly or force students to be bused around the city at great cost. Few schools truly serve their neighborhoods as they did in decades past, and very few children walk or bike to school. Meanwhile, City Planning is working to improve conditions in the neighborhoods by investing in crosswalks, bike lanes, small businesses, etc., few of which are used by kids on buses.
Stormwater management
Combined sewer lines predominate in the city, so clean rainwater is needlessly treated at the Van Lare plant. Improving the permeability of land in the city would allow rainwater to permeate into the soil, reducing the expenditure on treatment. Professors and students at RIT have developed plans to do this.
Organic waste management
Keeping organic waste out of landfills can reduce costs of landfilling, cut gas emissions, and produce rich soil. Much of our waste is organic and when landfilled, it breaks down and emits greenhouse gases. To its great credit, Monroe County captures some of these gases at Mill Seat to produce 6.4 megawatts of electricity, but not all gases can be caught. Establishing a countywide composting program could provide enormous quantities of precious soil while extending the life of Mill Seat. Existing local companies could help move this along quickly.
Fix existing housing before building new affordable housing
City neighborhoods are burdened with underutilized housing, resulting in empty storefronts, parks and places of worship. Empty buildings deteriorate remarkably quickly, leading to increased costs of code enforcement, fire protection and crime control and decreases in taxable value. The drive to create affordable housing by constructing new multifamily apartment buildings is an unintended cause of underutilized, often vacant, houses. Rather than building new, renovating houses can be cheaper and can keep people in neighborhoods. As can be shown, the price of constructing a new, 2-bedroom, 800SF apartment in Rochester (by an affordable housing developer using low-income housing tax credits) often exceeds $300,000, which is enough to renovate three to four 2-bedroom houses totaling over 4000SF. These new developments are attractive, in the sense that they attract people out of existing housing into the bright, shiny, new thing. But with a no-growth population, housing elsewhere goes vacant.
With ARPA funds, the City is proposing roofing and rehab assistance, funding of a housing trust fund, land acquisitions, and a Buy the Block program.
Parks restoration
Many of our parks have become unsightly from lack of maintenance. Trees are aged or dead, lawns are pitted and flooded, water courses are silted up, shorelines are overgrown, buildings, ball fields and courts are worn out. While ARPA funding is targeted to fixing built structures, much more funding is needed to repair the landscapes. Improving our parks and restoring our historic ones would attract families and youth to nature and to the river. Because the County operates and maintains most city parks, coordination between the County and City is needed. With ARPA funds, the City is proposing to construct a nature center at Maplewood Park and improve access to Durand Eastman Park.
Support small projects over large
Publicly funded mega-projects are meant to attract commerce to our region and improve quality of life, but we have no scientific way to measure success. High-cost, taxpayer-funded projects such as the High Falls Entertainment District ($30M), soccer stadium ($23M), Midtown Plaza demolition ($55M) are unable to show a return on investment. Two current proposals have the same problem: filling the Inner Loop North and removing Broad Street from atop the aqueduct, both of which seem worthwhile but yield no tax benefits. Conversely, smaller, lower-cost projects like trails, bikeways, sidewalks, docks, pedestrian and cycling traffic signals carry less risk and potentially serve more people. And private dollars spent strategically and organically (Village Gate, no public dollars) cost taxpayers nothing and often succeed more.
Drive less, save more
We don’t make gasoline here, so money flows out of our local economy for every mile driven. The regional transportation system in Portland, OR had a program called Drive Less, Save More, where residents reduced their driving miles and then input their “undriven miles” into an online database. A page on a dedicated website used images like a fund-raising thermometer to show the regional savings. Just like a fundraiser, people and groups competed to see how much they could save. Merchants and restaurateurs got behind the effort, encouraging participants to spend their savings locally. An added benefit: cleaner air.
Protect natural resources
At the same time that we must act to reduce emissions we must also act to protect our natural resources. Our region has everything people will need to handle the growing climate crisis, including low-carbon electricity, abundant, fertile cropland, fresh water, clean air, and ample forests. As Buffalo’s Mayor Brown says, climate refugees will be coming, sooner than people realize, and we need to be ready. Current City and County plans do not consider a sudden influx of people, since we haven’t experienced this yet.
