dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog

TALKING BACK IS GOOD!

dk — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:23:31 +0000

You can just watch if you like, but it's OK to touch too! Click the headline to read an entire post. Give a post the star-rating it deserves. Watch your vote be counted, just like that! Comment, if you like ... anonymously. Go ahead! Nobody's looking....

Google Could Quicken Eugene

dk — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:57:24 +0000

Dear Google,
We have read with interest about your Google Fiber for Communities project.
We understand you are planning to build and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the country. You’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. You plan to offer the service to at least 50,000, and potentially up to 500,000 people. Your recent announcement seeks to identify interested communities. We may not yet be interested, but we are intrigued. And, we hope, intriguing.
You may have heard about Eugene Free Network. Back in the day, it offered its own utopian Internet vision. Anyone in Eugene could sign up and get a free e-mail and dial-up accounts with efn.org. It was a pioneer in the field and we loved it, until it became popular and impossibly slow. But that was when the Internet was going to change everything, and before it had.
Your ultra-fast Internet connection holds promise for downloading feature films in just a few minutes, video conferencing with colleagues around the globe, or mapping Bigfoot sightings in 3-D. But can it speed up what most people do most of the time? Can your network get us arguing faster? Can it help us get past the West Eugene Parkway?
That would be good, because we have new controversies that are stuck on the entrance ramp, just waiting for their chance to be argued. Downtown development, Tasers, and a new basketball coach, just to name a few. We’re falling behind and we could use your help.
Your announcement last month gave some clues about what you are looking for in a community. You will favor municipalities that can move quickly and with broad public support. Let’s be honest. That’s not gonna happen here. We’ll have professors taking three minutes of public testimony, diagramming sentences to reveal your true intent. We’ll have parade entries objecting to the specifics of your plan. We’ll have placard-wavers on street corners and lawn signs warning about evil conspiracies.
But look at it this way, Google. If you can make your project succeed here, it will be battle tested in the harshest conditions. You’ll have proven not only that it can work somewhere. You’ll have proven it will work anywhere.
If you pick us, we won’t be grateful. We’ll become sure we should have asked for more, that it’s really some sort of trick, that whatever we’re given was already our entitlement. But there are people like us all over the place, and as your influence expands, eventually you’ll have to deal with folks like us. You may as come here and get it over with.
We understand that you have been gathering applications from interested municipalities for the past month, and that your deadline is March 26. Like many college towns, we never unlearned the value of cramming at the last minute, so it’s not unusual for us to do all the necessary work in the final two weeks.
Ask us sometime about the Supreme Court injunction we failed to secure because we filed our paperwork just a few hours late. We expected to get a finger-wagging and maybe a tardy slip, but we didn’t expect the whole case to be thrown out on a technicality like that. Oh well, live and learn.
We live and learn slowly here, so we’re hoping you can speed things up for us. We love to process everything here, even if it means the world sometimes passes us by. But your little experiment could quicken us. A large part of your investment will be in silicon processors that move much faster and consume less energy. That could help us immensely.
If your processors moved us along at double speed, our future would arrive that much sooner. With your help, by 2015 we could be out of the 1960s, where we’ve been stuck for a very long time. If we maintain that double pace for half a century, we’ll be caught up with every other place by 2060, just in time for a new decade of the Sixties.
Sincerely,
Eugene
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Mac Court’s Future Second Life

dk — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:50:51 +0000

The University of Oregon will play its last PAC-10 basketball game at Mac Court tomorrow. The university and the community have done an exemplary job marking the end of an era that started with a scintillating 38-10 victory over Willamette University on January 14, 1927.
Are people still talking about that game, with its thrilling two-handed set shots, its run-and-gun pace, and its win-from-ahead drama? No, not really. Such ancient history to most students seems, well, academic.
Universities honor the past because most of what there is to learn from is located there. But a university must always be looking into the future, because that’s where its mission lies. The richest asset of any university remains what hasn’t happened yet, literally embodied in the students it serves.
Show me a school that’s not getting ahead of itself, and I’ll show you a former school in the making.
Mac Court has had a good life. It’s having a good ending to that good life. Can there be a good second life ahead for Mac Court? That’s what the university wants to find out.
Exactly a year ago, The Future of McArthur Court Committee completed its preliminary study. This small work group considered seven goals for Mac Court’s second life, but they focused on opportunities that answered two questions deemed most central. Does the option address an identified academic need? And is the proposed reuse of Mac Court well suited for the location?
The committee proffered four alternative uses for adaptive reuse of Mac Court but no single recommendation. Only one of the four alternatives directly links Mac Court’s “second life” with a targeted student population that will further the university’s academic mission.
Relocating the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts (AAA) deserves first crack at the site and its adaptive reuse challenge. Not because moving the academic school into a venerable stadium will be easy, but because it will be hard.
Historic preservation is something taught inside that school, so teaching the concept inside a structure that preserves history serves also as a four-story-tall object lesson.
“Adaptive reuse” is not a new concept to architects, as anyone who has been to a quaint brew pub or a loft apartment in a repurposed industrial building can attest. But reuse-as-character is beginning to intersect with reuse-as-sustainability.
Architecture students have been studying sustainability for a generation and AAA’s program is rated one of the top in the nation. Architects and urban planners are beginning rediscover “old and improved.” Building standards are beginning to calculate and consider the energy that went into building the original structure as something worth saving. The future is calling AAA to reuse the past.
Giving the School of Architecture and Allied Arts a daunting design challenge allows the school’s reinvention to become an expression of the expertise it offers. If the Nice Cube is designed to show sport recruits and their parents how much we prize our student athletes, imagine how a high schooler wanting to study architecture will feel walking into a four-story-tall atrium to learn about our offerings.
Giving this prized piece of real estate to a single school within the university will help to preserve Mac Court as a place. And who better to remake that place than a school dedicated to teaching place-making?
The feasibility of adaptive reuse for a building that lasted longer than anyone might have expected will have to be studied next. The committee’s report made clear that such a technical analysis was beyond their scope of work. That analysis can serve both theoretical and practical needs if it evaluates specifically what would be required to move AAA from a handful of buildings a couple blocks north into a reimagined Mac Court and an adjacent new structure.
The University of Oregon should be looking for a bold statement to anchor the southern edge of its academic core, as the Lillis Business School marks the west edge of campus. “Bold” has risen a notch since the opening of the Jaqua Center for Student Athletes, but that’s good.
The Nice Cube points boldly toward the future, but a radical reinvention of Mac Court can do that and more. It also can boldly honor what is this week becoming the past.
==
Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is executive director for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, but these views are only his own. The Future of McArthur Court Committee’s final report can be downloaded at www.uoregon.edu/~uplan/mac_court/FINALMacCourtReport03_01_09sm.pdf

Sewers and Civilization

dk — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:39:31 +0000

RG08 – sewers & civilization
Yesterday’s televised health care reform session got me thinking about Coburg’s special election to decide whether residents will endorse their City Council’s plans for a new sewer system. President Obama arranged the televised work session to make visible his claim that Republicans have been obstructionists.
Health care works like sewers work — out of sight. You have permission not to think about your sewer system until your toilet backs up. It’s the same with health care, and the crux of Obama’s struggle. If the Republicans are obstructing some good thing from happening, why isn’t the clogged system forcing us to wade into our waste with a plunger of determination?
St. Vincent dePaul Executive Director Terry MacDonald once told me why he’s not hopeful about health care reform. “It’ll never happen until we have to step over sick or dying people on sidewalks. As long as we whisk our weakest off to emergency rooms, the problem remains unseen by too many people.”
I asked MacDonald this week what he thought about sewers. Pardon the expression, but I really stepped in it.
“Modern civilization comes down to three basic infrastructure improvements: clean water in, waste water out, and the electrical grid,” MacDonald said. “Remove those three, and you’re back into the Middle Ages. Think about that cold snap we had a couple months ago, when so many people had frozen pipes. They were camping out in their homes.”
If those same people were also without power, and for an extended amount of time, it becomes easy to see that the nicest house is nothing more than a hut with windows. It’s not surprising that MacDonald’s college degree was in Medieval Studies. “I’m still studying it,” he’s quick to add.
And, I would suggest, he’s fighting every day against forces that would allow us to slide back into that pre-modern state. Every day, St. Vincent dePaul is putting people in homes, getting people hot showers, salvaging stuff from our waste stream. He’s fighting for civilization.
I didn’t ask if he has an opinion about the Coburg system. I’m sure he would have told me his opinion doesn’t matter, that it’s up to the local residents, that he has to get back to work now. MacDonald keeps his work in front of him.
That brings us back to the problem of sewers and health care. Humans are not well equipped to care about things they cannot see, or to value what they cannot easily measure. As Albert Einstein famously reminded us, “Not all things that count can be counted, and not all things that can be counted count.”
The future, for instance.
A sewer system gives a community a future that can be different from its present or its past. Whether the residents someday identify that difference as “progress” cannot be counted on, but the inverse is certain. No sewers, no progress. Coburg cannot grow without better systems to take away their waste.
Is now the right time for Coburg to spring for such an upgrade? Although the city has attracted several federal grants to defray the costs, Coburg residents will see a new monthly bill if sewers are installed. For some whose finances are teetering on the edge, an extra dollar or two each day is beyond their capabilities. But for everyone else, the added expense will require adjustments in budgeting and a stronger faith in the future.
If Coburg votes for sewers, they will be voting to make room for more and other future Coburg residents. The current generation will be making some sacrifices for the sake of the next generation. That faith in the future is what drives civilization forward — regular people trying to make things just a little bit better.
A week from today a young friend of mine is hoping to purchase her first home. It’s a tiny house, it needs lots of love, she’s stretching to afford it, her parents are helping. She already has a five-year plan in her head for improvements she’ll be making and the house isn’t even quite hers yet. Her friends tease her that now she’ll settle down and have kids. Her parents are probably nursing similar hopes.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Renewing Urban Renewal

dk — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:36:19 +0000

I don’t usually attend Eugene City Council meetings, because I always think Don Bishoff would do it better. Bishoff faithfully and playfully recounted the councils’ antics and educated a generation of Eugene newspaper readers about what their local government was doing or repeatedly failing to do. We miss him.
But last week’s agenda compelled me to attend. Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz presented a comprehensive package for downtown that addressed public safety needs, development opportunities, and funding mechanisms. Rather than tackling each of these nettlesome issues piecemeal, he attacked all three at once in what I dyslexically call “one swell foop.”
The council’s first response? They voted immediately to separate the proposal so they could debate and vote on each part, relieving any councilor of the difficulty of accepting parts they dislike to achieve an end that they support.
Not surprisingly, the council then approved specific downtown improvements, but stalled when it came to finding ways to pay for them. Specifically, several councilors objected to extending the life of the downtown urban renewal district. They voiced general skepticism for the tool of tax increment financing (TIF). The council agreed to return to the issue — their tiff about TIF — in a couple of weeks, which is the legislative equivalent of exchanging phone numbers at the scene of a fender bender, except this crash keeps happening, over and over, at the same spot, in slow motion.
I have favored tax increment financing, which allows a city to reinvest property tax collections inside a specified “district” to hasten “urban renewal.” It’s been a great tool in other places — Portland, most notably — but its history in Eugene for the last generation is checkered at best.
I better understand the skepticism now, and it’s because I was in the room last week and not watching the meeting on cable TV. I had the good fortune of sitting beside one of Eugene’s fiercest opponents of tax increment financing. She graciously provided color commentary of the proceedings.
“Seething” is the word that comes to mind.
Through her eyes, and in several other conversations since, I see their rage and sympathize with their point of view. I still think we can mend, not end, urban renewal, but only if we’re straight to the point, sharp and quick.
First and foremost, Make Schools Whole. Focused funding for downtown diverts some funds that would have gone elsewhere, including public schools. No Eugene K-12 school should suffer a lost nickel because we’ve decided to focus attention and funding on downtown. If urban renewal is to be used for downtown, it should be understood that 4J Superintendent George Russell and Bethel School District Superintendent Colt Gill will send the city an invoice for any funding shortfall related to urban renewal and the city will pay it. No questions asked.
The city has gotten admirably creative about swapping with Springfield or with Lane County to achieve shared goals, but this issue demands no fancy footwork. A nickel lost by our schools is a nickel paid to our schools. Period.
We cannot allow education to suffer so that downtown can thrive. I understand that better from being in the room.
After the business of the meeting was finished, several councilors quickly went on record praising the Civilian Review Board, which had met the evening before and voted to recommend that Police Chief Pete Kerns reopen his investigation of the tasering of the Chinese student in September.
I noticed those who praised these volunteer citizens as heroes were the same voices who were nervous about tax increment financing. Abuse of power is at the root of these fears. So let’s form a Civilian Review Board to monitor our Urban Renewal Districts.
Ruiz already has included in his proposal a citizen panel to provide feedback and oversight, modeled after a group he convened to monitor road funding and improvements. But given the level of angst in the room about Urban Renewal Districts, Ruiz should consider applying the same balm to heal a similar wound of distrust.
A politically appointed review board can best earn the community’s trust to oversee the extended life for downtown’s Urban Renewal District, followed if necessary by its certain death.
==
Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Mascot for Thinkers & Drinkers

dk — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:34:16 +0000

I’ve been thinking lately about Robb Hankins. During his brief tenure as the city of Eugene’s cultural services director, he coined for Eugene a slogan that hardly anybody likes, even though it should have brought all sides of the city together. “The world’s greatest city for the arts and the outdoors” finishes strong — too bad it loses almost everyone but the most urbane by the fourth word.
He should have given the city a mascot instead. Mascots rally people better than slogans, if only because they don’t ask to be taken seriously. Ask the failed Nike RoboDuck. Our beloved fluffy duck’s macho Harley Davidson entrances only make the silliness of it all plainer to see.
A mascot for the city of Eugene would bring everybody together. Even if everybody hated the mascot, that hating could still be done altogether, with a wink or a grin. Mascots are good for that.
You may have a better idea, but I propose loggerheads. Loggers and heads; timber workers and college professors; flannel shirts and elbow patches; drinkers and thinkers — forced to share the same land and forced to share the same word. Auto workers in Flint, Michigan are known as “rivetheads.” Endlessly arguing Eugeneans could likewise embrace how they spend their days as “loggerheads.”
Don’t like loggerheads? How about a big, squishy, orange Umbrage? Whoever leaves as the most aggrieved party could take Umbrage with them, but they’d then be responsible for its care of feeding, until somebody else took Umbrage.
We all know loggerheads when we see them. Welcome to Loggerheads Land. Shakespeare used “loggerhead” for what we might call a “blockhead,” but the word can also refer to a very large, slow, sea turtle. A loggerhead was also a red-hot, bulbous stick, used in 17th century England either to melt tar or heat beer. Take your pick.
The spiced lager brings us back to the drinkers and thinkers. Tonight, you won’t want to miss a very important yet unpretentious event at Cozmic Pizza (8th & Charnelton, 5:30 p.m.) “Think and Drink” started in Portland as “a happy-hour series that sparks provocative conversations about big ideas.” The series is sponsored by Oregon Humanities, and this is its first stop in Eugene.
Robert Melnick, a former dean of the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts, can be thanked for taking “Think and Drink” beyond Portland. As the chair of Oregon Humanities, he instigated the road show, moving board meetings around the state. It made sense to bring “Think and Drink” along with them.
“These events bring together a wide range of viewpoints to discuss very difficult subjects,” Melnick told me. “They can play an important role in the larger civic conversation.”
University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere and Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy will be joined by University of Oregon Athletic Director Mike Bellotti and former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach, who is now the Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
They will discuss with the audience the economic and cultural benefits of collegiate sports, but that’s only a starting point. Nobody really knows where it might lead, and that’s why it’s important. It will be a joy to watch a Left Coast liberal and a Midwest Republican, a football coach and a Sanskrit scholar, mixing it up for all to see.
Let the fur fly!
Last weekend Washington D.C., a town at least as fractious as ours, got walloped with “Snowmageddon,” dumping two feet of fluff on a paralyzed city. How did the hipsters who hang out at Dupont Circle respond? They announced a citywide snowball fight, via Facebook and Twitter. Thousands showed up and pilloried anything that moved, making news across the country with their three-hour-long happy riot.
Once they dig out, will they find that something more than the snow has melted? Maybe, maybe not. But plenty of people will return to work saying “you had to be there.”
Wouldn’t it be great if that’s what people tonight are saying, as they walk away from “Think and Drink?” Melting tar or warming beer — pouring the civic elixir that can bind us together and cheer us, as the loggerheads that we are.
You may wish later that you had been there to see it begin.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com. Details about “Think and Drink” programs can be found at www.oregonhumanities.org.

Chance for Improvement: 30,000-to-1

dk — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:32:03 +0000

The Supreme Court of the United States acknowledged last month what has been tacitly understood for a generation. If money is speech, then limiting money would be limiting speech. Our Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but the rich get more of it.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows corporations to no longer pretend that their funds are not being used to gain access and influence with politicians. Making plain what was hidden is good. But the ruling does overturn 100 years of judicial precedent, favoring those who claim they oppose “judicial activists” and “legislating from the bench.”
Allowing money to flow more freely into campaigns will lead to political races getting closer and more divisive. Vote totals will portray us perpetually as an evenly divided country, even if it’s not true.
Here’s why. Freedom of speech takes three forms. Only the first involves literally talking. You are free to say whatever you want, so long as it’s not slanderous or endangering others. You can march or chant or holler to your heart’s content. Speech is speech and freedom is freedom.
Your vote is another form of speech. Voters “send a message” to legislators with their votes. Money is now officially a third form of speech, also with guaranteed freedoms. As they say, “money talks.”
Your vote is your voice, but you have to vote in your district, you vote only once, and your vote cannot be divided — you’re either for or against. That’s simple and direct.
But money also has a voice, according to the Supreme Court. You can give money in any district you choose, over and over. You can give money to both sides if you want. You can “invest” in the politicians you like best, each time they run.
Pollsters can tell you the likelihood that your “investment” will “pay off.” Only a winning candidate can pay you back, and the margin of victory doesn’t matter. Only winning matters. Paying for an overwhelming victory would be wasting money that could be invested elsewhere. Only chumps bankroll landslides.
So it looks like everything is even, but that’s just money doing what money does best — spreading itself around for minimum risk and maximum return.
We respond by speaking — literally, with our mouths — louder and more urgently because the outcome was close. We won or lost by only a little bit.
Radio and television help perpetuate the “evenly divided” trope because it keeps the audience engaged, which makes its advertisers happy. This pattern then feeds on itself.
As comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “I try to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.”
I do have a suggestion. It responds to an overturn of a century of precedent by reversing a rule put in place up the road from the Supreme Court about the same time.
The House of Representatives is required by the United States Constitution to have one member for every 30,000 citizens. In 1911, the House of Representatives passed Public Law 62-5, capping its own membership at 435.
That may have seemed a good idea at the time, but “the People’s House” is now our democracy’s last best hope. That’s as it should be, don’t you think?
U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio represents more than 600,000 citizens. Each vote cast for him is worth only five percent of what a vote for an Oregon Congressperson should be worth. If the Supreme Court won’t allow money to have less of a voice, how about lifting the 1911 law and restoring how much voice the Constitution afforded each vote?
A House of Representatives with 8,000 members won’t be able to function in the same way, but isn’t that what everybody is clamoring for — no more business as usual? Each representative will be about as accessible to citizens as a Eugene city councilor. Each voter will have opportunities to meet the person representing them in Washington.
When meeting every voter can be done by knocking on every door, television commercials will be less important. Campaigns will be less expensive, so money will have less influence.
Corporations may determine that buying access to 8,000 Congresspeople is not be a good investment, returning power again to the people. Shouldn’t that begin at The People’s House?
==
Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard. Others espousing this proposal have a website at www.thirty-thousand.org.

Fripperies R Us

dk — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:39:48 +0000

Fifth Friday footnotes, follow-ups, and far-flung fripperies:
• Surveying this week’s election results, one detail mystifies me. Why aren’t the votes for Measures 66 and 67 identical? I’ve read dozens of commentaries on the tax measures, but never saw one that split the difference between the two.
• I don’t quite understand why I launder my washcloths.
• If your grocery store has two entrances, I’ll bet you almost always use one and not the other, and you don’t really know why.
• Never trust a driver wearing a full-brimmed hat. Unless it’s Betty Snowden.
• Has any product ever been so maligned as polyester? I predict a comeback — under a new name, of course.
• After reading Don Tykeson’s essay a couple Sundays ago, I got to thinking how the absence of a sales tax may attract more ne’er-do-wells to Oregon. Income taxes only scare away those who have or hope to have high incomes. The Oregon town with the most college students without specific career goals might bear the largest brunt. Hmmm.
• After we bear a brunt, can we do anything else with it?
• Egalitarianism is anarchy dressed for company.
• Don’t mess with how other people decorate their refrigerator doors. Just don’t.
• How could I feel nostalgic for Cingular? But I do.
• Anticipating historic speeches from Barack Obama and Steve Jobs on the same day, I dreamt that they combined them with a sleek device that made participating in democracy as easy as buying a song for 99 cents. It was called an iVote.
• I stopped eating most junk food about the time they started lining the bags with that space age silvery material. Space food sticks never caught my fancy either. Or Tang.
• When I first came to Oregon, I was amazed how cheap Christmas trees were, until I learned that groups raise money by disposing of them for you. Life cycle cost: about the same. I have friends who prefer to tromp in the woods to get a tree for free, but none who admit to returning their tree to the forest after December.
• Every Post Office’s automated postal center receipt has printed on the bottom, “It’s a pleasure to serve you.” Since no human helped me, that seems creepy.
• Why does winter darkness seem darker than summer darkness? Just because there’s more of it?
• I was once a stoic, but it didn’t feel right. Then I became a minimalist — it was the least I could do. I tried being a philanthropist, but it did nothing for me.
• Eugene does everything slowly. You’d think that a town known for its rain would do at least a few things precipitantly.
• James Cameron’s “Avatar” could be seen as a bold artistic statement against obesity. Ignore the McDonald’s “Avatar” Happy Meals.
• Politicians would do well to stop confusing centrism with bipartisanship. Voters don’t care if their leaders like each other, so long as things get done.
• If you just happen to know which streets are paved with asphalt and which with cement, then you understand the torture of being unable not to notice.
• Can we have zero tolerance for intolerance? Can we be fundamentally opposed to fundamentalism?
• I’m afraid all my children know about long-term commitment, they’re learning from their cell phone companies. It starts with romance, but ends with a contract “to have and to hold” — a hand-held device.
• Biopsy analysts don’t do surgery themselves. Paper doll artists have assistants. These people have their work cut out for them.
• I believe Massachusetts voters wanted to send a message to one politician who they believed had been given too much power. Most knew this man only from TV, but some remembered his years as their neighbor. They were trying to rebuke Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman.
• When was the last time an American family couldn’t play cards because they lacked a card table?
• Isn’t it strange that the same people who want government to become more transparent also want us to keep an eye on its every move?
• A sharp knife makes everything easier. Everything.
• Show me a house where three-way switches are connected to one-way bulbs, and I’ll show you people choosing simplicity for its own sake.
==
Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) Writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Of Tasers and Dots

dk — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:37:13 +0000

The Chinese students’ quandary has haunted me for weeks. Eugene attorney Ilona Koleszar recounted it to Register-Guard reporter Jack Moran, after the students met with Eugene Police Chief Pete Kerns. Kerns told the student who was Tasered and his roommate that the police “find no fault with the students in this incident.”
The students appreciated the meeting, but near the end they got agitated. They pressed Kerns. “They said, ‘We don’t think you’ve told us whose fault you think this is,’ ” Koleszar recalled.
Kerns met with the students to apologize, but not to accept blame. The department’s internal investigation also did not blame Officer Judd Warden. The blame currently rests with policy and training. In other words, we’re blaming “the system.” It’s nobody’s fault.
Sound familiar?
After Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab nearly succeeded in blowing up an airplane heading for Detroit, President Obama admitted that the system failed “in a potentially disastrous way.” Vital intelligence was gathered, but the system failed “to connect the dots.”
Likewise, in November, the U.S. Senate opened its investigation into the Fort Hood massacre with this decree: “Our purpose is to determine whether that attack could have been prevented, whether the federal agencies and employees involved missed signals or failed to connect the dots….”
“We failed to connect the dots” cleverly absolves each dot-keeper. The blame is fixed to a mythical Connector of All Dots. It’s mythical because that Dot-Connector cannot be wrong. Ever. Once a U.S. Senator lands on a no-fly list, or a misspelling creates a confusion, the dot system becomes fallible, and we lose trust in the system. We worry that additional costs are incurred or our liberties are curtailed “for no good reason.”
Only a Dot-Connector with infinite resources and infallible wisdom can be counted on to always connect the dots before a tragedy connects them for us. Good luck with that.
Return now to our Taser controversy.
Police do difficult and dangerous work, day in and day out. We shouldn’t expect them to do it perfectly. They are everyday heroes, but their mistakes can be no less outsized. Cops must connect dots, some of which may be fuzzy or misplaced, in real time. Mistakes are inevitable. The “system” should shield officers not from blame, but from revenge.
We don’t throw a parade for every officer who saves a life. We’d run out of ticker tape, because it happens every day. And we shouldn’t fire a cop who makes a bad judgment in a split second. But the system should allow Warden to accept responsibility, take the blame, say it was his fault, admit he was wrong, ask for forgiveness, apologize, be sorry — whatever you want to call it — without springing a trap of legal liability.
Accepting responsibility is just one more act of everyday heroism we should be able to ask of our police officers. Instead, we blame the system, arguing that everyone shares responsibility, so nobody has to own it.
Kerns says the policy for Taser use is being re-evaluated. But even that gets complicated. Policy is being reviewed by the Eugene Police Commission, which is appointed by the City Council. Any recommendations proffered by this citizen panel goes to the Chief, who works for the City Manager.
Meanwhile, the Sept. 22 incident with the Chinese students was analyzed by the police department’s internal affairs division. The department’s findings were then adjudicated by the Chief of Police. The finding and the process used is now being evaluated by the Civilian Review Board and the independent Police Auditor. The board and the auditor may make separate or joint reports to the Eugene City Council.
Then, based on the multiple policy reviews and the sundry incident reports, the policy may be changed by the city council. Oh, and did I mention that a recent Ninth Circuit Court ruling about Taser use may also have to be considered?
Everyone agrees there are lots of dots to be connected. But the students’ concern is simpler — more like a single welt.
“They don’t want the publicity, but they feel more and more like something wrong happened here,” Koleszar said.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard. He blogs.

Rebuild Downtown’s Credibility First

dk — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:56:31 +0000

Last week I wrote that downtown Eugene can’t become any of the vibrant things we hope for until it’s first safe, clean and attractive. In that order. But I was wrong. Something important precedes even safety. Call it credibility. Downtown has to matter.
“The community has to make downtown matter,” says downtown property owner David Davini. “Or else it won’t.” He feels downtown has lost a decade or two. “Oakway matters. 5th Street matters. For too many people, downtown doesn’t matter.”
Downtown property owners formed Downtown Eugene Inc. (DEI) to make downtown safe and clean, but they overlooked its credibility issue, the same way I did. Downtown has stayed the same, while other parts of town have grown past it.
DEI board chairman Gerry Gaydos agrees. “It bothers me that a town as great as this doesn’t have a downtown that tells its story.”
Davini has been a downtown business owner for twenty years, and he was a DEI board member for “way too long.” He’s fuming, and frankly, a little embarrassed.
“We operated DEI the way plenty of non-profit boards operate. Our board members were involved, but not committed. We relied on staff to give us adequate information at our monthly management meetings, and apparently we didn’t always get that.”
Russ Brink served as the executive director of DEI since it was formed in 1988. He did many good things for downtown. He and I worked together on First Night, an alcohol-free New Year’s Eve celebration. He brokered a deal that saved the Eugene Celebration. He fought to get streets opened. He defended downtown.
Was Brink committed to downtown, using Davini’s distinction, or merely involved? If a chicken and a pig get together to make some ham and eggs, the chicken’s involved, but the pig has to be committed.
Greg Fleener was committed. He owned and operated Cafe Paradiso downtown for 11 years. The business climate and downtown’s micro-climate eventually bankrupted him. I tracked him down in Colorado, where he’s rebuilding his life. He didn’t offer too much in response, except to say “Eugene is a tough town.”
In 2007, the DEI board began exploring radical ideas to free up more operating funds. DEI elected to hand off its administrative overhead to the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce in 2008, and Brink stayed on for a three-month transition.
In the summer of 2008, Brink left Eugene to become the executive director for the Rockingham Area Community Land Trust in Springfield, Vermont.
That move should have saved DEI almost $100,000 per year. But so far, most of that savings has gone into cleaning up messes that Brink left behind. Nobody will admit to anything more than confusion, but a criminal investigation is ongoing. When the confusions mounted to the point of requiring a full audit of DEI’s financial records, Brink told a Register-Guard reporter that things were more complicated than they seemed. He asked for patience and understanding.
That was nearly a year ago. I’ve tried to reach him a couple of times. Others have too. He hasn’t returned my calls, except an e-mail message this week that offered the Internet-equivalent of “no comment.”
Brink left his Vermont job in September. His former employer also offered no comment on his departure, but the abrupt change surprised many in Vermont.
Longtime Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Dave Hauser knows the feeling. He recalls the moment when he first got surprised. Brink had just left for his new job. “I went into the cubicle that Russ had been using, because I needed a file or something. I looked down into his waste basket and saw a bunch of torn up bank statements. I thought, this can’t be good.”
The audit followed. Sorting through the financial records has taken almost a year and consumed all of the administrative savings so far. “We expected the transition to consume energy and resources for the first six months. It’s taken us eighteen,” says Hauser. “That’s the bad news. The good news is we’re just about up to speed now.” Downtown may now be on the cusp of having the vision and leadership — and credibility — to make its vibrancy matter.
Return to Davini’s distinction. Downtown may benefit from more people being involved. But what really matters is those few who are committed.
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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard. Past columns are archived right here.