Toellner Tells it

Calgary Provides us with model for successful animal control

Over at the KC Dog Blog, I posted a review of our recent conference speaker Bill Bruce.  Bruce is the head of animal control and bylaw services for the city of Calgary, Ontario.  I won't get into, the nitty gritty of Bill's speach when he was in town two weeks ago, but you can check it out over there.

But I wanted to highlight this for everyone because Calgary's ordinance has been so successful.  Since they started instituting their animal control program, the following has taken place (keep in mind that Calgary has a population of over 1 million, so these numbers sound like small town numbers).

1) A 50% drop in the number of dog bites/attacks/chases (in spite of the population of people and dogs doubling during that time).

2) A huge decrease in euthenasia rates to where only 256 animals were killed last year in their entire system (the KC metro area kills nearly 40,000 animals each year). Calgary thinks it can legitimately become a no-kill city within the next 3 years.

3) They have a 90-95% dog licensing compliance rate (KCMO's is about 10%).

4) The Calgary animal control department is completely self-funding through licensing compliance and fines operating on a budget of about $3.7 million.

5) Nearly 80% of stray dogs are returned back to their owners.

6) Calgary has over 140 dedicated off-leash parks for dogs (KCMO has 1)

It's a fabulous program. They've done it all without breed specific laws, anti-tethering ordinances, pet limits or mandatory spay neuter laws.

They've done it with good educational practices and enforcement of licensing and leash laws...and hiring good animal control officers. (My favorite of the many great Bill Bruce quotes when he mentioned that his animal control officers get paid about $75,000 a year he said "I've found if you pay peaunuts you only attract monkies.")

I really wish more city administrators would have come out for his presentation.  If there was interest in meeting with him, I would personally pay for him to come back out of my own pocket to meet with local officials and animal control officers.  Their program is absolutely amazing and should be the model that all cities use:  instead of cities like Lee's Summit and KCMO that used failing ordinances from other cities that have never been successful.

And Johnson Countians Complain about Missouri Roads

Johnson Countians often complain about the Missouri side of the state line's maintenance problems...turns out that they may have a few of their own.  While it's not uncommon for me to hit a few potholes or metal plates in my morning commute, it's been a long time since a road has litterally swollowed my car.

The Star did a nice job of capturing this unusual situation.

Sprint Parking Plan

Some days I can only shake my head and wonder why people can't think outside of the four-wheeled box.

Last night, Fox 4 ran a feature on downtown parking for the Sprint Center...and have even put together a downtown parking map (which doesn't include anything South of the I-670, so if you're looking for easy parking, park in the Crossroads and walk up).

Meanwhile, nowhere in the story did they mention that the MAX bus line will basically provide door-to-door service for you if you decide to park on the Plaza, at the Library, River Market, Union Station, etc and just take the Max line to the concert.    Free parking, plus $1.25 each way on the bus.  Heck, the city could encourage the behavior by actually promoting it and dropping bus prices to 50 cent(s).

Instead, we're determined to feed the crazed machine about how little parking there is downtown instead of focusing on options outside of our four-wheeled box. 

Until we start thinking and talking like a city with public transportation, we'll continue to have people underutilize in and continue to build infanitely more parking than we need and creating dead space in our city.

The beginning of online-only "newspapers"

I've written here several times about the decline of local media coverage.  As the costs of delivering the news have increased (including the building of hugely expensive printing facilities), newspapers in particular, and even TV news (and the basic non-existance of radio news), have cut costs by cutting staff and reporting.  It's happened all over the country. It's led to less reporting, and more focus on press releases.  And when they do report, there are usually fewer sources called.

Not long ago the KC Star was one of the better local newspapers in the country.  But corporate buyouts, cutting of staff, and increased focus on the bottom line, etc have caused it to be a shell of its former self. With a few exceptions, most of the reporting is suspect at best.  I've joked for a while, that if I've ever been involved in an event in this city, and seen the news coverage of it, I've pretty much always wondered if the reporter and I were at the same event.

Thus the rise in online "newspapers".  In many communities, real, serious journalists are starting "newspapers" online that are focused on investigative reporting, and really relaying local news.  By distributing online, they're able to spend only a small amount of their financial resources on distribution, and focus most of their resources on reporting.  A novel concept.  There is an interesting interview with the founder of one of these newspapers voiceofsandiego.org that can be read here.  The founder of the website mentions other startup ventures similar to it that are popping up in places like Minneapolis and St. Louis.

It's a great concept....and one that I would love to see started in Kansas City.  Already I get so much of my local news and information from reading bloggers who actually research their information.  Sites like the Kansas City Post, Gone Mild, Blog KC, KC Light Rail, and hell, even Tony's Kansas City when he is having a good day have provided me much more information about certain areas of interest in Kansas City than I've ever gotten from any of the local "news" sources.

In the end, we'll all benefit with the competition of news sources...because we'll have differing opinions, be free of just reading city hall press releases, and getting information beyond just the agenda often set forth by the Star.  Everyone will be a winner except for the traditional news sources that fail to adapt and change.

I can't wait.

Funkhouser needs to watch out for the little things

So last night, I went down to the Waldo neighborhood forum with Mayor Funkhouser.  I write a dog blog, and knew given the recent events of the Parks Board decision to rule against the Sunnyside Dog park (and a dog park and 95% of the rest of the city's parks) that I would go to see the show.

Mayor Funkhouser talked about his key issues -- fixing crime, fixing schools, fixing infastructure.  All of these are major issues with the city and need a huge amount of attention.  But it was interesting to me the scope of the concerns, and thank you's that came from the crowd.

People obviously spoke a lot about the use of park space.  They asked about why the SW Corridor is one of the few neighborhoods in the city without a community center.  They applauded the billboard amendment limiting new billboards because of the blight along Wornall South of 75th Street.  One guy wished there was more yard waste pickup because the parks department inexplicably planted Sweet Gum trees on the street right-of-way that he doesn't own but has to spend his entire fall picking up sweet gum balls.  They applauded the actions limiting payday loan places.  And of course, they complained about the Park's Board not listening to their concerns.

What was interesting was that most of the concerns and bravos were for relatively small things.  Any Kansas Citian with half a brain is aware that the schools suck, and crime is a real issue.  What the people in Waldo wanted were little things...and a vast majority of them had lost faith in the city government to even be able to deliver on these small things.  And sadly, if the governmmet can't even be relied on to deliver on the simplest of promises (public input, open government, dog parks) then how in the world would anyone expect them to deliver on big issues like crime and schools.

Funkhouser responded that that's just the way government works.  The problem is he campaigned that his government would be different.  It's not. 

I heard a lot of people last night that have no confidence in the government to even follow through on the simplest of ideas.  There's no way they trust them to do the big stuff.  So while many of these "little things" seem like small problems in the grand scheme of Kansas City politics, I think they're undermining the administration's and council's major goals, and clearly breaking many of Funkhouser's campaign promises.

That's what I heard last night at the meeting...I hope Funkhouser heard it too.

Rental Bikes

A couple of months ago, I mentioned on this blog that France has developed a system of doing bike rental kiosks.  The idea is to maximize the use of bicycles throughout the city for short trips -- and then the bikes are just returned to another rental kiosk at the next destination. I just found a Flickr page that has some photos of this system -- for the few that were interested.

Still not sure what keeps the bikes from being stolen, but I do like it as an idea...

Let's make laws to regulate everything

There was a letter to the editor in the Kansas City Star in reference to Overland Park ordinance PMV-2577.

The proposed ordinance that will go before the council next Monday.  Here is the basic premise behind the law:

People will not be allowed to park a commercial vehicle on their own property more than one time for a total of less than 24 hours every 30 days.  If someone does own such a commercial vehicle, it must be stored in such a way that no more than 10% of the vehicle can be viewed because it is obstructed from view.

When you read through what can be described as a commercial vehicle, this could include a LOT of vehicles that are used in light contruction, moving companies, utility workers driving company vehicles, etc.  For lack of a better explanation, it appears as if Overland Park is trying to put a ban on working class people.

It seems as if every time I turn around, there is a new law popping up trying to ban someone from doing something that one other person finds even mildly annoying: driving commerical vehicles, owning certain breeds of dogs, street performances, smoking in privately owned restaurants, etc.

The more of these types of nanny government laws I see, the more I want to agree with Mark Cubin's theory of government in that he votes for the person he thinks will do the LEAST while in office -- figuring that over the past 200 years of our nation's history, we've made plenty enough laws and that there is little reason to add more.

As a society, I think it's about time we stop asking government to interfere in every part of our lives.  While this law may only affect other people, the next one may be keeping you from driving your company work vehicle home from work at nights.

We don't need to regulate every single element of our lives...let's readdress this issue of freedom, shall we?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Turns out I missed an artilce from yesterday's KC Star.  Apparently, Coral Gables, FL has issued a citation to a man for parking his pickup outside his home. Now the man is lobbying a class-action lawsuite saying that the law is out there not to "ban pickups" but instead "This has to do with a certain class of people they don’t want in the city — people they see as being inferior — the blue-collar guy, the laborer — those people."

Two of the judges in the district court of appeals called the law "frightening". I'd say so.