“The president has been big on speeches, and another much-heralded speech on a new plan for jobs is scheduled before a joint session of Congress later this week. But Americans are getting teleprompter fatigue. They want to see new ideas and action.”
“The heart of the problem is that Obama’s idea of job creation largely revolves around public works projects that are rooted in Keynesian economics and driven by government funding and political payoffs.”
“First, the president could support the Freedom to Invest Act of 2011 (HR 1834)”
“Second, the president can ask his appointees at the National Labor Relations Board to fast-track the hearings and decision-making that would allow Boeing to open its 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina”
“Third, President Obama can direct his Interior Department to cut through the red tape and renew the permit granted to ExxonMobil to develop the largest oil discovery in a decade located in the Julia field in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Fourth, jobs are just waiting to be created by American companies eager to help tap the third largest proven oil reserve in the world, located in Alberta, Canada. The major holdup now is President Obama. He needs to approve the project and shepherd it through final State Department formalities.”
“We don’t need another speech on job creation that extols government investment. We need action that puts people to work in real jobs that help grow the economy, broaden the tax base and shrink our deficit and debt.”
The campaigns of Tom Leppert and Anne Raymond spent millions of dollars this spring wooing Dallas voters. Leppert and Raymond debated on radio and television. Both commanded a slate of city council candidates loyal to their causes.
But Leppert and Raymond weren’t running for office against one another. They weren’t running for office at all. They were arguing about a hotel.
Leppert is the mayor of Dallas. He’s also the biggest supporter of building a $500-million, 1,000-room hotel that will be adjacent to the Dallas Convention Center and will be owned by the city itself. Leppert believes the hotel will be the linchpin of Dallas’ downtown economy.
Raymond is an executive with Crow Holdings, a leading Dallas real estate firm. She was the spokesperson for a ballot campaign to block the hotel, arguing that city government should stay out of the hotel business. In that role, Raymond acted as a surrogate for hotel baron Harlan Crow, who spent an estimated $7 million of his own money to promote the measure. Ultimately, Leppert’s side won on a close vote, and construction has already begun. But the hotel debate became Dallas’ dominant political issue for months on end.
Strange as it might seem for a single hotel to command that much attention, it’s increasingly common. In the long war over government’s proper role in economic development, one of the most intense skirmishes has involved convention-center hotels paid for by cities. Today, new convention-center hotels are almost all publicly owned or heavily subsidized. In Texas alone, flagship hotels for convention centers have been approved with public help in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth. Elsewhere in the country, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, St. Louis and Baltimore have done the same thing.
The elected leaders of these cities believe that by building fancy hotels connected to their convention centers, they can lure more visitors from out of state. The taxes and economic activity generated by these visitors, they wager, can make investments in hotels pay for themselves.
Critics, though, don’t merely say that hotel ownership is beyond the proper scope of government. They argue that cities have placed bets on a declining stream of revenue based on impossibly rosy forecasts. And, there is reason for caution. Some publicly funded convention-center hotels have been solid successes, but others have been colossal failures.
It’s nothing new for cities to fight desperately to attract conventions and trade shows. Conventioneers come, spend money and leave. “Visitors,” Mayor Leppert says, “don’t require schools, they rarely require our fire department. They don’t require our social services.” That appeal has prompted cities around the country to build larger and larger convention centers, even if the previous one is only a decade old.
But even the 1 million square feet of floor space that comes with the largest of the new convention centers isn’t enough for event planners. They want amenities. Chief among those are massive headquarters hotels. “Having a hotel that is literally adjacent, contiguous, connected to the convention center,” Leppert says, “is an absolute necessity.”
But while event planners are convinced they need massive hotels, private developers are less enthusiastic. Since long before the recent credit crunch, they’ve viewed new high-end hotels as a bad investment. With conventional private financing, it simply takes too long for hotel profits to pay off the massive debt that comes from construction of the building.
So cities offer non-traditional financing. They do that in either of two ways: subsidizing the hotels or, increasingly often, issuing tax-exempt bonds to fund them. The specifics of the deals vary dramatically. In some cases, the bonds are paid off exclusively from revenue brought in by the new hotel. In other cases, the city is, directly or indirectly, committing other pots of money to the project. In some cases, as in Dallas, the city actually ends up owning the hotel. Operation of the hotel is usually turned over to Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt or Omni.
The common thread, though, is that the projects wouldn’t have taken place without government intervention. But why intervene on such a massive scale to build a facility that private developers view as a bad investment? That, says Anne Raymond, was the question her side raised in Dallas. “If this was a good real estate transaction, the private sector would do it,” she says. “Dallas is filled with optimistic real estate investors, but no one would step up.” In her view, that’s because they knew more about the market than the local government did.
Of course, a city can make a better deal for itself in the bond market than a private developer can. The bonds cities issue are tax-exempt, and allow them to pay bondholders much lower interest rates. What’s more, says Mayor Leppert, cities simply have different standards of success than private hotel companies do.
For cities, the financial success of the hotel itself is secondary. The point is to have the convention center thrive and for the city to reap the benefits of increased economic activity and increased tax revenue. This, Leppert argues, isn’t some dramatic expansion of government: The hotel is really just an extension of the public convention center itself.
Heywood Sanders has heard all of this many, many times before. Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is the nation’s leading critic of publicly funded convention centers and hotels. He argues that conventions in general, not to mention the facilities that host them, are a declining business. He says that more and more meetings take place online rather than in gigantic buildings, that the recession has only accelerated this process, and that recovery is not going to bring back the old days of massive trade and professional shows with participants flying in from all over the country.
Sanders cringes as he sees cities betting on convention centers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, then doubling down on that bet with hotels that cost hundreds of millions more. His research suggests to him that the link between new headquarters hotels and increased convention business rarely emerges. “You get to do a big project with big promises and lots of money for consultants and bond counsel and underwriters and engineers,” he says, “but you may do it at the expense of the very important things that may make a city’s future.” Sanders would prefer that cities invest in schools, roads and affordable housing.
This clash between big projects and basic services is a familiar one in municipal politics. In many ways, the current hotel debate is similar to the arguments traded back and forth over publicly funded sports stadiums. (Some of the hotels actually cost almost as much as stadiums.) But in both cases, business interests and labor unions nearly always join forces to promote the project. In Dallas, the new hotel had the backing of both the local chamber of commerce and the local AFL-CIO chapter. Opposition tends to come from a motley coalition of conservatives, who view the projects as government waste, and liberals, who view them as corporate welfare.
In Dallas, though, the clash was as much a personal struggle between two multi-millionaires, Mayor Leppert and developer Crow, as anything else. Opponents of the hotel ran ads calling Leppert arrogant. Hotel backers fired back that Crow’s intervention was mere self-interest–that he was trying to protect the fortunes of his own 1,606-room Hilton Anatole, one of the largest hotels in Dallas. Leppert’s forces carried the day, but just barely. The measure to block the hotel lost by only 2,000 votes.
Did Dallas voters make the right decision? It depends on where you choose to ask the question. Civic leaders in Denver would tell you yes, but those in St. Louis probably would disagree. The two cities illustrate the widely divergent results of past convention-center hotel projects.
By any reasonable measure, the convention-center hotel in Denver has been a success. Since it opened in 2005, the 1,100-room Hyatt Regency Denver has helped the city land major events, including the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The new hotel hasn’t hurt business at older hotels–just the opposite. Room rates and occupancy rates went up after the hotel opened, as more events attracted more visitors to town.
What’s the price tag for Denver taxpayers? “It’s cost them nothing,” insists Bill Mosher, CEO of the Denver Convention Center Hotel Authority. “There’s not a dollar of public money in the hotel.”
That might sound farfetched, given that Mosher’s public authority, a creation of the Denver government, issued $350 million in bonds to build the hotel. But Mosher’s point is that those were revenue bonds, meaning they’re being paid off from the hotel’s earnings, not out of the city’s general fund. If you don’t go to the hotel–and most locals don’t–you aren’t out anything. And since Denver didn’t exempt its hotel from city taxes, the project has been successful enough to redirect millions of dollars to the city treasury.
Given all of that, it’s no surprise that Leppert and his campaign cited Denver as a model to emulate. The
opposition, though, pointed to St. Louis.
Even before St. Louis’ 1,100-room, $265 million Renaissance Grand & Suites Hotel opened in 2003, things started going wrong. The terrorist attacks of 2001 weakened the convention industry. The home-based airline TWA ceased to exist, depriving St. Louis of its airport hub. The convention center’s developers were a little cagey in their claims of floor space: To get the total exhibit space to 500,000 square feet, they included the adjacent St. Louis Rams football stadium, which is unavailable for major events during much of the year. Underneath these problems lay the plain truth that not too many people wanted to visit St. Louis in the first place. It wasn’t Orlando, Chicago or Las Vegas. Or Denver, for that matter.
The end result was that, even with the headquarters hotel, the city’s convention business remained flat. Eventually, the hotel was able to turn a small operating profit, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pay off its debt. When the hotel went into foreclosure earlier this year, its bondholders bought it at auction, and kept it open. But that was only after St. Louis had dedicated millions of dollars of federal Community Development Block Grants to the hotel–money that could have been used to pave roads or build housing.
The failure in St. Louis wasn’t just a matter of bad luck but also wishful thinking. “There were four different consulting groups that wrote negative feasibility studies for the project,” says Gary Andreas, a St. Louis hotel consultant. “They found the one person who said that the other guys were idiots.” Andreas would know. He was one of the consultants who weighed in against the idea.
The question for Dallas–and other cities that are thinking about subsidizing convention hotels–is whether they, too, are engaged in wishful thinking. Dallas just broke ground on its controversial hotel in September. It will be years before we know how well it does.
Even the supporters of convention-center hotels say that cities should act with care. They warn that the deals to build the hotels are hugely complex and that small details come with large financial consequences. And while every city would like to be a hot convention destination, an opulent hotel next to the center doesn’t automatically make it one.
Some explanations of why people litter is that it is an anti-social behavior, the result of negligence, habit, or lack of education about the impact of littering (Armitage and Rooseboom, 1999; Litter Management, 2002). While this deals with one aspect of the litter problem, the act of people improperly disposing of waste, there are other factors that contribute to this issue. The creation of excess waste is one factor that contributes greatly to the accumulation of litter. This includes excess packaging of products, and unwanted advertising material placed on windshields or handed out (Armitage and Rooseboom, 1999; Litter Management, 2002). Another issue that affects the amount of litter is the lack of enforcement of anti-litter laws. This is most likely due to the amount of more serious offences that the authorities have to deal with, especially in urban areas. The measures set up for disposal and control of waste may also be part of the problem. Trash receptacles along sidewalks and other heavily trafficked areas can create more of a litter problem if they are not designed or maintained properly. In many cases there are not enough trash bins or they are too far apart and this can lead to overfilling or people littering because there is not a bin close by. Also, trash may blow out of bins that are left uncovered or susceptible to vandalism (Armitage and Rooseboom, 1999).
Waste and litter reduction strategies
The problem of litter is very complex and needs to be confronted in a variety of ways depending on the type of area that is being addressed and what measures are already in place. The following figure provides a concise outline of the type of multifaceted approach that is necessary for a successful litter reduction program.
Planning controls are the type of litter management strategy that are the broadest in scope. They include land-use policies that preserve the natural riparian vegetation and shape of river channels to reduce that amount of litter that flows into the river (Marais and Armitage, 2004). The basic idea of planning controls is that any development project that goes on takes into the account the impact that it will have on the surrounding environment, and puts measures in place to reduce its impact. Planning controls are an effective way for developing communities to make sure that the amount of litter and waste will be controlled, but in an urban community that is already fully developed; other measures are more effective and would likely be put into use first.
Structural controls deal with litter after it enters the waterway or drainage system by installing litter traps, diversion systems, silt traps, etc., to remove it. This is one way to keep litter from entering a larger body of water and affecting wildlife, or clogging storm drains and causing localized flooding. The problem with this is that these filtering structures range from 250,000 to 900,000 dollars and are much more expensive than other source controls (Environmental Protection Agency, 2002).
Source controls are the most cost effective way to reduce litter, but need to be implemented in conjunction with one another to be most effective. A specific plan should be laid out, probably favoring one type of source control, depending on the litter reduction strategies already in place, the type of community, and the resources available to address the problem.
Educational campaigns: This is by far the most crucial element of any litter reduction plan. It is “a better investment to educate litterers out of their habit than to go around just picking up after them†(Florida Litter Study, 1998). The idea is, to teach people that casual littering can have a serious impact on the many issues that were discussed earlier such as human health, wildlife, and the economy. Educating the public on these issues can be done in a variety of ways (Marais and Armitage, 2004):
• Integration into school curriculum or after school activities
• Anti-littering messages on buses, billboards, etc.
• Mass media campaigns on the radio, and/or television
• Cleanup campaigns that also provide information about how litter, or chemicals from litter, can be harmful to human and wildlife health
An example of a very successful waste management educational tool for children is a series of children’s books from the UK by Elisabeth Beresford, with characters that clean up litter and turn it into useful things. These books became very popular during the 1960’s and 1970’s and helped shape a generation that was more aware of recycling and litter reduction issues (Read, 1999). The key to any successful education program is to understand the group that should be targeted, and the best way to get the message across to them. As mentioned earlier, studies have shown that the group that litters the most is young males under 35 (Florida Litter Study, 1998). It would be wise for an educational campaign targeting a large area, like a nationwide media campaign for example, to address this group. For a smaller campaign designed for a specific community, it is more important to create a program targeting the dominant group of people that make up that community.
Waste reduction: Reducing the amount of waste that is created also plays a vital role. This includes getting businesses to reduce packaging, eliminate the use of unwanted advertisements passed out, recycle, and use products or packaging that are recyclable or biodegradable. Besides just getting businesses involved, it also means encouraging the public to recycle and reuse the products they use by (Marais and Armitage, 2004):
• Recycling in their own homes
• Utilizing recycling facilities elsewhere
• Reusing plastic grocery bags or using reusable shopping bags instead
• Reducing the amount of non-biodegradable products they use
Educating the public on what should be recycled and other ways they can help reduce waste should be considered as part of an educational campaign.
Cleaning operations: These include street sweeping, trash and recycling bins in public areas, and large, organized, volunteer cleaning operations like adopt – a – river or block. Street sweeping is very effective at removing trash from the streets, but fairly expensive and only effective if done in areas with a high volume of litter and frequently enough to remove most of the litter before it washes away (Marais and Armitage, 2004). In order to help people not litter it is also important to have enough trash and recycling bins in public areas, and make sure they are properly designed so that litter does not blow or fall out. Adopt-a-river or block programs have proven to be very effective in keeping areas clean, but in some urban areas it is hard to get the community and businesses involved in these programs.
Law enforcement: While there are litter laws in place all across the country that make it illegal for anyone to litter, they are very difficult to enforce unless it is large scale illegal dumping (Florida Litter Study, 1998). Also, the authorities have many other serious crimes to deal with, especially in urban areas, making it difficult to enforce the litter laws.
IS IT TRUE that we were pleased to express our great pleasure in yesterday’s edition of IS IT TRUE that there seems to finally be a wide recognition that Evansville looks pretty darn bad to outsiders?…that as our parents used to tell us “looks are not everything†when they were advising us not to fall for the Barbie Doll Bimbo or the Shallow Jock?…that looks are what makes most first impressions and it will be a positive step forward if and only if Evansville can do a bit of cosmetic surgery on the gateways to the city and pick up the litter?…that this kind of cleansing is really the minimum that is acceptable if Evansville is to ever develop any attractive force as a job magnet?
IS IT TRUE that most site selectors and businesses have already done a very rigorous amount of research before visiting an area?…that it is highly likely that these people are already aware of some of the problems that Evansville has that are well publicized like meth, suicide, dilapidated housing, and the looming $500 Million sewer repair?…that they already know about the performance of our school system, the new Ford Center, the crime rate, the problems that are being encountered in getting a downtown convention hotel, and the consolidation debate?…that how well the City of Evansville stacks up against other cities in a Google comparison is somewhere near the top of the list when it comes to getting that site selector or company executive to the airport in the first place?…that this is an area that is relatively inexpensive to cleanse and beautify and that it is in very serious need of some marketing help?
IS IT TRUE that cities like people look to a large extent as they are?…that If a person is obese, has ashen skin, rotting teeth, and smells bad these are symptoms of weakness and disease on the inside?…that cities that are ugly and have bad smells that are easily recognizable are really reflecting core problems?…that litter, graffiti, dilapidated housing, potholes in the roads, and foul smelling air are a city’s way of crying out for help?…that the skeleton and organs of cities are sewers, bandwidth, roads, utilities, and business friendly regulations. The blood of any economy is money? If there is a limited supply of money available and there is no heart to make it flow then this economy is much like an anemic person in need of a multiple bypass?…that dressing a corpse in its best clothing and applying makeup to the visible areas may improve the visual appearance for a few days but will not change the fact that it is a corpse that is in the casket?
IS IT TRUE that Evansville’s symptoms of civic sickness are easy for all to see?…that the “unattractive” attributes of this city are simply symptoms of insufficient infrastructure and a lack of capital?…that cleansing the gateways is a good and necessary first step but the real needs are on the inside of the patient called Evansville?…that the City County Observer does not think that Evansville is dead yet but upon examining the vital signs must conclude that Evansville needs much more than landscaping, litter removal, and four jetways to be a viable contender for real sustainable economic improvement from willful outside investment?…that unless the core of Evansville is healed that the people who litter our streets, graffiti our walls, pitch cigarette butts onto our public landscaping, and our government that tolerates squalor in our parks while building temples to sport will quickly destroy whatever cosmetic improvements that the good people of Evansville make?…that every good doctor knows that makeup does not cure cancer but that it may make the patient feel better about themselves which in some strange and little understood way does sometimes aid the healing process?…that the cleansing is a worthy process?
IS IT TRUE that what remains to be seen is whether the cleansing of the cities gateways and application of make-up are the work of an undertaker or the first improvements of a matchmaker preparing their client for that all important first real impression?…that all scientists are familiar with the terms “necessary†and “sufficient†when it comes to finding solutions to problems?…that cleansing the gateways and prettying Evansville up are some necessary conditions to be competitive but are not close to sufficient for Evansville to be a real player in the attraction, growth, incubation, or even technology transfer programs that other places do?
Kenneth Schnautz, a University of Southern Indiana student majoring in engineering, is the 2011 recipient of an international award for leadership and service to a student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
The Charles T. Main Student Section Award Silver Medal will be presented November 13 at the Members and Students Luncheon during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in Denver, Colorado. The recipient of the silver medal receives a $2,000 honorarium.
Schnautz will complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering with an emphasis in mechatronics in December.
During his freshman year, he played an integral role in forming the USI chapter of ASME after it had been dormant for several years. Schnautz is recognized for long-term leadership of the chapter, now a thriving organization, and for efforts significantly impacting the region, including the creation of a robotics competition that attracts more than 100 middle and high school students each year. Schnautz served as vice president of the USI ASME chapter in 2007-08 and was president from 2008-11.
The USI Robotics Competition celebrated its fourth year in 2011. As ASME chapter president, Schnautz has taken the lead in planning, advertising, communicating with middle and high school teachers, designing and building the course, and coordinating the judging. Prior to the event, the ASME student group offers two workshops to help teams and classroom teachers build their robots and test them on the course.
“The success of the USI Robotics Competition can be attributed to Ken Schnautz and his leadership of the student group,” said Dr. Shelly B. Blunt, associate dean of the Pott College of Science and Engineering.
Schnautz has worked to increase the involvement of the USI chapter within the larger ASME community. In 2010, he coordinated arrangements for six USI students to attend the District C. Student Professional Development Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. He also attended the 2010 ASME Student Leadership Seminar in Champaign, Illinois, afterwards initiating a successful proposal to bring the event to USI this year. It will be held October 14-15.
USI engineering faculty commended Schnautz for his professionalism and initiative.
“If I had to summarize my involvement, it would be that I was willing to do the dirty work,” Schnautz said. “If something needs to be done, I do it. If nothing seems to need doing, I find something to do, let it be organizing a robotics competition, building a website, selling t-shirts, or filing paperwork.”
Schnautz is a member of the Student Advisory Board for the Pott College. He has provided engineering demonstrations for the Tri-State Science Fair at USI and the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis. His outreach includes serving as a volunteer for the first Southwest Indiana Regional SeaPerch Competition held this year at USI. He was a member of the engineering team that competed in May in the Lunabotics Mining Competition sponsored by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center. Schnautz also has assisted the USI chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers with its concrete canoe project.
In fall 2009, Schnautz completed a 15-week internship at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. His research concentrated on correlating the electrical properties of soil with its density. He has completed three summer internships at Nidec Motor Corporation (formerly Hurst Motor Manufacturing), a maker of electronic motors, in Princeton, Indiana, and continues to work there this semester. His responsibilities include the testing and diagnostics of preproduction motor controllers. Schnautz also works as a lab assistant for the USI Department of Chemistry.
Schnautz has received the Biagi Chance Cummins London Titzer Endowed Engineering Scholarship (2007-11), Indiana Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Scholarship (2008-09), a USI Departmental Scholarship (2007-11), and the Lily Endowment Internship Scholarship (2010-11).
He is a 2007 graduate of Reitz High School in Evansville.
Schnautz’ goal following graduation is to work for an engineering firm in the Evansville region in a job relating to control systems, robotics, human-machine interface, or electronics.
ASME has more than 120,000 members in 150 countries. The organization established the Charles T. Main Student Section Award in 1919 and expanded it in 1983 to include a second-place award, with a gold medal presented to the first-place winner and a silver medal to the second-place recipient. Schnautz is USI’s first recipient since 1987 when Keith G. Benedict, now a USI instructor in engineering, received the gold medal.
Due to further evidence of West Nile Virus in Vanderburgh County, the Vanderburgh County Health Department is going to perform focused adulticiding operations in areas where significant mosquito or West Nile activity has been found. The adulticiding operations will take place September 6, 7, 2011, weather permitting. Fogging will begin approximately at 8:00 PM and conclude by 12:00 AM. The areas being sprayed will include the area bordered by the Lloyd Expressway on the south to Diamond Avenue on the north, and from N Main St on the west to Weinbach Ave on the east. If the treatment cannot be performed due to weather conditions, they will resume on the next available day.
The Vanderburgh County Health Department urges individuals to wear insect repellant while outdoors. August and September is the peak of mosquito and West Nile season and individuals should be cautious while participating in outdoor activities. The Vanderburgh County Health Department will continue to focus its efforts on habitat elimination, education, and treatment of stagnant or standing water as these are the most effective forms of mosquito control.
The Health Department continues to ask residents to:
• Be Smart. Take special precautions when outdoors between dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most active;
• Be Safe. Use insect repellant containing DEET, Picaridin, or Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus; and
• Be Certain. Make sure your property is free of any standing water, which could be breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry the virus. Empty flowerpots, buckets, old tires, and clogged gutters.
A drawing for an attendance prize will be awarded at close of meeting… you must be present to win.
The Tri-State Genealogical Society will have a brief business meeting followed by a presentation by:
Past President of the Tri-State Genealogical Society (TSGS), John G. West, will speak at the September 13 meeting of the society. Mr. West has been researching his family history for over 50 years and will share some of his experiences with others in his talk “Genealogical Research Skills vs. Just Plain Luck!” West proved his ancestry back to a Revolutionary War Patriot that qualified him for his membership into the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). As an active member of SAR, he has served as President, Secretary, Treasurer and currently as the Historian of his Ohio Valley Chapter. In the Indiana Society SAR, West has served State positions including his current office as State Historian and State Chair of the 4-H Youth Awards Program. West is very active in 4-H Genealogy, judging at county fairs and the last four years as an Indiana State Fair 4-H Genealogy Project Judge. West publishes the “TSGS Cruiser Blog” for the genealogical society http://tsgsblog.blogspot.com/ and enjoys presenting his patriotic & educational “Flags over America” program (with over 160 flags on display) to various organizations as part of the SAR Speakers Bureau.
As we study our “Family History†we can all learn more from the experience of others. This is a program you don’t want to miss, we will be looking forward to seeing you at the meeting and enjoying a very interesting and informative program.
You do not have to be a member to come and learn at the society’s monthly meetings.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This time of the year, weather conditions may cause the society to cancel meetings… the decision to cancel usually is determined the day of the meeting, providing short notice. Since a bad weather system may develop later in the day (or that night), check our blog (http://tsgsblog.blogspot.com/) for cancellation notice or call Willard Library (812-425-4309)
600 Block of East Franklin StreetThe impact of litter on the community
The presence of litter has a variety of impacts on communities ranging from health issues to economic impacts. Most commonly it is seen as an aesthetic issue, but what is less understood is how this aesthetic problem impacts other issues in a community.
Residents’ perception of neighborhood decline and disorder: In a group of studies discussed in The Florida Litter Study, litter has been identified as a major indicator of neighborhood decline and disorder. Other indicators of neighborhood decline and disorder include vandalism, abandoned buildings, graffiti, and vacant lots. Of all of the indicators assessed in a study done by Perkins, Meeks, and Taylor in 1992, litter was found to have the strongest correlation with perceptions of neighborhood decline and disorder (as in Florida Litter Study, 1998). A study by Skogan in 1990, indicates that the effects of this perception of neighborhood decline range from a decrease in property values to an increase in crime, or at least an increase in criminals’ perception that crime will be tolerated (as in Florida Litter Study, 1998).
Increase in crime: This study goes on to explain that as people’s perceptions of neighborhood decline increase, it is more likely that crime will occur and that criminals will be drawn to the area because it appears more likely that criminal behavior will be tolerated or ignored. A study by DeFrances and Titus in 1994 found a statistically significant relationship between neighborhood disorder and burglary outcome indicating that burglaries are more likely to be completed in neighborhoods with higher levels of disorder (as in Florida Litter Study, 1998).
Property values and business: The study by Skogan indicates that the effect of this perception of neighborhood decline and increase in crime can also negatively impact property values and investment interest (as in Florida Litter Study, 1998).
Cost of litter to the community and local government: Aside from lowering property values, the cost of cleaning up litter has an added impact of the economy. In 1993, the US spent $131 million on roadside litter clean up (Florida Litter Study, 1998). This does not include the cost of beach clean ups, street sweeping, localized flood damage from litter clogged storm drains, or any other clean up or litter prevention program funded by the government. From a study done by Baud and Iudicello in 1990 in Texas, local governments there spend over $14 million annually to clean up their beaches (as in Armitage and Rooseboom, 1999). A more recent estimate of the total annual cost of litter prevention, cleanup and disposal in the state of California was $375.5 million (Earth Resource Foundation). These figures should present a basic idea of the kind of money that is spent cleaning up litter that could be used for other programs.
Harmful to humans and wildlife: Excessive litter can have damaging effects on wildlife and be harmful to human health. Litter on streets or sidewalks, if not cleaned up, will most likely end up in a river, lake, or ocean. That trash can have a serious impact on the aquatic life in the receiving body of water (Marais and Armitage, 2004). For instance, a fish or bird might mistake a piece of plastic for food and choke on it. Certain types of litter contain nutrients that may build up in excess in the water and cause algal blooms which deplete oxygen levels (Petrie et al.). This in turn creates a lower quality aquatic habitat where fewer delicate species can survive. Litter can also degrade water quality if there are other harmful chemicals associated with it, which can be harmful to humans if, for example, they eat fish from that body of water. Another way that litter can cause health problems is if it builds up and attracts rats or other pests that may carry disease (Petrie et al.).
Kenneth Schnautz, a University of Southern Indiana student majoring in engineering, is the 2011 recipient of an international award for leadership and service to a student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Due to further evidence of West Nile Virus in Vanderburgh County, the Vanderburgh County Health Department is going to perform focused adulticiding operations in areas where significant mosquito or West Nile activity has been found. The adulticiding operations will take place September 6, 7, 2011, weather permitting. Fogging will begin approximately at 8:00 PM and conclude by 12:00 AM. The areas being sprayed will include the area bordered by the Lloyd Expressway on the south to Diamond Avenue on the north, and from N Main St on the west to Weinbach Ave on the east. If the treatment cannot be performed due to weather conditions, they will resume on the next available day.