Walking Through the News

Here are two stories that I recently read that keep popping back up in my head.

The first one was this from NPR station KPLU in Seattle:

Study: Residents of walkable areas don't always walk more

Here is a bit from the story:

Two different types of walking

One clue emerges if you look at walking as having two different flavors. There’s recreational walking — you know, people who “go for a walk.” It’s healthy. It can be social.  

Other people walk in order to get somewhere or get things done. That’s transportation walking. 

This study, which had higher numbers of women who are white and middle-to-upper socioeconomic status, could have had more women who walk for recreation – and maybe these women are so motivated that it doesn’t really matter where they live. They might even drive to a park or a trail just to go walking.

An expert on teasing apart these types of walking, Brian Saelens of Seattle Children's Research Institute, says "transportation" walking depends a lot on where you live and work.

“It’s not that people are going to walk miles and miles to get to a destination,” Saelens said. “They have to be close enough so that the tradeoff between walking and driving makes sense for them, to say, ‘Oh, I might as well take a walk, because its just as fast or close to as fast.”’

In studies that look more carefully at how much people walk, by putting a tracking device on them, instead of relying on their recall, Saelens has found transportation walking can go under-reported. People forget that they walked to the bus, or to a store, because they weren't intentionally walking.

Recreational walking, which is what people usually talk about and remember, may depend less on the physical environment.

Right now U-Heights has a mix of transportation walkers (mostly UI Hospital employees) and recreational walkers. We have few destinations to draw more transportation walkers, perhaps the Sunset Wide Sidewalk, due to be completed by fall 2013, may encourage some. Having destinations in U-Heights besides Stella might encourage more walking.

Here's a story I read Monday night. This one comes from an interesting little site called PlaceMakers.

Healthy, or Unhealthy, by Design

 Here's a quote from that story that really struck me:

“The trouble is that in the last half century, we have effectively engineered physical activity out of our daily lives. Health is determined by planning, architecture, transportation, housing, energy, and other disciplines at least as much as it is by medical care. … The modern America of obesity, inactivity, depression, and loss of community has not ‘happened’ to us; rather we legislated, subsidized, and planned it.” And that strong statement is according to three doctors, Andrew Dannenberg, Howard Frumkin, and Richard Jackson in their book, Making Healthy Places."

This is a different take on walking too, in digging into the Fuquay-Varina community mentioned in the story, it is a town of 18,000 so quite a bit bigger than U-Heights, but still a "small" town. The idea of  "suburban retrofit" is an excellent description of One University Place. For more information check: 

* PUD Design

* How Big is theFront Building?

* How Big is the Back Building?

March Council Meeting Summary

 March Council Meeting Webstream

  Here is my council summary I sent out last week, along with information about HF 184:

Last night city council held their regular March meeting, here are a few highlights:

1. Adopted FY2014 Budget- next year's budget will be tight due to the nearly 10% reduction of revenue as a result of the expiration of the Local Option Sales Tax in July 2013.

2. Gave Final Passage to Ordinance 182- This ordinance revises speed limits on non-arterial streets.

3. Gave First Approval to Ordinance 183- This ordinance defines the amount of back yards on East Olive Court may be used for parking.

Go here to view the February Council Meeting webstream.
Council will hold its April meeting on 4/9/13 at a place yet to be determined. 

HF 184 Good News... For Now

I got an email from a U-Heights citizen yesterday. He had emailed our Iowa House 86 Representative, Mary Mascher, about HF 184 yesterday. Below is the reply he received back from her:

We need to continue to contact House members, focusing on those outside of Johnson County, and urge them not to support HF 184. Since Republicans control the House, talking to them is recommended, but communicating with anyone is good. It's pretty easy to guess that House Leadership will continue to press members to support the bill, and bring it to the floor when they think it will pass.
Once again:

Here is the link to House members by county with their email addresses:

Iowa House

An interesting sidenote is to read which lobbyists have indicated they are in favor or opposed to HF 184:

 Lobbyist Declarations for HF 184

  
If HF 184 does not pass the full House AND a Senate Committee by April 5th , it will not have met the second funnel date and would in essence be dead for this legislative session.

Many thanks to our citizens who contacted legislators!

HF 184 Do Something?

It's not often that we in U-Heights get really riled up about the legislature in Des Moines. However at last night's city council meeting everyone was in agreement that House File 184 is bad for our town. The bill would eliminate the ability of cities to regulate occupancy through zoning codes. I had written about this last month: Interesting News From Des Moines and What It Means for U-Heights

(photo courtesy iowahouse.org)

Most of U-Heights is zoned R-1 single family. Our zoning codes says that in R-1 zones a family is people related by blood or marriage, or up to 2 UNRELATED adults. So an R-1 home could have:

•  a parent or two plus 5 children
• 2 parents a grandparent and a child
• two brothers and a roommate
• 2 roommates. 

The bill would eliminate all of this and the only limits on occupancy would probably be related to the size of the lot or structure.

If you agree that this would be bad for town I'd urge you to contact members of the Iowa House ASAP it is possible that the bill will be debated on the floor as early as 3/13/2013.

Here is the link to House members by county with their email addresses:

Iowa House

The Iowa League of Cities also opposes this bill. Here is what they had to say:

Action Step: Please contact your Representatives today to oppose HF184, using the League’s talking points to highlight home rule and the purpose of these ordinances. The main supporters of the bill, the landlords, are arguing that this is a property rights issue for landlords who own the rental property. You should stress this is also a property rights issue for the neighbor who bought their property with the expectation of living in a single family neighborhood--not next to rental properties with many renters who can cause congestion and other issues and disturb the character of their neighborhoods.

Here is some sample language I sent to several House members:

Dear Representative XXXX,

As a city councilor for University Heights, a small town of 1,000 adjacent

to the University of Iowa, I would urge you to oppose HF184. This bill

would be very detrimental to our town's well being.

We have a significant number of rental properties in town and we work had

to welcome new residents. We know from experience that many of our long

term citizens first lived in U-Heights as students, loved that experience,

and return to us later in life. However, by not allowing communities to

establish zoning regulations for the benefit of our citizens we will face

a situation where the density of residents would overwhelm our narrow

streets and small infrastructure.

Ninety percent of our homes were constructed before 1970, 57% were built

before 1960. Many homes are small bungalows or mid-century modern ranch

homes of less than 1,500 square feet. Allowing us to regulate the number

of unrelated adults per household is the simplest way for a very small

community to preserve its quality of life and provide benefits for every

citizen.

Please consider everyone's rights and vote no on HF 184

-Mike Haverkamp

 University Heights

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

Today's Press Citizen contained an interesting story:

UI planning to pair with firm to build apartments

The gist of the story is that rather than replace Hawkeye Court apartments themselves, the UI will contract with a private firm to demolish, rebuild, and operate an apartment complex to open the fall of 2014.

(UI Facilities Management photo)

The agreement with Balfour Beatty Campus Solutions, based in Dallas, Texas, would include a 444 bed 227 unit project at the current Hawkeye Court site, is to be approved by the Board of Regents on Wednesday. A second phase, not yet ready for approval, would construct an additional 350 beds on the Hawkeye Dr. site. Terms of the agreement include UI leasing the current site for $1.00, and that Balfour would have a 41 year lease with a 10 year extension option.

From the article:

"Rent for apartments in the proposed development hasn’t yet been established, and Rocklin said he didn’t want to speculate about whether the $650 to $750 per month range was accurate. If UI were to continue to own Hawkeye Court apartments, which opened in 1968, rent would need to increase by at least $200 per month to cover the estimated $10 million in necessary maintenance over the next 10 years, he said.
'So although the rents will be higher than we currently have at Hawkeye Court, they’ll be similar to the market in the area and provide tremendously better accommodations than we’re currently able to provide,' Rocklin said."

It will be interesting to see what kind of pressure  these additional units will have on the rental prices in University Heights. One would suspect that having a large increase in competing "student" housing would be felt first in non-owner occupied units at Grandview. But given the rise of single family homes that have switched from owner occupied to rental, it may also make a difference throughout U-Heights?

Here's another major issue to ponder:  Is this the beginning of a trend in public/private partnerships for UI? If so the University's current presence in, and surrounding, our town future projects could have substantial impact on U-Heights.

Interesting Election Returns

The special election for the Johnson County Supervisor seat previously held by Sally Stutsman seems to have  had a surprise ending for many with the election of Republican Jim Etheredge. Despite Democrats holding a sizable registration margin in the county, low voter turnout allowed the Republican's victory.

2013 Supervisor's Special Election
U-Heights Active Voters 917

Precinct	Total Voters	Dahms		Etheredge		Write-Ins
UH Univ. Heights	64	34	53%	30	47%	0

Voter turnout yesterday was 7% which was slightly higher than the county as a whole.

What makes the election interesting locally is how the turnout from University Heights mirrors East and near West Iowa City. We were one of only 3 precincts NOT in Iowa City that Dahms carried with a majority:

• CV03 Hygienic Lab
• CV07 Northridge
• UH Univ. Heights

SO Solon was a perfectly split 42/42 tie

Besides those above, the only precincts carried by Dahms west of the Iowa River were:

• IC02 Horn
• IC04 Lincoln

Farther west Iowa City plus the rest of Coralville,  all of North Liberty, and the township precincts were carried by Etheredge. Those include our nearest neighbors to the west:

• 07 West
• 08 Weber
• 09 Hall of Fame  

For comparison, here are the Presidential Precinct results:

2012 Presidential Election
Active Voters 917

Precinct	Total	Romney-Ryan		Obama-Biden		Stein-Honkala		Johnson-Gray		Litzel-Litzel		Write-
		(R)		(D)		(G)		(Libt)		(NP)		Ins
UH Univ. Heights	774	233	30%	531	69%	2	0%	4	1%	1	0%	2

Our voter turnout was 84%, slightly higher than the county as a whole. Our early/absentee voting was 517 which was 58.1% of our total vote, once again slightly higher than the county as a whole.