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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 17 30 January 2017 1.

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Quote of the Week: “We build the road and the road builds us.” ~a Sri Lankan Saying

Oregon Fast Fact The Oregon Legislature designated the Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) as the Oregon state flower by resolution in 1899.

Small Town and Rural Multimodal Networks Nonprofits Need to Stand Together to Push for Smart Public Policies Can We Bring Back Riskier Playgrounds?

Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost From the Young Transportation Agencies Will Finally Measure the Movement of People, Not Just Cars Pay It Forward - FEMA Calls for a Deductible to Reduce Disaster Spending Oregon Will Defy Joint Fish Management on The lower Columbia River 9 Ways to Get Public Input: Thinking Beyond the Survey Local Innovation Strengthening Rural Economies – Panel More Rural Americans Got Insurance Through The Affordable Health Care Act Last Year Incident Management Preparedness and Coordination Toolkit (IMPACT)

1. Small Town and Rural Multimodal Networks This document is intended to be a resource for transportation practitioners in small towns and rural communities. It applies existing national design guidelines in a rural setting and highlights small town and rural case studies. It addresses challenges specific to rural areas, recognizes how many rural roadways are operating today, and focuses on opportunities to make incremental improvements despite the geographic, fiscal, and other challenges that many rural communities face.

It provides information on maintaining accessibility and MUTCD compliance, while at the same time encouraging innovation. For example, this document highlights two innovative facility types: Yield Roadways and Advisory Shoulders. Regarding Yield Roadways, this document references AASHTO resources such as the Guidelines for Very Low-volume Local Roads 2001, which includes discussion of Two- Way Single-Lane Roads, and the A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, which notes that "on residential streets the level of user inconvenience occasioned by the lack of two moving lanes is remarkably low". It also notes that when faced with two-way traffic in a single lane "opposing conflicting traffic will yield and pause on the parking lane area until there is sufficient width to pass" (2011, p. 5-13).

This document notes that Yield Roadways are a common form for lowvolume local rural and urban roads, but recognizes that additional research on this facility type will be helpful. It will also be helpful to learn from the experience of states such as Oregon that recommend similar street types in their Oregon Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines.

To access the document, click here.

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2. Nonprofits Need to Stand Together to Push for Smart Public Policies During the last six years, extreme partisan gridlock in the nation’s capital acted like a shield protecting nonprofits and foundations against federal policy threats: Republican majorities in Congress could ignore harmful proposals from President Obama (such as limits on charitable deductions), and he could veto damaging bills from Congress (such as cutting critical domestic spending).

That protection will be gone on January 20, when the White House, Senate, and House will all be controlled by one party. We can expect a flood of federal legislative and regulatory changes that could directly and indirectly affect the work of virtually all nonprofits and foundations.

This transition in political power requires nonprofits to act completely differently than they have in the past. We cannot fixate on just one issue, such as the charitable tax deduction, which spurs donors to give. While such policies are vital, they are hardly the only change that could severely alter the work of the nation’s nonprofits. Nor can we afford to focus solely on Congress when public policies are likely to be altered by all three branches of government and at the federal, state, and local levels.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Can We Bring Back Riskier Playgrounds?

A slide, swings, maybe a seesaw or sandbox: These are the usual elements of today’s playground.

We’ve become so accustomed to their uniformity that it’s hard to believe that playgrounds used to be something different.

From their beginnings in the late 19th century until the 1980s, public playgrounds were spaces that would likely horrify today’s American parents. Cities set aside areas for children to build things with wood, hammers, and nails—without parental supervision. Funky sculptures to play on or in made for less safe, but exhilarating, exploration.

With the 1980s came a greater concern with safety, and different ideas about the role of playgrounds.

In turn, that led to less imaginative public spaces for play.

The Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter has been researching early playgrounds for a decade.

She has curated a number of museum exhibits in the United States, Europe, and Russia on the topic, and she edited the book The Playground Project, which came out last year.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost From the Young Over the past decade, many American cities have been transformed by young professionals of the millennial generation, with downtowns turning into bustling neighborhoods full of new apartments and pricey coffee bars.

But soon, cities may start running out of millennials.

A number of demographers, along with economists and real estate consultants, are starting to contemplate what urban cores will look like now that the generation — America’s largest — is cresting.

Millennials are generally considered to be those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s or early 2000s, and many in this generation are aging from their 20s into the more traditionally suburban child-raising years. There are already some signs that the inflow of young professionals into cities has Page 2 of 5

reached its peak, and that the outflow of mid-30s couples to the suburbs has resumed after stalling during the Great Recession.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Transportation Agencies Will Finally Measure the Movement of People, Not Just Cars “What you measure is what you get,” the saying goes, and for a long time, America’s transportation policy establishment was obsessed with measuring one thing: car congestion. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in the quest for free-flowing vehicular traffic. The result is wider highways, more sprawl, and more people stuck in congestion.

But this week U.S. DOT took an important step to change course, releasing new standards to guide how transportation agencies measure their performance. Advocates for transit and walkability say the policy is a significant improvement.

An earlier draft of these rules would have codified outdated highway-era dogma, emphasizing the movement of cars and trucks as a primary goal. Thousands of comments poured in demanding an approach that factors in the value of transit, biking, and walking — and the agency listened.

To access the full story, click here.

6. Pay It Forward - FEMA Calls for a Deductible to Reduce Disaster Spending Disasters are expensive and each year the price tag goes up. Last year, insurer payouts for natural disaster claims worldwide nearly doubled to $50 billion. The United States has averaged more than $27 billion a year in disaster assistance obligations over a ten-year period, and the National Flood Insurance Program is in debt to the tune of about $23 billion.

There’s got to be a better way, right? That’s the question the Federal Emergency Management agency is asking—and the answer might lie, at least partially, in a plan to use a disaster deductible approach to coax U.S. states into investing in mitigation and resilience.

FEMA’s plan (which is open for public comment until March 21) aims to reduce the cost of disasters by rewarding state investments in mitigation and risk-based planning. The agency posits that such a plan would help states better predict their disaster-associated spending and use taxpayer dollars more effectively.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Oregon Will Defy Joint Fish Management on The lower Columbia River The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission ripped a hole Friday in the 99-year-old fabric of concurrent fish management on the Columbia River.

With a split 4-3 vote, commission members defied the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission's attempt to negotiate the long-contested Columbia River Management Plan. The plan required a switch from gill-netting to selective commercial fishing on the mainstem below Bonneville Dam. It also gave priority allocation of mainstem salmon harvest to sport anglers.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. 9 Ways to Get Public Input: Thinking Beyond the Survey We are always amazed by the creative ways Community Heart & Soul® towns gather input from residents. In the process they not only get quality feedback, they also create opportunities for residents to engage with one another and build community. Here are nine examples we find especially compelling and fun!

1. Block party with a story booth  Golden Vision 2030, a Community Heart & Soul project, held a block party that drew more than 1,000 Golden, Colorado residents to have fun and discuss the future of the town. A pop up tent at the party was designated as a place where residents could tell stories and share what they love about Golden, and what they would change. This was a great way to receive public input while also enjoying a BBQ, drinks, and prizes.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Local Innovation Strengthening Rural Economies Rural America was front and center in the 2016 national election. Media headlines focused attention on our nation’s acute rural challenges – the decline of critical sectors like mining and manufacturing, technology-driven worker dislocation in those industries and agriculture, inadequate job opportunities for dislocated workers, infrastructure challenges, community health crises, and more.

But a deeper understanding of rural America reveals a companion picture – one where innovation and collaborative local leadership are turning challenges into opportunities. Rather than wait on solutions from outside, many rural places are building on their existing assets and designing creative economic development approaches that drive toward more broadly shared prosperity while creating and retaining jobs.

America’s Rural Opportunity is a six-part series of panel conversations that invites policymakers, economic and community development practitioners, and business and philanthropic leaders to engage in real dialogue around advancing a rural opportunity agenda. The series is presented by the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group with the Rural Development Innovation Group. Over the coming year, the series will:  

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Uncover the complex reality and diversity of America’s rural places, economies, businesses, development intermediaries – and people.

Raise understanding about what works in Rural America by exploring enterprising economic development approaches that tap a range of opportunities to build wider and more enduring prosperity – and strengthen productive rural/urban connections.

Identify what the private, public and philanthropic sectors can do differently to improve rural prospects.

The inaugural America’s Rural Opportunity panel will open the series by featuring innovators – business owners, intermediary partners, and investors – active in a variety of rural economies in the U.S.

For more information, click here.

10. More Rural Americans Got Insurance Through The Affordable Health Care Act Last Year As Congress voted to make it easier to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, a report shows that the number of rural Americans who purchased insurance through the federally managed marketplace increased to 1.4 million, a gain of more than 10 percent, in the last year.

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The study compared 2015 and 2016 data from the 36 states with nonmetropolitan counties whose individual insurance marketplace is managed through the federal system. (The states that weren’t part of the study either managed their own marketplaces or had no nonmetropolitan counties.)

The report showed that the percentage of the potential market in nonmetropolitan counties who purchased individual insurance through the federal system had grown from 36 to 40 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Metropolitan counties had a higher estimated rate of enrollment (48 percent), but the gap between rural and urban enrollment narrowed slightly over the study period.

The study created an enrollment percentage estimate for each American county by using statewide uninsured figures and county-level Census data. Data for states that managed their own insurance marketplaces were not available, the report said.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Incident Management Preparedness and Coordination Toolkit (IMPACT) IMPACT is a free all-hazards planning tool for first responders. It is meant to augment, not replace, current tools you may already be using. IMPACT combines simulation, visualization, and mapping into an integrated user interface similar to a smart phone or tablet. First responders can use it for planning, situation awareness, and response to natural and man-made disasters. It uses common data formats to easily exchange data with other map-based tools.

For more information, click here.

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