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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jul/05/city-to-use-utilities-funds-for-street-projects/

The Spokesman-Review


July 5, 2015 in City

City to use utilities funds for street projects

The city of Spokane owns about 45 percent of the property within its borders, including parks, plants, lots and government buildings.

And more than half of the land it owns – about 11,000 acres – is streets, sidewalks and alleyways.

Those 17 square miles of public rights of way are worth more than $2.7 billion, according to a recent appraisal done for the city. That comes to about $5.68 per square foot.

The property can’t be used for much, other than driving. But under the Integrated Clean Water Plan – the city’s primary strategy to beat a federal deadline to get the Spokane River free of pollutants – streets mean much more than pavement.

Last week, the Spokane City Council approved a 20-year agreement forged among its utilities, finance, and business and developer services departments. Through 2035, the utilities department will pay $5 million every year into the city’s arterial street fund for its use of street property for utility projects.

Those projects include updating the underground system of pipes that ferry water and wastewater to and from homes and businesses, but they also include implementation of the redesigned infrastructure of storm gardens, pervious pavement and other design elements that help prevent polluted water from entering the river.

Under a mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the city has until the end of 2017 to stop virtually all pollutants from entering the waterway.

Rick Romero, the utilities director, recently told members of the city’s Public Works Committee that the $5 million would come out of his department’s rates, reserves and debt. But to justify such a payment, the city first had to figure out how much its street property is worth and how much utilities should pay to compensate for disturbing the street and its regular flow of traffic.

“What’s the reduction in value because you have to do these other things on it?” said Marlene Feist, utilities spokeswoman. “Essentially, there’s diminished value to the right of way because we use it for things besides just transporting people and cars.”

Working backward

The justification for the $5 million payments worked its way backward from promises made by city leaders – including Mayor David Condon, Council President Ben Stuckart and Romero – in the run-up to last year’s vote on the 20-year street levy. The levy passed with nearly 78 percent of the vote, and the city had to make good on its assurance to match the $5 million annually put forward by the street levy with utility dollars.

Such a guarantee isn’t as easy as it sounds. Municipal utility departments have long been carved out of the rest of the city due to reasons of financial accountability. Utility funding comes from ratepayers, who are compelled to pay, and that funding can only be spent on utility projects. The idea is to keep cities from raising utility rates to pay for other projects.

“We wanted to be able to justify the expense in some way, to tie it to something real, to show that the expense that we were incurring in the utility was consistent with what is believed to be the value to the utility,” Feist said. “We didn’t want to overvalue it. We didn’t want to severely undervalue it. We wanted to make sure that we were keeping our funds whole.”

Stuckart said the agreement for use of streets is simply the latest step in the work to implement citywide integration of project planning.

“If you’re going in to replace a water main, you should replace that street at the same time,” he said. “That way, you’re not going back two years later to dig it up and replace the street.”

Stuckart said such integration is estimated to save the city 10 to 20 percent on its projects overall. Worries over financial accountability with this agreement are misplaced, he said.

“We spent a year with a professional company looking at the worth of the street and the worth of the right of way,” he said. “That’s the legal justification for this.”

Feist agreed.

“We’re really clear in our financial statements that this money is going here and it’s going to pay for these things,” she said. “We don’t lose that accountability. What we do get is the dollar savings and efficiencies you get by collaborating on these projects.”

Breaking new ground

Feist said thinking about projects from a citywide perspective, instead of department by department, has led to other discussions of reorganizing City Hall, but she said such discussions were in their infancy.

“Should we, instead of having a water department, a wastewater department and a street department, have a right of way management department?” she said. “What’s driven our decision-making for the last 10 years has been what’s been on the list for the street bond” from 2004.

Now, Feist said, it’s not just pavement condition that will drive street projects, but a number of things.

“We’re going to let different things be the lead. If we have a water main that really needs replacing but it’s below pavement with a condition that’s pretty fair, then the water main is going to drive this,” Feist said. “And if it’s on the Master Bike Plan, we could do pervious bike lanes so we take care of the stormwater. And we’re going to let Avista hop in because they need to put in a gas line.”

Councilwoman Amber Waldref, chairwoman of the Public Works Committee, said the collaboration between utilities and street work is something she’s been “clamoring for for years.”

“I don’t know why streets is in a different department than utilities,” she said. “I’m always for people talking, because sometimes that’s the best way to identify opportunities.”

Waldref said to her the agreement was “about money.”

“This allows us to do more projects in the city, to get more streets paved,” she said. “I think we’re breaking new ground. I hope other cities will look at this and say this is something we should consider.”










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(2013_video_game)


SimCity (2013 video game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SimCity (sometimes unofficially labeled SimCity 5) is a city-building and urban planning simulation Massively multiplayer online game developed by Maxis, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. Released for Microsoft Windows in early March 2013, it is the first major installment in the SimCity series since the release of SimCity 4 a decade prior.


Many resources in the game are finite. Some are renewable, such as ground water. Lead gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz stated, "If you've built up an entire city on the economic basis of extracting a certain resource, when that resource runs out your economy will collapse."

Different from some previous SimCity titles, each type of zone (residential, commercial, and industrial) is not divided into density categories. Instead the density of the roads next to them determines the type of buildings that will be created there. This means that there is only one of each zone type, and density of the buildings are determined by the density of the roads.

Roads in SimCity are one of the most fundamental elements of the mechanics. Unlike previous SimCity games, roads carry water, power, and sewage.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/quotes

IMDb


WarGames (1983)

Quotes


Stephen Falken: Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David.










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(2013_video_game)


SimCity (2013 video game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SimCity (sometimes unofficially labeled SimCity 5) is a city-building and urban planning simulation Massively multiplayer online game developed by Maxis


Critical reception


SimCity was also criticized for the size of the area the player is given to build a city; critics have noted it to be significantly smaller than what was available in previous games. Maxis responded to this criticism by stating that this was a deliberate compromise to ensure that the game would run smoothly on the majority of users' computers. Maxis has acknowledged that city size is a major complaint, but has stated that they are not currently working on an increase in size. However, they have stated that larger areas may appear in an upcoming release or expansion of the game. In October 2013, Maxis stated that due to player feedback, they attempted to implement larger cities through "months of testing," but ultimately decided to abandon the concept as "the system performance challenges [Maxis] encountered would mean that the vast majority of [SimCity's] players wouldn't be able to load, much less play with bigger cities."










http://gateworld.net/atlantis/s2/transcripts/209.shtml

GateWorld


STARGATE ATLANTIS

AURORA

EPISODE NUMBER - 209

DVD DISC - Season 2, Disc 3

ORIGINAL U.S. AIR DATE - 09.23.05


CALDWELL: What's he still doing in there?

McKAY: He can come out any time he wants. There must be a good reason.

DEX: Knowing Sheppard, he wouldn't leave without getting the information from the communiqué.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 02:13 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Sunday 05 July 2015