Karns Quality Blog

So it seems that Twitter has arrived in Harrisburg.  I was first turned onto this new serivce last summer.  Its part blog, part text message, part social network, part something entirely new.  After checking out its features, I was intrigued about the possibility of Twitter, but I didn’t know anyone else using it, so I moved on for the time being.  That all changed earlier this month when, out of no where, Twitter seemed to march into the burg.  Now, a core group of Harrisburg bloggers and tech industry types have jumped on and are running with it.

What was this impetus for this local surge in interest?  My research has traced it to Daniel Victor, a Patriot News reporter who actually seems to “get it” in terms of the impacts of social media on traditional journalism.  He started a all-out “one-month twitter twial” in an effort to see what would happen.  Well, so far, so good…

I gotta say, this is a communication tool that is really cool, and I cannot wait for it to expand outward from the small cirle of locals who are currently trying it out.  So, I encourage you to give it a go, as we see where this grand experiment takes up.

Today, Bruce Katz was in Harrisburg to meet with policy makers and community leaders to discuss An Economic Plan for the Commonwealth: Unleashing the Assets of Metropolitan Pennsylvania. I was privileged to hear a customized version of his Metro America presentation, with specific slides for Pennsylvania. Afterward I joined him in a casual reception and conversation. Rather than paraphrase his thesis hear, I think I’ll just have Bruce share it in his own words. Below are four youtube videos, totalling just over a half hour in length. Just start it.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

When considering these ideas, remember that “metro” is not a synonym of “urban”. In fact, many metro areas contain urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. A good example of this is Lancaster county, which lies entirely within one of the 100 metro areas that Bruce is discussing, farmland and all.

Real estate web site hotpads.com introduced an interesting feature to their real estate mapping software for visualizing foreclosure rates called the foreclosure heat map.  It combines the number listings of foreclosure properties with the total housing units by state, county, or zip code.  Drilling in on Harrisburg reveals a pleasant picture:

click for full size image

There’s Harrisburg, clearly below average.  That tip of red at the bottom of the image is the tip of a region of above average foreclosure rates in York County.

Outside the Hil-ARR-eee Event

Originally uploaded by y0sh.

Overflow crowd at the Forum on Harrisburg. Loudspeakers are set up for
those milling about outside. Jersey Mike is inside providing the play-
by-play.

It’s time for Middlesex Township Police to proudly step into the spotlight.  They busted the most treacherous of criminals, the bootlegger.  This guy had 1,520 bootleg DVD movies and 1,578 counterfeit CDs!!  Three cheers for this diligent detective work.

In other news, everybody else in the world, besides that poor sap and the Middlesex Township Police, just downloads their music via p2p networks.

Seriously, I feel bad for this guy for actually believing that there is still a market for this bootleg stuff, and I feel bad for the cops who are pretty delusional in thinking that they made a difference in anything.

When a government official tells a business to break the law, the business’s obligation is to the law. Therefore, we need to allow the courts to determine if the law was broken.

That’s me at the 56 second mark. Unfortunately, my sign is not very readable in the compressed YouTube video.

Here is the photo with a readable resolution:

If you feel strongly about this, I urge you to sign the petition.

In case you missed it, Governor Rendell made some highly racially charged comments to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in reference to Senator Obama and Rendell’s opinion of how Pennsylvania voters will react to him.  Here’s the recap:

You’ve got conservative whites here … who are not ready to vote for an African American candidate. I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking but white instead of black — that instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so. I think there was that factor there. And that exists, but on the other hand, that’s counterbalanced by Obama’s ability to bring new voters into the electoral pool.

After the fact, Rendell defended his comments:

I regret saying it because of the way it was interpreted.  Remember — I always tell the truth. Maybe I’m wrong, but I tell what my experience has taught me.

Wow.  Where to begin?  To summarize, Rendell thinks that some Pennsylvanians are racist and won’t vote for a black guy.  That’s how he feels about it, and he always speaks the truth.  To be fair, some Pennsylvanians are racist and probably won’t vote for Obama because of his race.  As I understand it, Pennsylvania is one of the few remaining states with active branches of the KKK.  So sure, I’ll give him that point; Pennsylvania, unfortunately, does have some racists.  I’d imagine that every state does.  But, Rendell, you shouldn’t have said that.

And you really shouldn’t have followed it up with your analysis of your campaign with Lynn Swan.  From his comments, we are to believe that 5% of Rendell’s votes in the last election were because the other guy was black.  On other words, Rendell thinks that 5% of Pennsylvania voters are racist.  There is no proof of that, and, in saying so, our governor slapped the face of all Pennsylvanians.

Barack Obama has united people and put up big numbers across the country in a diverse array of states: northern and southern, coastal and inland, urban and rural, diverse and homogeneous.  Rendell doesn’t think he is up to the task for Pennsylvania.  I can’t wait for Senator Obama to prove him wrong and win Pennsylvania in both the primary and general election.

I started this blog in 2004 as a experiment.  At that point, I was two years out of college, I had been living in Harrisburg for a year, and I was about to leave for seasonal employment in Oregon.  In a sense, I was all over the place, and I was having difficulty keeping in touch with friends and family.  Karns Quality Blog was born out of this difficulty.  Blogging was still new to me and to the world, and I decided to experiment with it as a means of keeping in touch.

What began as coverage of my adventures in rock climbing and travel slowly evolved over the years as I became more interested in and committed to the Harrisburg community.  Over that same time, I also discovered that my friends and family were not reading my blog with the consistency that I imagined (if they were reading it at all).

As I have explored the communication medium known as blogging, I have also discovered some insights as to what it takes to develop and maintain an audience.  Imperative in that task is staying on topic.  To that end, I have decided to formalize the natural trend that has been occurring around here.  Karns Quality Blog is now officially a blog about Harrisburg written by me Josh Karns, Harrisburg resident and voice of reason.

In formalizing this new format, all this Harrisburg (and Pennsylvania in a broader sense) are fair game.  I will be covering community development, politics, the music scene, special events, oddities, rants and rave, and onward.  I will continue to occasionally publish stories about my rock climbing exploits, especially within the greater Harrisburg region.  Additionally, I will occasionally discuss items of national importance that I feel are particularly relevant or that I believe I have some valuable to share.

I’ve set a goal for myself of four posts a week.  It will be a challenge to meet that, but I believe in setting the bar high.  Many of the posts will probably be photo posts of interesting visuals that I spot around town.  Others will be more textual.  My purpose is not (and never has been) journalistic reporting.  I’ll leave that to The Patriot.  Rather, I will provide analysis, commentary, and opinion on the stories that I see around me.  My goal is to advance discussion, to push the public discourse in directions that I believe will benefit this community.  As always, it will be an experiment.

Yesterday, Sentaor Spector, Senator, Casey, and Representative Holden descended upon the Midtown HACC campus, with the press in tow, in order to hear from GSA officials on why they felt it was best to demolish the existing courthouse and build a new one at the existing site.

The Patriot has given their take, including the curveball third option thrown by Judge Conner.  He suggests that the GSA evaluate againthe site at 2nd and Paxton St. on the south end of town.  That site has been repeatedly rejected due to its position in the flood plain.  The Congressional delegation seems to like the idea, but everyone else in the room, including the GSA, was hesitant.  For more of that story, read The Patriot’s article; I have other things to mention.

First, the number crunching that the GSA performed is astounding.  They really did their best to make it look like demolishing the current building, relocating all operation to temporary quarters, and rebuilding would be cost effective.  How is this possible?  They chose to consider the $18.5 million needed for interim housing to be an investment in Harrisburg, rather than a cost.

Additionally, the GSA did not consider Reed’s recommendation of selling the existing building to private investors after completing the move.  By keeping it in the hands of the feds in their cost analysis, they were able to show that moving the courthouse would result in a loss of taxes for the city and a loss in private investment.  The GSA failed to provide numbers on how selling the courthouse would impact these factors.

Finally, they suggest that moving the courthouse would result in increased financial burdens on the city in the form of additional parking garages and infrastructure.  However, Reed claims that such infrastructure is already in the pipeline to be added.

Reed touted the broad-based community coalition as indicative that the consensus was that 6th and Reily is best.  However, Barbara Shelton of the GSA cited the Pennlive forum discussions as evidence that consensus did not exist!  When pressed further, she relented that those forums were not indicative of the whole community.

My biggest issue in all this was not addressed.  Isn’t is terribly irresponsible and wasteful to tear down a perfectly good building that can be effectively used for so many other purposes when there are alternatives available?

The Patriot reports:

After three more months of studying locations for a new courthouse to be built in Harrisburg, federal officials [the General Services Administration (GSA)] concluded that rebuilding at Third and Walnut streets, their preferred site, is still the best.

The current courthouse site “best serves the federal government and the community, maximizes investment in the city of Harrisburg and minimizes required local investment,” according to a copy of the study obtained by The Patriot-News.

City officials dispute the findings, saying the locally preferred site at Sixth and Reily streets would save taxpayers at least $31 million. They cite the U.S. General Services Administration’s [GSA] own estimates of temporarily moving workers and demolishing the Ronald Reagan Federal Office Building.

Never fear, fair citizens of Harrisburg, the experts from the GSA are here to do the best thing for our city. To quickly recap the story thus far, Harrisburg could use a new federal court house. The current one is cramped and does not meet public safety standards for federal buildings. After studying their options, the GSA announces their three preferred locations: a historic neighborhood, some of the best low income housing in the city, or two mid-rise housing buildings for the elderly. Not one vacant property was included. It was clear that the GSA was intent on putting a wrecking ball to some fine Harrisburg real estate.

After a coordinated effort by the residents of the historic capitol area neighborhood, the GSA announced that the low income folks were getting the boot. They said it would cost too much to toss out the old folks. Still, they chose not to consider any of the open lots around town.

Enough citizens voiced their concerns about this location to get the GSA to scrap all three ideas and go back to the drawing board. Months later, a new list of potential sites was released. It did include the vacant lot at Sixth and Reily that most residents and the city government favored. However, it also included several blocks of prime downtown real estate with established businesses and offices!

After a thorough expert review, the GSA decided that tearing down one of two privately-owned, developed sites in downtown Harrisburg was the best option for a new courthouse. They were able to propose such ridiculousness through through the magic of eminent domain. Again, enough opposition rose up that a change of plan was necessary.

It became evident that the GSA was intent on tearing something down when they finally resorted to their currently-favored proposal. They determined that their next best option was to tear down the existing building.  A coalition of nearly everyone else, including our Senators Spector and Casey and Representative Holden, agreed that the Sixth and Reily location would better serve the city. Through the work of our elected officials in congress, funding for the new courthouse was frozen until the 6th and Reily site was studied. So the GSA “studied” the location and decided it wasn’t a good idea. They’d rather tear down their existing building and build a new one on top of the steaming pit of wasted resources that would remain when the dust settles. They really think that this is better than using the existing space for alternate purposes and building on the vacant lot in Midtown.

This whole affair has descended into the epic battle of the GSA vs. everybody else who has ever actually walked around in Harrisburg.  In my analysis of these events, one thing has become clear to me: the GSA is intent on tearing something down.  Every “finalist” location that they have selected, in all of the many rounds of deliberation, has involved the destruction of perfectly good real estate in Harrisburg.  In a moment of epiphany, I realized that the only way to reach consensus between the GSA and the people that are really affected by this decision is to offer up a sacrificial lamb.  The GSA wants to tear down a building.  We’ve got plenty of crumbling nasty buildings.  Let’s just give them a building that we don’t actually want to tear down.  That way the GSA can use their wrecking balls, and we can finally build the courthouse.

So who has a nomination for Harrisburg’s worst building?

The GSA is holding a meeting about their latest move 1:00 pm Monday at the HACC Midtown Campus.   I will be present to hear what they have to say, and I will happily share my thoughts here afterward.