Crime

The video, Crisis in Our Inner Cities, provided an excellent depiction of one of the key problems facing our society today – youth violence. As I watched the video I was amazed how accepting the children were of the violence that surrounded them. Many expressed fear, yet at the same time seemed resigned to the fact that this is just the way life is. Saddening, to say the least.

This assignment asks that I, based on what I saw in the film, come up with suggestions or ideas on how to prevent this type crime. Honestly I’m at a loss. In one of my other classes we talked about wicked problems. Problems so complex, that finding a solution is often difficult, if not impossible. I think that this issue certainly fits that category. That is not to imply that I am suggesting that this issue should be ignored – it has been ignored for too long. What I am saying is that a problem of this magnitude is not going to be solved easily and solutions that work in one city may not be applicable in another.

I grew up in a different time, in a neighborhood that was lower middle class. We didn’t have a lot but we did not really want for anything either. Both of my parents lived in our home, as did both of the parents of my friends. We played football, after school, in the field next to my house everyday of the week. Fights during games or after games were common place. However, whenever a fight did break out nobody ran home and got a gun in order to break it up. Rather, the adults that lived near the field would come out of their homes and stop the fighting. Some did not even have kids playing there, yet they still came out. As kids we knew if any adult said to stop we stopped. This is part of what makes this issue so difficult for me to grasp. How can the adults living in these neighborhoods care so little about the children? The sense of hopelessness expressed by the children in the video was maddening.

So, how do we solve this issue? I believe that it starts with improving the education system. The video emphasized that many of the people featured had received poor educations. In fact one of the young men had received his high school diploma, yet he could only read at a second grade level. I can remember when I was learning how to read and my grandfather would always tell me how important it was to be able to read. He would say, if you can read you can learn how to do anything, you can fix a car, build a house or even fly a plane. Ironically, he did not know how to read. But he knew that having an education was essential to my ability to have a better life. 

One of the gentleman interviewed said that the inner cities needed mentoring centers – a place where young people could go and be around positive role models. In my opinion this is one of the functions of our schools. Today and even more so in the future, having an education is going to be necessary in order to find quality employment. In fact, one of the first steps of the Cleveland Works program was improving the person’s level of education. Therefore, one of the keys to solving this issue is improving the inner city schools and education systems. The schools should provide a beacon of hope to the children living in what seems like a hopeless place.

I do not see any connection between the issues featured in the video and SB1474 or SB1070. While the film did make the point that accessibility to guns was part of the inner city problems, the issues deal with a completely different set of demographics.  

I realize I got a little off the assigned track in this post. However, I feel strongly that instilling knowledge in our children and improving the education system, especially in the inner cities, is the foundation to solving the problem of youth violence and many of the other issues that plague our society.  

Hope VI Grant

I would support applying for a Hope VI Grant because, other than the cost of preparing the submittal, there is no apparent downside to applying for the grant. Additionally, if the grant submittal is successful it will give the city the funds, outside of the current budget, to construct or restore much needed low-income housing. As highlighted in the video about the Matthew Henson Homes project undertaken by the City of Phoenix, the grant allowed the city to rebuild the housing project within the same area of the city, upgrade the efficiency of the homes and retain the resident’s sense of community. The film did not say if the restoration project could have or would have been done without the grant, however, the grant certainly facilitated the reconstruction project.

The impact of the grant on the community was significant. It allowed the homes of the low-income residents to be substantially upgraded without displacing them from their historical roots within their neighborhood. Because the application process was initiated by City Councilmen that were once residents of the projects it provided the politicians with a sense of giving back to their community and it showed the residents of the community that, despite their socioeconomic status, the city was there to look out for their well being.      

Economic Development

As the Director of Economic Development for the City of Idealia, Arizona, I would like to take a few minutes to introduce our city to you and explain why our city is the place to be in the world of highly technical manufacturing.

Our city is centrally located in the State of Arizona and is within very easy driving distance of two major east-west components of the interstate freeway system. Interstate 10 bisects Idealia and Interstate 40 is located approximately 60 miles north of the city. This prime location makes transportation of supplies and finished products virtually seamless, allowing members of our manufacturing community to keep their transportation costs to a minimum.

In addition to our close proximity to the national freeway system, the City Of Idealia has made a considerable investment in the development of the Idealia Industrial Park. This industrial specific development currently offers several large, fully improved land parcels that would be a perfect location for any type of high-tech or manufacturing oriented organization. Some of the already completed infrastructure features of this industrial park include:

·         Wide streets to accommodate heavy truck traffic

·         Freeway on-off ramps making access to the roadway convenient

·         City owned and operated water treatment plant to ensure an adequate supply of fresh water

·         Electrical substation that will provide uninterrupted power needs to facilities located within the park

·         Dedicated waste water treatment plant that specializes in the treatment of industrial waste water

Dedicated infrastructure is not the only commitment that the City of Idealia is willing to make to our corporate residents. The Idealia City Council recently approved a sales tax abatement to coincide with the existing property tax abatement. This business friendly environment makes Idealia the ideal place to locate any business.

Idealia’s location within a 100 mile radius of three state universities and numerous area community colleges explains the significant percentage of residents who hold some type of college degree. Our residents form the most educated citizenry per capita in the western United States. Access to this highly educated and highly skilled workforce was the number one reason that the Letni Corporation gave for choosing to locate their multi-billion dollar microchip manufacturing facility within the Idealia Industrial Park.

The City of Idealia is committed to making your company successful and welcomes the opportunity to be your corporate partner.

Education

I will admit that I experienced a feeling of dread when I reviewed the topics for this week’s assignment. Urban Education or Poverty? Initially, I did not find either of these two subjects appealing. My attitude regarding this subject matter stemmed from my belief that since my children are raised and out of the education system, I had no reason to be concerned with public education. As for the poverty topic, I have always worked hard to provide for my family and have never been directly exposed to people living in poverty. I did not think I could relate well enough to write about the issue. In the end I chose education and I was astonished at how much I learned about the American public education system.

Education as defined by the Merriman-Webster Dictionary is as follows:

1a: the action or process of educating or of being educated; b: the knowledge and development resulting from an educational process

2: the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools

This definition seems pretty straight forward. However, after viewing the Waiting for Superman video series it became very clear to me that at some point the people involved in America’s education system, administrators, teachers, parents and students, lost sight of the meaning of the word education. Although the videos only covered a small segment of America's public school system, the education system in our country is broken. The documentary highlighted several of the problems with education; these problems transcend location (urban or rural), gender, or race. The fact is students who attend public schools, no matter where they live and regardless of their skin color or gender, are not being educated. Unfortunately, as educators try to determine how to correct the problems faced by the system, America’s children continue to fall further behind students from other countries around the world.

Prior to this assignment I was aware that there were problems with the education system and like many, I believed the issues could be solved by investing money. However, as the producer of Waiting for Superman Davis Guggenheim pointed out, since the 1970’s the government’s per student spending for education has doubled. Obviously, spending more money is not the solution. In my opinion, the answer to a significant portion of the problem can be found in the video featuring Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Education Paradigms. Robinson claims that in order to solve the issues, educators are going to have to change their methods of teaching. He points out that in today’s society children are bombarded with information and technology. Traditional teaching methods are no longer effective at gaining a student’s attention. I also agree with Robinson’s contention that increasing a child’s ability to be creative is essential to improving their ability to learn.  

Modifying the methods used to educate children will stimulate their desire to learn. Ultimately, this will lead to a highly educated workforce, a critical factor in the United States’ ability to remain competitive in the global economy. Solving the problems that exist in the education system is essential to our country’s future.

Letni Corporation

Hello my name is Mark Wible I am the CEO of Letni Corporation, a large manufacturer of semi-conductors. The products that Letni produces are used in the vast majority of computers that are sold around the world. Today, Letni is the largest producer of semi-conductors in the world. As the global demand for computers and computer based products has increased so too has our company’s sales volume. In order to keep pace with this explosive demand the Board of Directors along with myself, made the decision to build a new production facility in Chandler, Arizona. Our company currently has several other manufacturing plants in the Chandler area and our ongoing relationship with the City of Chandler certainly had some influence in our decision. However, I would like to use this blog post to discuss several of the other factors that also contributed to our decision to locate our new state of the art manufacturing facility in City of Chandler.

As I mentioned above, Letni currently has several other manufacturing facilities located in the Chandler area. Locating our new facility here will allow us to take advantage of the specialized labor force that has developed in the area. Microchip manufacturing is an extremely complex process that requires a highly skilled workforce. The fact that our other manufacturing facilities are located in Chandler has created a division of labor, both domestically and internationally, between the Chandler area and the other regions that were considered. In addition, amalgamation of production in one large, central facility will permit Letni to streamline production, operate more efficiently and take full advantage of this economy of scale. This will ultimately allow us to lower production costs, making our company even more competitive in the global economy.

Another consideration was the cost of purchasing the land and the location of the property on which the facility will be constructed. The Chandler site was once used as farmland and its rural location offered Letni a significant cost savings over property in a more urban area. Additionally, the site’s close proximity to the existing freeway system will keep transportation costs low and will prevent external diseconomies associated with transporting finished product from an urban production facility from affecting our ability to meet the demand for our product.  All of this being said the most convincing argument for building the new plant in Chandler was provided by our current employees. When polled our employees overwhelmingly stated that they preferred a suburban lifestyle over living in an urban setting. Letni employees emphatically chose the neighborhoods, schools and general living environment that the City of Chandler and the surrounding area has to offer, over any of the other regions in the poll. Initially, it was the desire of the board to move our workforce from the suburbs back to an urban setting, allowing our company to participate in the internal migration phenomenon that is underway in other cities around the country. However, our employees voiced a strong unwillingness to give up their suburban lifestyle.

January 10th Assignment

As I mentioned in my first blog posting, I had the opportunity to work as an intern for the Arizona Rock Products Association (ARPA). During this time I had the occasion to attend regular meetings of the Construction Standards Committee of the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). MAG is a association comprised of representatives from the municipal governments of the cities and towns that make up the Phoenix Metropolitan area. This coalition of municipal governmental officials holds regular meetings in order to discuss and formulate public policy on a vast array of issues including transportation, air quality, public safety, construction and other common issues. MAG is an excellent example of a Regionist's vision of policy making. It provides proof that cities of any given area can work together to create policy that provides a solution to  problems and issues that are common to the region. 

While I personally tend to favor a more Decentralist philosophy, believing that less government is best and in resident empowerment, my exposure to this agency has shown me the strengths of the Regionalist point of view. Representatives from area municipalities, working together over the course of many years, have written and revised a set of regulatory policies that take the form of construction standards. This set of guidelines have been adopted by member communities and provide municipal engineering departments and area contractors with a uniform set of building standards that are used in roadway construction throughout the Phoenix Metropolitan region. This uniform set of construction standards is the reason why a person traveling on the surface streets in the Valley can exit one municipality and enter the next without any perceivable change in the roadway infrastructure that they are driving on. 

A Little About Me...

 

Hello and welcome to my blog. Before I get started I would like to tell you a little about myself and how I got to this point. I moved to the Phoenix area in 1982 and began my career working in roadway construction, primarily as a concrete finisher and project superintendent. I left the construction industry in 1994 to start my own commercial printing company, which I sold eight years later to return to heavy construction. It was at this point in my life that I began to think about returning to college to finish my degree studies. Finally in 2008 I enrolled at Arizona State University in order to finish what I had started a long time ago - obtaining my college degree. I have been married to my wife, Angel, for twenty eight years. Together we have two sons, Ryan, who is twenty five years old and a graduate student at the University of Memphis and Tyler, who is twenty three years old and is currently working as a personal banker for Chase after graduating from Wright State University with a degree in finance.

I recently had the privilege of working through the summer break as an intern for the Arizona Rock Producers Association. This alliance is best known by the acronym ARPA. ARPA's member companies are producers of aggregates, ready-mix concrete, asphalt and cement. These materials are used in every construction project throughout the State of Arizona. Collectively the companies that make up ARPA are a significant contributor to the Arizona economy and as an advocacy organization, ARPA prides itself on its ability to effectively represent its membership on any policy issue that is relevant to the industry. While working for this organization I was able to see first hand the process, from conception through implementation, of public policy being formulated. This peaked my interest and my desire to pursue a career in policy making/advocacy as it pertains to the construction industry here in Arizona.