Open Data Report from U.S. Conference of Mayors > Details + Video Playlists



The 2016 Mayors Conference got off to a rocky start with demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and shocking headline-grabbing news about toxic lead poisoning of residents from the city water supply in Flint, Michigan - a real-time and real-life call-to-action about problems that were either denied, covered-up, or conveniently ignored for years by local, state and national officials.

That was until investigative reporters looked into it . . .
Dear readers, please be advised this is not a quick read - you are encouraged to interact with this page by going to the links and see how  Mesa mayor John Giles participated in social media >

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/MayorGiles 
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mesamayorsoffice
Mayor Giles had this to say on Facebook:
I’m proud to co-chair this task force with New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu as we work to honor the service of our veterans by making sure all of them have a home to call their own.
By focusing our resources and maximizing our commitment, we can end veteran homelessness in our communities and our country
The City of Mesa Newsroom mesanow.org had this press release on 21 January
Mayor John Giles selected to lead national effort to end veterans homelessness
- See more at: http://www.mesanow.org/article.php?id=1587#sthash.VitoKvke.Bjs6zZON.dpuf
Admittedly it's "an uphill climb" to deal with vet homelessness in Mesa. The results so far: 70 accommodations have been provided. Apparently the city doesn't know how many people who are homeless are here in Mesa - volunteers are needed for a one-day count

Three Arizona mayors were at the National Mayors Conference
On January 20, 2016 Mayor John Giles retweeted this
from Katie Bier, D.C. Correspondent Cronkite News | Central Sound videographer ArizonaPBS | Covering immigration and politics issues in the nation's capital

Katie Bieri

@KatieBieriASU

    

Three #Arizona mayors are set to speak at the US Conference of Mayors today. Listen to their comments                   

Despite all of that, however, the conference has released a new report detailing policy priorities for our nation’s cities.
 
The 2015 Menino Survey of Mayors shows that a majority of mayors surveyed reported that aging and underfunded physical infrastructure is the greatest shared challenge facing their city.

INFRASTRUCTURE =  the basic and physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

 

This is the second year in a row that infrastructure has topped the list of mayoral challenges.



Ranked according to importance, mayors said that improving mass transit and road systems are the key infrastructure issues they would devote the most dollars to if funding becomes available.
In addition to improvements in infrastructure, Mayors said that they are looking for better ways to protect cyclists while on the road.

When it comes to hot-button issues like policing, survey results show support for change.

Mayors overwhelmingly support an array of proposed reforms, including

• body cameras (with 93% strongly supportive/supportive),
• independent investigations for all police related shootings (87%),
• publicizing arrest and crime statistics by demographics (85%),
• evaluating police departments based on arrest and crime statistics (74%), and civilian review boards (65%).

Poverty, inequality, and housing also made it high on the list of areas that need improvement.
But, respondents also noted that they face a wide range of constraints when it comes to improving civic life in their municipalities.

• Mayors, regardless of party affiliation, are feeling increasingly constrained by state regulations and the aggressive efforts of some of their state legislatures to limit local autonomy.
• They also express frustration with the current funding environment, notably the lack of financial support available at both the federal and state levels.

As CivSource has reported, there have been coordinated efforts led by ALEC and other special interest groups to pass laws in several states limiting municipal broadband, municipal level environmental protections, and municipal prevailing and minimum wage increases. Those same organizations are also pursuing federal measures to limit state-level autonomy where possible.

https://civsourceonline.com/2016/01/20/mayors-conference-off-to-a-rocky-start/

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY: Cities, especially big cities, are aggressively pursuing a wide variety of policies targeting the challenges faced by low-income residents.

The vast majority of mayors (74%) have programs that address the lack of job training and workforce development needs in their city.



Approximately half of all those interviewed are focused on

• high housing costs (57% of responding mayors),
• limited access to healthy foods (54%),
• limited access to government social and emergency assistance programs like SNAP (51%),  limited access to living wage jobs (49%).

Both large and small cities are aggressively tackling poverty, although big cities are taking on even more of the challenges affecting low income residents. On average, big cities are addressing more than five (5.5) challenges confronting the poor, while smaller communities are tackling just under four (3.8). Still, top priorities - job training, housing, food access, etc. - are similar regardless of city size.

While many cities have programs to address challenges faced specifically by low income residents, mayors believe inequality - the gap between rich and poor - is one area where they have limited control. They also believe constituents hold them to little account for any income inequality that may exist at the local level.

A playlist of On Demand Video of every  plenary session of the 84th Winter Meeting is stream lived on our YouTube channel and right here >> http://usmayors.org/84thWinterMeeting/

All The Rhetoric Commited To Improving The State of Ths World [video included]

Economist Felix Salmon fries the big financial fish swarming this week in Davos, SitzerWonderland in some excerpts and a video published on Fusion [links farther on].
The slogan of the World Economic Forum is “Committed to Improving the State of the World,” which makes for some pretty awkward conversations when the State of the World is clearly not improving, and is in fact getting markedly worse Sweet it is not.
Davos is an annual event, and if last year was characterized by fear, this year has the feeling of the other shoe dropping: the things that people were worried about in 2015 have become reality in 2016.

There are the markets, for one thing, plunging around the world.
U.K. and Japanese stocks, for instance, have officially moved into bear-market territory, down more than 20% from their highs, and they look positively rosy compared to what’s been happening in countries like Brazil and China.
There’s the European refugee crisis, which is in part a symptom of a broader crisis of radical hate coming from the likes of Daesh and Boko Haram.
Davos remains unsurpassable in its ability to bring together the most powerful people in the world . . .

But most of the public chatter about Davos concentrates on the high-minded stuff: the ritual incantations about having to improve working and living conditions for all the world’s 7.4 billion people in all manner of spheres, such as education, security, health, climate change, and the global economy as a whole. And that public chatter is important, since it gives the great and the good all the excuse they need to come up the mountain to rub shoulders in the Piano Bar and boondoggle away year after year.
And when it comes to the high-minded stuff, this is the year when it started becoming increasingly obvious that the emperor has very, very few clothes. The bankers and policymakers aren’t even faking it any more, and are increasingly willing to admit that they have no idea what’s happening and no idea what to do about it. This year, then, is proving itself to be the Davos of denial, the year that the disconnect between rhetoric and reality became more obvious than ever.

 



The truth, however, is that with the exception of a few public-health initiatives, the Davos model of “multi-stakeholder initiatives” and “global redesign” has utterly failed in its stated aims. The grandiloquence is as lofty as ever, but the world has not come together; instead, it is fracturing, and the World Economic Forum’s manifold Leaders are reduced to the status of impotent spectators. Some men just want to watch the world burn; Davos Man wants nothing less. But, right now, that’s all he can realistically do.
 

Details

It’s that time of year again.
Time for the world’s elite — heads of state, chief executives, academics, artists and celebrities — to take over a tiny Swiss town for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering. From the parties to the panels and private dinners, more than 2,500 attendees from over 100 countries will convene in Davos. The attendees have some obvious connections — it’s no surprise that heads of states might be connected to major academics or chief executives. But then there are the connections that surprise. Kevin Spacey connected to a banking giant? Leonardo DiCaprio connected to Shimon Peres? The hidden links are everywhere.

Mesa 11 Live Stream > City Council Meeting 21 Jan 2016

2015 > How Hot Was It?

Source: NOAA

2015 Was the Hottest Year on Record, by a Stunning Margin.
We actually broke the record for breaking records.
A powerful El Niño is largely responsible for the year’s extremes, but make no mistake: This is what global warming looks like. Temperatures are rising 10 times faster than during the bounce back from the last ice age. Fifteen of the hottest 16 years on record have come in the 21st century.

According to a report  by Tom Randall and Blackie Magliozzi yesterday from Bloomberg Business The heat during 2015 was relentless. Monthly records were broken for every month except January (second hottest) and April (third hottest), according to data from NOAA. The year ended with an exclamation point in December, recording the most extreme departure for any month on record.
Results from the world’s top monitoring agencies vary slightly, but NASA, NOAA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the U.K.'s Met Office all agree: 2015 was unprecedented. The heat was experienced differently around the world, but most regions were unusually warm to downright scorching for much of the year.
Up Next: More Broken Records.
The current El Niño has been a bit unusual in that it seemed to start in 2014 before faltering and re-emerging in 2015, said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. As a result, the warming that typically comes after an El Niño may have already occurred, Trenberth said. "If I had to guess, 2015 will probably beat out 2016."
So 2016 might set another record. Or it might not. But one thing is certain: It won't be normal. Those days are behind us.






January 20, 2016

Open Data from Mesa City Hall >> Where Is It?

Why open data should matter - transparency, efficiency, and innovation.

The simplest reason for why open government data makes sense is that government data belongs to the people – the gathering, maintenance, and analysis of government data is paid for by tax dollars, so citizens should have access to this data.

To be useful this data needs to be in a central location and cataloged so it can be findable. 
It also has to be published in “machine-readable format” so that the user of that data has the ability to perform their own analysis on the data. A .pdf on a hidden page of an agency website doesn’t cut it.
Transparency depends on access to information about what government does.
Open data accomplishes this.

Yours truly got a sweet Tweet two days ago 

Bloomberg Cities tweeted: .@WhatWorksCities is helping 100 mid-sized US #cities use #data & #evidence to make better decisions: #WhatWorks

Mesa applied for and was accepted in an invitation to join Bloomberg Philanthropies WhatWorksCities on Aug 05 of last year.
As of Jan 05, 2016 - six months later - City Hall is still wondering where to begin. Bureaucratic inertia maybe? In some glorious and colorful graphics presented at an Economic Development Advisory Board meeting,



Where to begin was followed with
"City-wide Cross-Functional Collaborations"
1. Transform Neighborhoods
2. Increase prosperity of Mesa residents

-[apologies to Robert Downey Jr. He's recovered]

 

Here a brief 1:03 Chicago Tech YouTube video

Published on Jan 18, 2016

Overview of OpenGrid, an open-source geo-spatial platform that lets users explore events that happen around

 

Here's a 8:30 upload for OpenGrid Intro Tutorial

 

For Spanish speakers a video from Ecuador

 

Taking A Look Re:Tithing | Medieval Practice or Mormon Flat-Rate Income Tax?

Just getting my "daily dose of Mormonism" via inbox from The Mormon News Report 3 hours ago at 7:01 a.m.
Yours truly was busy getting other posts up here on this site, but went back to scan the inbox to keep up-to-date on what's getting published online from Salt Lake City and learning more about that interesting religion.
Way-back-when, your MesaZona blogger and his brother were "altar boys" passing the basket to the congregation in a place of worship. Most people gave what they wanted or could afford to give. Having the pleasure to meet and talk with a few LDS members here, they all made a point to say they paid the 10% obligation to the Mormon Church. [A detail like that would never be asked by me since it's a matter of practicing one's faith].
Nonetheless, the mystery remains ... maybe it's like being required to pay dues if you belong to a union? Maybe it's some kind of income tax levying an exact percentage on what you earn? Are there credits and loop-holes and deductions? . . .

Today there was on Page Two a featured link
Letter to the Editor:
 Utah’s flat tax rate like LDS tithe rate
The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Jan 19 2016 06:42AM    •    Last Updated Jan 19 2016 06:42 am

In "The hypocrisy tax: Utah not shy about taxing the poor" (Jan. 15), the Tribune makes the case that Utah doesn't have a lottery as a means to fund schools and highways because the LDS Church holds that a lottery is too cruel for Utah to use to raise revenue because a lottery will come down hardest on those who can least afford it — the poor.

Yet Utah has hypocritically enacted essentially a regressively flat tax on income as well as relying on regressive sales taxes, both of which impose a disproportionate regressive burden on the poor who can least afford it — while favoring the tax status of the rich and super-rich

Utah's regressive state taxing system actually mirrors the LDS Church's tithing system. The 10 percent tithe on LDS members' income is essentially a regressive flat tax imposing a disproportionate tithing burden on those who can least afford it.

So if a lottery is bad, why aren't the regressive state taxing system and the regressive LDS tithing system held to be equally bad by church authorities?

Don L. Miller

St. George

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There seem to be at least two views of the feudal-age practice for tithing - imposed

1. A tithe (/ˈtaɪð/; from Old English: teogoþa "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government.

Is it a contribution to a religious organization?

Is it a compulsory tax to government?

Maybe a religious organization wrongly thinks it is a government ?????

                         

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2. What is tithing? [following the law anciently?]

To tithe is to freely give one-tenth of one's income annually to the Lord through His Church. . . The Bible indicates that God’s people followed the law of tithing anciently; through modern prophets, God restored this law once again to bless His children. To fulfill this commandment, Church members give one-tenth of their income to the Lord through His Church.

“Tithing is the great equitable law, for no matter how rich or poor we are, all of us pay the same one-tenth of our increase annually (see D&C 119:4), and all of us receive blessings so great ‘that there shall not be room enough to receive [them]’ (Malachi 3:10).”

Source: https://www.lds.org/topics/tithing?lang=eng

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2016’s Best & Worst Cities to Find a Job > Tools in The Economic Development Tool-Box

Let's start off with an assumption that five cities in the Valley of The Sun - Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale and Gilbert - all have access to and use all the same tools in their economic development Tool-Box. [see image to left]
Mesa's Director of Economic Development Bill Jabjiniak writes that it's a competitive environment.
"Today, competitiveness encompasses more than being low cost. Companies focus on regions with features that enhance their productivity and ability to compete in a global marketplace."

He goes on to say that cities in the region are competitors reinvesting and creating economic development tools that they have and use against us [?]
Use this link to access the newsletter >>http://www.mesaaz.gov/business/economic-development/news-room/economic-reporter-newsletter/first-quarter-2016

A fundamental change is underway in the practice of economic development and in the very ways in which regions compete for economic growth.
As the global economy shifted from manufacturing to innovation, geography was supposed to matter less. But the pundits were wrong. A new map is being drawn and it's not about red versus blue or rich versus poor. The rise of American brain hubs is causing huge geographic disparities in education, income, life expectancy, family stability, and political engagement. Dealing with this split—encouraging growth in the hubs while arresting the decline elsewhere—will be the challenge of the century, and The New Geography of Jobs lights the way
Publisher Houghton Mifflin http://www.hmhbooks.com/newgeographyofjobs/

 . . . so how's that working out for Mesa in this region?
Let's take a look at one metric: job creation

The business website WalletHub recently published a study you can find here >> https://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-for-jobs/2173/ about job creation that starts out like this
"Now that 2015 is behind us, it’s time to start thinking again about fresh starts. But whether that entails making a small change or a complete life overhaul, finding a new or better job will be a top New Year’s resolution for many Americans . . . Your luck of finding employment, of course, depends on where you live. In order to assess the relative strength of local job markets, WalletHub’s analysts compared 150 of the most populated U.S. cities across 17 key metrics. They range from job opportunities to employment growth."
The results: Mesa is ranked the lowest of the five cities. [Overall rank numbers are added]
Scottsdale 59.83 #16
Chandler 58.74 #20
Gilbert 57.19 #28
Phoenix 53.08 #47
Mesa 52.75 #50

Room for improvement? .....yes and the questions remain who, how and what strategies can deliver the results and outcomes?