Our View - Board inches toward changing school boundaries

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 20, 2009)

During Tuesday's meeting of the Iowa City School Board, administrators outlined a possible transition plan to alleviate overcrowding at West High and to use available space at City High until a planned third comprehensive high school opens for the 2014-15 school year. The proposed transition plan would require moving about 35 graduates from west-side elementary schools to South East Junior High and, starting in 2011-12, changing Northwest Junior High into a 7-9 school with about 150 ninth-graders.

Lest anyone mistakenly think the Iowa City School Board already has made up its mind about the plan, every page of the document has the word "DRAFT" scrawled across it. Yet only a few of the five boundary-change scenarios offered in the document seem to fit best within the district's "Secondary School Attendance Area Parameters."

That long list of parameters -- in addition to minimizing disruptions in students' educational experience and trying to ensure that students attend the school closest to their homes -- includes:

• Using current capacity in order to be fiscally responsible,

• Addressing immediate, short-term and long-term needs,

• Balancing socio-economic and ethnicity demographics,

• Keeping schools from growing either too large or too small,

• Considering transportation boundaries and

• Ensuring equity in education opportunities for all students.

We're already on board with the suggestion that the board and administrators need to fundamentally change the way they think about boundaries. Rather than consider attendance areas as static entities that should be largely left alone except for an occasional tweaking, it's time they start thinking about boundaries as being more fluid and update them more regularly.

If the school board is going to start the process with redrawing the boundaries between the district's two comprehensive high schools, then it makes sense to start with some elementaries on the boundary line. The proposed plan breaks up the school attendance areas for Lincoln, Hills and part of Roosevelt into six different neighborhoods or "building blocks":

• Block 1: Manville Heights;

• Block 2: North Lincoln, east of Dubuque Street;

• Block 3: North Lincoln, west of Dubuque Street;

• Block 4: Roosevelt/Hills south of Highway 1 up to and including Lacina Drive and Meadowview Lane;

• Block 5: Hills south of Lacina Drive and Meadowview Lane and east of Highway 218; and

• Block 6: Hills south of Lacina Drive and Meadowview Lane and west of Highway 218.

Redirecting students in Blocks 1, 2, 4 and 5 is the scenario with the fewest number of "con" bullet points in the document. But there is still a lot of room to argue about which of the parameters should have more priority: Proximity? Crossing boundaries like Interstate 80? Moving at least 35 students per grade level? Balancing ethnicity and poverty levels?

Likewise, we've called on the board to begin the process of redrawing boundaries between the district's elementary schools -- which are disturbingly out of sync with each other in terms of poverty, mobility and achievement statistics. Any short-term changes to the high school boundaries must be made with an eye to the long-term changes to the elementary boundaries.

As school board members continue to debate these controversial issues, they need to keep in mind some of the other recommendations of the High School Enrollment Task Force:

• They must actively and publicly solicit input from the affected schools and families, and

• They must demonstrate that they fully understand the consequences of whatever decision they make.

Our View - Empathy is an essential part of a judge's role

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 19, 2009)

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week ended with a pretty clear indication that the committee would recommend to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the third woman and first Latina to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some Republicans on the committee started introducing their questions with phrases like, "Once you're on the Court, I hope you will ..."

University of Iowa Law Professor Todd Pettys, in a phone interview Friday, said the weight of Sotomayor's long, balanced judicial record clearly overpowered the effect of the relatively few controversial examples her Republican critics kept pulling from her speeches.

"When the White House nominated her, they knew what was in those speeches and how often she uses some of the phrases," said Pettys, who live-blogged about the hearings for The Des Moines Register last week. "If she had only been on the bench for a short time, her critics could have said, 'These speeches are an indication of how she is going to rule.' And that would have been quite a strong argument. ... But considering how voluminous her judicial record is, it's remarkable how little they spoke about it."

The Republican senators did use the hearings to repeatedly criticize President Obama's statement that he considers "empathy" to be an essential quality of judicial temperament. But Pettys observed that, even in their attempts to equate "empathetic judge" with "activist judge," some Republicans seemed to be seeking reassurance themselves that Sotomayor could empathize with her critics.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, sounded very much like a Republican leaning toward voting in favor of Sotomayor but wishing she could make it easier for him, Pettys said. That came across when the senator from South Carolina asked if Sotomayor could understand why some people become so afraid when they read some of phrases in her speeches.

"A lot of us are concerned from the left and the right that unelected judges are very quick to change society in a way that's disturbing," Graham said Tuesday. "Can you understand how people may feel that way?"

Sotomayor's reply was simply, "Certainly, sir." But she could have proven her point even more emphatically if she had answered something along lines of, "If you mean, 'Can I empathize with them?', then, yes, I certainly can, sir."

Sotomayor often answered questions about the role of empathy in her decisions with a variant of the statement, "My life experiences help me to listen and understand." Yet she also suggested judges not only need to pull from their personal experience to empathize with people like them, they also need to be able to empathize with people unlike them. Without such ability, judges are at equal risk of letting either their unexamined prejudices or their unexamined affinities obscure their application of the law.

Pettys understandably said he was disappointed in how this more dynamic understanding of the role of judges became lost in the political theater that is the confirmation hearing process.

"It showed how in this nation -- at least in political circles -- we have an orthodox, simplistic view of what judges do," Pettys said. "The nominee still has to pay homage by saying, 'We don't make law; we only apply law.' That may be true, strictly speaking, but it's very misleading."

The Republican senators seemed to imply that judges should be robots -- or in Chief Justice John Roberts' overused phrase, "umpires" -- that mechanistically evaluate cases based on the specific instructions and parameters provided by Congress. But the instructions provided too often prove to be either contradictory or insufficiently specific. A robot can't evaluate how broad Constitutional phrases such as "freedom of speech" should apply to issues ranging from pornography to schools monitoring students' Facebook accounts. And lawmakers themselves often disagree on the intent behind a law.

"In the written texts that judges have to read, the legal words are so vague and -- especially in terms of the Constitution -- written at such a high level of generalization, judges by necessity play a powerful rule in shaping the content of the law."

And no robot could provide assurance to Lindsay Graham and his supporters that she both understands and can empathize with their fears.

Our View - City of literature moves forward with organization

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View" July 18, 2009)

With the incorporation of a new non-profit organization, local leaders have reached the next stage of planning in terms of how the community should build on UNESCO's decision to recognize Iowa City as an international City of Literature. International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill, who will serve as the new organization's president, will provide an update during his talk at the Iowa City Book Festival at 2 p.m. today in the University of Iowa Main Library.

The most important feature of the new organization is that its board of directors will include representatives from the local major stakeholders who stand to benefit from the organization's success -- a list that includes UI, Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, Johnson County, the Chamber of Commerce and the Conventional and Visitors Bureau.

There had been some concerns early on that Iowa City would try to claim this honor solely for itself. Besides creating an unnecessary turf war with the university and other local governments, devoting this non-profit organization solely to Iowa City's interests would have missed the broader vision -- not to mention potential federal grant money -- opened up by the UNESCO designation.

"We're looking forward to doing something on a bigger scale," said Iowa City Public Library Director Susan Craig, who will serve as the organization's vice president for the first year. "The ideas that are coming out of people are not just regional in scope -- and by regional I mean 'Midwest.' We want to build an organization that attracts attention around the country and around the world. The plans are very ambitious, but I think they can be fulfilled."

Unlike the other two UNESCO-designated cities of literature -- Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia -- Iowa City doesn't have enough of a donor base to support these projects on its own. Josh Schamberger, president of the Iowa City/Coralville Conventional and Visitors Bureau, said the organization already has $100,000 committed -- more than a third of its goal of $250,000. So far the public-private mix is lopsided by the money committed by the cities and UI, but the organization is aggressively going after more private donations and foundation grants. And to quality for those grants, the organization needs to look far beyond the local area.

"This is not only a brand that Iowa City should run with and celebrate itself," Schamberger said, "it's also something the state should take ownership of."

If the value of the UNESCO designation is going to be appreciated by people outside of the Iowa City area, Iowa City needs to avoid territorially viewing it as a mere pat on the back for our little Athens of the Midwest.

"It's an honor for the state as a whole," Craig said. "The designation and the intensity of literary effort, accomplishment and celebration that happens in Johnson County reflect very well on the state of Iowa. People are starting to take notice of Iowa after our role in the presidential election and the recent ruling about marriage equality. I'm not putting the City of Literature status on same level as those other two factors, but people are noticing that interesting things are happening in Iowa."

With one book festival under its belt, the organization's leaders now need to focus on hiring a director capable of providing clear evidence of progress over the next two years.

We do want this organization to hold successful events that help sustain and market the remarkable combination of resources that have made Iowa a site of great writing for nearly a century. But we also want those events to provide tangible benefits to the local economy by helping to put heads on pillows and butts in seats.

Our View - Quagmires in criminal justice, mental illness

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 17, 2009)

Overwhelming communication problems have plagued relationships between law enforcement agencies and hospitals in Iowa long before Mark Becker allegedly shot Ed Thomas last month. But those problems have raised a number of very difficult and high-profile questions since Becker, who had been recently released from psychiatric care at a local hospital, allegedly walked into Aplington-Parkersburg High School and shot the school's beloved football coach.

Officials from the Black Hawk County Sheriff's department want to know why Waterloo's Covenant Medical Center didn't contact them before the release so they could charge Becker with other crimes.

Officials from the hospital want to know, if law enforcement officers thought Becker was a danger to himself and others, why they didn't fill out the proper paper work or seek a court order to ensure the hospital could notify them before Becker was released.

Court documents show Becker, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder, intends to use insanity and diminished responsibility defenses in his trial. At the same time, Iowa Ombudsman William Angrick has launched an investigation to determine what happened with Becker's release and whether policy changes are necessary.

Similar questions were raised in Johnson County after a homeless man, Sonny Iovino, froze to death underneath the Benton Street bridge in the early hours of Nov. 7, 2007. The reports of Iovino's belligerent and erratic behavior in the days before his death made it difficult for agencies to help him. He had been released from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He refused to stay at Shelter House. And the Sheriff's Department didn't take him into custody, in part because he had a note explaining he was in need of medical attention.

Both cases -- Iovino's and Becker's -- provide worst-case examples of the quagmires that open up nearly everywhere mental illness crosses paths with the justice system. And those quagmires get even deeper in the more rural areas of the state where Iowa's shortage of psychiatrists is even starker. Smaller sheriff's departments are stretched dangerously thin when they have to devote officers to monitor people waiting for hours or days for an evaluation. And smaller hospitals are ill-equipped to provide security for patients facing criminal charges.

"The jails and the prisons are still the largest mental health care givers and providers in the state," Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said. "It shouldn't be that way."

Even with Johnson County's mental health diversion program, Pulkrabek said, the jail still has to house the mentally ill who are such a danger to themselves and to others that the local hospitals can't handle them.

"The jail is the dumping ground," Pulkrabek said. "Even if we can't manage them very well, we don't have the option to say, 'No, weren't not going to take them.'"

Some progress was made during the recent legislative session to show lawmakers how dysfunctional the system has become. The Iowa state Sheriffs and Deputies Association lobbied for a bill that would have set a specific amount of time a hospital had to evaluate a patient under court order and would have imposed penalties for institutions or individuals who failed to comply. The provision didn't get far, but it spurred representatives of the association to agree to meet with the Iowa Hospital Association next month to see if the two groups can find some common ground.

Hopefully law enforcement, hospitals, mental health providers and lawmakers have learned just how important it is for them to find more common ground. Otherwise, far too many people will find themselves sinking in more and more quagmires.

Our View - McDonald put a sense of trust in city government

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 15, 2009)

"At one time, most of my brothers and sisters worked in the business. ... There is a certain element of trust when you have family members working with you."

That's what John McDonald said back in 2006 when McDonald Optical, the business begun by his father and then overseen by him and some of his siblings, celebrated its 50th anniversary. And ever since the Iowa City businessman died at home July 8, friends and colleagues have been explaining just how far John McDonald extended his family's sense of "trust" throughout the community.

Thomas Scott, who managed McDonald's council campaigns in the 1980s, said McDonald's legacy will be his amazing ability to bring together people.

"In his 12 years on the council," Scott said, "he served with a number of different individuals with very different personalities. I think, without exception, regardless of the differences of opinions or the differences in political philosophy, they all would tell you that he was a superb leader."

Novelist Larry Baker, who said he lost to McDonald in a 1981 election but who eventually served on the council from 1984-87 and 1994-97, said McDonald's success came through all the hard work he did outside the council meetings.

"John had a retail personality," Baker said. "Retail is one-to-one. He always made you feel that he was talking to you. Listening to you. And not just to a constituent or to a voter or to a council member, but to Larry Baker."

Karen Kubby, who served on the Iowa City Council from 1989-1999 and who often voted differently than McDonald did, said McDonald was the perfect person to be mayor at the time because he had everyone's respect and thus could lead the city effectively.

"He instilled a sense of trust in the people he served," Kubby said. "There isn't that sense of trust in local government right now. Certainly times are different, but I think there was something in his way that helped instill trust. Something we could all learn from. It was real -- very genuine."

We hope our city leaders will learn from McDonald's example. And we also hope the Iowa City area will learn an additional lesson from the McDonald family's sense of trust: How to keep members of the next generations connected to this community. Many of John McDonald's siblings, children, nieces and nephews continue to work with the family business and, along with his parents, help make Iowa City seem a little more like a family. We're glad they are on hand to comfort one another and their friends during this time of loss.

"He was just a good, good person," Scott said. "And he was a damn good friend."

Our View - City Council should rename Sand Lake Recreation Area in honor of Terry Trueblood

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 11, 2009)

For a brief glimpse of how Terry Trueblood approached his job as director of the Iowa City Parks and Recreation Department, watch the October 2008 interview he did for "The Community Voice" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9mRR5wY2u4).

You'll see a little bit of the patience and thoroughness he brought to every aspect of his job.

You'll see the quiet, thoughtful demeanor that made it so easy for him to negotiate among different departments and between city staff and the public.

You'll see a man who not only loves his job but who also knows it well and who has performed it exceptionally and without fanfare for more than two decades.

But you'll also see a man who already has faced two bouts with cancer (prostate and colon) and who soon will have to take an extended sick leave for a bout with pancreatic cancer that eventually will take his life on July 3.

"We've had seven months to prepare for this, but we just didn't think of it like that," said Mike Moran, who has spent 23 of his 26 years with the department under Trueblood's leadership. "I fully expected him to come walking through that door like he's done before."

Moran said that he knew of Trueblood by reputation long before the Colorado native first arrived in Iowa City in 1986.

"When I heard he was going to take the job in Iowa City, I thought, 'What a coup,'" Moran said.

Finding the department in some financial trouble, Trueblood began implementing the meticulous standards that he had become known for. Soon, he not only had helped the department out of its financial troubles, but he began spearheading efforts to fund Mercer Aquatics Center, Scanlon Gym, the Kickers Soccer Complex, Waterworks Prairie Park and Thornberry Off-leash Dog Park.

"Our previous director had everything running about 99 miles per hour," Moran said. "Terry slowed things down to 50 and made sure things got done and got done well. ... He didn't do anything half-baked."

Even a partial list of the projects Trueblood helped to fully "bake" in the past 23 years proves the old adage, "Slow and steady wins the race."

John Westefeld, University of Iowa psychology professor and chairman of the Iowa City Parks and Recreation Commission, was so impressed with Trueblood's leadership style that in 2007 he nominated the public servant for the Press-Citizen Person of the Year.

"He had an amazing ability to bring groups of people together for the common good," Westefeld said. "He was one of the unsung heroes of city government."

Although Trueblood is gone, his vision for parks and recreation will continue through the recently released master plan for the department. Producing a master plan had long been a priority for Trueblood, and the final report relies heavily on his insight. (To view the plan, visit www.icgov.org.)

Not surprisingly, the master plan is both ambitious and expensive. It will require a huge commitment from the community if it is going to be implemented over the next decade. But Moran said Trueblood didn't want the department to be "a burden on the taxpayers" and was working on a plan to make the department less dependent on property tax dollars.

"He knew we would never be able to fund ourselves totally," Moran said, "but we could fund ourselves at a higher level ... through getting people to cooperatively do things for us that wouldn't cost as much."

That's why Trueblood's vision will require more than just city tax money. It will require the types of intergovernmental partnerships that allowed for the construction of the Grant Wood gym -- what Moran called an ideal blend of school district and Community Development Block Grant money. And it also will require the type of public/private partnership that enabled the construction of the city's dog park.

Given today's economic conditions, Iowa City's elected officials must view park development as of lesser priority than public safety, and they must make their budget decisions accordingly. But they also should follow Trueblood's example of working cooperatively and creatively -- at a slow but steady pace -- to enhance the city's recreation areas.

In the meantime, the council at least should approve the recommendation of the Parks and Recreation Commission and rename the Sand Lake Recreation Area in Terry Trueblood's honor.

Our View - Flood insurance still available for homeowners

(Iowa City Press-Citizen "Our View," July 10, 2009)

When a tornado ripped through Iowa City's downtown and some historic neighborhoods in 2006, the devastation was large from a local perspective but relatively minor from a national perspective. The city received no federal reimbursement for its disaster cleanup efforts.

Iowa City Public Works Director Rick Fosse is rightly concerned that a similar imbalance might occur if Ralston Creek ever floods to its so-called "100-year" or "500-year" level. Although many creekside homeowners would be devastated after such a flood -- especially those whose lenders did not require them to take out flood insurance -- the local disaster is unlikely to attract the same amount of federal assistance that poured into the area after last year's flood.

Plus the very nature of creek flooding would make it difficult for creekside homeowners to prepare. Because creeks are more susceptible to flash flooding caused by sudden downpours, homeowners probably wouldn't have time to sandbag or to otherwise secure their property.

That's why we agree with Fosse that homeowners who live in the Ralston Creek floodplain should get flood insurance for their property. Otherwise, they may face personal devastation as bad -- or possibly even worse -- than what uninsured residents of Parkview Terrace and Idyllwild have experienced for the past 13 months.

At the very least, we hope the flood of 2008 has put to rest the widespread mistaken notion that some people aren't eligible for flood insurance. Everyone is eligible, but not everyone is required.

Creekside homeowners, however, also need to recognize that they are as at-risk as riverside homeowners are. The same odds -- and same misleading chronological terminology -- apply to the so-called "100-year" and "500-year" floodplains of creeks as they do of rivers. Although detention basins constructed at Scott Park and Hickory Hill Park in the 1970s have reduced the risk of flooding along Ralston Creek, the risk of flooding has not gone away entirely.

Fosse said flooding along Ralston Creek in 1993 reached levels much less than a 100-year event, but he recommends homeowners to take appropriate precautions:

• Purchase flood insurance and

• Keep valuable items in safe places.

The city, likewise, is performing regular maintenance to ensure that the channels remain unobstructed and the basins don't fill with sediment.

"That's a true statement of any flood control works," Fosse said. "The flooding doesn't go away, it just becomes less frequent. ... We've got 30 years of good experience with the basins. But it is just 30 years."

There also is a flooding risk associated with Willow Creek on the city's west side. But Fosse said because residential development there is more recent, better stormwater drainage has reduced the risk.

Any local residents with questions as to whether their home is in the floodplain should:

• Contact their insurance company and find out what their risk is and how much their premiums would be;

• Visit the National Flood Insurance Program Web site at www.floodsmart.gov.; or

• Come down to the Public Works Department or the Housing and Inspection Departments at 415 E. Washington St. and look through the detailed floodplain maps.

No one -- especially homeowners and city officials -- should fool themselves into thinking that the local structures built in floodplains are completely safe.