HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006-05-08 - City Commission Workshop Meeting MinutesCITY OF TAMARAC
CITY COMMISSION WORKSHOP MEETING
MONDAY, MAY 08, 2006
CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco called the Workshop Meeting of the
City Commission to order on Monday, May 08, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 105 of
Tamarac City Hall, 7525 NW 88t" Avenue, Tamarac, Florida.
ROLL CALL: Mayor Beth Flansbaum-Talabisco, Vice Mayor Edward C. Portner,
Commissioner Patte Atkins -Grad, Commissioner Marc L. Sultanof, and Commissioner
Harry Dressler.
ALSO PRESENT: City Manager Jeffrey L. Miller, City Attorney Samuel S. Goren,
Deputy City Manager Michael C. Cemech, and City Clerk Marion Swenson.
Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco led the pledge of allegiance.
1. UPDATE REGARDING EXECUTIVE AIRPORT: Clara Bennett of the Ft.
Lauderdale Executive Airport appeared. Ms. Bennett said the Executive Airport is a
designated relief for airport activity, has a 24-hour traffic control tower, and the U.S.
Customs/Border Patrol is open seven days a week from 9:00 a.m. — 9:00 p.m. Traffic at
the airport has decreased from approximately 250,000 to just fewer than 200,000
annually, most likely due to rising fuel costs. The Executive Airport owns and operates
a 200-acre industrial park and employs between 3,500 — 4,000 people, some of who live
in Tamarac. The airport is self-sustaining with revenues derived from land lease and
fuel flowage fees that amount to $5 million annually. The CIP is aggressive and the
design and construction of the cross wind runway is in .the offing. The airport recently
completed its access/security program which addresses and prevents unauthorized
vehicular access, and includes fencing and card readers. The noise .abatement
program is very important and key to everything the airport does. The airport makes
use of noise monitoring systems to collect data. Everything the airport does must go
through the FAA. The airport has a 24-hour hotline and it has been noted that noise
due to arrival of flights has more of an impact on Tamarac than departures. There is
little that can be done about the arrival path but the airport can educate the pilots and
suggest ways in which they can abate the noise. Commissioner Sultanof questioned
the size of the aircraft that land at this airport, asked if former Commissioner McKay,
who is on the board, has been active for Tamarac, and questioned what measures the
airport has in place with regard to fuel after a disastrous event and whether the tanks
come under the EPA. Ms. Bennett said the largest aircraft is the Gulf Stream 5. Former
Commissioner McKay is active on Tamarac's behalf and the fuel tanks are
underground, double walled and monitored. Commissioner Sultanof spoke of BSO
helicopters, said BSO does an outstanding job for Tamarac, and asked whether they
conform to airport control and patterns. Ms. Bennett confirmed the BSO helicopters
come out of the Executive Airport and there is a good working relationship with crews
that fly these helicopters; they are receptive to suggestions from airport staff.
Additionally, airport staff has worked closely with the Boulevards and Tamarac Lakes
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North regarding arrival and departure routes. Vice Mayor Portner analogized living next
to an airport as living next to a golf course; the possibility of a golf ball hitting one's
window vs. the noise from the aircraft. Vice Mayor Portner questioned conversation at
one time with regard to extending one of the runways and Ms. Bennett spoke of the
master plan of 1997 that included a 750' extension to the runway. Based on response
from the community and the noise abatement issue, the extension was tabled in order
to take care of the noise problems. In the future it is more than likely the extension will
be addressed. It is up to the City of Ft. Lauderdale to prioritize projects for the airport.
Vice Mayor Portner asked if there is an advantage to increasing the size of the runway
and confirmed that in an emergency, commercial aircraft are able to land at the
Executive Airport. Ms. Bennett said runway length depends on the size of the aircraft
that will use the runway in the future and commercial plane landings would have to be
approved by Ft. Lauderdale. Commissioner Dressler said there is the perception that
there is a lack of police presence in the community. BSO helicopters coming out of the
Executive Airport could be used to an advantage in aerial surveillance. Commissioner
Dressler suggested the emphasis be taken away from noise with the accent put onto
police presence, relative to peoples' perception. City Manager Miller said that could be
done; an article is planned for the next Tam -A -Gram regarding city services and that
can be included. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco said she periodically receives calls from
residents regarding flight patterns and questioned the quickest way to get answers. Ms.
Bennett said the hotline, which is available 24 hours a day (954-828-6666) and the
office, which is open Monday -Friday from 8:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m. (954-828-4966). Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco said at some times it appears planes are coming in one after
another, and then at other times months go by without seeing a plane. Ms. Bennett said
the weather affects takeoff and landing, in particular, the wind direction, which has to do
with cold fronts. Commissioner Dressler spoke of an alert issued last week by the DHS
and asked if that was still in effect. Ms. Bennett said she did not believe it was in effect.
Vice Mayor Portner questioned whose responsibility it is to check for valid pilot licenses
and Ms. Bennett said it is the responsibility of the FAA. Commissioner Atkins -Grad said
it is most disturbing to note that in the middle of the night it appears the planes are flying
at extremely low altitudes. Ms. Bennett said there are procedures in place to address
night flying. Ms. Bennett informed the Mayor and City Commission that anyone wishing
a tour of the airport had only to contact her.
2. MAY 10, 2006 AGENDA ITEMS:
a. Item No. 6(f). SUPPORTING "A WAY HOME" — BROWARD COUNTY'S TEN
YEAR PLAN TO END HOMELESSNESS: (TR10956) Supporting "A Way Home",
Broward County Florida's ten year plan to end homelessness. Assistant City Manager
Phillips and Steve Werthman, Broward County Housing Initiative Program Administrator
appeared. Assistant City Manager Phillips said there was a request from Broward
County Mayor Graber for the Mayor and City Commission to issue a resolution in
support of the County's 10-year plan to end homelessness. Assistant City Manager
Phillips introduced Mr. Werthman. Mr. Werthman said the 10-year plan was adopted by
Broward County in 2005 and it underscores the recent tragedy and violence in Broward
County that involved several homeless people. Mr. Werthman explained the plan for
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City Commission Workshop
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1,200 new units, a portion of which would be used to house chronic homeless people
and spoke of the proposed implementation committee, which requires support from the
federal, state and local governmental agencies as well as participation from the private
community. Mr. Werthman said Broward County is one of 11 communities in the nation
that received a pilot grant from the federal government to treat and house the homeless,
and to provide housing and wrap around services for the chronic homeless. The results
are encouraging and cost avoidance is approximately $600,000. Mr. Werthman spoke
of the Kick -Off event scheduled for May 18t' and invited the Mayor and City
Commission to attend. (Mr. Werthman distributed an invitation to the Thursday, May
18, 2006 Kick -Off, a copy of which is attached and incorporated as part of these
minutes.) Commissioner Sultanof spoke of a facility in Sunrise in which families are
housed and provided with a list of available jobs, and said it has been very successful.
Commissioner Sultanof asked if homelessness has increased in Broward County or we
are just more aware of it due to the recent violence. Mr. Werthman said there are still a
lot of homeless people and much work to do. It is difficult to track the numbers due to
this being a transient area and the fact that HUD has changed the definition of
homelessness. The next count will be taken in January. Commissioner Dressler
confirmed that Mr. Werthman was here to ask the Mayor and City Commission's
support for the County initiative and Mr. Werthman said he was. Commissioner
Dressler spoke of his work as a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts in the 1980's and
the de -institutionalization of health care, which caused many to wind up in the streets.
Commissioner Dressler said this was disgraceful, and the thrill beating of the homeless
is disgraceful. Commissioner Dressler thanked Mr. Werthman for bringing this long time
systematic problem to the attention of the public, and added people do not care about
the homeless because they do not want to fund programs, and politicians do not care
because they feel it is a constituency they do not have to consider. Commissioner
Dressler said this program is the right thing to do and local government should help
because it is the right thing to do for the social good. The consideration should be
people based, not financial. Commissioner Atkins -Grad asked about the percentage of
homeless families and Mr. Werthman said there are about 25 families on a waiting list
every day and the plan is targeted to address their needs as well. Commissioner
Sultanof agreed families must be kept together. Vice Mayor Portner asked for a
definition of homelessness and Mr. Werthman said a homeless person is without a fixed
residence considered fit for human habitation, and this takes into consideration those
who live in shelters. Vice Mayor Portner said there is a lot of rhetoric with regard to
homelessness and it becomes the responsibility of governments to do something. Vice
Mayor Portner questioned low cost, affordable housing, and the amount of a person's
income that must go for housing. Mr. Werthman said affordable housing prevents and
ends homelessness and the Broward County Commission is looking at ways to address
this at the local level. Vice Mayor Portner asked if the County has considered public
lands on which to build housing and said he would like to get an appointment to speak
with whoever is working on affordable housing for the County. Mayor Flansbaum-
Talabisco said homelessness is the result of many levels of a problem and confirmed
that once a person or family is put into a situation where entities help them, they also
help them get back into the mainstream. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco said she served
on the United Way Allocation Board and visited many facilities. There is a facility in
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City Commission Workshop
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Pompano that houses families and she could see the families getting their self esteem
back. Mr. Werthman agreed these types of programs are successful. Assistant City
Manager Phillips said the item is on the agenda for commission vote on Wednesday.
Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco asked for an expression of interest for support of the
proposed resolution and all were in agreement.
b. Item No. 6(b). OCCUPATIONAL LICENSE FEE REFUND — ST. MALACHY
CATHOLIC CHURCH ANNUAL CARNIVAL: (TR10920) Approving an Occupational
License Fee Refund in an amount not to exceed $1,418.18, to be issued to the Saint
Malachy Catholic Church located at 6200 John Horan Terrace, for the operation of the
Saint Malachy Annual Carnival conducted on Thursday, October 20, 2005 through
Sunday, October 23, 2005 (Case No. 3-MI-06). Director of Community Development
King appeared and spoke of the carnival held in October and St. Malachy's request for
a refund of the special event fee. Commissioner Dressler asked if the same courtesy is
extended to other religious organizations and said the city must make an effort to
educate religious organizations if this option is available to them. Director of
Community Development King said the city has not been proactive in the past with
regard to this matter. City Manager Miller added very few organizations put on big
carnivals like St. Malachy does that require extensive permitting. It is handled on a
case by case basis, e.g., some religious organizations sell Christmas Trees and in the
past the city has forgiven the permitting fee; last year there was a Toys for Tots program
and the city forgave the fees. Commissioner Dressler said the function of government
is to educate people. Director of Community Development King said he would make
sure, as the organizations come forward they are made aware of the opportunity.
Commissioner Sultanof explained St. Malachy Church is a different function and since
Commissioner Sultanof has been in Tamarac, for the past 17 years, no other religious
organization has been in the same situation. St. Malachy holds a carnival and sells
beer. We can educate other organizations when and if they come to the city for an
event. Commissioner Sultanof spoke of Beth Torah holding a small function recently,
but it was not a carnival.
C. Item No. 7. EXTENDED HOURS PERMIT — OASIS PUB OF TAMARAC INC.:
(TR10921) Motion to approve Resolution approving a special extended hours permit,
requested by Gary Bruce Walker, owner of the Oasis Pub of Tamarac, Inc. (d/b/a:
Oasis Pub), to extend the hours of the on -premise sale and consumption of alcoholic
beverages and to open for business at 7:00 a.m. on weekdays, pursuant to the City of
Tamarac Ordinance No. 0-85-38, for the Oasis Pub of Tamarac, Inc. (d/b/a: Oasis
Pub) located in the Three Lakes Plaza at 3224 West Commercial Boulevard (Case No.
4-MI-06); providing for conditions of approval. Director of Community Development
King appeared and said special exceptions are non -transferable and the new owner of
the business would like to have the same business opportunities as the previous owner.
The extended hours permit is consistent with what has been done in the past.
Commissioner Sultanof questioned police surveillance and whether consumption will be
on and off site. Director of Community Development King said there will be on -site
consumption only. Commissioner Dressler questioned the quality of community issues
that may arise from the extended hours. BSO Chief Dugger said the extension was
May 08, 2006
City Commission Workshop
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granted to the previous owner and the new owner wants the same opportunity. There
have been no increased calls for service in the morning hours. There is neither a
positive or negative impact with regard to this establishment or other establishments in
the area and no reason to advocate for or against the extension of hours. Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco confirmed the business is currently open at 8:00 a.m. and they
are asking for one extra hour in the morning. Director of Community Development King
said they are also including New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day.
d. Item No. 6(d). AMENDING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT
2005-2006 GRANT FUND BUDGET TO INCLUDE DISASTER RELIEF FUNDS:
(TR10948) Amending the 2005-2006 Grant Fund budget for the Community
Development Department to include $66,227 in Florida Housing Finance Corporation
Disaster Relief funds and to be used for the City's current Homeowner Rehabilitation
Program waiting list according to the City's Local Housing Assistance Plan and Housing
Delivery Goals Chart; appropriating said funds, including any and all necessary budget
transfers (Case No. 6-MI-06). Director of Community Development King appeared and
said as a result of previous hurricanes the state has been proactive. Within weeks after
Hurricane Wilma hit, state agencies asked Tamarac to provide the number of people
impacted by the storm and the assistance needed. The State legislature allocated
additional funding to cities and counties for hurricane relief. Under the LHAP, adopted
by the Mayor and City Commission, the funds will be made available to those who
qualify for the program and the city has three years to expend the funds. Vice Mayor
Portner asked if distribution of the funds included the entire amount of the repairs and
Director of Community Development King said it did. The city is currently processing
25-30 people from the waiting list who qualified. For rehabilitation we will send a
contractor to determine the repairs necessary to bring the home to minimum code
standards. Then general contractors will bid on the job, and the lowest bidder will be
chosen. These funds can be combined with SHIP and CDBG funds and repairs have
been known to cost from $25,000 - $50,000. The goal is to get homes fixed.
3. DISCUSSION AND PRESENTATION REGARDING HOOK A KID ON GOLF
PROGRAM: Parks and Recreation Director Warner and Recreation Superintendent
Zimmer appeared. Recreation Superintendent Zimmer said the city and Woodlands
Country Club partnered last year, with the country club providing the facility and
instruction for 20 children at no cost to the children. Tamarac applied for the grant and
provided transportation for the children. The $2,000 in grant funding was received.
Last year there were 20 participants, with an additional 25 remaining on the waiting list.
The program received statewide exposure in the FRPA Journal. For this year's
program funding will be provided by HAKOG and the Florida Sports Foundation. There
are two programs scheduled for this year; one program for returning children who are
moving to the next level, for which there will be a $15.00 fee per child for the program
(Green Level Clinic); and the entry level which will be open to 20 new children (Tee
Level). The Tee level is for children 8-13 years of age who have no prior experience
with golf and are residents of Tamarac. The program will be marketed through flyers to
the elementary and middle schools, as well as to the camp programs. Advertising will
be at the Woodlands Country Club, the Forum and the Tam -A -Gram. Director of Parks
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City Commission Workshop
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and Recreation Warner said this is a popular program and by taking this to the next
level we will have 20 new children as well as a progression of children from last year.
Commissioner Dressler asked if the waiting list is due to there being not enough space
at the Woodlands Country Club, and Recreation Superintendent Zimmer said the
Woodlands Country Club and the grant funding provided for 20 children. Director of
Parks and Recreation Warner said the commitment from the Woodlands is significant
and it was worked into available hours for the golf club and space on the course.
Commissioner Dressler suggested the city also approach Woodmont Country Club.
Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco questioned the monetary calculation for the use of
Woodlands Country Club and the pros. Recreation Superintendent Zimmer said it came
to about $19,000. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco said she would like advertisement of the
program to go to all schools in Tamarac, including the Charter Schools. Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco said she and her husband participated in the program and it was
excellent; additionally, the board of the Woodlands was able to get members of the
country club to participate with the children and a tournament was held during the last
week of the program. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco said she is delighted to see the
program continue and it is a significant contribution of time and money. Recreation
Superintendent Zimmer said the dates for the 2006 program are July 8, 15, 22, and 29
from 9:00 a.m. — 11:00 a.m. for the returning group and from 1:00 p.m. — 3:00 p.m. for
the new group. Vice Mayor Portner suggested also looking into Colony West and
Inverrary Country Club. Vice Mayor Portner said he would like to sponsor up to 10
children for the program. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco asked that the Mayor and City
Commission be notified when the tournament will be held so the Commission can show
its support.
4. DISCUSSION AND PRESENTATION OF CONCEPTUAL DESIGN FOR
UTILITIES BUILDING: Utilities Director Gagnon said in December the city purchased
10 acres adjacent to and south of the existing Public Services Complex for utility field
operation offices. Director of Utilities Gagnon said he had hoped to have drawings for
the Mayor and City Commission at today's meeting but the proposal he received made
use of the entire 10 acres and the orientation was on Nob Hill Road, which was not the
intent of the Mayor and City Commission. Director of Utilities Gagnon said the design
team is going back to the drawing board to tighten up the design and he hoped to have
something for the Mayor and City Commission at the next workshop meeting. Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco questioned whether the design build team had parameters and
Director of Utilities Gagnon said the design criteria package did not specify the number
of acres to be used as the city wanted the team to be creative. Mayor Flansbaum-
Talabisco asked if the team would also be in attendance at the presentation and
Director of Utilities Gagnon said they would be. Director of Utilities Gagnon confirmed
the architectural design would blend in with the rest of the Public Services complex.
Commissioner Sultanof left the meeting at 10:55 a.m.
5. UPDATE RE: OPERATION OF AQUATIC CENTER: Parks and Recreation
Director Warner, Parks Superintendent Moll, and Katie Timm, Manager, Ellis Operations
appeared. Parks Superintendent Moll gave an overview of the amenities at the aquatic
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City Commission Workshop
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center: pool with zero depth entry, double torpedo slide, 'sprayground', picnic pavilion,
concession stand, fitness/wellness center, and locker room with showers and
bathrooms. Director of Parks and Recreation Warner said the grand opening is
scheduled for June with a definite date to be announced. Due to the hurricanes it has
been more difficult than anticipated getting supplies and laborers to work on the project,
but this will be a first class facility, worthy of Tamarac. Parks Superintendent Moll spoke
of the hours of operation; summer hours would begin when school lets out and continue
through August 13t", seven days a week for the pool and 'sprayground' from 7:00 a.m. —
10:00 p.m. During regular season from August 14 until school lets out for the summer
hours will be weekdays 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m. for the pool, 4:00 p.m. — 6:00 p.m. for the
'sprayground', and weekends for the pool 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m. and for the
'sprayground' from Noon — 6:00 p.m. From November 1 — February 28 the
'sprayground' will be closed because it is not heated. The slide, however, will be open.
Early lap swimming will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 a.m. — 10:00
a.m. throughout the year. Fitness room hours will be the same as they are currently in
the existing facility. Director of Parks and Recreation Warner spoke of various
programs to be offered: health/fitness, swim lessons, water aerobics, and water babies.
Classes will include lifeguard, junior lifeguard, and basic life support training.
Scheduled special events are Flick & Float (movies at the pool), Pirate Day, Holiday
Luau, Aqua Fest, and Grandparents' Day. Fees are scheduled as follows: daily
entrance fees for adults: $2.00 residents/$2.50 non-residents; seniors/students/military
$1.50 residents/$2.00 non-residents; children 12 and under $1.25 residents/$1.75 non-
residents.
City Attorney Goren left the room at 11:03 a.m. and returned at 11:05 a.m.
Director of Parks and Recreation Warner added there is no annual fee at this time.
Consideration is being given to a splash card good for 10 visits at the following cost:
adults $18.00 residents/$22.50 non-residents; seniors/students/military $13.50
residents/$18.00 non-residents; and children under 12 $11.25 residents/$15.75 non-
residents. There will be a discount for 15 or more people from one party. Rentals are
for three-hour blocks of time, including lifeguard services, and will afford two groups per
day to use facilities. Cost of rentals are $75.00 residents/$150.00 non-residents, with
an additional fee for extra lifeguard services for groups made up of over 25 guests. In
addition to the facility use fee there will be a per person entrance fee to the aquatic
center. After hours rental of the pavilion/pool from 7:00 p.m. -- 10:00 p.m. will be for the
use of the entire facility at a cost of $400.00 for residents/$500.00 for non-residents.
This includes two lifeguards for up to 50 guests with an hourly fee for additional
lifeguards. Proposed marketing is through pool flyers and a'h page mailer. Notices will
also be in the Tam -A -Gram, on the City Website, media open house, senior meeting
groups, Tamarac Community Center marquees, homeowner associations, Chamber of
Commerce, employee newsletter, and giveaway items. There is no charge for city
employees to use the pool. Vice Mayor Portner questioned the temperature of the pool
and Parks Superintendent Moll said it will be 84 degrees; Director of Parks and
Recreation Warner said this is a requirement of the grant. Commissioner Atkins -Grad
said all the activities sound wonderful. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco confirmed that the
May 08, 2006
City Commission Workshop
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hours will be reviewed and tweaked as necessary. Director of Parks and Recreation
Warner said this is correct, but a lot of the scheduling of pool hours is based on the
contract between Ellis and the City. If the City finds the hours need to be extended we
will work with Ellis. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco confirmed there will be programs for
adults as well as children and Ms. Timms said there will be general swim lessons
available for the community throughout the year at a cost of $36.00 - $40.00 for eight
lessons. Director of Parks and Recreation Warner said this is competitive with what
other cities charge. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco asked if the pavilion rental fees are in
line with fees for other Tamarac facilities and Director of Parks and Recreation Warner
said fees for the pavilion are a little more due to the exclusivity and location. Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco said she is sure the aquatic center will be very successful.
6. DISCUSSION RE: LEGISLATION SUPPORTING MANDATORY
INSTALLATION OF GENERATORS OF ELECTRIC POWER AT GASOLINE
SERVICE STATIONS: Commissioner Dressler said the legislature has addressed this
issue inadequately. City Attorney Goren reported this topic came up before the current
session of the legislature began. Several Bills were filed, many were very stringent.
Friday was the last day of the session and City Attorney Goren said SB862 may have
survived; however, at this time he is not sure. There were two components to that Bill
dealing with gas stations and multi -family residences. For gas stations, the Bill included
language requiring that by June 1, 2007 gas stations would have alternative electric
service in order to be able to sell fuel after a storm or other disaster. After July 1, newly
constructed or renovated stations will need to have fuel pumps pre -wired to
accommodate an alternate service source. Multi family buildings 75' or higher must
have at least one contingency elevator capable of operating on alternative power and
must be appropriately pre -wired. Commissioner Dressler said in essence, if generators
are not required the wiring is irrelevant. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco questioned how
many stories 75' encompasses and City Manager Miller said 6-7 stories; of which
Tamarac has no such buildings. Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco said at this juncture it is
unclear how the Mayor and City Commission should respond to peoples' questions as
the Mayor and City Commission go out into the community, and City Attorney Goren
said he hoped to know more by Wednesday after the Bills are engrossed. There has
been talk about a plan but no implementation of the plan on the part of the legislature.
Mayor Flansbaum-Talabisco asked City Manager Miller after the City Attorney has
discussed the Bill on Wednesday, to prepare talking points for the Mayor and City
Commission when they go into the community. Everyone is concerned and frustrated.
7. DISCUSSION RE: OPPOSING LEGISLATION INCREASING THE NUMBER
OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN BROWARD COUNTY: Commissioner Dressler asked that
this item be deferred indefinitely as he has not gotten enough data to date to form an
opinion or participate in a discussion.
Vice Mayor Portner questioned the status of his request with regard to campaign
financing or restricting the amount of money that can be given to a candidate. City
Attorney Goren said there were no Bills passed during this legislative session which
would have opened the door for public financing of campaigns. The City of Ft.
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City Commission Workshop
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J
1
Lauderdale has limited contributions in city races to $250.00 for each election, and this
has not yet been challenged. If the Mayor and City Commission choose to legislate
limitations on contributions, we can draft legislation based on what Ft. Lauderdale has
done. Vice Mayor Portner said he would like to pursue that avenue. Mayor Flansbaum-
Talabisco asked for something in writing.
Vice Mayor Portner said he would prefer future retreats to be facilitated by staff, and if
an outside facilitator is being considered, Vice Mayor Portner said he would rather have
it brought before the Mayor and City Commission before a decision is made.
There being no further business to come before the Mayor and City Commission, Mayor
Flansbaum-Talabisco adjourned the workshop meeting at 11:25 a.m.
Marion Swenson, CMC
City Clerk
May 08, 2006
City Commission Workshop
Page 9 of 9
You're Invited!
Topic: Broward County's Ten Year Plan
to End Homelessness - Implementation Kick -Off
Thursday, May 18, 2006
9:30 a.m. until Noon
Broward County Main Library Auditorium
100 S. Andrews Av. Ft. Lauderdale
Host: Broward County Mayor, Ben Graber
Special Guest Presentation: Mr. Philip F. Mangano, Executive
Director -- U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness
Excerpts from the speeches of Philip Mangano, Executive Director
"We seek visible, measurable, quantifiable change on our community's streets, within our
homeless programs, and, most especially, in the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors.
"We are not content to manage the crisis, or to maintenance the effort, or to accommodate
the response. We were called to one goal, one objective, one mission - to abolish
homelessness. Now is the time to forward the advocacy, fashion the strategy, and to
fulfill that mission."
Concluding Presentation: Dianne Sepielli, Chair — Broward County
Homeless Initiative Advisory Board and Ten Year Plan
Implementation Committee
Your RSVP is requested. Contact Cynthia Willis: Ph. 954-357-6101 or e-mail:
cwillis@broward.org before May 16.
Broward County's Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is available at:
littp://www.broward.or_g/humanservices/homelessplanfinal.pdf
United States Interagency Council on Homelessness - City and County 10 Year Plan Update
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Jacksonville, FL
OaklancVAlameda
ScrentmCacka Cty,
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PA
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Shelby, NO
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Cty/ Tumwaterl
Shreveport LA
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Daytontmontgomery
Key West, FL
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Denver, OO
KnoxvlllevKnax Cty,
Orocovi% PR
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Bellingham✓ Whatcom
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TN
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Southeastern TX
Cty, WA
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Las VagasrClark Cry,
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NV
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DurhamlDurham Cty,
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NC
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TaoomW%rc a Cty/
Bowling Green, KY
Eugenell-ane County,
Little Rock, AR
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BradentonrManatee
OR
Loiza, PR
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Essex Cty/ Newark/
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Tampa, FL
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East Orange/
Los Angeles Cty, CA
MI
Topeka, KS
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Lowell, MA
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Port►andmdultnomah
Tyler, TX
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IL
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WA
Canton/Alliance/
Fayetteville/Cumben'd
AZ
°RalelgWWalreCly,
Virginia Beach, VA
Maslllon/Stark Cty,
Cty, NC
Mayaguez, PR
NC
Ktcco, TX
OH
FRchburgll-'mrcester/
MemphisiShelby M
♦ Reno/Spatks/Vvashoe
Warwick, RI
Cape Cod, MA
Gardner, MA
TN
Cty, NV
Washington, DC
Carson City, NV
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Mercar my, Ni
Richmond, VA
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Caspar, WY
Ft VVbMVTarrant Cty,
Miami, FL
Riverside Cty, CA
Arbcr,Ml
Cedar Rapids/Linn
TX
Miami -Dade Cty, FL
Rochester, NY
Wilmington, NC
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GainasvitlanAlachua
Middlesex Cty, NJ
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mnstan-Salem, NO
Chapel H11VOrange
Cly, FL
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Cty, NO
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4"amery, AL
Cty, MC
YakimarYakima Cty,
Charleston, SC
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St Part, MN
WA
Charlotte, NO
Grand Rapida/Kent
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Yauco, PR
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Cty, MI
Nashville, TN
CA
Yonkers, NY
_ HE NEW YORKER
;ACT
I.T..N. OF SC)CIAt..s t;IWICU
MILLION -DOLLAR MURRAY
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage.
Issue of 2006-02-13 and 20
Pasted 2006-02-06
Murray Barr was a bear of a man, an ex -marine, six feet tall and heavyset, and when he fell down —which he did
nearly every day —it could take two or three grown men to pick him up. He had straight black hair and olive skin. On
the street, they called him Smokey. He was missing most of his teeth. He had a wonderful smile. People loved Murra
His chosen drink was vodka. Beer he called "horse piss." On the streets of downtown Reno, where he lived, he could
buy a two -hundred -and -fifty -millilitre bottle of cheap vodka for a dollar -fifty. If he was flush, he could go for the
seven -hundred -and -fifty -millilitre bottle, and if he was broke he could always do what many of the other homeless
people of Reno did, which is to walk through the casinos and finish off the half -empty glasses of liquor left at the
gaming tables.
"If he was on a runner, we could pick him up several times a day," Patrick O'Bryan, who is a bicycle cop in downtov
Reno, said. "And he's gone on some amazing runners. He would get picked up, get detoxed, then get back out a coup
of hours later and start up again. A lot of the guys on the streets who've been drinking, they get so angry. They are sr
incredibly abrasive, so violent, so abusive. Murray was such a character and had such a great sense of humor that we
somehow got past that. Even when he was abusive, we'd say, `Murray, you know you love us,' and he'd say, `I
know' —and go back to swearing at us."
"I've been a police officer for fifteen years," O'Bryan's partner, Steve Johns, said. "I picked up Murray my whole
career. Literally."
Johns and O'Bryan pleaded with Murray to quit drinking. A few years ago, he was assigned to a treatment program ii
which he was under the equivalent of house arrest, and he thrived. He got a job and worked hard. But then the progra
ended. "Once he graduated out, he had no one to report to, and he needed that," O'Bryan said. "I don't know whether
was his military background. I suspect that it was. He was a good cook. One time, he accumulated savings of over si)
thousand dollars. Showed up for work religiously. Did everything he was supposed to do. They said, `Congratulation
and put him back on the street. He spent that six thousand in a week or so."
Often, he was too intoxicated for the drunk tank at the jail, and he'd get sent to the emergency room at either Saint
Mary's or Washoe Medical Center. Marla Johns, who was a social worker in the emergency room at Saint Mary's, sa
him several times a week. "The ambulance would bring him in. We would sober him up, so he would be sober enoug
to go to jail. And we would call the police to pick him up. In fact, that's how I met my husband." Marla Johns is
married to Steve Johns.
"He was like the one constant in an environment that was ever changing," she went on. "In he would come. He woul(
grin that half -toothless grin. He called me `my angel.' I would walk in the room, and he would smile and say, `Oh, in
angel, I'm so happy to see you.' We would joke back and forth, and I would beg him to quit drinking and he would
laugh it off. And when time went by and he didn't come in I would get worried and call the coroner's office. When h
was sober, we would find out, oh, he's working someplace, and my husband and I would go and have dinner where b
was working. When my husband and I were dating, and we were going to get married, he said, `Can I come to the
wedding?' And I almost felt like he should. My joke was `If you are sober you can come, because I can't afford your
bar bill.' When we started a family, he would lay a hand on my pregnant belly and bless the child. He really was this
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kind of light."
Yage L of N;
In the fall of 2003, the Reno Police Department started an initiative designed to limit panhandling in the
downtown core. There were articles in the newspapers, and the police department came under harsh criticism on
local talk radio. The crackdown on panhandling amounted to harassment, the critics said. The homeless weren't
an imposition on the city; they were just trying to get by. "One morning, I'm listening to one of the talk shows,
and they're just trashing the police department and going on about how unfair it is," O'Bryan said. "And I
thought, Wow, I've never seen any of these critics in one of the alleyways in the middle of the winter looking for
bodies." O'Bryan was angry. In downtown Reno, food for the homeless was plentiful: there was a Gospel
kitchen and Catholic Services, and even the local McDonald's fed the hungry. The panhandling was for liquor,
and the liquor was anything but harmless. He and Johns spent at least half their time dealing with people like
Murray; they were as much caseworkers as police officers. And they knew they weren't the only ones involved.
When someone passed out on the street, there was a "One down" call to the paramedics. There were four people
in an ambulance, and the patient sometimes stayed at the hospital for days, because living on the streets in a state
of almost constant intoxication was a reliable way of getting sick. None of that, surely, could be cheap.
O'Bryan and Johns called someone they knew at an ambulance service and then contacted the local hospitals.
"We came up with three names that were some of our chronic inebriates in the downtown area, that got arrested
the most often," O'Bryan said. "We tracked those three individuals through just one of our two hospitals. One of
the guys had been in jail previously, so he'd only been on the streets for six months. In those six months, he had
accumulated a bill of a hundred thousand dollars —and that's at the smaller of the two hospitals near downtown
Reno. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the other hospital had an even larger bill. Another individual came
from Portland and had been in Reno for three months. In those three months, he had accumulated a bill for sixty-
five thousand dollars. The third individual actually had some periods of being sober, and had accumulated a bill
of fifty thousand."
The first of those people was Murray Barr, and Johns and O'Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital
bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets --as well as substance -abuse -treatment costs, doctors' fees,
and other expenses —Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada.
"It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray," O'Bryan said.
Fifteen years ago, after the Rodney King beating, the Los Angeles Police Department was in crisis. It was
accused of racial insensitivity and ill discipline and violence, and the assumption was that those problems had
spread broadly throughout the rank and file. In the language of statisticians, it was thought that L.A.P.D.'s
troubles had a "normal" distribution —that if you graphed them the result would look like a bell curve, with a
small number of officers at one end of the curve, a small number at the other end, and the bulk of the problem
situated in the middle. The bell -curve assumption has become so much a part of our mental architecture that we
tend to use it to organize experience automatically.
But when the L.A.P.D. was investigated by a special commission headed by Warren Christopher, a very
different picture emerged. Between 1986 and 1990, allegations of excessive force or improper tactics were made
against eighteen hundred of the eighty-five hundred officers in the L.A.P.D. The broad middle had scarcely been
accused of anything. Furthermore, more than fourteen hundred officers had only one or two allegations made
against them —and bear in mind that these were not proven charges, that they happened in a four-year period,
and that allegations of excessive force are an inevitable feature of urban police work. (The N.Y.P.D. receives
about three thousand such complaints a year.) A hundred and eighty-three officers, however, had four or more
complaints against them, forty-four officers had six or more complaints, sixteen had eight or more, and one had
sixteen complaints. If you were to graph the troubles of the L.A.P.D., it wouldn't look like a bell curve. It would
look more like a hockey stick. It would follow what statisticians call a "power law" distribution —where all the
activity is not in the middle but at one extreme.
The Christopher Commission's report repeatedly comes back to what it describes as the extreme coatcentration
p://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060213fa--fact 3/ 14/2006
of -problematic officers. One officer had been the subject of thirteen allegations of excessive use of force, five
other complaints, twenty-eight `rise of force reports" (that is, documented, internal accounts of inappropriate
behavior), and one shooting. Another had six excessive -force complaints, nineteen other complaints, ten use -of -
force reports, and three shootings. A third had twenty-seven use -of -force reports, and a fourth had thirty-five.
Another had a file full of complaints for doing things like "striking an arrestee on the back of the neck with the
butt of a shotgun for no apparent reason while the arrestee was kneeling and handcuffed," beating up a thirteen -
year -old juvenile, and throwing an arrestee from his chair and kicking him in the back and side of the head while
he was handcuffed and lying on his stomach.
The report gives the strong impression that if you fired, those forty-four cops the L.A.P.D. would suddenly
become a pretty well -functioning police department. But the report also suggests that the problem is tougher
than it seems, because those forty-four bad cops were so bad that the institutional mechanisms in place to get rid
of bad apples clearly weren't working. If you made the mistake of assuming that the department's troubles fell
into a normal distribution, you'd propose solutions that would raise the performance of the middle —like better
training or better hiring —when the middle didn't need help. For those hard-core few who did need help,
meanwhile, the medicine that helped the middle wouldn't be nearly strong enough.
In the nineteen -eighties, when homelessness first surfaced as a national issue, the assumption was that the
problem fit a normal distribution: that the vast majority of the homeless were in the same state of semi-
permanent distress. It was an assumption that bred despair: if there were so many homeless, with so many
problems, what could be done to help them? Then, fifteen years ago, a young Boston College graduate student
named Dennis Culhane lived in a shelter in Philadelphia for seven weeks as part of the research for his
dissertation. A few months later he went back, and was surprised to discover that he couldn't find any of the
people he had recently spent so much time with. "It made me realize that most of these people were getting on
with their own lives," he said.
Culhane then put together a database —the first of its kind ---to track who was coming in and out of the shelter
system. What he discovered profoundly changed the way homelessness is understood. Homelessness doesn't
have a normal distribution, it turned out. It has a power -law distribution. "We found that eighty per cent of the
homeless were in and out really quickly," he said. "In Philadelphia, the most common length of time that
someone is homeless is one day. And the second most common length is two days. And they never come back.
Anyone who ever has to stay in a shelter involuntarily knows that all you think about is how to make sure you
never come back."
The next ten per cent were what Culhane calls episodic users. They would come for three weeks at a time, and
return periodically, particularly in the winter. They were quite young, and they were often heavy drug users. It
was the last ten per cent --the group at the farthest edge. of the curve --that interested Culhane the most. They
were the chronically homeless, who lived in the shelters, sometimes for years at a time. They were older. Many
were mentally ill or physically disabled, and when we think about homelessness as a social problem --the people
sleeping on the sidewalk, aggressively panhandling, lying drunk in doorways, huddled on subway grates and
under bridges —it's this group that we have in mind. In the early nineteen -nineties, Culhane's database
suggested that New York City had a quarter of a million people who were homeless at some point in the
previous half decade --which was a surprisingly high number. But only about twenty-five hundred were
chronically homeless.
It turns out, furthermore, that this group costs the health-care and social -services systems far more than anyone
had ever anticipated. Culhane estimates that in New York at least sixty-two million dollars was being spent
annually to shelter just those twenty-five hundred hard-core homeless. "It costs twenty-four thousand dollars a
year for one of these shelter beds," Culhane said. "We're talking about a cot eighteen inches away from the next
cot." Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, a leading service group for the homeless in Boston,
recently tracked the medical expenses of a hundred and nineteen chronically homeless people. In the course of
five years, thirty-three people died and seven more were sent to nursing homes, and the group still accounted for
18,834 emergency -room visits —at a minimum cost of a thousand dollars a visit. The University of California,
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San Diego Medical Center followed fifteen chronically homeless inebriates and found that over eighteen months
those fifteen people were treated at the hospital's emergency room four hundred and seventeen times, and ran up
bills that averaged a hundred thousand dollars each. One person —San Diego's counterpart to Murray Barr —
came to the emergency room eighty-seven times.
"If it's a medical admission, it's likely to be the guys with the really complex pneumonia," James Dunford, the
city of San Diego's emergency medical director and the author of the observational study, said. "They are drunk
and they aspirate and get vomit in their lungs and develop a lung abscess, and they get hypothermia on top of
that, because they're out in the rain. They end up in the intensive -care unit with these very complicated medical
infections. These are the guys who typically get hit by cars and buses and trucks. They often have a
neurosurgical catastrophe as well. So they are very prone to just falling down and cracking their head and getting
a subdural hematoma, which, if not drained, could kill them, and it's the guy who falls down and hits his head
who ends up costing you at least fifty thousand dollars. Meanwhile, they are going through alcoholic withdrawal
and have devastating liver disease that only adds to their inability to fight infections. There is no end to the
issues. We do this huge drill. We run up big lab fees, and the nurses want to quit, because they see the same
guys come in over and over, and all we're doing is making them capable of walking down the block."
The homelessness problem is like the L.A.P.D.'s bad -cop problem. It's a matter of a few hard cases, and that's
good news, because when a problem is that concentrated you can wrap your arms around it and think about
solving it. The bad news is that those few hard cases are hard. They are falling -down drunks with liver disease
and complex infections and mental illness. They need time and attention and lots of money. But enormous sums
of money are already being spent on the chronically homeless, and Culhane saw that the kind of money it would
take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it. Murray Barr
used more health-care dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state of Nevada. It would probably have been
cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment.
The leading exponent for the power -law theory of homelessness is Philip Mangano, who, since he was appointed
by President Bush in 2002, has been the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a
group that oversees the programs of twenty federal agencies. Mangano is a slender man, with a mane of white
hair and a magnetic presence, who got his start as an advocate for the homeless in Massachusetts. In the past two
years, he has crisscrossed the United States, educating local mayors and city councils about the real shape of the
homelessness curve. Simply running soup kitchens and shelters, he argues, allows the chronically homeless to
remain chronically homeless. You build a shelter and a soup kitchen if you think that homelessness is a problem
with a broad and unmanageable middle. But if it's a problem at the fringe it can be solved. So far, Mangano has
convinced more than two hundred cities to radically re6valuate their policy for dealing with the homeless.
"I was in St. Louis recently," Mangano said, back in June, when he dropped by New York on his way to Boise,
Idaho. "I spoke with people doing services there. They had a very difficult group of people they couldn't reach
no matter what they offered. So I said, Take some of your money and rent some apartments and go out to those
people, and literally go out there with the key and say to them, `This is the key to an apartment. If you come
with me right now I am going to give it to you, and you are going to have that apartment.' And so they did. And
one by one those people were coming in. Our intent is to take homeless policy from the old idea of funding
programs that serve homeless people endlessly and invest in results that actually end homelessness."
Mangano is a history buff, a man who sometimes falls asleep listening to old Malcolm X speeches, and who
peppers his remarks with references to the civil-rights movement and the Berlin Wall and, most of all, the fight
against slavery. "I am an abolitionist," he says. "My office in Boston was opposite the monument to the 54th
Regiment on the Boston Common, up the street from the Park Street Church, where William Lloyd Garrison
called for immediate abolition, and around the comer from where Frederick Douglass gave that famous speech
at the Tremont Temple. It is very much ingrained in me that you do not manage a social wrong. You should be
ending it."
p://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060213fa. fact 3/14/2006
The old Y.M.C.A. in downtown Denver is on Sixteenth Street, just east of the central business district. The
Main building is a handsome six -story stone structure that was erected in 1906, and next door is an annex that
was added in the nineteen -fifties. On the ground floor there is a gym and exercise rooms. On the upper floors
there are several hundred apartments —brightly painted one -bedrooms, efficiencies, and S.R.O.-style rooms with
microwaves and refrigerators and central airconditioning--and for the past several years those apartments have
been owned and managed by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
Even by big -city standards, Denver has a serious homelessness problem. The winters are relatively mild, and the
summers aren't nearly as hot as those of neighboring New Mexico or Utah, which has made the city a magnet
for the indigent. By the city's estimates, it has roughly a thousand chronically homeless people, of whom three
hundred spend their time downtown, along the central Sixteenth Street shopping corridor or in nearby Civic
Center Park. Many of the merchants downtown worry that the presence of the homeless is scaring away
customers. A few blocks north, near the hospital, a modest, low -slung detox center handles twenty-eight
thousand admissions a year, many of them homeless people who have passed out on the streets, either from
liquor or —as is increasingly the case ---from mouthwash. "Dr. Tichenor's--Dr. Tich, they call it —is the brand
of mouthwash they use," says Roxane White, the manager of the city's social services. "You can imagine what
that does to your gut."
Eighteen months ago, the city signed up with Mangano. With a mixture of federal and local funds, the C.C.H.
inaugurated a new program that has so far enrolled a hundred and six people. It is aimed at the Murray Barrs of
Denver, the people costing the system the most. C.C.H. went after the people who had been on the streets the
longest, who had a criminal record, who had a problem with substance abuse or mental illness. "We have one
individual in her early sixties, but looking at her you'd think she's eighty," Rachel Post, the director of substance
treatment at the C.C.H., said. (Post changed some details about her clients in order to protect their identity.)
"She's a chronic alcoholic. A typical day for her is she gets up and tries to find whatever she's going to drink
that day. She falls down a lot. There's another person who came in during the first week. He was on methadone
maintenance. He'd had psychiatric treatment. He was incarcerated for eleven years, and lived on the streets for
three years after that, and, if that's not enough, he had a hole in his heart."
The recruitment strategy was as simple as the one that Mangano had laid out in St. Louis: Would you like a free
apartment? The enrollees got either an efficiency at the Y.M.C.A. or an apartment rented for them in a building
somewhere else in the city, provided they agreed to work within the rules of the program. In the basement of the
Y, where the racquetball courts used to be, the coalition built a command center, staffed with ten caseworkers.
Five days a week, between eight -thirty and ten in the morning, the caseworkers meet and painstakingly review
the status of everyone in the program. On the wall around the conference table are several large white boards,
with lists of doctor's appointments and court dates and medication schedules. "We need a staffing ratio of one to
ten to make it work," Post said. "You go out there and you find people and assess how they're doing in their
residence. Sometimes we're in contact with someone every day. Ideally, we want to be in contact every couple
of days. We've got about fifteen people we're really worried about now."
The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment
in Denver averages $376 a month, or just oven forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and
care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she
would cost on the street. The idea is that once the people in the program get stabilized they will find jobs, and
start to pick up more and more of their own rent, which would bring someone's annual cost to the program
closer to six thousand dollars. As of today, seventy-five supportive housing slots have already been added, and
the city's homeless plan calls for eight hundred more over the next ten years.
The reality, of course, is hardly that neat and tidy. The idea that the very sickest and most troubled of the
homeless can be stabilized and eventually employed is only a hope. Some of them plainly won't be able to get
there: these are, after all, hard cases. "We've got one man, he's in his twenties," Post said. "Already, he has
cirrhosis of the liver. One time he blew a blood alcohol of .49, which is enough to kill most people. The first
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place we had he brought over all his friends, and they partied and trashed the place and broke a window. Then
we gave him another apartment, and he did the same thing."
Post said that the man had been sober for several months. But he could relapse at some point and perhaps trash
another apartment, and they'd have to figure out what to do with him next. Post had just been on a conference
call with some people in New York City who run a similar program, and they talked about whether giving
clients so many chances simply encourages them to behave irresponsibly. For some people, it probably does.
But what was the alternative? If this young man was put back on the streets, he would cost the system even more
money. The current philosophy of welfare holds that government assistance should be temporary and
conditional, to avoid creating dependency. But someone who blows .49 on a Breathalyzer and has cirrhosis of
the liver at the age of twenty-seven doesn't respond to incentives and sanctions in the usual way. "The most
complicated people to work with are those who have been homeless for so long that going back to the streets just
isn't scary to them," Post said. "The summer comes along and they say, `I don't need to follow your rules.' "
Power -law homelessness policy has to do the opposite of normal -distribution social policy. It should create
dependency: you want people who have been outside the system to come inside and rebuild their lives under the
supervision of those ten caseworkers in the basement of the Y.M.C.A.
That is what is so perplexing about power -law homeless policy. From an economic perspective the approach
makes perfect sense. But from a moral perspective it doesn't seem fair. Thousands of people in the Denver area
no doubt live day to day, work two or three jobs, and are eminently deserving of a helping hand —and no one
offers them the key to a new apartment. Yet that's just what the guy screaming obscenities and swigging Dr.
Tich gets. When the welfare mom's time on public assistance runs out, we cut her off. Yet when the homeless
man trashes his apartment we give him another. Social benefits are supposed to have some kind of moral
justification. We give them to widows and disabled veterans and poor mothers with small children. Giving the
homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk an apartment has a different rationale. It's simply about efficiency.
We also believe that the distribution of social benefits should not be arbitrary. We don't give only to some poor
mothers, or to a random handful of disabled veterans. We give to everyone who meets a formal criterion, and the
moral credibility of government assistance derives, in part, from this universality. But the Denver homelessness
program doesn't help every chronically homelessperson in Denver. There is a waiting list of six hundred for the
supportive -housing program; it will be years before all those people get apartments, and some may never get
one. There isn't enough money to go around, and to try to help everyone a little bit —to observe the principle of
universality —isn't as cost-effective as helping a few people a lot. Being fair, in this case, means providing
shelters and soup kitchens, and shelters and soup kitchens don't solve the problem of homelessness. Our usual
moral intuitions are little use, then, when it comes to a few hard cases. Power -law problems leave us with an
unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both.
Afew miles northwest of the old Y.M.C.A. in downtown Denver, on the Speer Boulevard off -ramp from I-25,
there is a big electronic sign by the side of the road, connected to a device that remotely measures the emissions
of the vehicles driving past. When a car with properly functioning pollution -control equipment passes, the sign
flashes "Good." When a car passes that is well over the acceptable limits, the sign flashes "Poor." If you stand at
the Speer Boulevard exit and watch the sign for any length of time, you'll find that virtually every car scores
"Good." An Audi A4 ---"Good." A Buick Century —"Good." A Toyota Corolla ---"Good." A Ford Taurus —
"Good." A Saab 9-5—"Good," and on and on, until after twenty minutes or so, some beat -up old Ford Escort or
tricked -out Porsche drives by and the sign flashes "Poor." The picture of the smog problem you get from
watching the Speer Boulevard sign and the picture of the homelessness problem you get from listening in on the
morning staff meetings at the Y.M.C.A. are pretty much the same. Auto emissions follow a power -law
distribution, and the air -pollution example offers another look at why we struggle so much with problems
centered on a few hard cases.
Most cars, especially new ones, are extraordinarily clean. A 2004 Subaru in good working order has an exhaust
stream that's just .06 per cent carbon monoxide, which is negligible. But on almost any highway, for whatever
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reason —age, ill repair, deliberate tampering by the owner —a small number of cars can have carbon -monoxide
levels in excess of ten per cent, which is almost two hundred times higher. In Denver, five per cent of the
vehicles on the road produce fifty-five per cent of the automobile pollution.
"Lct's say a car is fifteen years old," Donald Stedman says. Stedman is a chemist and automobile -emissions
specialist at the University of Denver. His laboratory put up the sign on Speer Avenue. "Obviously, the older a
car is the more likely it is to become broken. It's the same as human beings. And by broken we mean any
number of mechanical malfunctions —the computer's not working anymore, fuel injection is stuck open, the
catalyst died. It's not unusual that these failure modes result in high emissions. We have at least one car in our
database which was emitting seventy grams of hydrocarbon per mile, which means that you could almost drive a
Honda Civic on the exhaust fumes from that car. It's not just old cars. It's new cars with high mileage, like taxis.
One of the most successful and least publicized control measures was done by a district attorney in L.A. back in
the nineties. He went to LAX and discovered that all of the Bell Cabs were gross emitters. One of those cabs
emitted more than its own weight of pollution every year."
In Stedman's view, the current system of smog checks makes little sense. A million motorists in Denver have to
go to an emissions center every year —take time from work, wait in line, pay fifteen or twenty-five dollars —for
a test that more than ninety per cent of them don't need. "Not everybody gets tested for breast cancer," Stedman
says. "Not everybody takes an Amy test." On -site smog checks, furthermore, do a pretty bad job of finding and
fixing the few outliers. Car enthusiasts —with high-powered, high -polluting sports cars —have been known to
drop a clean engine into their car on the day they get it tested. Others register their car in a faraway town without
emissions testing or arrive at the test site "hot" —having just come off hard driving on the freeway —which is a
good way to make a dirty engine appear to be clean. Still others randomly pass the test when they shouldn't,
because dirty engines are highly variable and sometimes burn cleanly for short durations. There is little
evidence, Stedman says, that the city's regime of inspections makes any difference in air quality.
He proposes mobile testing instead. Twenty years ago, he invented a device the size of a suitcase that uses
infrared light to instantly measure and then analyze the emissions of cars as they drive by on the highway. The
Speer Avenue sign is attached to one of Stedman's devices. He says that cities should put half a dozen or so of
his devices in vans, park them on freeway off -ramps around the city, and have a police car poised to pull over
anyone who fails the test. A half -dozen vans could test thirty thousand cars a day. For the same twenty-five
million dollars that Denver's motorists now spend on on -site testing, Stedman estimates, the city could identify
and fix twenty-five thousand truly dirty vehicles every year, and within a few years cut automobile emissions in
the Denver metropolitan area by somewhere between thirty-five and forty per cent. The city could stop
managing its smog problem and start ending it.
Why don't we all adopt the Stedman method? There's no moral impediment here. We're used to the police
pulling people over for having a blown headlight or a broken side mirror, and it wouldn't be difficult to have
them add pollution -control devices to their list. Yet it does run counter to an instinctive social preference for
thinking of pollution as a problem to which we all contribute equally. We have developed institutions that move
reassuringly quickly and forcefully on collective problems. Congress passes a law. The Environmental
Protection Agency promulgates a regulation. The auto industry makes its cars a little cleaner, and--presto—the
air gets better. But Stedman doesn't much care about what happens in Washington and Detroit. The challenge of
controlling air pollution isn't so much about the laws as it is about compliance with them. It's a policing
problem, rather than a policy problem, and there is something ultimately unsatisfying about his proposed
solution. He wants to end air pollution in Denver with a half -dozen vans outfitted with a contraption about the
size of a suitcase. Can such a big problem have such a small -bore solution?
That's what made the findings of the Christopher Commission so unsatisfying. We put together blue-ribbon
panels when we're faced with problems that seem too large for the normal mechanisms of bureaucratic repair.
We want sweeping reforms. But what was the commission's most memorable observation? It was the story of an
officer with a known history of doing things like beating up handcuffed suspects who nonetheless received a
performance review from his superior stating that he "usually conducts himself in a manner that inspires respect
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for the law and instills public confidence." This is what you say about an officer when you haven't actually read
his file, and the implication of the Christopher Commission's report was that the L.A.P.D. might help solve its
problem simply by getting its police captains to read the files of their officers. The L.A.P.D.'s problem was a
matter not of policy but of compliance. The department needed to adhere to the rules it already had in place, and
that's not what a public hungry for institutional transformation wants to hear. Solving problems that have power -
law distributions doesn't just violate our moral intuitions; it violates our political intuitions as well. It's hard not
to conclude, in the end, that the reason we treated the homeless as one hopeless undifferentiated group for so
long is not simply that we didn't know better. It's that we didn't want to know better. It was easier the old way.
Power -law solutions have little appeal to the right, because they involve special treatment for people who do not
deserve special treatment; and they have little appeal to the left, -because their emphasis on efficiency over
fairness suggests the cold number -crunching of Chicago -school cost -benefit analysis. Even the promise of
millions of dollars in savings or cleaner air or better police departments cannot entirely compensate for such
discomfort. In Denver, John Hickenlooper, the city's enormously popular mayor, has worked on the
homelessness issue tirelessly during the past couple of years. He spent more time on the subject in his annual
State of the City address this past summer than on any other topic. He gave the speech, with deliberate
symbolism, in the city's downtown Civic Center Park, where homeless people gather every day with their
shopping carts and garbage bags. He has gone on local talk radio on many occasions to discuss what the city is
doing about the issue. He has commissioned studies to show what a drain on the city's resources the homeless
population has become. But, he says, "there are still people who stop me going into the supermarket and say, `I
can't believe you're going to help those homeless people, those bums.' "
Early one morning a year ago, Marla Johns got a call from her husband, Steve. He was at work. "He called and
woke me up," Johns remembers. "He was choked up and crying on the phone. And I thought that something had
happened with another police officer. I said, `Oh, my gosh, what happened?' He said, `Murray died last night.' "
He died of intestinal bleeding. At the police department that morning, some of the officers gave Murray a
moment of silence.
"There are not many days that go by that I don't have a thought of him," she went on. "Christmas comes— and I
used to buy him a Christmas present. Make sure he had warm gloves and a blanket and a coat. There was this
mutual respect. There was a time when another intoxicated patient jumped off the gurney and was coming at me,
and Murray jumped off his gurney and shook his fist and said, `Don't you touch my angel.' You know, when he
was monitored by the system he did fabulously. He would be on house arrest and he would get a job and he
would save money and go to work every day, and he wouldn't drink. He would do all the things he was
supposed to do. There are some people who can be very successful members of society if someone monitors
them. Murray needed someone to be in charge of him."
But, of course, Reno didn't have a place where Murray could be given the structure he needed. Someone must
have decided that it cost too much.
"I told my husband that I would claim his body if no one else did," she said. "I would not have him in an
unmarked grave." +
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