Ethan Demme

Thoughts and Policy for Building a Better Pennsylvania

Pedal to Preserve 2017: Farmland Preservation Trust

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Did you know that Lancaster County is home to 425,336 acres of farmland spread out over 5,462 farms? According to the Lancaster Farmland Trust, “Lancaster County’s farmland and the industry it supports provide more than 51,000 jobs and contribute more than $4 billion to our local economy each year.”

On June 3, 2017, the Trust will host the Pedal to Preserve, a bike ride to raise money in support of the Trust’s conservation work. The event included three marked routes allowing participants to choose between 6, 20, and 51 mile rides through Lancaster County’s pastoral countryside.

The Trust was established in 1985 and its mission is to “preserve and steward the beautiful, productive farmland of Lancaster County that reflects our heritage, supports our economy, protects our environment, nourishes our health, and enhances our quality of life.” The Trust website explains that:

Land conservation offers many benefits to the community, including attracting jobs, enhancing property values, safeguarding a valuable way of life for future generations, ensuring an adequate, fresh food supply, and protecting the quality of the environment.

To learn more about preserving Lancaster County’s farmland, and to sign up for this years, Pedal to Preserve, visit the Trust’s website here.

A City Transformed – Book Review

Lancaster City is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States of America. It was originally settled in 1709 by German immigrants, the Pennsylvania Dutch. Lancaster was originally known as Hickory Town and was designed by James Hamilton. Lancaster was chartered as a city on March 10, 1818. During the Revolutionary War, Lancaster was the capital of the American colonies for one day, September 27, 1777, when Congress was fleeing from the British. Lancaster was also capital of Pennsylvania from 1799 till 1812.

In his book A City Transformed, David Schuyler traces the history of redevelopment in Lancaster City from 1940 through 1980. Schuyler is Professor of American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and he has spent a lot of his academic career exploring the challenges cities faced during the second half of the 20th century.

In the postwar years, cities across America faced drastic economic decline. Lancaster was one such city and in order to try and address this decline, the city adopted various urban renewal programs with the goal of revitalizing the city and particularly downtown.  Sadly, as Schuyler documents, most of these government-driven programs were failures that often exacerbated the problems. One of the greatest issues facing Lancaster was the need for affordable housing. Schuyler writes that “the discovery of a crisis in housing was the initial step in the development of a comprehensive urban renewal program for Lancaster” (pg. 35) After the Lancaster newspaper drew attention to the substandard living of poor residents in Barney Google Row and Shanytown where the “houses” were shacks with no running water or electric, Lancasterian leaders decided that something needed to be done. Unfortunately over the course of the next several decades, providing adequate housing for poorer families would prove a harder task than what was imagined.

Pertaining to housing, Schuyler documents in heartbreaking detail the unintended effects of gentrification with the Church-Musser plan for townhouse development which led to large increases of rent driving out poorer families from their homes. Schuyler also explores the ugly reality of segregation and the ways in which racial tensions also hurt families and kept them from accessing affordable housing.

One recurring theme in A City Transformed is how government intervention consistently made things worse. For example, during the summer of 1965, Lancaster’s leaders decided to demolish the historic west block of Lancaster despite intense public opposition. Schuyler writes that “despite the concerns, citizens voiced at the September 1964 public hearing, and despite editorials that warned against turning downtown into a rubble-strewn wasteland … members of City Council and the Redevelopment Authority abandoned a policy that had prevented premature demolition and adopted a new one that ensured it.” After demolishing the west block, the block sat vacant for almost a full decade and became known as “our hole in the ground” (pg. 87).

A City Transformed is a sobering account of Lancaster’s history here in the 20th century and the struggles for economic sustainability and affordable housing. Despite the best interests of Lancaster’s leaders, often the very initiatives that were hoped to alleviate the problems of the poor and revitalize the economy had the opposite effects. Nevertheless, the book is also a celebration of the enduring spirit of Lancastrians, their compassionate conservatism, and their work to try and make the city a better place for everyone.

David Brooks on Lost Hills and Strengthening Communities

If you ask New York Times columnist David Brooks what he thinks is the defining issue of our day, he would say social isolation. In one of his columns, he writes that “gaps have opened up among partisan tribes, economic classes and races. There has been a loss of social capital, especially for communities down the income scale. ” Brooks is thus pointing to the same negative phenomenon noted by Luvin in his new book The Fractured Republic (read my review of that book here).

To illustrate this problem, Brooks references Lost Hills, a farming town, writing that “there’s still no permanent church. Up until now there has been no library and no polling station. The closest police station is 45 miles away. Until recently there were no sidewalks nor many streetlights, so it was too dangerous to go trick-or-treating.” Fortunately, Lost Hills is the location for a new experiment in developing the social capital of the community. Brooks writes:

The experiment is being led by Lynda Resnick, who, with her husband, Stewart, owns the Wonderful Company, which includes FIJI Water, POM juice and most of the pistachios and almonds you eat. You should know that I’m friends with Lynda and Stewart and am biased in their direction. But what they are doing is still worth learning from.

…They’re not trying to find one way to serve this population. The problems are so intertwined, they are trying to change this community from all directions at once. In Lost Hills there are new health centers, new pre-K facilities, new housing projects, new gardens, new sidewalks and lights, a new community center and a new soccer field. Through the day, people have more places to meet, play and cooperate with their neighbors.

Brooks concludes by noting that communities are where social repair takes place. “The community is the right level, picking a piece of land and giving people a context in which they can do neighborly things — like the dads here who came to the pre-K center and spent six hours building a shed, and with it, invisibly, a wider circle of care for their children.” – Read the whole thing here.

GOP Candidates: Education Records and Rhetoric

I previously posted and highlighted statements on education (school choice and the role of parents) of GOP presidential candidates. Today, I want to look at the record of the candidates choices for themselves and their children and compare that to their rhetoric.

Jeb Bush: is a proponent for school choice and his Foundation For Excellence In Education has been an influential advocate for school choice and education reform. Bush attended Andover Academy, an elite private prep school that his dad and brother also attended. However, he opted to spend his undergrad years at the University of Texas rather than an Ivy-League school. Jeb’s oldest son attended an elite private school before going to Rice University for his undergrad. Jeb Jr. on the other hand, attended University of Texas like his father. For the Bush family, school choice means making use of both public schools / non-elite higher education institutions and the best of the elite private schools. In terms of voting record though, there is no doubt that Jeb walks the talk. Here’s an article detailing his voting record and education reform initiatives.

Ben Carson: is a proponent for school choice. [source] He graduated from Southwestern High School, a public high school in Michigan. His personal story regarding parental engagement in education and the role of his mother is powerful: if you’re not familiar with, you can read it here. He attended Yale for his undergrad. Ben Carson’s son Murray attended one of Baltimore’s elitist college prep schools, McDonogh, before attending Yal. [source]. Ben Carson has no voting record to speak of. However, he did create the Carson Young Scholars nonprofit organization which has a program devoted to increasing reading and awards college scholarship funding.

Chris Christie: is a proponent for school choice and has often struggled to push voucher legislation through the Democrat-controlled legislature. [source] He graduated from Livingston High School (public) and did his undergrad BA at University of Delaware. Christie’s oldest son attended an elite school Delbarton and is now studying at Princeton [source]. Christie has a track record of pushing for school choice such as approving charter schools and pushing for tax credits and voucher programs.

Ted Cruz: is a proponent of school choice, calling it a civil rights issue. [source] He graduated from Second Baptist High School and then did his undergrad at Princeton. Cruz has only recently (as in, this year) gotten into the school choice movement, including sponsoring school-choice friendly legislation. [source]

Carly Fiorina: is a verbal proponent of school choice. She graduated Charles E. Jordan High School (public) after spending time in schools in London and Ghana. She earned her BA from Stanford University.

Jim Gilmore: is a somewhat unenthusiastic proponent of school choice. He graduated from  John Randolph Tucker High School (a magnet school) before doing his undergrad at University of Virginia.

Lindsey Graham: is a proponent of school choice. He graduated D. W. Daniel High School (public) and was the first person in his family to attend college, he did his undergrad at University of South Carolina. Graham has supported school choice legislation like this as early as the 1990s. [source]

Mike Huckabee: is a proponent of school choice. He graduated from Hope High School (public) and attended Ouachita Baptist University for his undergrad. Huckabee has been inconsistent in regards to school choice [source], and appears to be less committed to it in practice.

Bobby Jindal: is a strong proponent of school choice. He attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School before doing his undergrad at Brown. Jindal has supported and fought for voucher programs in Louisiana. [source]

John Kasich: is a proponent of school choice. He attended various public schools and did his undergrad at Ohio State. As governor of Ohio Kasich has pushed through several school choice reforms including vouchers and funding for charter schools [source].

Rand Paul: is a proponent of school choice. He attended Brazoswood High School (public) and spent three years studying at Baylor University (he left before earning a BA.)

George Pataki: is a strong proponent of school choice. He attended Peekskill High School (public school) before doing his undergrad at Yale. His daughter Allison (a published novelist) attended high school at The Hackley School (an Ivy-feed school for Yale) before her doing her undergrad at Yale.

Marco Rubio: is a strong proponent of school choice [source]. The son of immigrants who never graduated from high school, he attended South Miami, a public Sr. High School  and did undergrad work at Tarkio College and Santa Fe Community College before getting his M.A. from the University of Florida and his J.D. from the University of Miami.

Rick Santorum: is a proponent of school choice. [source] He attended various private and public schools before graduating from Carmel High School, a private parochial school. He completed his undergraduate degree at Penn State. Santorum’s children have made use of homeschooling as well as charter schools. Given his rhetoric regarding not having government involved in education as well as thoughts on public funding, some saw him as duplicitous for enrolling his own children in a state-paid-for PA charter school even while his resided primarily in Virginia. [source]

Donald Trump: is a vocal proponent of school choice. He attended The Kew-Forest School and New York Military Academy. He did his undergrad years at University of Pennsylvania. His children have attended various prep schools including Choate Rosemary Hall and The Hill School and have done their undergrad studies at Georgetown and University of Penn.

 

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