With NYC’s Stonewall Designation, ‘Salvation Isn’t a Guarantor’; Monitoring Water Abusers
Celebrating the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision outside the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 26, 2015. a katz / Shutterstock.com
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also: Trouble finding women leading local governments and when $15 an hour just won’t cut it.
NEW YORK CITY, New York: It came at a moment that might now seem predestined. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted on Tuesday unanimously to grant protected status to the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, the site in 1969 where gay residents stood up to ongoing police harassment and unofficially launched the contemporary gay rights movement. It’s a big deal, but qualified, as New York Times writer Gina Bellafante notes:
The naming of the Stonewall as a city landmark assures us that the structure itself cannot be radically altered — we will never see a 20-story luxury condominium complex springing from the roof — but it doesn’t prevent the owner of the building from leasing it to a chain purveyor of green juice or cold-brewed coffee. Salvation isn’t a guarantor.
The designation was granted by the commission based on the “meaning” of the building, rather than on its appearance, which is rare. And, in a Manhattan being transformed by real estate developers, the move is being heralded well beyond city limits.
In a piece on the movement in London to win similar protection for the Royal Vauxhall Tavern — a gay-friendly venue that has acted as sanctuary and stage for decades — the Evening Standard on Thursday cited the Stonewall designation as an example to follow. [New York Times; Evening Standard]
DENVER, Colorado: A recent outside review of this city’s embattled sheriff’s office reads like a dirge, a soundtrack to a story of abuse and mismanagement, but it included an unlikely positive note. Newly written policies regarding the growing number of inmates who identify as transgender are enlightened and effective, the report authors noted. The Denver Post on Sunday hailed the policy as a “national model.”
“Transgender inmates are allowed to have private showers, can request to share cells with other transgender inmates, and can choose whether they want a male or female guard to search them if necessary,” the Post writes. Inmates also choose preferred names and pronouns to be used during their incarceration. The decision on whether to house prisoners in male or female sections is subject to review and not solely determined "based on the inmates' birth sex, identity documents or physical anatomy," as the eight-page policy puts it.
The new policies were the product of outreach and collaboration. Courtney Gray, transgender programs manager for the GLBT Community Center of Colorado, was one of the local leaders who helped craft the policy during what the Post reports was “a sometimes-painful, often-intense year and a half of two-hour meetings every other week.” [The Denver Post]
LONG BEACH, California: There is nowhere to hide. This city, parched like the rest of the state after 15 years of drought, is going after the roughly 2 percent of residents who just won’t stop using way more water than they’re supposed to. Tai Tseng, the water department’s director of operations calls the residents “abusive water users” in a HuffPost Live interview. He is subjecting them to monitoring.
We have a comprehensive media system to determine who these residents are. Once we determine who these residents are, we can actually install a smart register on their water meter that allows us to have five-minute interval water usage data from that resident and then allows us to figure out if they're violating our water-use restrictions.
In Los Angeles, officials have sent out letters to 4,600 mostly upscale residents telling them to wake up to the new normal on water use.
Meantime in Sacramento, California state legislators are playing catch up. Last week lawmakers at last took action to de-claw local laws that penalize residents for letting their lawns go brown. [HuffPost Live; Los Angeles Times; AP via KGO-TV]
NATIONWIDE: Working off a new National Low Income Housing Coalition report, Fast Company looks at the national housing crisis in light of the political debate over raising the minimum wage. It’s a fierce debate, writes Jay Cassano, but given housing prices, $15 an hour wouldn’t even come close to addressing the problem:
Currently, there is no state in the country in which a person can work full-time at minimum wage and afford a one-bedroom apartment. A person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would have to work 85 hours per week—more than double full-time—to afford a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent… In 13 states, you would need to earn earn over $20 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. In fewer than half of the states in the country could you afford a two-bedroom apartment on less than $15 an hour…
The NLIHC report includes an interactive map. [Co.Exist / Fast Company; NLIHC]
LAWRENCE, Kansas: Jimmy Carter came, but it was small compensation. The organizers of the University of Kansas’s first conference on women in public administration couldn’t find a single woman who ran a local government, writes longtime local government guru Jan Perkins at the Emerging Local Government Leaders blog. That first conference was held in 1975. Things are better now but not great, says Perkins. [ELGL]
(Photo by a katz / Shutterstock.com)
NEXT STORY: These States Collected the Most Q1 Taxes on Booze, Gambling and Other Categories