10 ms·

I half wonder if you live in my city because your description matches it to a tee, but I bet this is happening in cities all over the country. As for why they

by sylens 4y ago

I half wonder if you live in my city because your description matches it to a tee, but I bet this is happening in cities all over the country. As for why they care about NIMBYs so much - it is because our current class of politicians aim to be career politicians. Therefore, they look to remain in power at all costs, and part of that means not pissing off the most vocal members of their community. What we need is real leadership from politicians who are willing to stake their tenure in office on pushing projects through.

JohnBooty 4y ago
What we need is real leadership from politicians who are willing to stake their tenure in office on pushing projects through. Easy to say, but our current system proves that it selects for politicians of exactly the opposite ilk. How do we change the system?
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
  Maybe by getting younger people to vote more? (I know this has been tried since forever, but have we tried everything?) And, holding public comment hearings outside of traditional working hours so that non-retired people have a fair shot? IDK seems pretty hopeless..
  - tacocataco 4y ago
    I got some ideas: Could just put a ballot at the end of tax forms. Just piggy back the ID confirm the IRS does. Doesn't have to be mandatory. Give a $5 tax credit for filling it out. People who don't pay taxes can vote normally or by mail. Universal mail in voting. I'd go as far as to make mail in voting the only way to vote. Make every state have the same voting day (primaries/general). This helps reduce media influence on the elections. Get rid of first past the post voting. Allows for more political parties, increasing the odds people are engaged with one of the parties. Something like ranked choice would keep their vote relevant even if their preference didn't make the cut. It's infuriating to me when people recognize there is a problem, yet toss up their hands and not try new things. How is repeating the same thing going to get different results?
- b112 4y ago
  You know what I hear in this thread? Combined, posts have said that NIMBYs, a tiny minority, who always vote, show up to council meetings, and politicians listen to them, and yet everyone here trying to figure out what is broken. Well, nothing is broken, except non-NIMBYs dont care enough to do the same! The answer is simple. Show up to council meetings and vote! If you don't, you don't care as much as the NIMBYs, and the result is clear. Nothing is broken, it is called democracy.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    That’s not true. There’s lots of ways that things are rigged in favor of NIMBYs. For example, environmental review laws enable a NIMBY minority to file bogus lawsuits that add years of delays (during which time developers still have to pay mortgages on property that aren’t allowed to start developing).
  - bluGill 4y ago
    > except non-NIMBYs dont care enough to do the same! Show up to council meetings and vote! The zoning meeting for my city is the same night as my kid has scouts. This is why I don't show up: I have other things going on in my life. Even if they did pick a night where there is nothing else, I really want to get into my shop and build something and this meeting is taking that time away from me. There is another problem: the people showing up for school board and causing problems are not the same as showing up for zoning and causing problems. And there is also the library and parks board, each either their own meetings I could show up for. Different groups show up for each, and I cannot counter them all.
    - seb1204 4y ago
      I feel you. It comes down to prioritise a d you have made yours clean. As many others act the same there are only very few at the meeting to voice with your side. We only need to mobilize a few to go to one meeting....
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And it happens and it works, I've seen YIMBY groups "win" but it has taken them years of continually working on the same thing to finally get it through. Sometimes it ends up going all the way to Congress: http://www.startribune.com/obama-gives-his-approval-to-bridge-across-st-croix-river/142717635/ http://www.startribune.com/obama-gives-his-approval-to-bridg... You can't YIMBY generic things like "more bike paths" or "better roads" you have to identify particular projects and build a group that will support it, and work on it for years sometimes. For lots of things, there are groups that can help out there, you just have to find them. And part of that "working" at it is listening to the NIMBYs so you can understand their concerns (even if the leadership of a NIMBY group is batshit, the people "on their side" at least resonate with some of them) and work to mitigate/solve them. And be prepared to take advantage of disasters to push your side forward.
- muad_dib_4ever 4y ago
  The problem is not just that a vocal minority us opposed. Our political ruthlessness and acumen is so high, that project that is longer than a politician's term will leave them open to sound bites they can't recover from. It puts them in a position at reelection time of having all the cost, and none of the payoff. And more than likely, the project is harder and more costly than planned. And by the way, the party can't afford to not control that seat going into the national election. Neither side can tackle anything that can't be roi positive by election time. Most of those projects are "deck chairs on the titanic" value propositions.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    [any] project that is longer than a politician's term will leave them open to sound bites they can't recover from. It puts them in a position at reelection time of having all the cost, and none of the payoff. Yeah, this is my take. We've designed a system in which literally all that matters is continually preparing for the next election, which is typically not more than four years away for any politician. I challenge anybody who thinks this is okay to take a long, hard look at their own lives and think about what they've accomplished in the last four years. Hell, it took me three years just to get my garage door replaced for a variety of reasons. Four years might have been enough time to do something meaningful back when a mayor's biggest project might have been, I don't know, installing new hitching posts for horses on Main St. It's not enough time to do anything today, and that's why nothing gets done. And yet, I don't know the answer. Longer terms for politicians seems like they would create as many problems as they would solve.
    - nobody9999 4y ago
      >Yeah, this is my take. We've designed a system in which literally all that matters is continually preparing for the next election, which is typically not more than four years away for any politician. I'd go even further than that. It's not just politicians who engage in short-term thinking, corporations engage in even shorter term thinking as well. In fact, I'd posit that much of the division in our society is related to such short-term thinking. When manufacturing and farm jobs (primarily, but not entirely through automation) started to go away, it was clear that things needed to change in order to maintain a semblance of parity throughout the country. Rather than slashing funds for infrastructure and transportation 40+ years ago, we should have employed those folks who were losing their jobs to build high-speed rail, housing and infrastructure throughout the country, making it possible for folks to continue living where they were and have jobs elsewhere. And 25 years ago, we should have started building out municipal Internet infrastructure all over the country, even in rural areas, instead of giving giant corporations tens of billions to do nothing. But instead we ignored these problems (as such projects would take decades) and folks in exurbs and rural areas became detached from the economic engines that drive the economy -- causing many folks (especially young folks) to abandon the places their families had lived for generations. This devastated many communities. Having high speed transporation and Internet could revitalize many of these communities, through start ups, work from home and fast transport to regional population centers. That would bring money into the local economies and create incentives for new housing, business (all those people will need stuff -- food, housing, household appliances, etc., etc., etc.) and include those areas in the economic engine that made the US so successful. But since we didn't do that, folks in well connected (transportation and network-wise) areas have flourished, while people in areas that don't have seen their communities shrivel, their outlook sour and their futures crumble before their eyes. Is it any wonder that many of those folks feel neglected and left out? No. Because they have been. And as the population centers prosper, the folks who have been left behind see their fellow Americans as destroying their world by ignoring and neglecting their infrastructure, talents and the enormous human capital that they represent. But no. The politicians won't think past the next election (although the infrastructure bill is a start -- just 40 years too late) and corporations rarely look past the next quarterly (or if we're lucky, annual) earnings reports. And if we don't alter course to make all Americans welcome and part of the larger society, we're just going to see more suspicion and ill will that will continue to divide us. I wish I knew how to fix that, but I don't. So all I can hope for at this point is that I'll be dead before we rip our country apart. And more's the pity.
acabal 4y ago
In my experience - certainly in the bike lane example I gave above - the NIMBYs are a minority. A vocal one, yes - but still a minority. If a politician is only concerned about their career, surely a popular project like bike lanes would garner them more votes the next time around? Thinking about this more, at least in my city it seems like one of the problems is that for a generation now, politicians have consistently outsourced decisionmaking to a poll of the community. In theory, one elects a politician to be independent decisionmaker for the constituent's interests, for the length of their term; and if at the end of the term the people didn't like their decisions, they're voted out. This gave politicians latitude to do what they thought was best, with the greater good of the community in mind. In the past half century, (and again, only in my city) this model seems to have changed to politicians being elected, and then running every decision past the community as a kind of popularity poll. Developer wants to replace an auto lot that's been abandoned for a decade with dense apartments? Better poll the community to see what they think. Adding a protected bike lane to connect two existing bike networks? Let's ask the community first. And of course when they do that, the only people who show up are the NIMBYs, and the politicians get the impression that nobody wants development. The NIMBYs have spoken, we better leave that disused auto lot abandoned and blighted! (And this is a real example from today's news!)
- refurb 4y ago
  Politicians listen to the people who talk to them. NIMBY’s are highly organized and politically active, so politicians listen. Generally there isn’t a counter group or they are poorly organized and don’t hold much political weight. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish if you’re organized. A prof I worked with was able to introduce a bill to congress (that he wrote with the congressmen’s staff) simply because he built a relationship and then proposed something the congressmen liked. The issue is the vast majority of voters do nothing more than vote.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  From what I've seen in Toronto and after having spoken with a local councillor, the thing is that those NIMBY show up to all consultation meetings. Any new bike lane require a community consultation (which is a problem in itself!, but let's forget that for a minute)... but who comes to those? The working class families that have to take care of their kids in the evening? Or older folks that have no other plans on a random week night? Before COVID all those meetings were in person at some community center. Of course for any cyclist to get there, they'd need to bike on a street with no bike lanes. So who shows up? People in cars! Things are slightly easier now because lots of those meetings moved online with Zoom, making it more accessible to a bunch of new people. But I'd recommend (if you're not doing it already!) to keep showing up to all consultation meetings, because that's the only way things get done. Concillor was telling me it was hard to make a case to the civic servant that they should keep pushing for bike lanes when ALL consultations kept only getting opposition. Even thought they all knew it was likely more popular, but it's hard to argue with the "democratic" process.
Aunche 4y ago
> it is because our current class of politicians aim to be career politicians I don't think that's quite fair. Look at the statistics of who actually turns up to vote. The median voting age for mayoral elections is 57 [1]. Seniors are 15x more likely to vote than those aged 18-35. If I had to guess, this would only get worse if you get into even more obscure elections like city council. Incidentally, Boomers are much less likely to bike everywhere, so you can't really blame the politicians for catering their policy to them. [1] http://whovotesformayor.org/ http://whovotesformayor.org/
- seoaeu 4y ago
  Part of the reason is that cities frequently hold off cycle elections which drastically reduces turnout. If mayor/city councilors were chosen with the same ballot as presidential candidate, the things would be very different
avgcorrection 4y ago
> What we need is real leadership from politicians who are willing to stake their tenure in office on pushing projects through. Real leadership is to do what politicians are already doing because most people who pursue high-level leadership positions do it for selfish reasons.
stackbutterflow 4y ago
Easy to say. Would you push through a project at your job that has a high risk of getting you fired?

by sylens 4y ago

JohnBooty 4y ago

What we need is real leadership from politicians who are willing to stake their tenure in office on pushing projects through. Easy to say, but our current system proves that it selects for politicians of exactly the opposite ilk. How do we change the system?

CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
Maybe by getting younger people to vote more? (I know this has been tried since forever, but have we tried everything?) And, holding public comment hearings outside of traditional working hours so that non-retired people have a fair shot? IDK seems pretty hopeless..
- tacocataco 4y ago
  I got some ideas: Could just put a ballot at the end of tax forms. Just piggy back the ID confirm the IRS does. Doesn't have to be mandatory. Give a $5 tax credit for filling it out. People who don't pay taxes can vote normally or by mail. Universal mail in voting. I'd go as far as to make mail in voting the only way to vote. Make every state have the same voting day (primaries/general). This helps reduce media influence on the elections. Get rid of first past the post voting. Allows for more political parties, increasing the odds people are engaged with one of the parties. Something like ranked choice would keep their vote relevant even if their preference didn't make the cut. It's infuriating to me when people recognize there is a problem, yet toss up their hands and not try new things. How is repeating the same thing going to get different results?
b112 4y ago
You know what I hear in this thread? Combined, posts have said that NIMBYs, a tiny minority, who always vote, show up to council meetings, and politicians listen to them, and yet everyone here trying to figure out what is broken. Well, nothing is broken, except non-NIMBYs dont care enough to do the same! The answer is simple. Show up to council meetings and vote! If you don't, you don't care as much as the NIMBYs, and the result is clear. Nothing is broken, it is called democracy.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  That’s not true. There’s lots of ways that things are rigged in favor of NIMBYs. For example, environmental review laws enable a NIMBY minority to file bogus lawsuits that add years of delays (during which time developers still have to pay mortgages on property that aren’t allowed to start developing).
- bluGill 4y ago
  > except non-NIMBYs dont care enough to do the same! Show up to council meetings and vote! The zoning meeting for my city is the same night as my kid has scouts. This is why I don't show up: I have other things going on in my life. Even if they did pick a night where there is nothing else, I really want to get into my shop and build something and this meeting is taking that time away from me. There is another problem: the people showing up for school board and causing problems are not the same as showing up for zoning and causing problems. And there is also the library and parks board, each either their own meetings I could show up for. Different groups show up for each, and I cannot counter them all.
  - seb1204 4y ago
    I feel you. It comes down to prioritise a d you have made yours clean. As many others act the same there are only very few at the meeting to voice with your side. We only need to mobilize a few to go to one meeting....
- bombcar 4y ago
  And it happens and it works, I've seen YIMBY groups "win" but it has taken them years of continually working on the same thing to finally get it through. Sometimes it ends up going all the way to Congress: http://www.startribune.com/obama-gives-his-approval-to-bridge-across-st-croix-river/142717635/ http://www.startribune.com/obama-gives-his-approval-to-bridg... You can't YIMBY generic things like "more bike paths" or "better roads" you have to identify particular projects and build a group that will support it, and work on it for years sometimes. For lots of things, there are groups that can help out there, you just have to find them. And part of that "working" at it is listening to the NIMBYs so you can understand their concerns (even if the leadership of a NIMBY group is batshit, the people "on their side" at least resonate with some of them) and work to mitigate/solve them. And be prepared to take advantage of disasters to push your side forward.
muad_dib_4ever 4y ago
The problem is not just that a vocal minority us opposed. Our political ruthlessness and acumen is so high, that project that is longer than a politician's term will leave them open to sound bites they can't recover from. It puts them in a position at reelection time of having all the cost, and none of the payoff. And more than likely, the project is harder and more costly than planned. And by the way, the party can't afford to not control that seat going into the national election. Neither side can tackle anything that can't be roi positive by election time. Most of those projects are "deck chairs on the titanic" value propositions.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  [any] project that is longer than a politician's term will leave them open to sound bites they can't recover from. It puts them in a position at reelection time of having all the cost, and none of the payoff. Yeah, this is my take. We've designed a system in which literally all that matters is continually preparing for the next election, which is typically not more than four years away for any politician. I challenge anybody who thinks this is okay to take a long, hard look at their own lives and think about what they've accomplished in the last four years. Hell, it took me three years just to get my garage door replaced for a variety of reasons. Four years might have been enough time to do something meaningful back when a mayor's biggest project might have been, I don't know, installing new hitching posts for horses on Main St. It's not enough time to do anything today, and that's why nothing gets done. And yet, I don't know the answer. Longer terms for politicians seems like they would create as many problems as they would solve.
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    >Yeah, this is my take. We've designed a system in which literally all that matters is continually preparing for the next election, which is typically not more than four years away for any politician. I'd go even further than that. It's not just politicians who engage in short-term thinking, corporations engage in even shorter term thinking as well. In fact, I'd posit that much of the division in our society is related to such short-term thinking. When manufacturing and farm jobs (primarily, but not entirely through automation) started to go away, it was clear that things needed to change in order to maintain a semblance of parity throughout the country. Rather than slashing funds for infrastructure and transportation 40+ years ago, we should have employed those folks who were losing their jobs to build high-speed rail, housing and infrastructure throughout the country, making it possible for folks to continue living where they were and have jobs elsewhere. And 25 years ago, we should have started building out municipal Internet infrastructure all over the country, even in rural areas, instead of giving giant corporations tens of billions to do nothing. But instead we ignored these problems (as such projects would take decades) and folks in exurbs and rural areas became detached from the economic engines that drive the economy -- causing many folks (especially young folks) to abandon the places their families had lived for generations. This devastated many communities. Having high speed transporation and Internet could revitalize many of these communities, through start ups, work from home and fast transport to regional population centers. That would bring money into the local economies and create incentives for new housing, business (all those people will need stuff -- food, housing, household appliances, etc., etc., etc.) and include those areas in the economic engine that made the US so successful. But since we didn't do that, folks in well connected (transportation and network-wise) areas have flourished, while people in areas that don't have seen their communities shrivel, their outlook sour and their futures crumble before their eyes. Is it any wonder that many of those folks feel neglected and left out? No. Because they have been. And as the population centers prosper, the folks who have been left behind see their fellow Americans as destroying their world by ignoring and neglecting their infrastructure, talents and the enormous human capital that they represent. But no. The politicians won't think past the next election (although the infrastructure bill is a start -- just 40 years too late) and corporations rarely look past the next quarterly (or if we're lucky, annual) earnings reports. And if we don't alter course to make all Americans welcome and part of the larger society, we're just going to see more suspicion and ill will that will continue to divide us. I wish I knew how to fix that, but I don't. So all I can hope for at this point is that I'll be dead before we rip our country apart. And more's the pity.

acabal 4y ago

In my experience - certainly in the bike lane example I gave above - the NIMBYs are a minority. A vocal one, yes - but still a minority. If a politician is only concerned about their career, surely a popular project like bike lanes would garner them more votes the next time around? Thinking about this more, at least in my city it seems like one of the problems is that for a generation now, politicians have consistently outsourced decisionmaking to a poll of the community. In theory, one elects a politician to be independent decisionmaker for the constituent's interests, for the length of their term; and if at the end of the term the people didn't like their decisions, they're voted out. This gave politicians latitude to do what they thought was best, with the greater good of the community in mind. In the past half century, (and again, only in my city) this model seems to have changed to politicians being elected, and then running every decision past the community as a kind of popularity poll. Developer wants to replace an auto lot that's been abandoned for a decade with dense apartments? Better poll the community to see what they think. Adding a protected bike lane to connect two existing bike networks? Let's ask the community first. And of course when they do that, the only people who show up are the NIMBYs, and the politicians get the impression that nobody wants development. The NIMBYs have spoken, we better leave that disused auto lot abandoned and blighted! (And this is a real example from today's news!)

refurb 4y ago
Politicians listen to the people who talk to them. NIMBY’s are highly organized and politically active, so politicians listen. Generally there isn’t a counter group or they are poorly organized and don’t hold much political weight. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish if you’re organized. A prof I worked with was able to introduce a bill to congress (that he wrote with the congressmen’s staff) simply because he built a relationship and then proposed something the congressmen liked. The issue is the vast majority of voters do nothing more than vote.
jeromegv 4y ago
From what I've seen in Toronto and after having spoken with a local councillor, the thing is that those NIMBY show up to all consultation meetings. Any new bike lane require a community consultation (which is a problem in itself!, but let's forget that for a minute)... but who comes to those? The working class families that have to take care of their kids in the evening? Or older folks that have no other plans on a random week night? Before COVID all those meetings were in person at some community center. Of course for any cyclist to get there, they'd need to bike on a street with no bike lanes. So who shows up? People in cars! Things are slightly easier now because lots of those meetings moved online with Zoom, making it more accessible to a bunch of new people. But I'd recommend (if you're not doing it already!) to keep showing up to all consultation meetings, because that's the only way things get done. Concillor was telling me it was hard to make a case to the civic servant that they should keep pushing for bike lanes when ALL consultations kept only getting opposition. Even thought they all knew it was likely more popular, but it's hard to argue with the "democratic" process.

Aunche 4y ago

> it is because our current class of politicians aim to be career politicians I don't think that's quite fair. Look at the statistics of who actually turns up to vote. The median voting age for mayoral elections is 57 [1]. Seniors are 15x more likely to vote than those aged 18-35. If I had to guess, this would only get worse if you get into even more obscure elections like city council. Incidentally, Boomers are much less likely to bike everywhere, so you can't really blame the politicians for catering their policy to them. [1] http://whovotesformayor.org/ http://whovotesformayor.org/

seoaeu 4y ago
Part of the reason is that cities frequently hold off cycle elections which drastically reduces turnout. If mayor/city councilors were chosen with the same ballot as presidential candidate, the things would be very different

avgcorrection 4y ago

> What we need is real leadership from politicians who are willing to stake their tenure in office on pushing projects through. Real leadership is to do what politicians are already doing because most people who pursue high-level leadership positions do it for selfish reasons.

stackbutterflow 4y ago

Easy to say. Would you push through a project at your job that has a high risk of getting you fired?