politics halloween and bunnies

Kevin Gardella Speaks Out About Making Local Elections Tolerable

Readers, you have seen my name below the comments section on various articles of Portland least credible news source saying how important it is for the media to support unbiased journalism. I never realized it before but certain major newspapers feel it is their duty to tell voters who and what they should vote for. It is nether is a reason we don't allow newspapers to vote: they are a corporations(in the case of the one I am using for an unmentioned example). You also may have seen comments I made about empty and desperate political posturing around election time. The timing of these two phenomena are interconnected. As a candidate I have become acutely aware of how hard it is to make an informed decision about all the candidates. There are few voters who have met all of the the candidates in any of the races. It is even harder now to get an honest opinion from any of the papers without running into some form of empty posturing. It is dishonest and not at the heart of good policymaking or politician selecting. I do not have the silver bullet but I do have a bunch of ways of making sure that local politics in Portland stay vital and honest. It is through a few steps but is feasible.
1)No more campaign funds for candidates, all races should be run on the same minimal budget(and I mean minimal). These clean elections funds are run as pools and voters will decide how much each candidate will get to run for the seat. Candidates are given blogs and spots in the newspapers to brag the week before elections. The candidates can brag and posture all they want in the silence of their own blogs rather than subject news-readers to it.
2)No more political signs on public property. Any trash generated by political signs and fines for not following the no political sign on public property will fund clean elections.
3)The citizens of Portland(in my dream world) make it very clear to their leading new source they will no longer be tolerating their opinions in local politics. We have heard quite enough from the largest newspaper in Portland. We vote for a reason, because we are informed and want to have control and involvement with our democracy. We most certainly do not need your rag telling us how to vote.
4)In order to reduce expenses and tax on our landfill no more sending of BS regarding political stuff in the mail. Not once have I received a piece of campaign lit that has made me support someone. It is time to stop this local wastefulness.
5)I really, really support group endorsements of candidates and nights for candidates to meet constituents and field their questions. These are the kind of events that will make Portlanders feel in charge of their city once again.
6)There should be mediation services given to political hopefulls who are not getting along and using nice words. Local politics is community based and the worst thing for communities is to have their representatives carrying on like children. This is a more general comment, Portland's race this year has been very cordial, everyone I have personally been in contact with is extremely civil.

Lesley Jones' Suggestions for a Better Portland

My friend Lesly just sent me a laundry list of suggestions. I thought I would publish them in their complete form then talk about ones that I will work towards integrating as a school committee member. Please continue to send suggestions readers as local government is representing you and your ideas. If you feel something is important I will work hard to make sure your ideas are explored and heard as best as I can. Young non voters and people who are interested in helping Portland's schools become better please send ideas as well. I will represent you nomatter what your voting status. A good idea is a good idea nomatter where it came from.
1) Bottles Save/ Trash Decreased -put bottle redemption cans attached to the trash cans. Folks can environmentally dispose of the bottles as trash, and those who collect for money can gather and return for change. We could have the units (which I would be happy to sketch out) attached to side and sponsored by local business with signage. WIN/WIN/ Win. Less trash/ money for those to take back and structure supported by area business. Les waste, more revenue.

2) PLOWING and COST SAVING - City government – put big rubber tips on the bottoms of plows. This will eliminate some of the wear and tear on our road, and it will make the plows last longer too. City should pay for this and it would save money in long run. Not really Reciprocity but city idea. We could think about how this could be reciprocal…..

3) SAVE ENERGY INDOORS - Get an environmental engineer to consult with city to eliminate waste in our gov’t buildings. Some groups do this for free, but maybe those GREENs could earn Time Dollars. Also, maybe something could be done on larger scale with video produced by CTN to show consumers how to do this no matter what size home or business.. Also negotiate bulk savings on bulbs and other energy devices for all citizens. Share and share alike – esp. the knowledge! By the way, every school should be GREEN!
4) Time Bank in Each Neighborhood Association - Implement a time bank in each Neighborhood association. Reward citizens for contributing to our civic duties, instead of just volunteering. Get one going in each neighborhood as infrastructure and the core values will come out of that to pervade the city!

5) BIKE/CAR SHARE - Implement a bike or car-share service like in DENVER. Get folks to donate used bikes, or use the bikes that are confiscated in crimes. Get citizens to paint and repair, and have the city set up more BIKE centers so that anyone who needs a bike could use the bike. Recruit Mechanics or PATHS to fix up the cars to do for PRO BONO Work. Share and share alike! Many bikes are thrown away each year, but could be refurbished.

6) Create job opportunities- get people to mentor and help each other like SCORE or other programs, but do things like look at resumes, and utilize volunteer opportunities/ Time Bank Opportunities (like some of the ones listed here) as job experience to help young people get started on career track or move others along the career track.
7) Adopt a Block Programs – pick a new area each season to focus on: gardens, trash, maintenance as a community, city-wide event.

8) TRASH Helpers - Pay people to pick up trash like the bottle redemption system. Paid for by the pound, and this would save some work by city officials. We can all help to keep the city clean!

9) Promote Outdoor concerts and local performances on the street. Close down Market or Exchange to Car Traffic and just have foot traffic. Allow artists and musicians, and encourage them to be outdoors. Think of CHINA TOWN in San Francisco or GALWAY in Ireland! Promote the arts for the betterment of society!

10) Create GRAFFITI COURTS – where artists can paint to hearts content. Think of WIKIPEDIA for URBAN ARTISTS. Then employ stiffer fines for painting/tagging outside these areas. Think of them as the visual SKATE PARKS! J

11) Fund MENSK. – Ask ELI CAYER what he would like to see in this CITY!

12) USEFUL LABOR – work with schools and universities to integrate programs to meet community needs. For example, SMCC has a COMPUTER PROGRAM where students learn to use computer but don’t have practical applications. Let students earn credit for learning about computers with real world applications. So when they learn POWERPOINT or another lesson, let them partner with a nonprofit that needs a project created! Channels 2, 3 and 4 need dozens of slides made a week for Public Service Announcements, mean while students are creating templates or examples everyday that will never be used in the real world. Everyone could win in this situation by employing student labor for credit in real world applications! WIN/WIN/ WIN – students/ society/ nonprofits.

13) PLANT SWAP for a MORE BEAUTIFUL WORLD - Create a plant swap with the city garden system with pubic parks and citizens to create more diversity in the gardens and to help with dividing plants (like BI-Annuals, bulbs and other plants.) This could help city greening plan, and also help the gardens to be more healthy by dividing the plants. For example, I could donate DAY LILIES from my garden, and the City could donate bulbs that need to be divided from the USM gardens. Get all groups involved in all the city gardens. Pretty for everyone!

14) KEEP OUR STREETS CLEAN - Start a CLEAN THE STREET for SPRING CLEANING in the OLD PORT. In Europe shop keepers are responsible for cleaning their front walks. We could ask the same of show keepers here, with citizens, businesses, and city officials providing the brooms and water with the Fire Department to clean the streets on a regular basis. This might be like the APRIL Stools Day EVENT on the East End with FETCH.

15) Round Table Forums and Salons –VISIOINING EXERCISES for the WHOLE CITY – What do we want our cities to look like? What are our collective values? Put teams together not just on the practical, political stuff – but what about dreams for our city? What do we want it to look like?

16) Have WIRELESS NETWORKS around the City - like AUSTIN does and ATLANTA considered. Make TIME-WARNER do this as Part of FRANCHISE NEGOTIOATION and promote citizen knowledge. Time WARNER uses our airwaves, its time for RECIPROCITY ON THEIR PART!!!!!

17) CREATE SATALITE STATIONS with computers, at more places than just libraries. Use donated computers if needed.

18) REUSE/REDUCE – STARTS at HOME - Start a RECYCLING/ REDEMPTION CENTER(S) at our city dump like the one in Falmouth and Hampden, Maine. Citizens can buy items for $1 or whatever at a facility, instead of just throwing those items away. Funds could be used to create a small shed to house the items and part-time staff. (This could actually save money on BIG ITEM PICK Up/TRASH Day that is held 1-2x per year.) Ask Falmouth to show Portland how to do it. Some one’s trash is another person’s treasure!

19) Sustainable community – look at what Burlington, Vermont is doing. They all compost, and then the farm turns it into soil, which the citizen’s can buy. They also have kids learn farming to create healthy food which is served in the schools and sold in the farmers’ market. It goes around and around and around for the health of the community!

20) Promote ALTERNATIVE MEDIA- keep our city informed. Let Portland and Maine push the boundaries of the Federal Government. WE know best! Have Maine and Portland sign the KYOTO TREATY! We are one world!

21) Partner with Energy Groups and Business Group – like BALLE and others to create more environmentally sound communities! We need to work together with our skills and talents for the betterment of our entire society.

22) REVIEW BEST PRACTICES by other cities and use what we need here.

Dave and Eliot, His Youngest Constituent

Understand the Impact of Experts

Portland has changed over the last ten years in many ways. The particular change I would like to frame out is how Portland has been gentrified. Portland used to cost very little to live in and housed many poor people who were happy to be skirting the poverty line. It was a game. How little can I work without impacting the amount of comfort I have? The answer for me in 1998 was 26 to 28 hours. It was grand, I made good money doing work for Goodwill and had plenty of time and money for fun. Times have changed, realestate values have inflated(I have a family). Condos have been built and families have left. No longer are the days of living near poverty for 28 hours of work a week. The job market has not improved, the number of affordable spots to crash are minimal. Portland loses its flavor. I am making less now doing similarly skilled work than I was eight years ago.
Over the last ten years we have had experts guiding our city. They have told us to value their knowledge of policy. They have told us there is nothing they can do to bring down the prices of housing and everything relative to the payrates in Portland. They have done little to bring in good employers unless it was in the form of construction work for condo conversions.
I personally think it is time for the wolves to be exposed as wolves and replaced with proper responsive altruistic shepard types. No more relying on experts to tell us what our diverse city's people need. A good representative knows how to use the resources already existing in the city of Portland. The resourses are the people of Portland. Their experiance, thier frustrations should be heard. Myopic candidates who seeing Portland through only their own lens distort what it takes to fufill thier pubilc service role. The key for success at any of the elected positions is the ability to know how to ask the right questions, take that information, turn it into sound policy, and get the community behind it.
There has been a whole lot public debate going on about many issues in Portland's schools. Public meetings of school committee members, the role of class rank in Portland's schools, AP classes futures, and the funding of specialized sex education. Only one of these debated items was solved in a completely productive way. The sex ed question. I plan to approach all potentially devisive problems in this manner. Keep all debate civil and productive always. Make sure everyone wishing to speak has been heard. In an organized way find out how other communities have responded using reasearch methods and personal interviews. Form policy which is minimal, flexible, and ammendable. Have experts on Portland public policy review the policy then present it to constituents. This may sound time consuming but it is really quite natural. It is just a better way of making sure constituents have input in the governing process when they want to provide some. I am running for school committee because I enjoy the fruits of collaboration: truly visionary policy which will involve and enhance our community and their schools.
Experts are not always the best collaborators. The way they are most easily spotted is by thier lack of listening skills. I have never voted for someone who spoke of their vision without asking me for mine.

Thank You 100 State Street

I just went down to 100 State Street to talk to the residents about who I am and what I am running for. As planned it was very easy to talk to them and I talked to a few folks afterwards about various salient issues this election. I hope I get a few votes from that. It was really nice to have the support of the other candidates in terms of fatherhood. I am afraid that Eliot has eclipsed this race in terms of importance and it was just really nice to hear that all the other candidates had been rooting for me nomatter what their opinion of my politics. Thank you guys.
I spoke with a man who had said he thought without class ranking colleges would have a harder time figuring out class ranking. Thay in turn would find it diffucult to award financial aid. This perception is not really correct anymore. Many factors other than class rank go into deciding who gets the largest amount of financial aid. If a kid gets good grades in all classes and is civicly minded they will get loads of financial aid. They will get even more if they know how to sell themselves. I recommend and will recommend schools save by eliminating standardized testing from as many classes as possible. Instead focus those funds and class hours on teaching kids how to procure grants and sell themselves so they can succeed when it is time to do so in the real world.

The Arts In Portland

As Portland artist move to bedroom communities to be able to avoid starving in Portland the city has taken action. The mayor started the official reaction with a creative economy summit. Others have been actively engaging in acknowledging the role the arts must play in a healthy Portland tourist trade.
Last evening was my first public night out since the birth of Eliot. There was a creative conversation at Space regarding the arts district. It seems like more and more people(not just artists and direct arts supporters) have come to recognize the value of the arts to our city. There is a strong creative presence in Portland already. All this community has to do is coax it with a bit of encouragement and support.
There are a number of interested relegated developers who have recognized the value of this to their cause: making money on Portland realty. I hope that Portland recognizes the value of its artists before they allow these realtors to make a quick buck marketing the arts in Portland for their own coffers.
The application to schools is simple. If housing prices continue to rise families will not live here and send children to area schools. Something needs to be done now to make sure we keep area affordable housing for families who want to stay in town and send their kids to school here.

What should and should not be consolidated.

There are state incentives being given to financially troubled schools. These incentives tend to encourage consolidation. Strategies to curb school spending involving making one mega school out of many little schools may well actually be worth a try in more rural areas where kids have to be bussed anyway. In the city of Portland consolidation only threatens Portland communities. It will not solve any of the crowded classrooms, it will not save money. We will not be able to quantify the impact of consolidation on a given area in a given year. There is no way of demonstrating how the long term cost of decommission our neighborhood schools has undermined the Portland communities that had existed for decades. It is for this reason I am taking a strong stand against consolidation. I think it undermines Portland richest commodity, that is its communities. Please give me your feedback.

Should God still find its way into the allegiance?

I personally was asked this in a interview with a main newspaper in Portland. It was an odd question, especially when real and solvable problems plague our schools. I answered "Yes. Keep the pledge as is because frankly there are better things to do with our time." Lets not waste any more time talking about tripe. We work harder and pay higher taxes to receive fewer services than any other country classified as first world. It makes my blood boil to think we spend as much as we do on war when there is no socialized health care, no subsidized continuing education for most, no subsidized rail transit or clean transit, and poverty. Why are newspapers asking local candidates about the verbiage in the pledge? Do the authors of our local papers really feel that religious beliefs being pushed on kids is the most pressing issue we face. I urge anyone to check out the Portland schools web site linked here. Try to find in the school committee section the agenda spent on religion in schools. Still people who are running for an office think they are adequate because they Believe in Truth, Justice, and the American way. They think they are aligning themselves with people's ideals by talking a strong stand on the pledge. As a young person who graduated in the last twenty years I promise you the hardest thing I had to deal with was not whether or not I felt the presence of God in school because of the anthem, the pledge, or any other thing. No these issues very rarely reared their heads except when we tuned into to local politics to hear candidates posturing. When government officials tell you kids these days just need God it is because they are simple minded and lack vision. Running for this local office has taught me plenty. The most shocking lesson was how the best funded papers in town still are perpetuating divisive and non-productive debates on issues that should just be left behind.

He is here! Eliot Edward Verry-Gardella

halloween and butterflies

This is going to be the best halloween ever since we will get to dress up a baby. Soon he will be here. Sorry to everyone whose meetings I missed. If I could have been there I would have. There are just lots of great oppertunities to meet Portland voters . Thank you for your interest in local schools.