I am Paul Helmke, Mayor of Fort Wayne and Past President of The U. S. Conference of Mayors.
The Conference of Mayors represents more than 1,050 cities with a population of more than 30,000.
Mr. Chairman, let me first thank you and other Members of this Committee for holding these hearings today. "Livability" provides a timely context for discussions on a number of issues of concern to the nation's mayors and the citizens we serve.
When mayors speak of livability, they talk about reducing crime, improving public education, helping kids and adults secure better job and housing opportunities, improving the delivery of public services, recycling brownfields, enhancing the local environment, improving parks and libraries and making transportation systems work for people. These are the issues squarely before local elected leaders and largely drive our agenda.
To support the Committee's consideration of these issues today, my statement will:
provide some general observations and perspectives on livability from the mayors' vantage point; offer some suggestions on the challenges specifically before this Committee, given your influence over federal surface transportation, infrastructure and environmental programs, areas which are increasingly singled out in this debate; and review some of the key issues on the mayors' agenda which I believe relate to this broader debate.
Mayors' Perspectives
Mr. Chairman, we don't have a complete definition of livability, but as a mayor, I know it when I see it. And, certainly, I know it when I hear it, and it is something that is very much on the minds of the voters in local communities.
For mayors and other local elected officials, you might say we are in this business. One of the reasons we are here today is that citizens in a very grass-roots way are demanding something more from all of us, their elected leaders. They want us to work harder to help improve their quality of life, not just their standard of living.
All of this is pushing what have been historically locally-oriented issues on to the political agenda of state and federal leaders, forcing elected officials at every level to respond, and to be aware of how past and current policies have sometimes created problems at the local level.
In effect, voters are forcing their national legislators and leaders to examine these federal policies and respond to some of the same concerns which have been before me, other mayors and local officials. As a mayor, I would welcome your attention to these issues and a more thorough examination of how these federal policies influence the lives of local citizens in their communities.
For some time, we have been urging partnerships with federal and state governments that genuinely respond to local needs and interests. It seems that the "livability" concept provides a place-based and people-based context for your review of issues that come before this Committee, be it transportation, air quality or water resources.
Mr. Chairman, contrary to some statements in the press, this definitely is not a top-down movement. It is a local citizen or grass-roots movement, driven by all types of conditions throughout the country. As a local official, I can assure you that this is not a Democrat, Republican or Libertarian issue.
It appears this message is being amplified by the confluence of two population segments. People in newly developed areas are clamoring for improved services, managed growth and some relief from the increasing burdens of auto dependency. People in built communities -- largely central cities, inner ring cities and urban counties -- want more help for their particular needs, like updated infrastructure and facilities, including rehabilitation of parks and libraries, and pedestrian- and neighborhood-oriented improvements. People in existing communities also expect more attention to their needs now that we have spent more than two generations investing in and building up the suburbs.
After much anxiety in dealing with the nation's economic restructuring over the past several decades, there appears to be more confidence about our economic future and, collectively, our voters are demanding more attention to issues affecting their quality of life.
What is new about this issue is that it is finally finding a place here in Washington, where debates have focused on sometimes more distant matters. The front door issues -- those issues before you when you open your front door, and not just what you see on the front pages -- are knocking at your door.
BROWNFIELDS
Let me provide an example of this, from my perspective as the mayor of a community, which made the transition from a fort to a strong city of 200,000. As President of The U.S. Conference of Mayors, I made brownfields the top issue of my tenure as a leader of the nation's mayors. I didn't call it livability, but it is at the core of so many issues in this debate.
"Brownfields redevelopment" is really a metaphor for renewing our partnership commitments to existing communities.
By recycling the thousands of brownfield sites in communities throughout the nation, we can offer alternatives to simply plowing under and paving over more pristine greenfields, be they farm land, forests or open space.
And, in this way, we can better serve millions of people in communities struggling with this challenge, places where many of us live and work today.
Brownfields, so often in evidence as abandoned properties with all of the outward signs of neglect, are a particularly powerful way to call attention to the need to look at existing communities and policies to help local leaders sustain their economies.
We recycle glass, paper and aluminum cans, but as a nation, we don't fully recycle our land. We believe that existing communities have the capacity to recycle land for reuse in future development, breaking the cycle of developing pristine land or greenfields as a first choice.
Yet, there are obstacles in getting these sites cleaned up and redeveloped. And, the difficulty in redeveloping these sites and capturing all of the many community and economic benefits has also hindered our ability to meet the many concerns of our citizens. Pressing local issues -- transportation, environmental quality, safety, education, and neighborhood-oriented investments in schools, libraries, ballfields and parks -- can be addressed more readily through redevelopment of these sites, as local economies are strengthened, generating the resources to reinvest in our communities.
As a local leader, I can tell you we have been working hard to recycle and restore these lands, attempting to offer developers, business leaders, bankers and others new opportunities to invest and grow in existing communities. But much more needs to done to turn the perception of these "dead zones" in to prosperous and thriving uses.
A year and a half ago, I addressed the "Brownfields 97" Conference in Kansas City, where I said:
"Brownfields is the leading edge of what I believe will soon be the nation's most pressing environmental concern: the loss of open space -- farmlands and forests -- brought about by our continuing patterns of urbanization."
In discussing this issue, I frequently cite data from the American Farmland Trust. For the 10-year period, 1982 - 1992, the United States converted more than 4 million acres of prime farmland to urban land. This is the real stuff -- "prime farmland" -- the kind of land that is very productive.
In that period, we lost prime farmland that is larger in size than the entire greater Chicago metropolitan area, which runs from Northern Indiana to Southern Wisconsin. Or, farmland that is equal in size to the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island. As Chicago Mayor Daley, a former Conference President, so often says, "The U.S. destroys more farmland each year than any nation on earth."
In the same 10-year period, all of the land which was developed, including this prime farmland, is equal in size to the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and one quarter of Maryland.
I believe there is some urgency to the brownfields issue, particularly when you step back and consider what is happening to farmland and forests in proximity to our urban areas.
Brownfields redevelopment, for so many communities, is about making sure that the land is productive again, unburdened by liability issues and free to capture private sector investment in housing and job-producing businesses. We see this as a cycle of potential renewal, with rising property values and increasing tax receipts to build better communities that our citizens want and expect.
Issues Before the Committee
Mr. Chairman, you have a full agenda on many of the issues in the livability debate, as you examine transportation, smart growth, open space preservation, brownfields redevelopment and various initiatives pertaining to these matters.
Mr. Chairman, I want to express the appreciation of the nation's mayors for the personal attention and efforts you have made on our behalf to move various legislative vehicles to address the concerns of mayors and others on brownfields within the context of Superfund reform. And, we also appreciate the Members of this Committee for their leadership. Senator Bond, in his capacity as Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies, has been very supportive of local efforts to move brownfields redevelopment forward. Senator Lautenberg has been involved with this issue before most people even knew what brownfields were and we appreciate his strong leadership on our behalf.
I am hopeful that legislation will finally move through the Congress this year to provide communities with the tools and resources to more readily reclaim and recycle the thousands of brownfields sites all across the country. I know from the Committee record and statements that Members of this Committee fully appreciate the importance of getting these properties back in to productive use. I also know that this issue will be revisited by the Committee in the coming months.
TRANSPORTATION
Let me turn to the transportation arena, and again use this opportunity to thank Chairman Chafee, Senator Moynihan, who played such an instrumental role in enacting ISTEA, and the Committee Members for your leadership in enacting TEA-21.
The Conference of Mayors in its testimony before this Committee and our work in support of ISTEA renewal, urged a balanced investment between highways and transit, and flexible funding, as well as continuation of programs like Enhancements and the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program and continued emphasis on system preservation. But the key message that Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell delivered on behalf of the mayors was the continuing need for partnership in addressing the nation's transportation infrastructure needs, urging that the ISTEA framework be used as the basis for this partnership.
Mr. Chairman, I also want to recognize this Committee and its leadership in making this partnership stronger under TEA-21. Also, by continuing policies and programs such as the Interstate Maintenance program and the Bridge Program, you kept the focus of the new law on system preservation.
Keeping what we have in good repair is very much in tune with what voters are asking for. Recently, the Rebuild America Coalition conducted a national survey and found that an overwhelmingly majority of the respondents believe that keeping existing road surfaces in good condition and free of potholes was more important than building new highway capacity in dealing with congestion. These findings affirm some of the issues we have discussing today in that voters want more attention to keeping what we have in better condition, as one of the ways to better serve citizens in existing communities.
Most of these transportation elements have been strongly supported by local elected officials, through investments in the CMAQ program to better air quality, in the Enhancements program to better integrate transportation facilities into our communities, in the Bridge Program to rehabilitate these facilities, and in increased investment in public transportation.
The Conference of Mayors would offer several recommendations on how the Committee might follow-up on these and other matters.
First, we encourage the Committee to hold field hearings and conduct more oversight on state efforts in implementing TEA-21. Under ISTEA, local officials were concerned that many of the key programs of most direct interest to local communities, like CMAQ, Enhancements, Safety, had the lowest obligation rates compared to other programs of higher priority to the states. Moreover, with the unexpected gap in FY'1999 between apportionments and obligation authority (more than 13 percent), defunding of these programs could get worse under TEA-21. If you take CMAQ funding, for example, it is troubling that with more than one-half of the 1,050 U.S. cities with a population of 30,000 or more in non-attainment with ozone, we continue to see states using the Act's flexibility to move funding obligations away from CMAQ-eligible activities. Poor air quality where millions of Americans live is high on our livability agenda. Second, we are working with the states all across the country to ensure that funds under TEA-21 are fairly distributed within the states, an effort we call our "Fair Share Campaign." In effect, local officials are often asking why funding fairness stops at the state lines. We have preliminary data that shows that under ISTEA two out of every three metro areas -- where about 80 percent of the nation's population resides -- were donors. As we look at livability issues, we as local officials know that we can't address these issues if we never get access to the resources to make the improvements our citizens want. We are hopeful that U.S. DOT's expected planning regulations will operationalize the Act's "revenue forecast" provisions, directing states to jointly develop forecasts of TEA-21 funding with MPOs. This is really a "right to know" for local officials about what funds may or may not be available for transportation projects and needs in their local areas. Third, we don't see states taking full advantage of the flexible funding aspects of TEA-21. For example, we have more than 200 communities/regions throughout the country planning, engineering or building new rail projects, the highest level of interest in rail projects at any point in the nation's history. We also know that many of these projects won't get built unless state DOTs take more advantage of the Act's flexible funding features, using core program funds in support of these investments. In large and small markets, rail investment is being sought by local elected leaders as one of the preferred ways to manage development patterns, combat highway congestion and improve mobility in their respective regions. Finally, we also hopeful that the states will use some of the Act's flexibility to make resources available to local areas for transportation infrastructure improvements in support of brownfields redevelopment. In our 1998 Brownfields Survey, we found many respondents citing the need for transportation improvements, such as upgrading and modernizing existing facilities, as necessary to facilitate investment at brownfield sites.
One of our biggest challenges in the transportation arena has been state transportation department officials, who historically denied the linkage between transportation investment and development patterns. TEA-21 certainly provides the tools and the laboratory, but it doesn't guarantee success. That is up to local elected officials working with the governors and state transportation officials to use the tools you have provided.
But, as a key partner in this equation, it is helpful to those of us at the local government level to have this Committee fully engaged in monitoring our progress under TEA-21 and how these substantially increased resources are deployed. This Committee has many other policies -- clean air, water quality, flood control -- that are advanced or harmed by state and local actions in the transportation arena.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS
Given the Committee's involvement with the financing of environmental infrastructure through State Revolving Funds to the States, particularly the Wastewater Revolving Fund, the Conference would suggest some actions related to the issues before the Committee today:
first, it would be helpful to have U.S. EPA prepare information for the Committee on the distribution of these funds within areas of the state, offering some perspective on how existing communities, particularly in urban areas are faring under the program; second, it would be useful to know from the agency if these resources are promoting outward development or aiding in redeveloping existing areas; and finally, the Conference is supportive of proposals to redirect some portion of these funds toward wet weather problems, such as municipal stormwater and combined sewer overflow improvements, changes which will help serve continuing clean water needs among existing communities.
Mr. Chairman, we know that some of our development patterns are exacerbating our ability to tackle stormwater and flood control needs in areas all across the country. We are also learning more about how these development patterns might be infringing upon our surface and groundwater supplies. This is an area where we would like to work with the Committee to examine these issues in further detail.
On clean air, the Conference has been very engaged in a number of issues involving implementation of this Act. For example, we have been concerned about the potential effects of the new air standards on brownfields redevelopment. As a result, the Conference has been working on a project with U.S. EPA, the Economic Development Administration, and several cities, including Chicago, Dallas and Baltimore, to analyze the relationship between brownfields redevelopment and achievement of clean air standards.
I would also call the Committee's attention to the Administration's proposal, the Clean Air Partnership Fund, which calls for first-ever funding of $200 million in FY'2000 to help communities fund clean air projects and deploy new technologies. This investment is particularly important to local areas which in the past have only had access to CMAQ funds for mobile source efforts. From a local perspective, we welcome any additional federal commitments to help us meet the increasingly complex air issues before our communities.
PARKS
Finally, let me note that open space preservation and parks development are areas where the mayors have been very supportive. We, however, will continue to press for more attention on urban parks as the "Lands Legacy" Program and other proposals move forward.
We all know that preservation of open space has important implications for the work of this Committee as you continue to grapple with transportation, air quality, water quality and non-point source pollution, flood control and water resources. Mr. Chairman, I would encourage Members of this Committee to engage in this debate, given your considerable jurisdictional interests in seeing successful initiatives in this area.
Mayors' Agenda
Mr. Chairman, let me close with some comments on the mayors' agenda.
During my tenure as Conference President, I talked extensively about farmland and open space preservation and the need to recycle America's land through brownfields redevelopment. Conference presidents for five successive years have been pressing for a stronger federal partnership on brownfields. We see the Administration's proposal for "Better America Bonds" as a response to local leaders, like myself and others, who have championed a more aggressive federal commitment to local efforts in this area.
Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, who served as President of the Conference before me, personally championed the cause of the stateside program of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and urban parks, with these issues finally receiving some attention in recent months, nearly four years later. Mr. Chairman, you may recall that he met with you on this subject. Quite frankly, we were disappointed that there was so little emphasis on urban parks in the Administration's plan, but in the whole we believe there is a need for a broader federal commitment in this area. We are pleased to see that Chairman Murkowski is proposing to fully fund the stateside LWCF program and fund urban parks at a much higher level.
I have already noted elements in the transportation area. I would just reiterate our desire to see state officials use these resources to partner more fully with local officials in funding locally-determined transportation projects, such as new rail starts and other alternative transportation projects as well as broader commitments to system preservation, safety, enhancements and air quality.
Mayors have advanced brownfields redevelopment as one of the cornerstones in our "livability" agenda, an area which I have discussed in some detail. Mr. Chairman, next month the Conference will release its Second Annual Report on Brownfields. Among the more interesting findings of this report will be a projection on how many people these responding cities can absorb without adding substantially to existing infrastructure. In this survey, 110 cities estimate that they can absorb more than 3.5 million new residents, a capacity which substantially exceeds one year of the nation's population growth. Tapping just a portion of this potential capacity in existing communities could save taxpayers billions of dollars in future capital and operating costs.
We see brownfields as part of a broader agenda, which includes reducing crime and community-based public safety, improving public education along with community-wide responses to the needs of school age kids, emphasizing arts, cultural and other unique community assets, and renewing our infrastructures, like schools, parks, housing and transportation facilities. In the whole, these issues respond directly to what we as mayors believe our citizens are seeking in their daily lives, concerns which are increasingly characterized as livability.
I also helped launch our Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, an historic partnership of The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties, to look at how cities and counties can work together more effectively on many of the issues we are discussing today. We are making real progress on these challenging issues.
Closing Comments
As a mayor who is completing my twelfth and final year of service, I can attest that cities have certainly seen some tough times, with both the perceptions and realities of crime-ridden neighborhoods, failing schools and infrastructure. At the same time, we have been hard at work dealing with these issues, changing both perceptions and the realities of these urban ills. And, mayors and local citizens will tell you that we are experiencing positive change in communities all across the country. We are confronting rising expectations, and rightly so, on how we can improve the everyday quality of life.
Some of this success can be attributed to the new style of local elected leadership and a new energy among our citizenry. And, undeniably, mayors and other local leaders will tell you that new and continuing partnerships with the federal and state governments are making a real difference in our communities.
It seems all of us are figuring out that our standard of living is not the same thing as our quality of life.
The Washington Post reported last week that demand for close-in addresses is outpacing available housing, as people look for alternatives to ever-growing commutes here in one of the most congested markets in the nation. Senator Larry Craig is described as leaving his larger home in Mount Vernon for a smaller house on Capitol Hill, cutting his one-hour commute by car to a 13-minute walk. He is quoted as saying, "I can get up in the morning and my wife and I can be together for breakfast. It truly added an hour of quality time to our day."
Senator Craig's quote may best express what this issue is all about.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to share our views with the Committee on this important subject.