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 --Lisa Regula Meyer, Chair, KEC

Smith from PARTA noted that when Beniston came to AMATS, she began to plot the existing bus routes and sidewalks in Portage and Summit counties and do other mapping projects as a part of the agency's Connecting Communities Plan, which has been a big help to PARTA and has changed the conversation in the region. A big issue for PARTA is how to make transit relevant for each community in Portage County. Smith noted that what is needed in Palmyra or Edinburg, for example, is not always the same as what is needed in urban areas such as Kent. The federal government, Smith said, mandates that PARTA produce a Transit Development Plan (TDP) every seven to 10 years. This is a guiding document that can be found on PARTA's website. Smith noted that the mandate lacks details about how the plan is to be developed, except to say that meetings are required. Like AMATS, PARTA also has trouble attracting people to meetings. In Atwater, no one attended a meeting held there. Smith said he helps with planning, finds ways to use the community input, finds the funds needed to implement the TDP and obtains approval for the plan from the agency's board. A federal grant PARTA received for the multimodal facility was made possible with help from the city's Bicentennial Plan, AMATS and PARTA's TDP.  

Bowling has been the engineer for the city of Kent since 2007 and a consultant to them for 13 years before that. He said he saw how KEC and other citizens changed the conversation in Kent--most recently, looking at a different expectation regarding including pedestrian and bicycle uses on the new Fairchild Avenue bridge. The city's transportation planning process is as follows:

1. The city identifies a need. The Bicentennial Plan identified some of these issues. Citizens also voiced their concerns (they did not lack citizen input).
2. The city lists the work to be completed needed and has experts conduct accident and traffic studies.
3. The city evaluates solutions in light of fiscal constraint. This step includes technical studies and may include citizen input.
4. The city develops a capital plan to determine what can be done and in what order.
5. The city presents the plan to city council for discussion and approval.
6. The city conducts a preliminary study (sometimes in conjunction with a committee) to determine the details of how to fix the need (e.g., adding a bike lane to the Summit Street resurfacing project).
7. The city begins the design phase, where plenty of input is solicited from various people so the small issues are not forgotten.
8. The city builds the project. 

The following are snippets from the question-and-answer session after the panel discussion:

• About the necessity of the Esplanade: It was in the Bicentennial Plan and funded by grants. 
• About bike trails: By 2017, Kent will connect its bike trail to Tannery Park. There are bike trails from north to south but not along State Route 43, which is quite busy at times.
• About the need for more bus shelters: One percent of transportation funding must be spent on enhancements. Smith from PARTA said that he has $30,000 for such structures and will build bus shelters if another organization pays for the cement pad (usually 10 feet by 12 feet, but it can be smaller) and has an engineering drawing of the pad--such as occurred with the veterans' facility in Ravenna recently. He said he is willing to consider building more shelters in cooperation with other groups. He added that even if he cannot address all of the needs now, he can set them for future dates.   

KEC member Charles Frederick then spoke about active living, giving an overview of the concept of active living and the crowd-sourcing methods he has been using in his study of the topic. He then showed slides of the photos and descriptions submitted by Kent residents that relate to active-living issues. The research can be summarized as follows:

Good Example. The expansion of the Kent State University esplanade into downtown Kent has the potential to be a good example of active living. Without this extension, one must either go through a residential area or cross a busy intersection to get downtown. These options do not promote active living because many people would consider either option to be a hassle and decide that going downtown is not worth the trouble. An extension of the esplanade into that area creates a clean route for students to access the rest of Kent and for Kent residents to access the university. The extended esplanade will create a much stronger connection between the two areas, and this connection likely will entice people to cross between the two areas and help revitalize downtown Kent, which is another way to promote active living and cohesion within the community.

Moderate Example. Bike racks encourage physical fitness as well as environmentally friendly ways to travel in a city. People may feel more inclined to ride bikes if a city provides secure places to lock them when not in use. Kent provides quite a few places for people to lock their bikes; however, the addition of more of these devices may improve and encourage active living in Kent.

Poor Example. This is a poor example of active living because it shows that numerous people are driving to college classes. A lot of people in Kent live close enough to campus that they could walk to all of their classes instead of filling up huge parking lots. Most likely, a significant part of the people parked her live too far to walk, but with dorms and houses so close to campus, fewer people could be driving. Weather conditions also likely play a role in a person's decision to drive or walk. Not many people want to walk far in the cold.

For a map plotting the three levels of active living examples around Kent, see the illustration below:

Map showing the plot of good, moderate and poor examples of active living around Kent.

Seven other active living attributes were created by interpretation of the narrative submitted with the image. 

The KEC active living project will continue through 2013. The immediate intent is to advance the understanding of the data to a point that at least policy recommendations could be forwarded to the appropriate stakeholder--city of Kent, PARTA or AMATS--or that KEC with a partner could develop planning guidelines for a particular active living concept. The expectation of ongoing data management directly follows the intention of this research: that data collection via community participation seems to increase the likelihood for planning success. Furthermore, an engaged community is an informed community and can help lead various aspects of the planning process. The two active living project community meetings (i.e., KEC Annual Meeting and KEC Spring Forum) have been positive and engaging toward this research and the concepts of active living. A better test will be the KEC Fall Forum (date still to be determined, the focus of which will be continued development of community participation and policy suggestions and/or planning projects for active living concepts.

The project will continue to evolve with a particular focus on data management. Soon this process should be taken to the next level of engagement with its inclusion on KEC's social media portals--primarily the KEC website and Facebook page. The intent here is to test more opportunities for social networking and data collection. Another research opportunity is to use the social networking image platforms (e.g., Flicker) for an increased web presence and for data mining.

In conclusion, the project director needs to continue to receive input and determine how to sustain the project. For the next few months, the focus will be on how more data can be gathered and how to use the information to fix the areas that are lacking, or what is done as a process. The panel members suggested that it would be interesting to overlay the AMATS maps on the maps that Frederick has compiled from the crowd-sourcing effort. They believed the crowd sourcing was an absolutely useful tool.

The following are comments from the audience:

• KEC member Harold Walker pointed out that transportation habits are most damaging to natural environments and tie into land use for roads, parking lots, storm-water runoff, ever increasing the need for oil and gas. He added that part of KEC's focus is conserving natural environments. He said the Active Living Committee needs to do more planning and goal setting. How can we live more sustainably and more compactly and make connections clearer to people, Walker asked.
• KEC member Bob Wilson suggested that to gain input, PARTA should have people meet on a bus and ride around. It would be a discussion and comment session on the go, similar to the successful bike ride mentioned earlier in this article.
• Bob Howard commented that the College of Public Health at Kent State University is using the concept of healthy cities, which overlaps active living, and that the dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design brought in Richard Jackson, M.D. from UCLA to discuss public health and the built environment. Howard said these might be sources of collaboration.
• Kent Councilwoman Heidi Shaffer noted that not many people speak up for blighted sidewalks. Kent City Council, she said, needs to have this input.

• Physicians, Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy 
• Richard Manning, "Bakken Business: The Price of North Dakota's Fracking Boom,"(Harper's, March 2013, pp. 29-37).  
• EcoWatch 
• Walter M. Brasch, Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster, 2013.
• "Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health," (New Solutions, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 51-77, 2012). 
• Renewable energy sources 

Is there any way out of this growing circle of disaster? There is, and it is called alternative energy: wind, water, solar, biofuels, geothermal, tidal power, and electric and hybrid vehicles. All of the above represent important sources of alternative energy. While space limitations do not permit a discussion of each of the above, readers are encouraged to check out those which are not included below on Google and other information sources.

Wind generated energy, as pointed out in the March/April issue of Sierra Magazine (Vol. 98, No.2), supports an estimated 75,000 jobs nationwide. Since 2008, America's wind energy capacity has doubled, making wind second only to natural gas in terms of new generators coming online in recent years. Ohioans are in a position to benefit greatly from the winds on Lake Erie, which represent a major potential, some of which is already being tapped. There are other sources, however, that often are overlooked. Mike Wilson, executive director of the Trumbull Soil and Water Conservation District, points out that much of Ohio is windy enough to power turbines, noting that Ohio's wind potential is greater than that of Germany's. Trumbull County alone has enough accelerated winds to house many wind turbines, thus opening the potential for wind power to become a significant economic development opportunity for that area.

Water power generated by Niagara Falls has for many years provided New Yorkers with an abundant source of alternative energy. There is great potential for water power as a source of renewable energy not only in the United States but also worldwide. Here again, space does not allow for a full discussion of water power, but abundant resources are available for the interested reader. One of the best is Wickipedia, which may be found by Googling "Water Power."

Solar power is another free and abundant source of renewable energy. Solar panels are being installed on many industrial buildings and private homes. But today's solar products go far beyond what most of us think when we hear the term solar power or solar energy. We typically imagine solar electric panels on rooftops, converting sunlight into electricity. While these panels do represent a large piece of the solar pie, many more solar powered products and technologies using the sun's energy now exist. One of the largest is solar hot water, which uses the sun's heat instead of electricity to warm a potable water supply. This method is proving to be highly efficient and cost effective. Solar HVAC systems, battery-backed off-grid systems, solar farms and more are at the forefront of the solar power world of innovations, with still more to come.

Corn ethanol and other food-based biofuels represent yet another important source of alternative energy. While their use does put pressure on food supplies, recent development of cellulosic biofuels largely avoid these problems because they can be made from perennial grasses, agricultural residues left behind after harvesting and even garbage. This process has the potential to displace enough gasoline to save more than 1.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2035.

Geothermal and tidal energy also represent valuable sources of alternative energy. Once again, because of space considerations, they will not be discussed; however, numerous resources can be found by Googling Geothermal, "Tidal Energy."

Unfortunately, the United States is lagging far behind many other countries in the support of renewable, alternate energy. According to the Government Accountability Office, electricity generated by fossil fuels in the United States receives five dollars in federal subsidies for every one dollar received by the renewable energy industry. Furthermore, oil and gas drilling corporations are among the most highly profitable industries in the world. (Supermajor is a term used to describe the world's five or six largest publicly owned oil and gas companies. The supermajors are considered to be BP, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell and Total, with ConocoPhillips Company also sometimes described as part of the group. These companies earned a combined $30.2 billion in 2012, or $331 million per day. The recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision allows these corporations to pour millions into the coffers of legislators and judges (who are elected in 39 states).

It is incumbent upon all of us, therefore, to urge our federal, state and local legislator to begin paying more serious attention to this issue. Development of alternate energy deserves far greater support than it now receives. Nothing less than our lives and the lives of future generations depend on it.

--Ted Voneida, Ph.D.  

Kent's 23rd annual River Day festival began the morning of Saturday, April 18, when Boy Scouts from Troop 253 conducted a flag ceremony and led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

 

Lisa Regula Meyer, Kent Environmental Council board chair, then spoke about the importance of the natural environment and the river as examples of a natural and recreational heritage that benefits the community.

 

A child pets a turtle.

Many children at the event enjoyed seeing the turtles and snake at the Kent Parks and Recreation booth and had a chance to make face masks. Next to the teepee set up by the Portage County Historical Society, many participants enjoyed weaving a mat from snake grass at a stand-up loom.

 

Art works from a contest for school children were displayed and depicted various birds. Also on display were various animal pelts, Indian artifacts and jewelry.

 

A family try life jackets on for size.

Kent State University's Crooked River Adventures was there with life jackets to encourage their use and to try to set another word record for the most life jackets tried on in one day. The adventure group's canoe and kayak livery is now open on weekends and taking reservations for river trips.

 

Information was available about KEC and its active living project along with pictures and information from Friends of the Kent Bog. Concerned Citizens provided literature about fracking dangers and alternative energy sources.

 

Holden Elementary School children demonstrate their skill at song and dance.

The Holden Elementary School choir was grand finale for the day with songs about water and rivers; dancers were included this year as well. An estimated 150 people viewed the performance.

In the evening, the Kent Community Dinner, sponsored by All Together Now, Inc., was held at Plum Creek Park, followed by a bonfire and drum circle with singing and dancers sponsored by KSU's Native American Student Association.

For more of River Day in pictures . . . 

Edith Case (left) and Caroline Arnold at the KEC booth.

An authentic Indian teepee.

A Native American in full dress displays Indian artifacts.

Children work on art projects.

Adults and children engage in zebra mat weaving.

--Edith Chase and Lorraine McCarty