Pencilstorm Post UA Election Interview: Next Steps For Rebuilding The Schools

Now that Upper Arlington's School Levy (Issue 43) passed with 54% of the votes, Pencilstorm reached out to Upper Arlington Superintendent Paul Imhoff  and Treasurer/Chief Finance Officer Andy Geistfeld with five questions about what will happen next. Their unedited answers are posted below.  

Paul Imhoff, Superintendent

Now that the levy has passed, what are the next steps?
It’s important to remember that none of the projects has been designed yet.  The next step is launching a community-based design phase for the six schools that are to be renovated or rebuilt.
 
Community involvement was the key to the success of our master planning process, and we believe that will be true with the design phase, too.  We’re sticking with the theme “your voice matters,” and we’ll be holding community meetings and asking for volunteers to be on building design teams and a district-wide green team.
 
The design phase will last about 12 to 15 months, and only then, once we have community-developed design plans for each of the six buildings, will we break ground — tentatively in early 2019.
 
In terms of timeline, which buildings will be worked on first? Do you have an estimate on when each will be finished? In addition, when will all day kindergarten start?
Tentatively, in early 2019, we’ll break ground first on a renovated Barrington and Tremont elementary school; a new Greensview and Wickliffe Progressive elementary school; and a new high school. The exception there is Windermere. We won’t be able to break ground on Windermere until the fall of 2020. And that’s because we’ll build a new Windermere on the footprint of the old building.
 
A renovated Barrington and Tremont and a new Greensview and Wickliffe will open to students tentatively in the fall of 2020. While the new Windermere is being built, students from that school will be educated in the old Wickliffe building. Then, a new Windermere and high school will tentatively open the next fall, in 2021. All construction on the high school site will be finished by the fall of 2022, with the athletic fields and support spaces completed and the old building demolished.
 
The plan is to add enough space at the elementary schools through these projects to accommodate both our enrollment growth and a future all-day kindergarten program.
 
How can the community get involved in the next stages of planning?
We’ll be having community-wide meetings to launch the design phase in December, and we’ll be setting the date for that in the coming days. We’ll offer both a morning and an evening option as we did during the master planning process. Community members can watch their mailboxes and our website, www.uaschools.org/facilities, for more information.
 
We will also be reaching out to community members about more opportunities to get involved, including building design teams and a “green team” that will explore environmental best practices for the new or renovated buildings. Neighbors living in close proximity to the buildings can also join a neighbor committee to share feedback and offer guidance throughout the design phase and construction process.
 
Which high school sports will be impacted by the construction and at what point will they need to be moved to a temporary facility?
Our goal is to minimize the impact the construction will have on our extracurricular activities.  The new turf field, baseball field and softball field to be built on the land behind Tremont Elementary School will definitely help with that.  However, we do anticipate that baseball, softball, tennis, and track and field will have to be temporarily relocated during construction.

Andrew Geisfeld, Treasurer/Chief Financial Officer

Let’s talk money. How will you look for savings and if there’s any extra money, what will you do with it? (Answer from Andy and Paul)
We will look for savings during each step of the community design process.

If funds remain after the projects are completed, those funds would be used to reduce the amount collected from residents to pay annual debt amount.

Pencilstorm would like to thank Paul and Andy for taking the time to answer our questions. For more information about the construction visit: www.uaschools.org/facilities.

Local UA Politics coverage provided by Wal Ozello. You can email him at Pencilstormstory@gmail.com or try to catch him at Colin's Coffee.

"An Arlington Hobo" - A Coffee Shop Conversation by Colin G.

Colin's Coffee conversation 9/23/13

"Hey man, check out this video." 

As I general rule, I do not check out what other people want me to watch on Youtube. As the only person working at Colin's Coffee, if I say yes once, it would set a precedent and most of my day would disappear being called to table after table watching endless loops of skateboard videos and clips of elephants that can brush their teeth.  So I usually just politely respond, "No, I am not going to check out your video. No offense, I just don't watch other people's Youtube clips."

But every once and a while I'll let my guard down and take a gander. I figure it's part is my penance for forcing hundreds of unsuspecting late-night visitors to sit through Cheap Trick Live at Navy Pier on VHS back in the day.

On this cool, cloudy Thursday morning I glanced at an I-phone to see a clip of what looked like a uni-bomber type character quickly filming his face and then a shot down of railroad tracks from the moving train he was apparently riding on.

He explained, "That's my buddy. We graduated together from U.A. He is a hobo now. That is him hopping a train from Portland down to Sacramento." 

It seemed odd to me that a hobo would take the time to post this clip from a semi-expensive piece of technology, but what do I know about the state of hobos circa 2013? Maybe they all roll with I-phones. I suppose the GPS and train schedule app would be pretty helpful.

 "Yeah, him and his son just hop trains and travel all around the country. it's pretty dangerous because if they get caught it is a federal crime".

"His son? How old is his son?" I asked.

"26" 

"Oh," was all I could muster. My brain came up empty for a response to make sense of  this new piece of information.

"Yeah, they just hop trains and sometimes play music to make some money to fill their bellies. I really admire their courage. I'm pretty jealous. What an awesome life." 

"I have to imagine the hobo lifestyle has its downside as well." 

"Not for these guys, if they ever get in serious trouble they just bust out the debit card." 

"What do you mean? Do they have money?" 

"Oh yeah, he is loaded. Inherited a ton of cash." 

"Uh, dude, I don't think your friend is a hobo, I think he is just a rich guy fucking around."

Colin Gawel works at Colin's Coffee and plays in the band Watershed. Sometimes he writes things for Pencilstorm. 

Too Poor To Buy a Trash Sticker but Rich Enough to Throw Away New Shoes.

As CEO of Colin's Coffee Inc. I have many important responsibilities: managing a large labor force, meeting customer expectations, keeping stockholders & the board members satisfied and most importantly* - taking out the trash. 

Here at the Golden Bear Center, I am not only responsible for the trash inside the coffee shop, but also the three outside containers as well.  I won't bore you with the details but, in a nutshell, I personally take out and pay for the trash from Colin's Coffee, McDonald's and most of the neighborhood adjacent to the shopping center.

See, here in U.A. we have a program where recycling is free, but you pay for any trash to be picked up. It is a rather ingenious system as it encourages good behavior and punishes lazy, wasteful bastards. 

However, the lazy, wasteful bastards from the neighborhood and McDonald's across the parking lot have stumbled onto an ingenious plan of their own - just dump your trash outside Colin's Coffee and he can deal with it. 

And deal with it I do, on a semi-daily basis. So the other day - as I was struggling to remove a 50 gallon trash bag stuffed with Big Mac containers, beer bottles, dirty socks and the like - I noticed a newish Ann Taylor shoebox jammed in the pile. Odd. I've seen many things in the trash but something about this particular item stirred my curiosity. So I turned my nose to the side and slowly opened the box, hoping that curiosity hadn't also killed the family cat, leaving me to stare upon poor deceased Professor Paws. 

My worst fears were unrealized, as the mysterious new shoebox contained exactly what one would expect, a new pair of expensive high-heeled shoes. Perhaps a gift from a tawdry affair run amok that needed to be disposed of quickly? A clue to a crime? Or more likely, just some person too cheap to buy a trash sticker but rich enough to throw away new shoes. Nice.

Colin Gawel wrote this at Colin's Coffee. He also plays in the band Watershed. please check out his other scribblings on Pencilstorm by visiting the archive page.

*Actually, cleaning the women's restroom is the most important responsibility of the Colin's Coffee CEO. 

Golden Pear: Whole Foods Opens in Upper Arlington

It feels a lot longer for us Upper Arlington residents who care about food, but for over a year we've had to make do with the cramped, temporary mini-Whole Foods that was scrunched uncomfortably into the Lane Ave. Shopping Center like Woody Allen in a chorus line of Rockettes, but finally the new, spacious Whole Foods has opened up where the old Whole Foods once stood and where Wild Oats stood before that, and it’s pretty great.

First among its virtues is its manageable size. Unlike the Dublin location, the new store doesn’t swallow up Disney World-type acreage. To wit: Disney World is bigger than 17 countries while the Dublin Whole Foods is bigger than 5 of those countries; or at least as big as Tuvalu which coincidentally sounds like an expensive, imported cheese.

This new market comes stocked with all of the quality items you’d expect and a few new tricks to make the UA swells feel like they’re getting the cut above they’re entitled to by virtue of the fact that they’re UA swells.​ For instance, there's a visible dry-aged steak locker, touch-screen order kiosks at the deli and hot bar, and a cute little bistro called The Social where you can order food and have a draft beer or coffee, provided your caffeine needs can't wait until you get to Colin's Coffee...

​On a recent visit to the new digs, I was impressed to see a variety of glassy-eyed whole fish (a sign of freshness) on display – flounder, branzino, and snapper. I'll most definitely be grilling these mothers whole through the summer. And the rest of the selections, from the dairy to the deli, are equally impressive.

I should divulge here that I am a fan of Whole Foods. Now, listen, I would much prefer to be single, have no kids or pets, live downtown, ride a Vespa, dress smartly in skinny chinos, shop every day at the North Market, and scoff knowingly at schmucks who still listen to old-timey devices like the radio, but that ain't my reality. And because I appreciate quality, organic and/or sustainably raised or cultivated foodstuffs without a lot of s**t in them, it follows that I appreciate having a Whole Foods nearby.

Not everyone is as appreciative. One other food reporter was in attendance at the recent media tour of the new store. When I expressed my excitement over a cheese made with beer from Rockmill Brewery in Lancaster, she was quick to point out that the cheese was not made at the brewery, but that the beer was shipped to an Oregon cheesery, added to the product there, then shipped all the way back to Ohio. 

Certainly, I agree that shipping the beer to Oregon and the cheese all the way back probably leaves a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint, but she was leaning on this  imperfection to dismiss the store. 

I think she saw this cross-country beer-and-cheese long haul as some sort of sin. But to offset that misstep, the market works with a number of Ohio beef, pork, and chicken farmers, gives other Ohio products a place on their shelves, diverts 90% of their waste from the landfill, practices composting, and supplies electric car hook-ups in their parking lot. Isn't it enough to deflect that one blow?

In all fairness, the observation itself was rather vague, but the tone of it seemed leveled at the store and not at Rockmill Brewery.  And this is where we are with our food writing these days. There is an unwillingness to embrace anything, um, unhipsterish for lack of a better word; and UA is most definitely a hot bed of unhipsterishness.

I definitely see the value in the city's food writers ignoring restaurant chains so we can devote more space to columns about independent restaurant owners. I even see the value in dismissing crapholes like Kroger and Meijer outright, but Whole Foods? Seems like there are better places at which to aim their culinary vitriol. 

The problem is our very tightly knit food community. Everyone knows everyone else and no real criticism can take place for fear of pissing someone off or hurting a friend’s feelings. Real criticism has taken a backseat to glad-handing the "in" kids. This often leads to mediocre food being overpraised or a great store like the new Whole Foods being casually dismissed because there's no local, in-kid connection.

None of this will really affect people in Upper Arlington because people in UA wouldn't know good food if it jumped down their gullets and because they're unaware of the larger food conversation taking place in Columbus anyway. About the only engagement with social media in Arlington is the mommy blogging phenomenon wherein women who can’t stop talking about their kids write about them when there are no other women around to talk about their kids with.

The bottom line is that the new Whole Foods turns out to be the latest, greatest hot spot to eat out in Upper Arlington and not just because of UA's food illiteracy and their overall, bland Caucasian-based tastes, but because it's better than 90% of the actual restaurants in the neighborhood. You probably just won't hear the bloggers — food, mommy, or otherwise — talking about it.