Local cities rank high on Movoto list

Pasadena Star News

By: Cynthia Kurtz

Posted: 4/30/2014 

I enjoy stories about cities. What cities have the best food, best schools, and best shopping? The problem is that most of these stories are about big cites. If you aren’t Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago or Los Angeles, you get passed over. And that means the great cities in the SGV don’t get noticed.

Recently Movoto - an on-line real estate brokerage based in San Mateo, CA and famous for its list of “best” of everything about cites - discovered that there were good things to note about mid-size cities too. While visiting a mid-size California city, author Natalie Grigson was amazed at the creative energy she discovered. She decided to explore further.

Her discoveries uncovered creative cities about which we are already familiar but were new to many of her readers.

The #2 most creative city in the whole U.S.A - none other than Pasadena, CA. Coming in at #22, our neighbor, the City of Glendale. Not quite in the SGV but we did let them have one of our best city managers, Scott Ochoa. Also making the list at # 39, Pomona.

So what makes a creative city? Ms. Grigson didn’t have the time to visit all the mid-size cities so she based her rankings on data from the U.S. Census and Department of Labor. Her seven criteria were:

1. Art supply stores per capita. That makes sense. Creative folks have to have supplies and the stores are going to go where they know the creative folks shop.

2. Musical instruments stores and music teachers per capita. Turns out that there was a close relationship between music and art stores. Cities that scored high in one were apt to score high in both. Glendale was the exception -- off the charts with music stores but low on art stores. All I can figure is that those Glendale painters must be slipping over to Pasadena for their brushes.

3. Galleries per capita. You need a place to view and buy all that creative work so galleries are important. Here is where Pomona shined. It has lots of places to view art.

4. Art schools per capita. It is no surprise that Pasadena ranked #1 in the country with 21 art schools. When you have Art Center College of Design, it is no wonder that other schools want to be close to the best.

5. Book stores per capita. Pasadena was numero uno again. You only have to spend an afternoon in Vroman’s Bookstore to know that Pasadenans love their books.

6. Colleges and universities per capita. The colleges and universities in the SGV are famous for their creativity and innovation. This ranking was based on having the most, but not judging the best. If the latter had been the criterion - with schools like CalPoly Pomona, Mt. Sac, Caltech and PCC - we would have ranked even higher.

7. Theaters and performing art centers per capita. Of course a creative city needs places to act out all that creative energy. Pasadena was once again the leader with 69 theaters, more than any other mid-size city.

Congratulations to all three cities. We already knew you were creative but it is nice to let the rest the world know as well.

Study suggests 'grit' can be developed

Pasadena Star News

By: Cynthia Kurtz

Posted: 4/23/2014 

What makes one business person successful while another in the same business fails? Why do students with the same backgrounds perform so differently on difficult tasks? Is it possible to predict which employees will do well on challenging work?

Traditionally, when we ask these questions, we look to IQ - the Intelligence Quotient - as the way to predict achievement, job performance and even income potential. IQ is measurable. It is mathematical. It is a standard that allows comparisons between people. 

There is research underway that suggests that IQ is not the only measure, maybe not even the most important measure that can predict whether someone will do well in school and in life. 

Angela Lee Duckworth was teaching seventh grade math when she began to notice that it wasn’t always her high IQ students who did best on tough assignments. She began to watch more closely to see if she could determine what it was that determined success. 

She became so interested in understanding this phenomenon that she decided to study psychology and started working with children and adults in difficult situations - rookie teachers in tough schools, West Point Military Academy cadets, and people in high pressure sales positions. She looked for the variables that would allow her to predict who would do well. 

Instead of social skills, family income, good looks, or even IQ, she determined it was “grit.” What is grit? Remember the movie True Grit? The John Wayne movie in which a young girl decides to track down her father’s murderer. She didn’t know it wasn’t proper or possible. She simply decided to do it and she did it. That pretty much is “grit.” It is a pervasive stamina, a determination to succeed along with some just plain old follow-through.

Grit raises the same questions we have about IQ - how do you get it? Can you learn it? Do you inherit it? Can it be taught? The exact answer is still unclear but Carol Dweck at the Stanford University has published interesting research that suggests that there is a way to develop grit.

Professor Dweck says it starts with “growth in mindset.” To the non-academic that means believing that you have the ability to learn and that failure isn’t permanent. 

When self-worth is measured only by success, then it is unlikely that a person will pursue anything that doesn't guarantee success. 

Students who are taught that the brain is a muscle that grows with exercise are fueled by setbacks. Failure becomes an opportunity to learn instead of a reflection of inadequacy. Not getting a problem right the first time means working harder and trying again. 

The theory of mindset growth has implications for many aspects of our lives but most certainly for how businesses develop employee skills and encourage innovation. Good performance shouldn’t be just about success but also about how someone approaches risk and responds when things don’t go as planned. The result could well be motivation and productivity gains for employees and businesses.

Colorado River project vital to SoCal

Pasadena Star News
By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted: 4/17/2014 

Southern California’s economy - the eighth largest in the world - requires a mix of ingredients among them skilled labor, materials, power, a transportation system, markets and water. Southern California is blessed with natural resources that make it easy to find, make, or bring many of these ingredients here. Water is the notable exception.

As you know, we are experiencing a serious drought and finding enough water is a problem. It isn’t a new problem. In the 1930’s Southern California leaders realized that the lack of water was the Achilles heel of the region’s future. Their solutions had all the makings of a Hollywood fiction film but it is a true story.

It started in the San Gabriel Valley when elected official from 13 cities met in Pasadena to discuss their mutual problem – the region was running out of water. To them, the answer was simple. They needed to find a place with a surplus of water and bring that water to Southern California. 

What they ultimately resolved to do became one of the most complex engineering solutions ever designed. The place they found that had water was in another state separated by 242 miles of mountains, deserts, rocks, and scorching temperatures.

Accepting the challenges, the determined group moved ahead and created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In January 1933 Metropolitan began building the Colorado River Aqueduct. With $220 million of voter approved bond funding - that is right $220 million in the middle of the depression. Everyone knows you need water.

Without the federal government’s decision to tame the flood waters of the Colorado River by building Hoover Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct would not have been possible. Hoover Dam made it possible for Metropolitan to begin building Parker Dam which forms Lake Havasu a Mojave word meaning “blue.” The lake is 45 miles long and stores 600,000 acre feet of water.

The Whitsett Intake Pumping Station, the first of five pumping stations in the project, lifts water from Lake Havasu 291-feet into Gene Wash Reservoir. Two miles west the Gene Pumping Station lifts water 303 feet into Copper Basin. From there gravity takes the water 67 miles west through a network of aqueducts, pipelines and tunnels to Iron Mountain Pumping Station. Here the water is lifted 144 feet before it begins its 41 mile trip to Eagle Mountain.

The two largest lifts are the last the water reaches. Eagle Mountain Pumping Station lifts the water 438 into Cotton tunnel. Sixteen miles west, Julian Hinds Pumping Station lifts the water the last 441 feet.

It’s all downhill from there - 116 miles down hill - towards Lake Mathews in Riverside County.  Water from Lake Matthew goes to the Weymouth Water Treatment Plan in La Verne to serve the SGV and the metropolitan area beyond. Some water is diverted before it reaches the Lake and heads south to San Diego.

The total trip includes 58 miles of pipeline, 63 miles of lined canals, 29 miles of inverted siphons and 92 miles of tunnels. It took 35,000 workers working eight hour shifts, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, and eight years to complete the project. 

Those 13 leaders understood that big problems needed big solutions. That was true then and it is true today.

Transportation upgrades vital to SGV

Pasadena Star News

By: Cynthia Kurtz

Posted: 4/03/2014 

Recently I joined the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce on a trip to Washington, D.C. to talk to legislators about managing California’s drought. We received a good reception. Water is a bi-partisan issue. Inside the “Washington bubble” we found that support for programs that provide water crosses party lines. However, what those programs should contain can take very different paths. 

Last week I wrote about water issues that were prominent on the agenda during a recent trip to Washington D.C. That same D.C. visit included meetings with elected officials about transportation. Representatives from the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership were in good company. We joined an entourage from the Board of Directors and the staffs of the Alameda Corridor East (ACE) and Foothill Gold Line Lightrail Construction Authorities as well as the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. 

It is a particularly important time to be discussing transportation. Federal officials are working on the reauthorization of the current legislation - “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” or MAP-21 - which sets transportation policy for the nation.

The federal government began establishing policies and programs focused on the quality and safety of the nation’s surface transportation system - highways, transit, rail, bikes and pedestrians - in the early 1990's. The last bill was adopted July 6, 2012 and expires on September 30, 2014.

There are two particularly critical issues for the SGV that are dominating this reauthorization discussion. First, the traditional way of paying for transportation, the gas tax, is just not working anymore. Steve Scauzillo's excellent article, which ran in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune newspapers on March 27, 2014, explains why the gas tax is continuing to decline as our dependence on gasoline declines. 

The gas tax can no longer pay for the required repairs of bridges, highways and related transportation infrastructure. The Highway Trust Fund could be bankrupt as soon as July, 2014. Some federal officials are leaning towards user’s fees - you pay based on the miles you travel not your fuel type - as a substitute but such a change comes with its own set of issues that need to be resolved.

Second, how should the federal government expand the polices and funding that have traditionally been focused on how to move people to also include the movement of goods? The movement of goods is especially significant for the SGV. Forty-three percent of the materials that come into the U.S. come through the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles for distribution  to the rest of the country by truck and rail - creating as many as 50 trains a day traveling though the San Gabriel Valley. That number is expected to increase by 160 percent by 2020.

The congestion, accidents and air pollution that already result from traffic idling behind long trains effects our local economy and our quality of life. The projected increases could be devastating if not addressed.

We are fortunate to have the ACE project which has already added safety improvements at 39 local street rail crossings and built seven grade-separated crossings. Seven more intersections are under construction and two additional projects will begin this year. Three grade-crossing are in design. That leaves three more grade crossings that need to be funded. 

As part of the reauthorization, President Obama has asked Congress to include $10 billion for a four-year “Multimodal Freight Investment Program.” His budget statement mentioned the "Alameda Corridor East project, a program of grade separation projects in the San Gabriel Valley of California" as the type of project that would benefit from funding for this new goods movement program. 

This is exactly the program that the SGV needs to manage the impacts from playing an integral role in the national distribution system. It will be good for our economy and our quality of life.