Tacoma 2075: Falling or Flying

Joanne Rixon

kjoannerixon@gmail.com

James ‘Spoke’ Engels

11th and Sprague to 9th and Market

17 September 2075

The poster on the wall beside the elevator brightly and cheerfully informs Spoke that, “Elevators are the MOST efficient mass transit.” He spots a dash of color on the edge where the blue ink doesn’t quite line up with the yellow and grins: all the city’s public info campaigns go through the school print shop where his friend Diego rules the roost. Diego, who thinks Spoke is too novice to accomplish anything real on the City Council.

“Who’s the trainee now, D!” With his hands occupied with his bike, he controls his messenger by clicking his tongue. “Told me I can’t get laws passed but here I see your posters not printed!” He makes sure his tone is teasing, and sends a picture of the poster along with his voice message.

Diego messages him back just as the elevator bings open, just a goofy two second holo of himself rolling his eyes. Spoke laughs, feeling better about his own suspicions that Diego is right.

The City Council likes to get posters done at the high school in the name of keeping work local and interconnected. A big order of posters supports the skills program in the high school, and the flip of that is that half the budget for the posters comes from the education side, so on paper the Build Up to Save Wild Spaces campaign is saving money.

Spoke had been head-empty about budget tricks like that when he was first elected last year, but now. Now he knows things other 19-year-olds don’t. Even though the more he learns the more there is he doesn’t know. He’ll never learn it all. Sometimes he feels like he’s standing on thin air. But right now he’s late, in a hurry, and his bike barely fits into the elevator so he does a dance step to hop the wheel inside before the door closes, and up he flies.

Inside the elevator, the posters make him snicker. “Put your heart into it. Take the stairs!” Bit late to see that message once you’re already on your way up. Competing posters might be an issue for him to bring up on the Conversations Committee–well, maybe not. It might make him sound clever, or it might make him sound whiny. Not sure.

His bias would show, if he did, because you need elevators in tall towers, and he loves tall towers.

The wind in the park at the top of the apartment tower at 11th and Sprague is brisk, cool off the ocean in spite of the hot September sun. It’s drought season, and the clear sky is faintly tinted with distant wildfire smoke, but today the smoke is high and light, and the wind smells like the sea.

Spoke would like to feel the wind whip his hair, but he can’t do that anymore. As Youth Representative on the City Council, he could never get on a bike without his helmet. He has a responsibility to show up right for all the under-25s. Gotta act smart, pay attention to how people see him.

He’s ready, anyway, to build something of himself, to be tall, to prove he can make a difference. That’s why he ran for Youth Rep, and secretly he thinks once he’s too old for the Youth seat he’ll run again for one of the Puyallup Tribal seats. He’s enrolled, his mom’s whole family is Puyallup, he qualifies! Or he could run for the district seat for Stadium, where he lives, or Central, where he works. He’ll be an incumbent, that’s in his favor, but the tribal seats are usually held by elders, so really the Stadium seat is a better option…

The building-top park is packed with pedestrians, so Spoke wheels slowly. His bike, like the elevators, picks up energy from braking, and all the skybridge pathways go from rooftop park to rooftop park downhill from this building to the City Admin building on 9th and Market, so he doesn’t have to pedal much.

The bike path winds between bushes and shrubby trees and past a grassy yard where a small brown dog is running around joyously, refusing to come to the girl calling and running after it. The wind in his face is gorgeous, and the swoop in his stomach when he gets close to the edge of the park–the edge of the tower–makes up for his cautious speed. The skybridges have two sides, one for pedestrians and one for bikes, so once he passes out of the park and into the air, he can let go of the brakes. He glides smoothly past the cyclists pedaling hard uphill in the opposite direction.

Safety nets on the outside of the steel mesh siding crosshatch across his view of the streets below him. It’s safe–no one has ever died on a skybridge since they were built–but it doesn’t feel safe. It feels galactic to ride through the sky, helmet and all.

#

“Now that we’re all here,” Larry says sharply as Spoke slips into the meeting room.

Spoke rolls his eyes. He isn’t late, just exactly perfectly on time.

Larry opens up a display with a map and starts greeting the other people in the room. For this Land Use and Permits committee, the Council Reps are Spoke, Larry, who used to teach plumbing at a trade school, and Jewel, who is Spoke’s mom’s age and has a handful of foster kids. Plus there are like five city specialists to speak on the electric grid, the water grid, construction law, and labor interests, and then also the guy, Micah Powell, from Cucurbita Farms, and his lawyer. Cucurbita is wanting to expand to a new location, a greenhouse space on Center Street, and last month they came in wanting to ‘consult.’ Which Spoke can tell means they want special favors.

Spoke picks at the stickers on his bike helmet to help him stay focused on the numbers. He’s a little irritated with how much Cucurbita is asking for. In the last meeting they had with Powell, he was asking for a new shuttle stop for the workers at the greenhouse, and extra shuttles scheduled for that route. Okay. It makes sense. That’s a benefit that will make life easier for everyone, especially the farmers. But there was a whole entire meeting about it, and now there’s this meeting.

“Here’s the underground view,” Larry says, and flicks his fingers at the projector, tossing a huge bright map up. It shows water and sewer pipes, storm drains, and underground obstacles. “If we look at Junction 133 here, you can see…”

It’s a jumble of noises for Spoke. Like his ears shred the words into sound fragments as they enter his head. It makes him feel stupid and useless. He knows nothing about plumbing. Well, he knows they need to upgrade the original plumbing in the building they want to convert, which is a couple decades old and used to be a warehouse. Renovating their building seems like it should be their problem, but he understands that they need to interface with the city’s water system. He wishes they would just handle it themselves, like most businesses do!

Except he knows that, really, all businesses need permits, and that means messages with someone in the permit office at least. Meetings are necessary, but it’s supposed to be experts on plumbing and laws and stuff who just walk people through filling out paperwork. It’s not a Council job usually. Usually that only happens if the new use of a building would have a huge impact on traffic patterns or something. But the plumbing stuff, well, it’s Larry’s passion.

Larry goes on and on. Powell has so much patience for answering questions. Spoke’s brain is melting.

“Psst.”

He jerks up, glances around, embarrassed. Someone noticed him zoning out.

Jewel catches his eye, gestures with her chin at the blueprints open on the projector. She looks sympathetic, but firm; Spoke feels mom-scolded. He can do better, though. He will do better.

He sets down his bike helmet, picks up the stylus to his tablet, and forces himself to focus on what the Cucurbita Farms guys are actually asking about.

“…concerned about the flat fees for use during our first few months. If we’re not even connected to the municipal lines, then paying usage fees is a bit steep.”

Spoke realizes he doesn’t even know how much the fees cost or what they’re supposed to cover. Are they talking about a connection fee? A stormwater fee?

Larry nods along. “There’s a waiver you can fill out, we do it all the time. I’ll have my secretary send it to you.”

Spoke doodles an upside down face. If Larry says waivers are common, they probably are, but he still hates people who feel like they’re special enough to skip what other people can’t. He also hates feeling lost, and he only gets more irritated as the conversation turns to what is obviously their whole real goal with this meeting: Cucurbita is trying to weasel out of the regulations on maximum hours. They want to pay their farmers the going salary for greenhouse techs, but require them to work seven-hour shifts five times a week. Thirty-five hours a week per farmer means the owners won’t have to hire as many farmers as a greenhouse this big actually needs–and the only reason Spoke can see for this is that the owners want to shave off some money from farmer salaries and keep it.

“Greenhouse techs are high-skilled, specialized positions that require extensive education and training,” Powell says. “We’ve been looking, and there simply aren’t enough trained techs in Tacoma for us to open this new location and stay within the regulations.”

The state’s max hours law has been in place as long as Spoke can remember. Washington gets waves of new residents after every hurricane and drought anywhere else in the world. Olympia was trying to solve a situation where half of people were working themselves to the bone and the other half couldn’t find work at all. A lot of traditional jobs are automated now, and there are only so many hands-on nurses a population needs.

They put in an income tax on bosses and investors, of course, but when that wasn’t enough, the state decided a real long-term solution meant they had to spread the work around more evenly. They defined full-time employment as four six-hour shifts a week, boosted minimum wage, and told bosses to be patriotic about it. Those posters said, “Everyone Deserves the Dignity of Work,” and “I want YOU – to take a day off.” After a few years of adjustments it worked out pretty well for everyone.

“So you’re asking us to submit a petition to the state Labor Board for a waiver,” Jewel clarifies.

The City Council could do it, if there really weren’t enough farmers to run this greenhouse. Spoke can’t contain his skeptical scoff. They have a lot of nerve coming in begging for permission to overwork their employees.

“Spoke? Did you have something for us?” Larry looks at him over his glasses.

“Um.” Spoke thinks fast. “I just think–there are four, five colleges within the city limits that have certification programs for technicians. I personally know people who farm. My friend Roslyn and her husband–” He needs to phrase this so he doesn’t sound so lightweight. “I realize that’s just people I know, but what I’m saying is that it seems like greenhouse techs aren’t that scarce. We haven’t heard from other greenhouses complaining about this issue. How hard have you looked?”

Powell clears his throat. “We looked at the state’s data on job openings and hirings, as outlined in the law, and we found that turnover in greenhouses is comparatively low. These people you’re speaking of, they’re currently working. Not available for us to hire.”

“Okay, but–” He meets Jewel’s eye and she gives him an encouraging auntie smile. “The city as a whole, and the whole region, is better off the more people there are with useful skills, right? So I think we should focus on, um, on training more people as techs so you can hire them.”

Larry clears his throat, but Spoke powers on. “What if–we might support an exemption for a few years if Cucurbita Farms puts those savings back into training programs. You investors could invest in the future success of your farm and the whole city.”

“Oh, well.” Powell’s fingers dance over his notepad, looking for his data. “There already are training programs. The Evergreen State program is supported by the—” he scrolls— “the Salish Food Systems Engineers Association and the Washington State Farming Guild—”

Spoke waves his hand, interrupting. “I happen to also sit on the Education Committee, so I can tell you that right here in the city of Tacoma, forty-five percent of our farmers are trained at Tacoma Community College, and TCC’s many scholarship programs include several fully-funded seats every year that are supported by a coalition of not just nonprofits but also greenhouse investors like yourself.”

Powell looks offended. “We’re more than just investors! We bring years of experience and skill in managing highly technical facilities.”

Spoke can feel his momentum, the downhill rush. “An investor would be running the numbers comparing paying fewer farmers for longer hours versus more farmers for standard hours, figuring you could save some money that way. But you can prove you’re more to the community than that by being part of the education of the youngest generation of farmers.”

Larry puts a bright green diagram on the biggest screen and redirects back to a question about plumbing. Spoke can tell he’s annoyed about losing control of the flow of the meeting, but Spoke doesn’t care! He’s here to be the voice of the youth.

The final decision won’t come for another few weeks–the city tries to make permits easy to get, but the plumbing thing turns out to be horrifyingly complicated. As he gathers his things he sees Larry’s pad with notes on the screen: greenhouse tech scholarships? Compromise: 12 scholarships for next 4 years = 48 new farmers. Edu budget can match funds? talk to Alma

Spoke clenches his fist in victory, feeling like he’s soaring through the sky again. When he glances up, Jewel is shaking her head at him, laughing. She saw his victory dance–but he doesn’t mind. He might be young and silly, but he’s got ideas. He’s going places–wind under his feet, he’s going fast.