Chris Goodman

Hi folks, Chris here. I figure I should do one of these intro things. I'm a prof at NIU, studying special districts and/or state preemption (people typically know me for one or the other). I post a lot about local govts, Illinois, and cycling. Welcome!

Whew, @obsidian.md's new mermaid engine is super quick!

My main non-computer media consumption device is an iPad Mini (from several years ago). My only complaint about it, except for the aging battery, is the jelly scrolling. If Apple managed to fix that, I'm in on the new one, even at the higher price.

I try to get across to my students that empathy is perhaps the key thing they need to work on to do their jobs effectively (provide local public services). So, this maybe explains why their work lives can get a bit messed up.

Oh.

There are a bunch of trails (converted roads or rail) in Chicagoland that look like this, and it's one of my favorite things about living here.

"WIU's total enrollment fell another 16.7 percent, from 5,337 to 4,447. That's 890 fewer students in one year. Undergraduate enrollment dropped 17.4 percent, and graduate enrollment fell 14.9 percent. Its freshman class is now 429 students, down from 923 in fall 2018."

Good. More states should require newly elected official training.

Maybe the excitement around the iPhone duo will mean more interesting iPad layouts. I'd love some of these inner-screen duo layouts on an iPad mini—especially the side buttons.

👇

No one wants to say it, but Tyler is essentially a monopoly. Cook County taxpayers are paying the cost of that.

I sometimes forget (because I have little face-to-face interaction with them) that the public/muni law folks are great.

Weirdly, given what I do, I file surprisingly few open records requests. Today, I filed 186.

Some days I think that I activate my Flightly pro sub just to figure out if I've been on a plane before. I was on my current plane a year ago, ATL -> TPA.

Grateful that TrueNAS doesn't use PHP, especially since I can't physically update due to travel. That said, my NAS has exactly one port open to the web, so…

Back at ORD, hopefully for the last time this semester, but I'm not hopeful.

My flights today and tomorrow (coming home and leaving again) are so close that Flighty thinks that I have a long layover. 😭

Hovering over the post button (really, the `git commit` button) on a blog post that's definitely important but is gonna make a lot of people mad.

My intergovernmental relations colleagues and I have been predicting this for a while—and not just with FEMA. We expect a broad retrenchment in federal support.

My attempt to teach a bunch of local govt management students about (a subset of) all the things that managers need to know about their communities.

Teaching class in a city hall (that's not mine; many thousands of miles away) is neat. We should do this more often.

Ok, I give up on why GitHub Actions keeps failing out by not being able to find R. This is now a tomorrow problem.

`quarto::write_yaml_metadata_block` is a lifesaver for programmatically titling and dating pages from a csv. Perfect for reading in a class schedule and setting page yaml.

Via @datacolada.bsky.social

Read the whole thread but wow

BTW, the structure outlined in here is pretty great for online classes. It's pretty similar to how I layout mine, but I definitely learned a few things!

Ah, misunderstanding federalism strikes again! Most urban places have several overlapping law enforcement agencies, and singling out one to make your argument makes you look stupid.

Reaping [tax escrow lowering the salience of property taxes, allowing for higher rates]: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Sowing [the salience property tax skyrocketing as people pay off their mortgages]: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

FYI: all the National Resource Inventory data is online. A huge change from when it took me 3-4 years to get this.

Sigh.

👀

I'm a little work-traveled out (10 days on the road in September), and I'm traveling again for the next week. But at least I have an exit row to myself on this flight to LAX.

🫡

Very different from 2005, however, is my job for a little while is responding to people asking if this is a phishing attack.

Putting a survey in the field is no less nerve wracking than it was the first time I did it in…checks notes…2005.

One of these years I will not have back-to-back conferences that prevent me from doing Big (or Little) Sugar. I'd like to see what the Bentonville mess is all about.