The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Really Cool Foods up to $3.05 million in performance-based tax credits, up to $165,000 in training grants and will provide Cambridge City officials with a $200,000 grant to assist in off-site infrastructure improvements needed for the project. Wayne County officials offered the company 50 acres of land, $165,000 in grants and a 10-year property tax abatement.

The facility opened in October of 2008 with 250 of the projected 1,000 jobs to start, and over the last few years the company has had numerous challenges reaching initially estimated milestones of investment and jobs created.

Today, the company told workers who showed up for their morning shift that the facility was closing, and in a press release sent after 9 AM, announced the company is shutting down.

A couple of initial thoughts and questions about this unfortunate announcement:

First, if the reports are true, what a crummy way to treat your employees.  Even if there had been layoffs in recent years and even if the economy is bad, short of natural disaster I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to have an entire workforce find out about the end of the company when they show up for work that day.  (Not to mention the timing of right when the weather turns really cold, right before the holidays, etc.) Yes, it’s harder and maybe even risky to share the news in advance, but I think employees deserve the respect of being a part of that conversation well before the rest of the world knows.

Second, I’m sure there might be a lot of finger pointing going on around this announcement, but it really is important to investigate why a company so well received in our area and so generously supported by taxpayer dollars has to close after only three years in operation.  Yes, the economy is bad, but it was bad three years ago too.  Is this a case of bad planning, excessive optimism and hype, poor management, problems with the location…what caused this, and how can we stop it from happening again (especially on the taxpayer dime)?

Governor Mitch Daniels welcomes Really Cool Foods to Indiana

Speaking of the taxpayer-funded incentives, the local Economic Development Corporation likes to talk about the role of clawback terms in their offers to businesses wanting to locate here.  Does such a clause allowing us to recoup these subsidizations exist in this case, and are they “on it” when it comes to being a registered creditor for any sale of assets or bankruptcy proceedings?  What percent of lost revenue and outright grants does Wayne County and the state of Indiana stand to get back?  What will we do differently next time in vetting a potential recipient?

Lastly, Really Cool Foods has often been cited in our region as a success story of the conventional model of economic development, using taxpayer dollars to sell the area to large employers in hopes of landing significant long-term investment in the community.  More and more, the evidence points to this as an outdated and unsustainable model, and when the success stories turn into nightmares, we have to pay attention to that.  I personally hope we turn toward job creation at a more human scale, but whatever we do, we need a model that’s sustainable when you look at the big picture – global economic trends, fuel costs, climate change, etc. – and not just what makes for a good headline over one, three or five years.

My heart goes out to everyone involved with Really Cool Foods – especially the workers and their families but even the people who worked hard to bring them here in the first place and the management who had to wrestle with a foundering enterprise along the way.

But one way to honor their pain and misfortune is to make sure it’s not repeated in the future, and that we find ways to be better stewards of the people and resources in our region.

Earlier today I attended the Indiana University 2012 Business Outlook Panel in its visit to Richmond.  It’s a group that “has presented national, state, and local economic forecasts for the coming year to business, political, and community leaders of Indiana” for the last 38 years.  I attended the same gathering back in 2005 and I have to say that today’s commentary wasn’t much different from what it was six years ago: “things are not great with the economy, but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.”

As I noted in my reflections from the 2005 event, there were a couple of troubling ideas that permeated the remarks, especially from the panelists looking at global and national trends.

The main one that I continue to struggle with is the idea that we just have to wait for the global economy to improve and drive things to get better at the national, state and local level.  In defending the power of globalism, one of the panelists even outright made fun of the idea of building a regionally self-reliant economy.

A more regional approach to economic development – instead of depending on the importation of resources from around the world – is exactly the approach that many others (myself included) are saying is key for communities like Richmond to surviving the increasingly intense effects of rising fuel prices, the falling value of the dollar and the destruction of the natural environment.  While I appreciate that there’s hope in what a thriving global economy might mean for midwestern cities, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ask the people without jobs or credit or homes or disposable income to keep waiting it out, just another year or two.

Despite the inclusion of this troubling premise, the event was still interesting and perspective-bringing; some other tidbits shared by the panel:

• Political dysfunction at the national level is clearly eroding confidence in the ability of policy-makers (Congress and the President) to have any real effect on the economy
• To make sure we can survive through any kind of economic recovery, we have to address the Eurozone economic situation, stop implementing short-term, ineffective fixes domestically and start solving problems for the long term, open and evolve our financial system (“Federal reserve monetary policy currently penalizes people who save instead of rewarding them”), and pay attention to China’s emerging consumer culture.
• Despite the down economy, corporate earnings are up 11% and are expected to improve
• We have to do better at answering the question “what should investors do with their money?”  The market is too volatile, savings accounts don’t offer a return, and if we don’t have some good options, people will seek dangerous ways to get a higher rate of return (e.g. lending money to home-buyers who can’t actually afford it).
• Indiana has been hit harder than most states, using a quarter of a million jobs from 2007 to 2009.  Those jobs mostly aren’t coming back, in part because they’ve been lost from organizations that are more efficient and don’t need them any more.
• Private education and healthcare services are the two industries that are doing well in Indiana, with 36,000 jobs added in the last year.  The government sector has recently done well too as the result of stimulus fund application (there were 450,000 government jobs in Indiana as of May 2010) but that’s expected to level off or decline as those funds dry up.
• Housing sales in Indiana are down 3% and the average price of homes for sale are up 1% – not a good economic trend, and new housing construction has slowed significantly.

I also learned a new economic term that is very timely for my own hiring attempts at Summersault.  One of the event attendees asked the panel how they reconcile the issue of companies and organizations investing in lots of infrastructure and equipment to expand but then not being able to find qualified workers to fill those jobs.  The term for this is “structural unemployment” where there’s a mismatch between demand in the labor market and the skills and locations of the workers seeking employment.  Richmond is experiencing a form of this now, where we (including my company) have positions that are open but our workforce doesn’t always have the training or skills to fill them.  The panel didn’t offer any particular solution to this phenomenon, but the implication was that it is among our most serious challenges to solve.

Thanks to Indiana University East for sponsoring this event and to Reid Hospital for hosting it.  I hope it generates some useful conversation.

For most people, having a job is a means to other ends – making money to help provide for our families, a place where we go to be productive and feel a sense of accomplishment, a foundation on which to build a quality of life.  Most people don’t want to live so they can work – they work so they can live.  And so it’s disconcerting when politicians casually talk about job creation as the end in itself, without any concern for or follow-up on what that means for the people in a given community taking those jobs.

If jobs are created but workers aren’t paid a living wage or are prevented from standing up for their rights, is our work really done?

If jobs are created but hiring processes are discriminatory or working conditions are oppressive, can we say we’ve done a helpful thing for our fellow citizens?

If jobs are created but toxic chemicals are released into the groundwater or treasured natural areas are destroyed in ways that limit the quality of life for future generations, can we really claim success?

If job creation is our only goal, there are a lot of unsustainable and destructive models we can follow to get a whole bunch of people put to work right away.  Relax a few laws, sweep a few health and environmental issues under the rug, put up a “help wanted” sign, and ta-da – you’ve got your jobs numbers to wave around, at least for this news cycle!

But if our primary goal is not just job creation, but helping people make a meaningful and fulfilling living for themselves and their families, then maybe we approach it a different way.  Maybe we can start to think about job creation at a more human scale.

What does job creation at a human scale look like?  I wrote some about this back in 2005, when I described what a driving vision for job creation might prompt us to prioritize. A few more examples:

• Supporting employers that are rooted in their communities and that have a tangible stake in the health and well-being of the people who live and work around them
• Investing in employment opportunities that will pay a living wage, and that value the health and well-being of their employees over the long-term, even when it’s not immediately profitable in the short-term to do so
• Not being afraid to see value in creating one, two, three jobs at a time, instead of always waiting for the “big win” of hundreds or thousands of jobs at once – most “growth” is happening in smaller companies now, not larger ones, and the cumulative effect is just as powerful and important
• Regional economic development efforts that focus on the question “how can we do well with what we already have here?” instead of “how can we import resources and build brand new infrastructure so that we can look and feel exactly like some other place?”

I’m sure there are many other ways to think about job creation at a human scale, and I welcome your contributions.

As you can imagine, this isn’t an idle academic exercise; traditional methods of economic development are failing, local and state governments are on the ropes, and at least in my state of Indiana, personal bankruptcies and debt levels are soaring.  We must talk about job creation, yes, but we must talk about it in a way that fully engages the human scale of what it means for a particular person in a particular community to have a job, and what sacrifices and compromises are made by that community to get there.

As I watched various department heads present their requested budgets for the upcoming year, I observed a few things:

• It’s been taken as a given that there will be no changes in compensation for any city staff.   I’m not sure if this happens because it’s made clear at the outset that requests for compensation increases will be rejected, or because the staff already know that to be true, but it’s got to be a challenging experience for city workers who know that cost of living is increasing and their own pay is staying level.  I know that when the citizens of a community are feeling limited in their own financial situation, it can be an easy target to claim that this person or that person in government is making too much money, and I’m sure in some cases, those claims might be true.  But I would also hope that as a community we can recognize the value of having our city run by professionals who are compensated fairly and equitably for their work.
• Quibbles with spending practices are all about context.  For some departments, a budget increase of  a few hundred dollars for spending on training or supplies raises the eyebrows of Council members – “why do you need that?” – but for others, there are line items in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that are vaguely described and when questioned, the department heads can’t always immediately account for how that money will be spent.  Of course we should hope that for each line item, department heads and city officials guiding this process have broken down the actual need for each dollar, but it’s still strange to see some smaller dollar amounts be questioned when other larger amounts are taken for granted.
• The budget management process is surprisingly agile.  One might expect a city government’s budget to be fairly rigid in its ability to handle unexpected changes or evolving operational needs throughout the course of the year.  But it seems that with the good work of the Controller’s office,  the flexibility of city staff and the care of City Council, Richmond is able to accomodate those kinds of changes without too much strain.  It also makes me appreciate the procedural importance of having Council meet with a quorum on a regular basis, always ready to consider any budget transfers or changes that are pressing.

So far there seem to be three areas of some controversy in the proposed 2012 budget, and I’ll address my views on those here:

1) Reducing benefits for spouses of city employees who have coverage options elsewhere:

In the headlines, this is being referred to as a “spousal carve-out,” which is kind of a creepy phrase to use when referring to anything to do with medical anything.  The proposal on the table is to have the city stop paying for benefits for spouses and dependents of city employees who have the option to receive health insurance through their own employer.  City expenses for spousal insurance claims have ranged between $750K and $1.2 million in recent years, although it’s not immediately clear how much of that is for spouses who would be compelled to get insurance elsewhere under the proposal.

As many folks have noted, ending premium payments for spouses is something most organizations – business and government alike – have done a long time ago.  That doesn’t soften the emotional and financial blow that some affected families would feel as a result of this change – it’s essentially a reduction in compensation for the employee – but the City is also taking an approach that at least ensures no one need find themselves left without health insurance.

I also have to agree with those who note that this challenge is not unique to Richmond – because of the way the U.S. handles health care and insurance in general, every city and business is struggling with the dynamics of how to provide reasonable and humane access to health insurance while still maintaining costs.  In commenting on Richmond’s situation, blogger Doug Masson says:

Among other things, we need to disassociate health care from employment. It’s bad for employers and, I think, it’s bad for employees. It’s probably bad for the economy as well if, for example, employees that could better use their skills elsewhere or go out on their own as entrepreneurs are discouraged from doing so because they are chained to health care benefits their employers increasingly begrudge them.

I agree that in the long run, having one’s ability to pay for needed medical treatment tied to changing economic conditions and the whims of one’s employer is a Bad Idea.  As a small business owner myself, I’m painfully aware that decisions we make about whether an employee is part-time or full-time has a direct impact on whether or not they’re eligible for our otherwise generous health insurance benefits.  This is not an ideal coupling at all.

For Richmond, I think a change to the health insurance plan is inevitable, and we can only hope that the process is undertaken with sensitivity and care to those who will be affected by it.  As an employer, the city has a responsibility to the well-being of its employees, and at some level that includes the well-being of their families.  But given the financial constraints of the situation, I think most people would say that this is an understandable change to pursue, and one that may keep other more painful cuts from happening for now.

2) Expanding Fire Department operations to include EMS Service:

The details of this proposal are still being straightened out, but the gist of it is that the Richmond Fire Department is planning to perform additional EMS services (patient transport, responding to emergency medical situations, etc.), and that it needs to adjust its budget to accomodate the staffing, supply and equipment changes that go with that.  Council member are questioning whether the Department has fully fleshed out plans for how revenue generated by the additional services will cover the added expenses.

At some level, this seems to come down to the Council’s willingness to approve the taking of a measured risk on the part of City staff.  No one can guarantee that the additional EMS services will generate the needed revenue and be financial sustainable.  But if Department Chief Mike Crawley – who surely knows more about the rhythms and opportunities related to local fire department operations than anyone on Council – says that it’s an opportunity worth pursuing, I hope that Council takes that seriously.

Unfortunately, there’s at least a recent history of Council not fully engaging in dialog with City staff when it comes to disagreements about the budget, so this is an opportunity to do things differently.  Certainly the burden is on Chief Crawley to continue to make a compelling and well-reasoned case for taking on the new EMS services, but it’s Council’s responsibility to hear that out fully, and not make the proposal a target for attack just because it’s something different.

3) The Human Rights Commission budget wasn’t discussed or presented at all:

Despite having its own section in the printed draft budget being presented to Council, and despite the significant interest shown in the issue by the community last year when the Commission’s $74K budget was de-funded in a controversial 5-4 vote, there was no spot on the agenda of the proceedings for anyone from the Commission’s staff (now practically working as volunteers) to present or comment on their department’s operations, even if those operations are still being conducted with a budget of $0.

I’m not sure at what level or by whom that procedural decision was made, but it seems an unfortunate glossing over of an important piece of unfinished business from last year.  Whatever someone’s opinion of the value and function of the HRC, it’s still a city department that deserves to have a place in the budgeting process.

* * *

Those are some of my thoughts on what is surely an evolving situation with the 2012 City Budget.  I’m continuing to go through the draft budget myself and learn more about the details of city finances.  I welcome feedback and comments from others in the community about these issues, and I hope that my fellow candidates for Council will publicly share their views as well, so that we can continue this conversation leading up to the election, and beyond.

Full disclosure: as noted in my disclosures page, the City of Richmond sometimes uses my company Summersault as a vendor, and so deliberations about fund allocation have a potential impact on my own business’s income.

But we can’t let the shared pastime of grumbling about the machinations of politics and the wearing complexity of government trick us into forgetting that, right now, for the future of our city, this is the election that matters.

Why?

As I campaigned during the primary season and met with concerned voters, business owners and community leaders, and as I’ve observed the economic, social and cultural forces at work in our area, I’ve come to see that the next four years are going to be a critical time in the history of Richmond, Indiana:

• We’re having basic conversations now about “what are the essential functions of a city government?” that will affect policy, legislation and quality of life for decades to come.  The decisions we make now about what government should do for us, and what it shouldn’t do, will determine the path that Richmond takes when it comes to economic development, upkeep of infrastructure, and caring for the needs of all citizens who live and work here.  And when we decide now that something is or isn’t a part of what we want the City of Richmond to do for us, it will be much more difficult to change that decision later.
• Richmond faces unprecedented challenges in unprecedented economic times.  Things we’ve taken for granted in the past about the way job creation, governance, energy costs and community building (and how you fund those) are changing right under our feet, and the way we react to those changes could make all the difference between barely surviving and thriving as a city.
• Citizens are looking for new models of leadership and collaboration at all levels of government.   The frustration with national, state and sometimes even local leaders is palpable – voters are tired of broken promises, wasteful spending, political bickering and unwieldy government agencies that, in the end, don’t work for the people.  The people we elect to serve in City government now will determine whether Richmond sets its own course and actually works to serve the people who live here, or whether we slip back into business as usual.

Of course, these factors are just the beginning.  Every time the Mayor’s office decides how to spend the time and resources of City employees, every time the City Council meets to discuss a proposed tax abatement or new ordinance, or to set the budget for the coming year, we will be making decisions that ripple throughout the community and into its future.  Richmond is not a fragile town, but it is a place that needs those ripples to be of energy, creativity, and new perspective, not “wait and see” or “that’s not politically expedient” or “here’s how we’ve always done it, there is no alternative.”

I’m running for City Council because I think I can be a force for good at a critical juncture in the history of a community I love and call home.

I’m running because I can see no greater calling at this point in my life than to help make Richmond a stronger, more vibrant place to live.

I’m running as one way to celebrate the fact that, at least for now, the voters of Richmond still have the power to set the course for our future, and put into office officials who will honor the hope and trust placed in them.

But more importantly, the conversation about raising the debt ceiling is the wrong conversation to be having.

I’d like to present those observations, but instead of referring to “the U.S. Government” every time, I’ll just refer to this guy “Sam.”

Please tell me if I’m wrong or over-simplifying:

• Sam consistently spends more money than he makes. This means that Sam will always be short on cash, and that his lifestyle is by definition unsustainable.
• In order to keep living the life he wants to live, Sam makes up for being short on cash by borrowing money from his neighbors.  Sam has found a lot of different neighbors who are willing to loan him money, and he’s always reassuring them that he’s good for it.
• At some point, even Sam recognized that he couldn’t just borrow money without limits, so he set up a maximum amount of money he wanted to owe to his neighbors at any given time.  He called it his “debt ceiling.”
• But over time, as Sam got even more used to his lifestyle and didn’t bother to fix his inherently unsustainable cash flow, he realized he’d set the debt ceiling too low. So he raised it!  After all, it’s just his own self-imposed limit, so he can tweak it a little here and there and then lower it again later.  It’s similar to Sam’s friend who has a problem with alcohol abuse but always thinks he can handle one more drink when out at the bars.  Sam has raised his debt ceiling 10 times already.
• Sam’s friends (some of them experts in financial management) have tried to convince him to stop spending more than he makes so that he doesn’t have to keep borrowing money and raising his debt ceiling.  But this way of life is so enjoyable for Sam (at least when he’s not worrying about the neighbors he owes), he’s forgotten any other way to live.  Sometimes Sam gets angry when his friends and neighbors won’t leave him alone about his spending habits.  A few times he’s used physical violence (or the threat of it) to get some of his lending neighbors off his back for a bit.  Some people say they’ve seen Sam outright stealing from others to pay his bills.

If Sam were a person, we’d know that he is on his way to some pretty serious lows in life.

Bankruptcy, losing family, friends and neighbors, health issues, homelessness and possibly violence or early death.  Maybe someone would stage an intervention, maybe he’d get help after a close call, but maybe not.

But we know that Sam’s financial habits don’t work, aren’t sustainable, and aren’t to be emulated.  Sometimes, we know that it’s only by hitting bottom and facing these hard realities head on that someone with a problem like Sam’s can actually begin to rehabilitate himself.

It seems unfortunate, then, are we willing to allow our representatives in Congress to distract us with a conversation about raising the debt ceiling AGAIN because “there is no alternative,” knowing full well that it just enables the government to defer confrontation of its unsustainable way of operating.  All of the back and forth about who wants to cut what spending, who will get taxed how much, etc. is political theater, hand-waving and misdirection so that we don’t pay too much attention to the underlying problems.

Would a good and helpful friend of Sam’s indulge him in a long conversation about whether to raise his limit on borrowing today or next week, or whether he should continue his unsustainable spending on this restaurant or that piece of clothing?  When Sam says, “C’mon dude, get off my back, I’m just trying to have some fun here,” would we lay off?  No, a good and helpful friend would shake him by the shoulders and say (or scream) “Sam, you’ve got to find a new way to exist that doesn’t require you to perpetually borrow money from your neighbors.“

Unfortunately, as U.S. taxpayers, we’re all affected by and responsible for Sam’s actions.  He’s family, and the harm he does to himself is harm he does to us.  Are we going to let Sam go on this way, or are we going to intervene and make Sam try something different?

(Thanks to Planet Money for this explanation of the debt ceiling that inspired this post.)

The article does a good job of summarizing the challenges of blight as amplified by rough economic times: property owners who might already struggle with maintenance and upkeep are even more at risk of letting a given structure or piece of land fall into disrepair when finances get tight and layoffs and foreclosures are looming.  With such a high percentage of Richmond’s residences being rentals, there’s possibility for further disconnect between the state of the property and the owner’s involvement in it.

My impression from the article and from the conversations I’ve had with city leaders is that Richmond is generally doing what it can to respond to the impact of decaying properties.  But it can be discouraging to know that the process of getting a blighted property owner’s attention is often drawn out over a long time and a lot of paperwork, not to mention expenditure of taxpayer dollars: wait for the property to be reported as blighted, flag it, mow it or repair it and bill the property owner, wait for the bill to go unpaid, place a lein on the property, and THEN there MIGHT be a financial incentive for some action.  This routine may bear the customary government trademarks of caution and glacial due process, but it doesn’t recognize very well the shorter-term impacts (financial and social) of a property falling into disrepair, and the ripple effect it can have on other areas nearby.

That particular concern is probably better taken up by neighborhoods and communities of neighbors than by municipal government, though.  When a given area has a strong sense of community or neighborhood identity, perhaps through the work of an active neighborhood association, it’s harder for any one property or resident to get left behind.  When people know their neighbors and understand what personal and financial constraints are at work, there may be more opportunities to lend a hand and stop a bad situation from getting worse in a way that more deeply impacts the whole neighborhood.  When we have vibrant and accessible public spaces, including a healthy downtown and surrounding arts and cultural districts, we have more opportunities to pool together our shared investment in the health of the city.

Of course, blight is a symptom of some other troubling trends as much as it is a cause.  Richmond can check off many of Wikipedia’s list of sources of urban decay:

It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape…Urban decay has no single cause; it results from combinations of inter-related socio-economic conditions—including the city’s urban planning decisions, the poverty of the local populace, the construction of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass the area, depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood redlining, and xenophobic immigration restrictions.

As much as we should be working to address blight in Richmond, we need to also develop a holistic view of these underlying causes, and develop a long-term approach that not only focuses on revitalizing Richmond’s residential areas, but also on building a vibrant and self-reliant city as a whole.

The Center City Development Corporation has asked that $300,000 of the $5 million in funds available through Richmond’s Certified Technology Park account be used to support renewed operations of the organization and its Uptown Innovation Center facility.  The Palladium-Item covered the request today in a news article and related editorial, the latter of which painted the request as just another ask for taxpayer funded handouts to support private business efforts and essentially encourages a “no” vote by the Redevelopment Commission, the entity that approves the funding request.

It’s important to note here that the $5 million in the CTP account has been sitting around for close to eight years, and that the City is coming up on its third renewal of its CTP designation without any significant use of those funds.  Those I’ve talked to about it have expressed some concern that if the State of Indiana, which administers the CTP program, sees this under-usage of those funds, there could be an understandable attempt to move them back under state control.  So an argument can be made for spending at least some of the funds sooner rather than later to demonstrate that we’re a town with a plan.

I should also note that I’ve been a part of some conversations about how to use these funds, and I have even put my own proposals on the table for what might make a good partial use of them (that’s a blog post for another time).  I started and have managed a high-tech business in Richmond since 1997, and we’ve created a number of technology jobs here, so I definitely have something to say about what might further encourage tech businesses to locate/grow in this city.  I’ve shared some of those thoughts in this space, e.g. Growing a Geek Culture in Richmond.

Is allocating $300K to Center City the best and highest use of the funds?

Maybe, maybe not.  I haven’t seen the details of the request.  I know that Beth Fields and Jason Whitney, co-Executive Directors of the organization, and board chair Rhett Baumgartner are three people who are deeply, personally invested in the health and well-being of this community, and that they wouldn’t attach their names to this request if they didn’t believe it to be a viable, impactful way to use the money.

The money can’t be used for just anything, as the CTP program requires that it go to support “the attraction and growth of high-technology business in Indiana and promote technology transfer opportunities.”   Questions in the paper about the necessity of proposed fund usage will surely be answered by the detailed organizational budget already submitted to the Redevelopment Commission.

As already noted, in the absence of other formal requests to allocate the funds to a given project, this is a relatively small slice of that pie that could be used to move something forward with long-term implications.  We say as a community that we want new and exciting opportunities to be taken on that spark growth and encourage further investment in the community.  We have to embrace the fact that these efforts require non-trivial investment and risk to get going, and the CTP designation was created for just that purpose – investing in new and exciting things that will lead to job creation and community building.

As a small business owner eagerly trying to find qualified technology workers to add to our staff, and as someone who has invested heavily in the success of the downtown business district, it’s encouraging to think of a renewed, well-funded Center City organization focused on exactly those things.  There’s a pool of money that’s been made available for just this purpose and that might go away if unused, and now someone is saying they’re willing to put it to good use.

As a community, we (as represented by the Redevelopment Commission) should ask good questions of the proposal and probe the details, but we should be very careful about saying “no” to people who are investing in moving the community forward.

Updated at 2:53 PM to include link to Pal-Item editorial, now available online.

The article contains some interviews with downtown business owners, some perspective on the history of the Main Street organization there, and some talk of renewed activity from merchants and business owners (myself among them) in helping make the area thrive.  But there’s something missing from the picture the article paints.

One key angle that the article glosses over is the role that the rest of the community plays in creating and maintaining a thriving downtown.  While there’s certainly some role for business owners and merchants to play in creating a thriving downtown, it’s not entirely their burden to bear.  Retail districts live and die by the shopping choices of their customers, and so it seems important to recognize in any conversation about the health of a downtown that at least some of it is dictated by the “consumer culture” of the surrounding community.

It would be interesting to interview some “regular citizens” and ask them where they tend to shop, and how they perceive the downtown area.  “Given the choice between going downtown to support a business there and going to the mall or a big box store, how do you decide?”  Are they willing to pay a little more for products and services knowing those dollars stay in the community longer (thus supporting the long-term health of the area), or will they always prioritize convenience and the lowest available price?

It also seems worth looking at the environment of governmental and political support surrounding downtown.  Is it possible that city, county and state laws might be negatively impacting the ability of downtown business to thrive?  Is it possible that our approach to zoning, transportation, taxpayer-funded economic development and taxation are favoring non-local chain businesses over those who would choose to start and grow a small business in the place they live?  Is it possible that politics and personalities are at times standing in the way of a thriving central business district instead of nurturing it?

I’ve blogged about these ideas before:

The value we get from a strong and diverse local business community is hard to see when compared as a “bottom line deal” against the attractions of the “big box” stores. And I’m not suggesting that these larger retailers don’t have a place in a strong local economy. But my hope is that we’ll see the Target store closing as yet another indicator of an important trend. By putting so many of our eggs in baskets that lack the personal ties and community investments that our local businesses are built around, we set ourselves up for even greater disappointments and more noticeable disappearance of the business ethic, entrepreneurship, and innovative spirit around which Richmond has historically been built.

There’s no question that the economic health of our downtown is based on complex systems with lots of variables.  The business owners and downtown merchants are mostly already doing their part – they’re running their businesses and they’re engaged in the life of the business district and the wider community.  As a small business owner myself, I know that there’s probably not a whole lot of time left over for those hard-working folks to ALSO do the marketing, advocacy, legislative and policy work needed to help downtown compete against strip malls and big box stores.

So what role does the rest of the Richmond community have in creating a thriving main street area?  How do your choices make a difference in the health of downtown?

Lawmakers and executive branch leaders across the political spectrum are acutely aware that they’ll never be criticized for “supporting the troops” that serve in these operations.  In his recent speech updating the world on the status of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he also acknowledged the tenuous state of the economy, President Obama said that, “as long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and we will do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us.”  The finest in the world.  Whatever it takes.  These phrases mean something coming from the President of the United States.

Locally in my community, as our City Council debates questions of funding various departments and programs, shrewd Council members have learned that they can shore up support for cutting the funding of any given budget line item by raising the specter of having to cut back on law enforcement or fire-fighting personnel.  In a newspaper article just today, a Council member pits public safety against funding the local Human Rights Commission, because he knows public safety will always win: “When you are forced to get rid of police officers and firefighters, I’m sure human rights is going to come up for discussion again.”

Is that what it’s come to?  We will be asked to endure any cost, any sacrifice as long as we don’t have to cut back our spending on police, fire, and military?  Why is that?

Essential Services

These public safety jobs have long been described as “essential services,” things that you just don’t give up on unless you’re abandoning your very participation in civilized society.  We use tax dollars to train emergency/public safety/military personnel and equip them with expensive, high-tech gear that (in our idealized narrative, anyway) allows them to solve problems in ways no ordinary citizen can:

• If someone is threatening to harm our country, these people of courage and might can use unparalleled military force to stop them!
• If a fire is threatening to harm our household, these people of courage and might can use special fire-fighting equipment and training to put the fire out!
• If someone is threatening to harm us personally, these people of courage and might can use the threat of force – or actual force – to stop that person in their tracks!

Members of the military, fire-fighters, police officers, EMTs – these aren’t just people doing an everyday job; they’re out there saving lives.  Whether we think we’ve ever directly benefited from their work or not, they become our protectors, our heroes, our saviors.  They are something reliable, essential, rock-solid in a world where so much can change so fast.

So raising the question of reducing funding for these heroes is of course unquestionable.  How dare we even consider what it would mean to ask someone who has put their life on the line to look for work elsewhere?  Where is our loyalty to the troops?  Where is our appreciation for their sacrifice?

Just Another Job?

While it would be a stretch for anyone to say that these roles in our society are “just another job,” we do need to remind ourselves that those who find themselves in the military, in a police force, in a firefighting department have almost always chosen to be there voluntarily.  They are made well aware of the risks involved, and they are paid for their time and for putting themselves in harm’s way.  This doesn’t make their heroic actions any less heroic, but it does mean that our contract with them has some limitations.

When we as taxpayers choose to pay people to protect us, we are not also committing to their life-long, tenured employment.  We are not committing to never question the value or utility of a given public safety program weighed against other community needs, or to never ask what a reduction in forces might look like.  We are not blindly saying that we’ll always do whatever it takes to keep those public servants employed, no matter what.

After all, what kind of bleak existence would we have if we always gave absolute priority to defense spending and police/fire budgets?  When we’ve whittled away our budgets for maintaining a given quality of life, when we’ve closed all of our parks and our public spaces, when we’ve traded local control of services and programs that ensure our rights are protected and our voices are heard for the empty assurances of monolithic state and federal governments, when we’ve accepted that you don’t have to be well-informed about the news of the day or about how the world works as long as you can be entertaining, when we’ve given up on providing educational settings that enrich lives instead of preparing us to pass tests, when we’ve destroyed the natural landscapes of the Earth so that we can buy a Big Mac more conveniently…will it really be enough to know that there are police and firefighters and military forces patrolling our streets, watching out for our safety?

Is that really the best future we can imagine?

Or,

Another Way

Can we start to turn this conversation around?

Can we start to ask questions about how the money we spend on the military and public safety services fits in to our priorities as communities?

Can we accept that discussions about changing how we use our community resources does not equate to bashing the service or worthiness of the heroes who have put their lives on the line?  That in fact, we best honor those who serve our community by being good stewards of the community’s limited tax dollars?

Can we put aside the absolutes and the unquestionable statements of “whatever it takes” and instead allow ourselves to sit with complex needs in a complex world?

Can we ask ourselves what we might spend money on if we weren’t driven by fear – fear of not being re-elected, fear of being accountable to our mistakes, fear of that which we cannot control or that which is not familiar?

Several years back, at a town hall meeting here in Richmond, I watched Congressman Mike Pence use this hero worship against one of the heroes themselves.  A police officer from the Richmond Police Department stood up and asked a question about Pence’s views on, I believe, healthcare benefit funding for police officers.  The question was one that challenged Pence and demanded more than a sound bite answer.  So what did Pence do?  “Ladies and gentleman, first of all, let’s just all give this officer a round of applause for the service and sacrifice that he and his fellow officers make every day.”  The room erupted in sustained applause, and by the time it died down and everyone was sitting again, Pence could have answered any question he wanted any way he wanted – we’d all forgotten about the officer’s good, hard question.

Mr. Pence knew what he was doing, and indeed, he proceeded to not really answer the question, the officer unable to push him further without seeming ungrateful for the applause.  It was a scary moment, one when the power of this particular form of hero worship was hit home for me.

Up to us

I appreciate what the police officers in my community do for me.  I’m glad to know that I can call 911 and expect a fast response if I need a fire put out.  I’m immensely grateful and touched that there are those who believe so strongly in their job that they’re willing to risk their lives as a part of it.

So let’s not take that for granted.  Let’s not let politicians and uninformed fear-mongers create a false dichotomy when it comes to funding the work of the heroes in our community while also maintaining a reasonable quality of life that includes protection of civil rights.  Let’s honor the service of those involved in public safety by being willing to truly understand whether their sacrifice and risk is actually necessary in the context of the future we really want to create for ourselves.