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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.

First, the tax is being presented by the Commissioners as a suddenly urgent need for the area, “act before it’s too late,” they say.  I find this characterization troubling given that one of the fundamental truths of life is that roads will deteriorate over time and will require money be spent on them if we want to keep them fixed up.  If our ability to maintain infrastructure comes down to whether or not we can urgently get the public to approve additional taxation once in a while, then we’re doing it wrong. Where was the long-term planning and well-thought-out discussion that would give the community time to react to this significant problem in our county and explore alternatives?

Second, citizens want to believe that public officials are acting with integrity and consistency when it comes to being good stewards of existing tax dollars.  It’s truly cringe-worthy that the County Commissioner who has advanced the proposal for this tax, Ken Paust, stated in no uncertain terms during his campaign for election that he would not advocate for any new taxes if elected.  From his recent interview in the Palladium-Item:

“That was the whole platform for my campaign (last year) — no more taxes,” Paust said.

We know, we know – circumstances change, the economy didn’t recover as fast as we thought it would, yada yada – but…REALLY? I know Ken Paust means well, but couldn’t you find someone else to be the spokesperson for this cause? From a taxpayer and voter perspective, this reversal on Paust’s part just reinforces the all-too-prevalent idea that political candidates can’t be trusted in their commitments and that public officials are out of touch with what their citizens want.

Third, the wheel tax is regressive in that it would create the most hardship (as a percentage of income) for lower-income citizens who likely do the least damage to County roads and be the least inconvenient (as a percentage of income) for individuals and businesses who operate vehicles that do the most damage to those roads (e.g. large trucks, buses, etc).  In this economy, why would anyone propose a tax that further shifts the common financial burdens of maintaining our infrastructure on to those who can least afford it? And that doesn’t even begin to address issues like the fact that someone operating a bus (for example) could be contributing to reducing the number of cars on the road, a behavior that should be rewarded instead of taxed additionally.

The introduction of a proposal for a new tax often comes with the statement (as it does in this case), “if we don’t do this now, we’ll be paying even more later.”  In some cases, that might be true, but the burden of proof should be extraordinarily high to show that it is.  There are all sorts of behaviors we engage in (that don’t even involve outright taxation) that defer the negative consequences of a failure to act and shift the burden onto future generations.  Why is this lack of long-term planning the most pressing to fix?

When we fail to plan the layout of our communities in ways that are bike- and pedestrian-friendly and instead encourage everyone to drive around one person to a car whenever they want to, we tax our citizens of tomorrow with rising road maintenance and healthcare costs.  When we base financial planning on unfounded optimism about the ability of “the market” or “the global economy” to do this or that in a given year, we tax our citizens who depend on a budgeting process that’s grounded in reality.  When as a culture we tell ourselves that we should be able to have all modern conveniences at steadily lowering costs with higher quality and we deserve it RIGHT NOW no matter the environmental or social impact, we tax future generations who will be forced to wake up from that dream more suddenly and inconveniently than we can imagine.

Is there any reason to believe that imposing a wheel tax on the citizens of Wayne County is the best, most well-thought-out solution for the long-term health of transportation in the area?  Or is it just a short-term fix that covers over poor planning and unrealistic fiscal policy?

Most importantly, can we trust our elected officials to slow down the artificial momentum for this tax proposal, and really listen to how this community answers those questions?

On one hand, you’ve got the City painting a picture of being left out of the key parts of the relationship the EDC has with its Richmond constituents, having to fork over $730,000 without appropriate representation.

You’ve got a County official noting that the City is as well represented on the EDC board as the County or other entities, and that things are working just fine as they are, while the Chamber president notes that there may be a conversation to be had, but that the current actions being taken are too poorly timed.

What’s going on here?  Everyone seems to be making reasonable statements on the matter that represents the point of view of the entities they serve, but it sounds like they’re having the conversation with each other for the first time on the pages of the newspaper. ARGH!

If indeed the “conversation” was triggered by a City Council resolution refusing to designate its usual fund contribution to the EDC budget, then that seems like a really poor way to start things off. It sets up a battle full of pressure points and high-stakes leveraging, and needlessly sensationalizes the issue. Councilman Phil Quinn noted that they’re trying to “send a statement” – why do that with a public vote, when you could do it in a meeting, e-mail message or even postal mail? I suspect we’d be a lot farther along if there’d been in-person meetings between City, County, and Chamber officials trying to hash this out before going public with it, and while I don’t know firsthand that there wasn’t one, I suspect that they skipped that part.

By the same token, County and Chamber officials should not have responded in kind for a news story, using the media for power plays. When you say things like “it doesn’t make any sense to me,” or “this is extremely untimely” for the press, it’s a kind of public disapproval and shaming, even paternalistic finger-wagging, that can only serve to inflame whatever tensions might already exist. It also makes us look like we’re a community in chaos, which is exactly what economic development efforts don’t need. Instead, officials should have either refrained from commenting in any detail while noting that conversations are ongoing, or at least framed their concerns more positively – “We’re concerned about the timing and the reasoning here, but we’re ready to work with each other to understand everyone’s needs and broker a solution that works best for our citizens.” Would that have been so hard?

Yes, I’m basing all of this unsolicited advice on a single Pal-Item news story, and there may be other pieces of the puzzle not yet reported, but I think the theme here is not a new one for our community.

I’ve discussed the kinds of power struggles that are already built into the structure of our community building organizations, and when you throw in poor (or total lack of) communication on top of that, things are only going to get worse. I think it’s fine for community leaders to act shrewdly in the fulfillment of their vision for a better Richmond and Wayne County, but this cannot involve closing the door to dialog with other stakeholders – early and often.  Too frequently, we hear about one organization or government entity “scratching its head” at the actions of another, and then we throw up our hands and wonder why there’s little public confidence in our prospects for economic revitalization. Let’s connect some dots here, folks.

Mayor Sally Hutton is quoted as saying that “The bottom line is we want to work together…We will work something out.” Let’s hope that, for everyone involved, there’s not only an intention to work together but some actual mechanisms by which that might happen. These community leaders need to get in a room together TODAY, and they shouldn’t leave until they’ve got a joint media statement prepared that lays out a much more positive path forward. Richmond and Wayne County deserve at least that level of collaboration.

Update on 1/6/09: in an article today, the Pal-Item notes that the City Council has approved their contribution to the EDC’s budget, contingent upon a future appointment to the board.  This comes in the form of a 1-year agreement instead of the usual 4-year term.  According to the article, “No time frame was set for the first meeting between representatives of the city and county.”  This also comes on the same day as an announcement about the new EDC President.

But one only has to look at the long list of community building organizations and entities in Richmond – and the overlap, duplication, and even competition that some of them represent for each other – to wonder if maybe this isn’t an area where we’re actually holding ourselves back instead of moving ourselves forward.

Consider, in no particular order:

• City of Richmond (including the Mayor’s office, City Council, various commissions and committees)
• Wayne County Government (commissioners, council, and related entities)
• Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce
• Main Street Richmond Wayne County
• Richmond/Wayne County Convention and Tourism Bureau
• The Economic Development Corporation
• The Richmond Depot District
• Richmond Art Works
• Wayne County Vision
• Neighborhood Services Clearinghouse
• Institute for Creative Leadership
• Preserve Richmond
• Wayne County Foundation
• WayNet.org
• United Way of Whitewater Valley

All of these organizations, while having some significantly different areas of focus and programming, are essentially working on the same core issue: how to make Richmond and Wayne County a better place to live, work and play.

They approach that question differently, for sure. Some are funded by taxpayer dollars while others seek membership fees and grants. Some have brick and mortar operations with paid staff while others are made up of a few key people who meet when and where they can. But all of them are trying to build up our community.

I wonder, then, if Richmond and Wayne County is benefiting from the work of these organizations as much as it could or should. If you add up all of the budgets and person-hours and fundraising galas and community events and networking gatherings and the like, are we really seeing the results that we should if those same resources were being put to work by a smaller number of organizations, or even one organization? Or is there some fragmentation, or even severe limitation, that comes from having so many proverbial cooks in the proverbial kitchen?

And the above list is just the organizations working on community building at a fairly broad level – if you start to look at organizations working on specific issues like environmental awareness and sustainability, education, youth programs, housing, or providing social services to those in need, you can make whole separate lists with all new kinds of overlap and duplication of efforts, all right here in one little city that doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant!

Sometimes the overlap is just logistical or administrative: everyone having their own calendar of events, for example, that the average citizen doesn’t have a hope of knowing to check when they want to find out what’s happening in town. Sometimes the duplication or perception of duplication is more substantial: every year about this time, small businesses start getting bombarded with letters asking for charitable gifts or membership renewals for the coming year, and they have to decide how best to support their community, hoping their dollars go as far as possible. In turn, the soliciting organizations have to spend their time and resources reiterating the value they bring to the area, just to make sure they aren’t lost in the noise.

This doesn’t seem like the most effective way to operate.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that the work of any one of these organizations isn’t needed or valuable, or that their mission and approach aren’t sound. In fact, I support many of them with my time and dollars, and have been fortunate to call many of their leaders and advisers friends over the years. Some of them do collaborate and enjoy strong partnerships, and many of them can point to significant and lasting successes they’ve had here. Diversity of approach and funding, sometimes with a little duplication, can be essential.

But I also can’t help but indulge in some thought exercises:

What if some of these organizations were better at communicating openly and honestly with each other not only about shared values and goals, but about their concerns, egos and territorial sensitivities?

What if some of these organizations could truly collaborate, share resources, or even merge programs?

What if we didn’t take the impact and relevance of some of these organizations for granted, grilling some on why they’re still a good value, and praising others more for the under-appreciated work they do?

What if we decided that our community needed a new approach?

We are complex enough beings that we can simultaneously understand how our community is hurting in a lot of ways, and also how good we have it and much possibility there is for the future.

Old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?“

New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?“

Let’s make sure our community building efforts are actually working to make things the way we want them to be.

1. The Results Are In: Four more years for Sally Hutton and Karen Chasteen, a bit of a shakeup on the City’s Common Council, and a 27% voter turnout – bleh, but not so bleh as last time.
2. Voting, a blog entry: Scenes and thoughts from one voter’s experience
3. Pal-Item endorses Hutton, Thalls erases blog entries: most voters were probably thinking of the critical need to observe good blogging etiquette when they cast their vote today…
4. Meet the new Mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard: Greg Ballard, the Republican who pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in Indiana history, will be the next mayor of Indianapolis.
5. Antioch College will stay open: a different kind of recent vote that affects the region. Of course, if you’re the Weekly Standard, you might be a little disappointed after predicting Death by Political Correctness.

How was your Election Day?

• Only 4,378 people voted. That’s 16% of our registered voter population, 27,290, which is also woefully small. These numbers are pathetic.
• Republican mayoral candidates: of the 2,645 people who voted, almost 80% of them picked Rick Thalls over Ron Chappell and Danny Black. Possible conclusions to be drawn…Rick Thalls had the leverage of a career in the school system and all of the lives he’s touched as a part of that? Danny Black and Ron Chappell needed to do a lot more campaigning? Mr. Black didn’t have enough name recognition and people remembered Mr. Chappell’s lack of integrity around the City’s non-discrimination policy discussion? Hmmm. Quite a landslide, anyway, and some good momentum for Mr. Thalls as he faces the incumbent in the fall.
• Democratic mayoral candidates: Mayor Sally Hutton garners more than 82% of the vote over Mark Cordell. Cordell didn’t have a very widely distributed image or platform, and so the incumbent advantage easily wins out. Still, with only 1,651 voting, it’s not exactly an overflowing of political capital for the Mayor, and falls short of her fall opponent’s apparent levels of support. She’ll need to work hard between now and then to win.
• Republican candidates for city council district 2: Sharon Sheets beat Joshua Jones by 8 votes, with only a total of 84 votes. With voter participation that low for a particular seat, it’s sad to see such a small margin, and you can’t really fault the losing candidate. Let’s just hope the winner is qualified.
• Democratic candidates for city council: way too many unopposed seats or even empty seats. Regardless of your party affiliation, you’ve got to appreciate the benefits of a contest when it comes to holding political leaders accountable over time. For the at-large seats, the margins were all so close that again it becomes more a matter of voter turnout and less a matter of mandate based on qualifications. Let’s hope the winners can do the job.
• The voting process: mixed results. Convenience and efficiency seemed to be the general trend, but when I asked for a paper record of my vote they still could not give me one, and when I asked to inspect the software that powered the voting machines, they still could not let me in. It’s a black box voting system and we have no idea who or what could be influencing the outcome…a complete failure of transparent democracy.

  The stickers they give out when you’re done should read “I’ve been told My Vote Counted!”

What do you think?

As a part of my participation in this year’s Institute for Creative Leadership workshop, a group of Wayne County citizens are now creating the Wayne County Time Bank, and I’m so excited about it. If you’re interested in learning more about this new tool for social change, I hope you’ll come to our next information session on May 16th at 5:30 PM, at the Uptown Innovation Center. And whether or not you can attend, check out WayneCountyTimeBank.org to sign up for our mailing list; we’ll let you know when the project is ready for public participation!

I’m so glad that the Chamber is focusing on the relationship between agribusiness and the energy crisis that we face as a nation and as a planet. I’m also glad that the solutions we’re talking about are keeping in mind a systems approach – how the inputs and outputs from a particular industrial or energy-generating process can be used as efficiently as possible.

But I hope that whatever solutions we pursue take into account that there is a tremendous amount of energy that goes into making our agricultural system work, and so any energy solutions derived from it must take that cost into account. The USDA recently noted that ethanol generates little more energy than it takes to produce. Some scientists have shown that ethanol production consumes 6 units of energy for every 1 it produces.

Richard Manning, in his Harper’s 2004 essay The Oil We Eat, says:

“Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.”

In other words, it might be unwise to treat an agricultural system that depends so heavily on oil as a promising option for replacing oil. (As Tom Philpott also summarized in his blog entry on the matter.)

I hope the Chamber continues to pursue these important issues, and I’m glad these conversations are happening in our community and ABOUT our community. We just need to make sure that we’re addressing the real issues that underly the energy crisis at hand.

I popped on over to the City of Richmond website to see what it said. Quote, “The Mayor is the City executive and head of the executive branch. He or she shall faithfully perform the duties and responsibilities contained in I.C. 36-4-5.”

I.C. 36-4-5? Oh wait, I think I know what that means…it’s Indiana Code section 36 subsection 4 paragraph 5. According to it, here’s what the Mayor is supposed to do:

1. enforce the ordinances of the city and the statutes of the state;
2. provide a statement of the finances and general condition of the city to the city legislative body at least once a year;
3. provide any information regarding city affairs that the legislative body requests;
4. recommend, in writing, to the legislative body actions that the executive considers proper;
5. call special meetings of the legislative body when necessary;
6. supervise subordinate officers;
7. insure efficient government of the city;
8. fill vacancies in city offices when required;
9. sign all bonds, deeds, and contracts of the city and all licenses issued by the city; and

approve or veto ordinances, orders, and resolutions of the legislative body.

Okay, so lots of working with the legislative body – the City council – and lots of good management/oversight stuff. Sounds fun. I wonder what your qualifications have to be? Here we go: “A candidate for the office of mayor must have resided in the city for at least one year before the election.”

And that’s it. Wow. So in order to be the executive leader of our city, in order to run for mayor, the only official qualification is that you live here for a year. That’s maybe not so helpful.

Maybe I could offer up a job description for the Mayor’s office:

WANTED: multi-talented individual to guide unique mid-western city toward greatness. Must have impressive experience facilitating cooperation and collaboration amongst many parties with diverse agendas and astonishing personality quirks. Excellent written and verbal communication skills a must, expert word processing, e-mail and web research skills a plus. Must be able to set goals and develop implementation plans that address future needs as well as present day ones. Candidates should apply in person to the voters of Richmond, no calls please.

It will be an interesting race, that’s for sure. Mayor Hutton seems like she’s been busy working for the citizens of our city, but I’m not sure a lot of people in the area know doing just what, so she’ll need to get the word out about that. Ron Chappell is a name that we see in the news now and then, but it’s usually as a part of some controversy, prosecuting one person’s alleged discrimination or defending another’s, so we’ll have to see what vision he has for our City. I don’t know much about Rick Thalls or Danny Black, but I hope they contribute something new and useful to the conversation.

And with the residency requirement fulfilled on every count, I guess it will be up to the people of Richmond to decide if one of these people should lead our city in the bold manner outlined by…ahem, I.C. 36-4-5.

This editorial piece originally appeared as a commentary segment on episode #15 of the Richmond News Review podcast.