Contract with the Community
In 2017, I introduced, with the help of my friend Shane Nicholson, the “Contract with the Community,” a simple list reforms and ideas intended to bring about a more open, honest and transparent government. Over the coming days, I am revisiting the Contract to explore in-depth each of those 10 items. Today we’ll be discussing No. 5, “Grow the Local Economy.”
It’s the Economy Stupid
Most presidential elections are about change. But the vast majority of the presidential victors prevailed because they understood one thing. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Consider this city and village elections in 2017. Rockford, Loves Park, and Machesney Park all had contested mayoral races. Tons of Rockford Alderman and City or Village Board members had contested races. When you think about the platforms, what do you remember? Crime? Property taxes? And yet some of the most important decisions local governments have made have been with economic development dollars.
Winnebago County spent money on infrastructure in Loves Park and expanding the Rock 39 industrial park. Rockford and the County partnered with Rock Valley College on a project to remodel the Barber Colman facility to house a state-of-the art advanced technology training facility that could serve as a catalyst for more quality paying jobs in the region. Rockford and Winnebago and Boone Counties are partnering on a Land Bank to combat blight. And Rockford has made significant investments in economic development by approving an Indoor City Market, a downtown hotel and convention center.
Any social media user is sure to have seen the videos, tweets and posts on both sides of the debate, highlighting either the pitfalls or virtues of the projects. Winnebago County Board Economic Development Committee Chairman Fred Wescott thinks local governments shouldn’t play politics. He also thinks they should make informed decisions before voting, which is why the Winnebago County Board took its time to thoroughly review the Land Bank proposal before passing it.
During the 2017 municipal campaign season, one political operative repeatedly claimed, “We have no jobs. All our jobs are leaving because of the crime.” This is untrue. Most fast food restaurants have “Now Hiring” stickers on the doors. A former upper level Rockford Area Economic Development Council member, once said, “The problem isn’t that there aren’t jobs. The problem is people don’t show up to work.”
Winnebago County Board Chairman, Frank Haney has said, “One of our challenges is workforce (upwards of 5,000 unfilled jobs, 45,000 people without a GED or high school); however, one of our regional advantages is also workforce (access to large labor shed).” As our community fights to hold public officials accountable for their part in growing our economy, including job training, we should also be accountable for ourselves.
How can we influence local governments and grow our local economy? With all the platitudes and criticisms swamping our senses, what steps can people take to hold public officials accountable? Three simple steps are a good start.
1. Make the Right Choices
It sounds easy enough. Just make the right choices and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, choosing how to invest thousands or even millions of taxpayer dollars on economic growth projects are not as simple a choice as picking an apple or an orange.
Wescott says, “We should focus on businesses that build on our economic footprint and create jobs.” The first part to making the right choice is to know what our footprint is. A 2015 study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Enabling Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, calls the process, “Mapping the ecosystem.”
Transform Rockford serves as an excellent local resource to learn what our community’s business ecosystems are (transformrockford.org). Haney has said we should, “Build upon our strengths: Health Care, Advanced Manufacturing, Aerospace, and the fact that we have an Airport. These are sectors with a lot of primary job growth opportunities.”
The Rockford Area Economic Development Council’s (RAEDC) President Nathan Bryant has expressed a desire to direct area incentives to “primary job growth”. Since “primary job growth” is the RAEDC’s goal, it’s easy to understand his motivation. On its website, the RAEDC claims to market “the region to attract new capital investment, while assisting existing business with resources for sustainable growth.”
Should the RAEDC put “assisting existing business first”? It could be. Once a community has identified its core ecosystems, the next part should be to develop those ecosystems. The Institute for Local Reliance offers insight. In its web article, “Key Studies, Why Local Matters,” it says, “In recent decades, policy across the country has privileged the biggest corporations. Yet a growing body of research is proving something that many people already know: small-scale, locally owned businesses create communities that are more prosperous, entrepreneurial, connected, and generally better off across a wide range of metrics.”
The data suggests that growth is better when the focus is on local business and opening doors for local opportunities, instead of chasing massive “outside” corporations or investment. The Kauffman Foundation suggests that investment reducing red tape for entrepreneurs will help make a community’s business ecosystem healthier than favoring “incumbents.” Public officials should place a premium on developing local businesses, especially new business, and market local business resources to owners and entrepreneurs to grow the local economy.
2. Ask the right questions
In order to ask the right questions, public officials need to have enough time to understand the issue and make a decision on whether public resources should be used. It’s important for every public body to give the people who decide how to spend tax dollars enough time to understand what they are buying.
There should be a standard time frame for economic development projects, communicated at every level of a public organization. Neither taxpayers nor their representatives should feel as though they do not have enough time to understand the pros and cons of a project.
Information should be made available in an easily digestible format both online and through social media. Public bodies should avoid “data dumping” or “cheerleading”. Tell folks the score, not a perception of the score.
A good question to revisit on the downtown hotel project would have been, Why should developers and taxpayers be held hostage by landmark status?
Wescott says the Winnebago County Board worked hard to ask the right questions with respect to tax abatements, voting against an abatement for the Sonic restaurant on Riverside in 2010 because its cost outweighed the benefits. An example of a “good” abatement was the North Pointe facility in Roscoe, which opened in 2007.
The Winnebago County Board approved a scaled abatement from 90 percent to 10 percent over time. The selling point was that even with a 90 percent abatement to start, the county would collect more property tax revenue (thousands more due to a change in zoning) than was collected from the property before the project began.
3. Regularly evaluate
There should be an ongoing evaluation of publicly funded projects to understand how they grow the local economy. The metrics should be easy to understand, and made readily available to taxpayers online and through social media.
For example, people should know how the millions of local dollars invested in the AAR project are performing, what the plan is, and where we expect to be. The same applies to the downtown hotel, the South New Towne housing development, Rock 39, Loves Park, etc.
The community should have public officials who make the right choices by asking the right questions and regularly evaluate those choices. Timelines and performance should be made available to the public. Public officials, or entities who refuse to report performance should be held accountable to grow the local economy. After all, it’s not their money. It’s ours.
