Seven Things Jeff K Could Do For Economic Development

Back in September I suggested that the reason tax abatements are used so much by City Hall is that they are nearly the only tool possessed by the Economic Development Corporation. This afternoon I found a nearly two year old article about Jeff Kaczmarek, head of the EDC. It gives me the impression that Kaczmarek thinks abatements are the only tool at his disposal. That inspired me to make a few suggestions for things that the EDC, and Kaczmarek in particular, could do to help economic development.

1. Work informally to lure venture capitol to the city.
2. Be an advocate for quality of life issues that really do attract companies.
3. Work to create a division within the EDC that encourages and nurtures start ups.
4. Provide step-by-step instructions on the EDC web site for navigating the bureaucratic hurdles to starting a business. It might look something like these instructions from the State of Texas (scroll half-way down).
5. Advise City Hall and Jefferson City on simplifying bureaucratic barriers to starting and running a new business in Kansas City.
6. Sell our natural advantages as a manufacturing location without offering abatements. To wit: Lots of vacant land within city limits, second largest rail hub in the country, and central location provides some insulation against future and highly likely fluctuations in shipping costs.
   
7. Be an advocate for these issues with the Chamber of Commerce.

Unusual Bus

Yesterday afternoon I was driving around the West side of downtown when I saw this very unusual bus.

I've never seem one like this, but it looks like a great way to travel.

Appointed School Board Plan

The Kansas Star and the Joplin Globe is reporting that State Representative Jonas Hughes supports a locally-backed plan to replace the elected Kansas City School Districted board with an appointed one.

I have one question. How would this arrangement be different from the current school board? All but two of the current school board members were appointed to serve out the rest of someone else's term. One, Arthur Benson, ran as a write-in candidate in an uncontested race. Airick West is the only school board member who actually ran for his position. If we had an honest-to-goodness elected board, would it necessarily follow that an appointed board would be an improvement? Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools doesn't think so.

“The truth of the matter is it often doesn’t matter much,” he said. “Sometimes an appointed board will act the same way [as an elected one]. It doesn’t matter how they got there, but how they work together. There’s no real evidence that one is better than the other.”

Joel Pelofsky Interview

KCTribune continues its series of interviews with Kansas City School Board members. The latest is with second-term member Joel Pelofsky.

City Council News: 12/11/2008, 12/18/2008

We all know by now that the developers of the Citadel project got the $20.5 million it asked for. I guess it never occurred to City Hall that the bottom might fall out of the economy. If Citadel Plaza LLC had planned their project without TIF funds they wouldn't need help from the city.

A little late, I know. Here are some other items that caught my attention in the last two week's City Council minutes:

• Waldo created its own community improvement district (CID). City Hall granted its approval. (12/18/2008)
• The City Council passed it's legislative priorities for the first session of the 111th Congress. (12/18/2008)
  
• City Manager Wayne Cauthen was instructed to submit the city's plan for fixing our combined sewers and storm drains to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the EPA. Despite the bad press about possible sewer fee hikes for city residents, there are things about this plan I like. If I can find time over the next few days, I'll explain further. (12/11/2008)
• The Council repealed restrictions of campaign donations for Mayoral and City Council elections. Ostensibly, this is to bring city ordinances in compliance with changes to campaign finance law passed by the last Missouri General Assembly. I don't know if state law specifically prohibits donation restrictions for municipal elections or if the City Council just took the opportunity to get out from under them. (2/11/2008)
  

Budget Woes Discussed

I've been distracted for a few days (with the holiday coming and everything). While I was napping, City Hall called a public meeting regarding our budget problems. While I was not able to attend because of work, Gone Mild has recap of the meeting.

I have to agree with Dan. It is despicable that those who most benefited from the feeding frenzy on tax breaks would suggest that the way out of this mess is to increase taxes and fees on working stiffs.

Adding One Thing to Another

To many, the Modern Sisyphus may seem a bit absurd, never mind the question of what it has to do with building a great city. Yet, the hypothetical described in my previous post is an example of what Jane Jacobs called "adding new work to existing work." That is a process by which new kinds of work evolve from one of the sub tasks (in other words "divisions of labor") of older work. Jacobs expressed this concept using the following forumla:

D + A → nD

In English this means a new task (A) is added to an existing division of labor for another job (D). This leads to new kinds of work that have their own divisions of labor (nD). In her book The Economy of Cities Jacobs gives enough examples of this process to convince me it is a common occurrence. This process can occur on the scale of an individual worker or the scale of an entire enterprise. The examples in my last post illustrate the former. Several examples of both are described in Jacobs' book. Even more compelling than Jacobs' examples is the case of a company in my very favorite city in the known universe. What's more, that case is more spectacular than any that Jacobs ever described. That's the subject of my next post.

Escape for the Modern Sisyphus

The interior of the office building I work in nearly always looks freshly painted. That's because once a year a man comes around and touches up the walls. The thing that haunts me, that makes me glad I got a college education is that for at least the last ten years, it has been the same man. Ponder that for a minute. This man's life is painting the same building over and over and over again. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned for all of eternity to repeatedly roll a bolder up a hill just to watch it roll back down again. I used to wonder who would think up such
a diabolical punishment? The answer is that it probably came from a man or woman in Ancient Greece who, like the painter of my building, spent his or her whole life doing the same menial and meaningless task over and over again.

But in the course of his ten years, has this humble painter dreamed up some device that would improve his life, and the craft of painting? This is not a silly question when you consider that the vaccum cleaner was invented by a janitor, or that the first experiments with the modern rotary lawn mower were made by a simple farmer, or that the brassier was invented by a humble seamstress. All of these inventions spawned entire industries. The vaccum cleaner in particular spawned not only the vaccum cleaner industry, but wall to wall carpeting and the job of carpet laying. Although the jobs created by these inventions are not sexy like many high tech or biotech
jobs, they are money-making ventures nonetheless. More importantly, they are better suited as opportunities to poor and uneducated workers.

Which brings us back to the painter. I already hear the criticism of what I'm suggesting. "What makes you think a painter has the skills to turn an idea into a successful company?" What makes you think he doesn't? I've met plenty of people who because of choice or because of a wrong turn in life ended up in places where their education's were of no use to them. There are others who have the wherewithal for success despite a less than stellar background. My point is even simpler than a recitation of history. My point is that nobody knows better how to improve a task than the people who do it every day; nobody knows better how to improve a device than the people who use it every day. So I end with a rhetorical question. If it were easier for people to start businesses, would we need development incentives?

The Benefits of Trade

For some time now, area leaders have worked to expand Kansas City's position as a center for North American trade. This is well and good for the jobs that it will create. But it can never be what it once might have been. A century ago, we would not only have gotten the jobs of the laborers who move the cargo, we would also have gotten the jobs of the brokers and dealers did the actual trading. Their wealth would have stayed in the area. Unfortunately for us, in the internet age the brokers can be anywhere in the world.

Are there other advantages to being a trade center in the modern world? I've thought for some time that our central location combined with our position as a crossroads for major transportation networks also makes us a good location for manufacturing. With the expected gyrations in the cost of fuel, a central location for manufacturing provides some insulation from those gyrations. Furthermore, if fuel prices go up and stay up, the savings on fuel in this area could conceivably exceed the saving on labor in other countries for some (though not all) products.

A recent article in Ingram's suggested another advantage I had never thought of. A special report in the November issue discusses the need for warehouse space that is a byproduct of being a trade center. That in turn has it's own byproducts:

"All of these warehouse and distribution facilities bring an increase in business for support services, from companies selling shelving and pallets maintenance services. As a result, the wave of distribution centers is creating a secondary flow of business, with companies coming here to service the surge of forklifts and supply shelving, or existing companies expanding to meet a growing need."

This issue illustrates one of the chief concerns that policy makers need to consider when working on economic development. What are the secondary benefits of a particular economic development activity? From the literature I have been able to find, this is one of the hardest things to calculate before a particular development project is approved. What's even worse is that there seems to be no universally accepted methodology for doing so.

Rules of Order; Resolutions On Trash Day?

When you first start reading the City Council minutes you may find a lot of things you don't understand. I'm going to start explaining some of the items in no particular order, though I will start with a type of agenda item that appears at the top of all City Council minutes: resolutions.

Resolutions are worded very much like ordinances and are given an ordinance number just like an ordinance. Other than that, they often don't seem to mean much. There is the frequent recognition of some local person for some great thing he or she did. Some legislative bodies, like the Missouri House of Representatives, call this a courtesy resolution, although the City Council rules do not give them a name. It would be nice if the local paper would give these resolutions some special attention, perhaps a weekly column listing them. That would make these resolutions have even more meaning.

Some times these resolutions have no meaning at all. Such is the case with Resolution Number 081163, declaring November 16-22, 2008, Homeless Awareness Week in Kansas City. The motive for this resolution is well and good. But it was passed on November 20, a Thursday afternoon, after 3:00 PM. In my opinion, people don't notice much of public importance between Noon on Thursday and 5:00 PM on Sunday. This accounts for the alleged practice by some PR professionals that an episode of "The West Wing" called "trash day"--that is releasing something to the press on a Friday that you don't want to get much attention.

Now, I'm not accusing the City Council of wanting to not talk about the homeless. Since this resolution was passed at the request of Homeless Services Coalition, I have to consider the possibility that the request was made too late for it to get passed before Homeless Awareness Week started. Let this be a lesson to anyone wanting to get a resolution passed. Get it passed early enough to include the declaration in your own press releases about the issue.

Rules of Order is a semi-regular feature that explains workings of elected bodies and government bureaucracies.

Calgary Vs. KC

The thing I need to report today almost pains me. That's because I consider myself a staunch supporter of public transit. So, let me make one point before I get into this. This is not an argument against public transit. It is an argument for greater public oversight and involvement in local government.

By pure coincidence, I found two documents recently that put in sharp contrast the different between the way something was done in Kansas City and the way it was done somewhere else. The first document is a report presented at the 2006 Joint International Light Rail Conference in St. Louis. The report was by several officials of Calgary transit. The portion of interest here is the on page 12 under "A Conservative - No Frills Approach".

"Calgary Transit philosophy is to use basic, proven technology. For example, storage yards and garage track are not automated, vehicles are not air conditioned, onboard passenger information is provided using manually operated voice recordings, vehicle destination signs are not electronic, and there are no centralized onboard vehicle diagnostics."

Compare that with a report given on August 22, 2006 by Mark Huffer of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA). The report was given to the Total Transportation Policy Committee of the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC). I've quoted the relevant passage from the meeting minutes below.

All MAX stations feature a specially designed passenger shelter. Stations are clearly marked and named, featuring easy-to-understand route maps and real-time transit information. KCATA officials worked with the Gillig Corporation to manufacture the distinctive design of the MAX vehicles, with low floors and wider doors for easy and rapid boarding, and a unique style.

Immediately after this, a gentleman named Dick Jarrold, also with KCATA, reported that "ridership is up 29% and weekend ridership has increased." I remember reading that figure in the Pitch two years ago. I didn't know much about the city's buses back then. Some questions never occurred to me. For example, how much of that ridership was generated by reduced service on adjacent routes such as the 55? Was that bump enough to cover the frills in
the MAX design?

City Council News: 12/4/2008

Whenever I can, I like to read the minutes from the latest City Council meeting. Here's a few items that caught my attention from Thursday's meeting:

• Something I've never seen before. A TIF plan has been contracted to exclude unused project areas. If anything, TIF plans are typically expanded.
  
• Tucked into an ordinance regarding pay day loan businesses, $75,000 was given to the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) for a "small business outreach program". The name is a little confusing. This is actually a small business assistance program. The money comes from a total of $125,000 generated by licensing fees for pay day loan businesses. Since most new jobs are created by small businesses, this amount seems a little meager. I'll be curious to see what they do with it. It's my understanding that ECD has already submitted a plan for the program. I'll get a copy of that plan as soon as I can. One question nags at me: can they not use some of the largess they get from managing TIF projects?
  

MARC Legislative Priorities

Yesterday, the Mid America Regional Council's (MARC) Transportation Legislative Advisory Committee considered a draft of its 2009 Legislative Program. (The draft starts on page 5 of the committee agenda.) This document serves much the same purpose the Legislative Priorities document currently being considered by the City Council.

I've often wondered why there was not more leadership from MARC regarding area transportation issues, particularly light rail. This document gives the impression of an organization that is more interested in staying off limbs than getting anything done. I wont give you a point-by-point analysis of the entire document. One example will suffice.

"Establish a Clear Direction for the Nation’s Transportation Investments"

Can't we as a community set our own direction? The last thing I want when it comes to transportation is a one size fits all approach that forces us to build something that fits our needs. I'm guessing that what MARC wants is a Federal law that trumps local politics. MARC, you're a regional planning entity. Cross-jurisdictional politics comes with that territory. Deal with it.

Car Thinking IX

I recently passed these decrepit buildings at 39th and Woodland and pondered how they got in this condition. Some of the answers are obvious and well known such as the housing market's preference for automobile suburbs and the racist lending and real estate practices of earlier eras. But, I think there are other factors.

(Disclaimer: for the sake of argument, this section is going to ignore other issues in the surrounding neighborhood, specifically poverty and crime. Be aware that I can show you buildings in similar conditions adjacent to areas with more affluence, and that this area actually has less crime than many sections of Main and Broadway. Don't believe me? Check out KCPD's crime map site.)

For one, consider Kansas City's zoning ordinance. According to said ordinances, a business moving into one of these buildings would need to provide one parking space for every 1000 square feet of floor space. But where would it go? In some areas, such as on Main or Broadway, our fore bearers tore down buildings to build surface lots. That only destroys the pedestrian-friendly fabric that I and many others believe is needed to make areas like this work. Fortunately, this site has large amounts of empty land nearby, land that appears to have held houses at one time.

Why should this business need to provide that much parking? The building and the neighborhood it's in were designed for pedestrians. Sidewalks abound in every direction, and the housing lots are small, which means more people to use the sidewalks than you would find in the suburbs. As the sign at right shows, there is a bus line that stops at the very intersection of 39th and Woodland. In other words, this area should need fewer parking spaces than specified by code because there are other ways to get here.

The sad thing is, this building will likely need to be torn down. Under current thinking, the only thing anybody will want to replace it with is a suburban style development with a large parking lot. Any developer who wants to do otherwise the would need a zoning variance and more money for renovation than they probably have.

New School Board Members

The two vacancies on the Kansas City Missouri School Board were filled earlier this evening. Here's what little a know about them.

Cokethea Hill. Most recently a paid field organizer with the Obama campaign.

Derek Richey. He's an employee of Cerner. He has a wife and newborn baby.

According to a recent Star article, Richey was one of ten names submitted late that were no released to the public despite an open records request by the star. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

UPDATE: Shortly after my post, the Star posted their article. You can read it here.

Duane Kelly Interview

Earlier this week, KCTribune published an interview with Kansas City School Board member Duane Kelly.