I tuned in to Board of Estimates last night to catch up on this, because I hadn’t heard much about this lately. I attended some meetings a year ago or more . . . but you’d think an economic development plan for the city would be getting more attention! Here’s what the Board of Estimates discussed. Spoiler alert: I’m not impressed.
Alder Rummel asked for it to be pulled off the agenda, otherwise it would have passed without any comment. She asked staff if there was going to be a council presentation or how will the council be educated about the plan, if they haven’t been to all the rounds it has been going through. Dan Kennelly and Matt Mikolajewski from the Economic Development Division come to the table to answer the question. They seem confused by the question, Rummel repeats it, Kennelly asks about “in terms of rollout, strategy?” Rummel says yes. Kennelly says “um . . .” We hadn’t talked about a special presentation to council.
OK WTF? Mikolajewski is looking a little sheepish.
Kennelly says that they did one several months ago, before the document was complete. We could certainly do another one.
Rummel says that she sees this as an important thing, its certainly an interesting document. I would enjoy that, I don’t know if others would. Kennelly says “sure”. No one else speaks up. Kennelly says that he can work with the council staff to get that set up. Rummel says that you could give us the elevator speech right now, too.
Kennelly says “sure . . . uh . . . um . . . so . . . ” Wow, this is embarrassing. He’s not at all prepared. Unlike the HOURS they spent on the Public Market during budget, this actually hasn’t been talked about all that much publicly and doesn’t have several committees talking about it. Kennelly says, “I guess a couple of highlights, I think most of you know we’ve been working on this strategy for quite some time, it started back in 2014 and we did this very deep dive and looked at a wide range of data and trends in the city, tried to discern some emerging things that we weren’t aware of. The prime take away is “the city is changing.” No shit Sherlock It’s younger and more diverse, all the job growth in the city is in the private sector. We used to be a mid-size college and government town and we’re becoming more of an innovation hub with entrepreneurs and small businesses driving our job growth. And we have a deep challenge in the city with economic disparities. There is alot of detail in the data analysis and that drove the recommendations that emerged. In terms of background and outreach we did a couple well attended events at the Monona Terrace. Yeah, cuz that is how you are going to get input from those impacted by the aforementioned economic disparities, hold your events at the Monona Terrace. Sigh . . . We got alot of input, we did some community meetings around the city, its included as an appendix. Scroll through the photos to witness all the diversity – some of the white men wore suits, others wore khakis. There were business people and alders there. And, no evidence of said “community meetings” except the ones held at the Monona Terrace. It doesn’t look like “community meetings held around the city.” Looks like two meetings. The carpeting is a bit of a give away. We asked a few community members to provide advisory papers.
ADVISORY PAPER #1: Connect Businesses with Talent, Capital, and Markets to Foster
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Prepared by: Paul Jadin and Betsy Lundgren, Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP)
ADVISORY PAPER #2: Equity and Government Contracting
Prepared by: Dr. Ruben Anthony, Urban League of Greater Madison
ADVISORY PAPER #3: Focus real estate development on key sites and corridors
Prepared by: Jeff Vercauteren and Angie Black, Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C.
ADVISORY PAPER #4: Embrace food and beverage’s role as a platform for community-based entrepreneurship and wealth-building.
Prepared by: Michael Gay, MadREP) and Anne Reynolds (UW Center for Cooperatives) with support from Sharon Lezberg (Dane County UW Extension)
ADVISORY PAPER #5: Embrace Bicycling as an Economic Driver
Prepared by: Gary Peterson, AICP, BikeFed Board of Directors
ADVISORY PAPER #6: Create efficient and technology-enabled multi-modal transportation system.
Prepared by: Susan Schmitz, Downtown Madison, Inc.
ADVISORY PAPER #7: Connect Madison’s various creative sectors as an economic driver and visitor draw
Prepared by: Peggy Gunderson, Strategic Brand Marketing
We did alot of public outreach, that was the second input. And then the economic development committee spent alot of time and did alot of work fine tuning. (Note the three vacancies, one for almost a year now?) We started with 10 broad goals and 50 projects and came up with 5 broad strategies and one priority 1 projects for each one. He says that’s the broad overview and he can speak to the projects if they like.
Rummel has a follow up – what is the capacity of the staff, there is alot of good ideas and the B.A.T. (business assistance team) is a good idea, but it could take up alot of your time. I recall Matt talking about when he had a smaller team that he spent most of the day trying to get businesses connected. Is that still the case, what kind of a position are you in, what are you facing?
Kennelly says that the capacity to implement is a challenge, we got it down to lean strategy and we are a small division and we are already doing alot of work. The B.A.T. is work we are already doing, it just will formalize the work and be more conscientious and organized about it. Strategy two (development districts) will have a bigger budget and more to it, but if you look at the city Housing Strategy and the Madison in Motion transportation plan, those both landed on something that look alot like this idea. In Madison in Motion focuses on activity centers and the Housing Strategies focused on a few areas. Also as the comprehensive plan gets started we can work collaboratively there. The third priority is the business expansion-retention project and we’re already doing some of this. We will just be more strategic – we do some BRE visits now – but we would target on some specific industries. 4th project is building a business case for long range Regional Transportation. Capacity is an issue there but it’s a priority and we can put some efforts behind. The last one “work-based learning opportunities for youth” there are lots of opportunities for youth. This emerged from the outreach, they want to help young people, particularly young people of color, find pathways to jobs. Excuse me while I barf, white kids go to college, young people of color get “pathways” to jobs. We took this to heart and conveniently the schools district is kicking this off with the “Pathways” program, right now. The path for us is to support the leadership and connect with businesses in town and provide internships, be more strategic about how we involve internships. He says in terms of capacity some of this is articulating new initiatives, alot of it is projects and opportunities where we see alot of partnerships in the city and MadRep and Chamber of Commerce and other groups. The Office of Business Resources is looking at how this impacts their work plan for 2017, they are now fully staffed which helps and they will do some thinking over the next couple months about how this overlays with the responsibilities and look at what they can realistically undertake over the next year or two. It’s almost as if they are saying the plan is garbage and they just want to make it go away and keep doing what they are doing . . . I don’t hear any enthusiasm or that anything is actually going to change. Honestly, I’m quite surprised.
Rummel asks about the Madison Development Districts, this is one thing she paid attention to all along and she hopes that before they just announce a development district that they do some good public engagement and outreach so people don’t hear this late in the process and have worries. It needs a good outreach strategy.
And with that, Rummel thanks them for their good work, the rest of the alders have no questions and barely vote on the item. Zero enthusiasm.
Bottom Line, this is our five strategies for working on economic disparities?
STRATEGY 1: Support small businesses, Promote new business models, and cultivate diverse business startups.
PRIORITY PROJECT: Business Assistance Team (BAT)) Create a multi-agency city staff team to help existing and potential businesses navigate municipal licensing and regulatory requirements, and connect them to outside business support resources.
STRATEGY 2: Grow tax base and encourage targeted redevelopment in priority areas
PRIORITY PROJECT: Madison Development District Program – Identify areas of the city and specific sites to prioritize for redevelopment (based on existing plans). Combine robust land banking program, leveraged with private funding, to purchase and reposition these sites. Then recruit developers to implement projects that fulfill the City’s vision.
STRATEGY 3: Create Good Jobs by Building on Competitive Strengths in Key Economic Sectors
PRIORITY PROJECT: Targeted Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) – Target the City’s BRE program to support growth and opportunities in five key high-opportunity sectors (Information Technology, Biotechnology, Food Systems, and Precision Manufacturing)
STRATEGY 4: Make the Economic Case for Investing in Modern and Efficient Transportation Solutions
PRIORITY PROJECT: Business Coalition for Transportation – Organize and convene the business community to create a private sector driven coalition to research and advocate for investment in a modern urban transportation system.
STRATEGY 5: Strengthen the long term workforce by supporting career pathways for young people PRIORITY PROJECT: Work-based Learning Opportunities for Youth. Work with community partners (particularly the education community) to coordinate, align, and build on programs focused on creating work-based learning opportunities for young people.
The plan is only 23 pages and very visual, not a lot of reading to be done. You can breeze through it in 5 minutes or less.
Closing Comments
I wonder how they used the equity tool on this? They used the words, but they didn’t seem to DO anything.
And uh, my personal favorite . . . Inclusionary Zoning for businesses? In Strategy two they say they need to “Set clear parameters for acquisition targets and outcomes (e.g. require that a portion of units be affordable, mixed-use, enhance design standards for these sites, set targets for the number of jobs created, etc)
No wonder they seem so un-enthusiastic about this plan, they’re looking for accountability?!
I honestly, tuned out on this a year or two ago . . . I went to some of the early meetings, glad I stopped wasting my time. This sounds like its just going to get tossed in the circular file and have little impact. Maybe I’m wrong, but there seems to be no one championing this.
So, what should our city’s economic development plan be? And how could we start to address the economic disparities that they mouthed the words, but didn’t really address as a goal. This seems like a missed opportunity.
Thanks Marsha for bringing this up . . .
