Puppies, Ponies and Trojan Horses

[XLFD]

Free puppies sound great.  Free ponies sound even better.  Until you realize that the new free things come with a lot of hidden expenses, and that you were barely getting by before.  Get too many of these free puppies and ponies, you're bound to wind up in the doghouse yourself in a far from stable situation.  Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn looked at the problems with city hall taking on too many free puppies this week in a piece entitled:  "How we crowd out the best local investments".   The article follows, slightly condensed, with commentary and analysis afterwards as to how it applies to Ludington.

Last week it was announced that my hometown of Brainerd was chosen for the location of a new children’s museum being built in the area. Your reaction might be to congratulate me – after all, we were the ones chosen out of supposedly nine other potential locations in a five-county area – but I’m not inclined to find this something to celebrate. It has all the hallmarks of: Congratulations, you just won a new puppy!

The question I want to focus on today isn’t whether or not we should want a children’s museum – I love children, love museums, and also love puppies – but just how my city council found themselves wrestling with the notion of just what it meant to win a puppy. How did we get so lucky?

Part of answering that question is to understand that it wasn’t something we sought. Last fall, the city adopted a new comprehensive plan. I was on the steering committee for the plan, and while I’m not going to stand up and promote the document as a vision representative of the community (I didn’t vote for it), there is one thing I can say for sure: It doesn’t mention a children’s museum anywhere.

In fact, I made nearly every meeting where the plan was discussed. I reviewed the public comments from multiple listening sessions. I sat through public hearings in my role as a planning commission member. At no point through any of this was a children’s museum, or any facility remotely resembling a children’s museum, ever discussed. Not once.

So, on the way to answering the question “how did we get so lucky,” I’m going to put forth an observation: A children’s museum is not a priority for the residents, businesses, or property owners of Brainerd.

It might be a priority now that we know we can have a puppy, but before that option was dangled in front of us, as we were assessing our own challenges and the many opportunities we have, the idea of a regional amenity serving families with young children was never put forth.

That’s because we were all too busy focusing on more pressing needs. Housing is a major issue, both the quality and the ability of people to afford a home. Basic economic development, job creation, and workforce development were things investigated at length. And the often cited – but never really addressed – need for neighborhood revitalization throughout the city’s struggling neighborhoods.

Essentially, city residents want to be able to work at a job that pays enough to cover their basic needs living in a neighborhood that might not be wealthy, but is at least improving in overall prosperity. That seems reasonable, and not a very high bar, but despite nearly every council member campaigning on such a platform, action remains elusive.

We’re too busy dealing with all these free puppies we’ve won.

And that’s the way it’s worked in recent decades. We can’t keep the streetlights on overnight. We can’t keep our fire department staffed the way we would like. We must defer maintenance, not fully fund our parks, struggle with basic upkeep on our public buildings, and experience annual tax increases that never seem to stabilize our budget. Our neighborhoods are desperate for basic maintenance – paint crosswalks, fix broken sidewalks, plant street trees – yet we continually find ourselves sucked into these kinds of “big” projects.

Brainerd recently finished a financial fiasco of a project to extend sewer and water services out to the airport on the far reaches of town. The project never needed to happen – the problem it “solved” could have been addressed with a couple hundred thousand dollars of storage capacity instead of $13+ million in utilities – but the money was there and so the project took on a life of its own.  Ultimately the city got in too deep to back out so and now rate payers spend decades paying for millions in cost overruns. Money better spent elsewhere.

And if there is a little local match, so be it. We’re already into this project for $20,000, plus whatever staff time and resources we’ve spent on it. That’s the ante to play this game.

I describe this situation in Chapter 5 of my book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.

"Local governments are bribed to take on unpayable long-term liabilities so that the national economy can experience growth today. In the name of efficiency, they are stripped of nearly all means of ingenuity. Our cities orient up the government food chain, allowing themselves to be positioned at the bottom, grateful for the crumbs they receive. This is backward.
To build Strong Towns, local leaders will need to take steps to opt out of these systems. This is difficult because it’s the water we all swim in, and the current gets stronger as things become more desperate. Still, if we are to truly serve the people in our communities…. we need a new path to prosperity."

To “opt out of these systems” requires an intentional reorientation of local government.

Fortunately, it’s one that aligns with how nearly all local leaders view themselves best serving their constituents: by tending obsessively to their needs.

The Strong Towns approach to public investment is part of an overall strategy of shifting our local energy from chasing the next project to building wealth. From building new to making better use of what we’ve already built. From raw growth to productivity as a more sophisticated measurement of success.

Public investment in a Strong Town never begins with the puppy. We should never start with the state or federal program, the priorities of the consultant or developer, or the dream of the front row.

If we use a Strong Towns approach to build momentum in our neighborhoods, we’ll also find the confidence to say “no” to those who are trying to give us a free puppy that we know is never free.

And if you find that habitually your community can’t say no to free puppies, then stop walking past the pet shop. Direct your staff and your cadre of front row advisors to stop bringing you free puppies and instead focus on the things you have already prioritized. Better yet, direct them to go out and humbly observe where people are struggling to use the city as it has been built.

ANALYSIS:  Charles Marohn came to our town for a full day in January to speak of his approach to solving city problems to our local community leaders.  Our City Manager, Mitch Foster has been actively touting Marohn's Four Step Approach which runs counter to the orthodoxy that has been in place in Ludington for at least the last two decades.  But can he convincingly sell the new policy with one hand while with the other hand signing paperwork sinking nearly $2.5 million into somewhat bizarre cosmetic improvements to the James Street Plaza, an area that already is rather flexible in serving as a city center?

Maybe the purebred puppy is 90% off, but is the old dog already there really that bad?  Then there's the free pony courtesy of the DNR down at the west end of Ludington Avenue.  We spent some big bucks to put a fancy corral where premium farmland was before and for the second year in a row, we will not see the pony being used, just costly maintained.  

Then there's the Trojan horse of the splash pad being created in Copeyon Park.  We had a 'private' committee and a couple of standing committees making a lot of decisions out of the public eye about this future drain on the city's resources.  The public was able to see it approved at council without knowing anything about it until it got there several years in the making.  Like the other projects, our leaders tell us that this will be funded and maintained solely by donations while waving one hand and writing grant applications with the other hand.  

The Greeks led by Indebticus come out of the gift horse shortly thereafter:  somebody needs to pay for the project shortfall since the passport grant failed (including a $150,000 concrete fishing pier that hasn't been well conceived or received), somebody needs to cover water & sewer costs, somebody needs to pay for the $400,000 upgrade planned for the park's restroom facilities (an upgrade not contemplated before the introduction of the stealth splash pad). 

"Local governments are bribed to take on unpayable long-term liabilities so that the national economy can experience growth today."

[Freedom Seeker]

One can only hope that our Councilors take heart to the costs of our Trojan horses so well explained in your article, XLFD and by Charles Mahrohn. But the horses have already broken out of the stable in Ludington and are running wild. Even our new city manager who speaks softly and hopes to corral the big projects seems to be caught up in the totally unnecessary $2.1 million dollar remake of James St. town rectangle, the shape of a bowling alley taking out more parking and catering to downtown business and drunken revelry.
If the downtown started focusing just a little bit on the locals, maybe there would be some real patronage and growth. Instead the locals are not invited, are cut out of meaninful discussion, and if one has the courage to speak to a council resentful that they must endure listening to the peons, the peons (locals) are either ridiculed or ignored.
The "front row" in ludington wants little to do with locals. They are promoting business at the expense of locals.
The only reigns that I see that might harness the wild horses is for our city manager to stress the budget to a "front row" who has money far from their minds. Our front row are high-pitched polyannic cheerleaders who rely on nothing except daddy's endless pockets, not knowing where the money even comes from or knowing that daddy is really broke and keeps borrowing to keep up appearances. The cheerleaders are backed up by a second-row of clueless City Councilors, imo.
Meanwhile Ludington's real source of income (its residents) is trampled by the wild horses and the hospital and vet bills and the fatalities will be tremendous.

[XLFD]

Your use of the work 'polyannic' intrigued me.  You undoubtedly were meaning "pollyannaish" an adjective meaning unrealistically optimistic (originating from a 1913 children's book Pollyanna where the title character had that trait).  But noticing that the prefix 'poly' means 'many', and 'anna' (a variant plural of 'annum' meaning 'year'), the term polyannic could refer to something that takes/lasts 'many years'.  Here are an additional 'polyannic' puppy, pony, and Trojan horse projects unique to our area and of recent vintage:

1) $101 million school retool (puppy):  this adorable whelp was LASD's baby, moving our organic neighborhood schools out to the suburbs and blowing up our property tax bills.  In thirty years, this project will be obsolete and require a new and much bigger price tag, but don't worry, they'll be finding millions more to spend before that on questionable purchases.

2) Bowling Alley Block Project (pony):  State and local taxpayers will be subsidizing this Shetland stable $16 million project for the next 40+ years, making it even more polyannic than our schools.  Have no fear, management will likely move the old folks and the poor folks out in 15 years (or less if they can get away with it) and house the well-off with you and I paying for most of their city services.

3) Harbor View Marina Endowment (Trojan horse):  The State reportedly made this marina a little over 20 years ago because the City was able to trick them into thinking that what the city needed was another state-built marina by fudging the demand numbers.  The 25 year private lease was walked away from due to the maintenance costs of the aging marina set to overwhelm the operation revenues.  Michigan citizens will now be able to pay millions of dollars to replace and repair docks and everything else there so that our multiple private marinas can be the next thing overwhelmed.   They really need to erect a statue at the marina of a hand with an extended middle finger directed toward the PM Bayou.  This 'enterprise zone' (*snicker*) is the most polyannic of the bunch, draining state and city resources for an indefinite period into the future.

[Freedom Seeker]

Thanks the the insight on an incorrect use (probably stemming from an old dialect), but yes pollyannaish is what I meant but there are too many letters in that word for my like. Someone with an overly optimistic view without considering all aspects of the whole, and in Ludington, selling the hogwash to the public with unending exuberance.

[Willy]

Very good analysis X. To me, it all boils down to the voters. Well informed voters who are not looking for "something for nothing deals" and who research political candidates and issues are the best hope for the future of America. Just think where we would be if X had not used his own time and research to ferret out local corruption? What if there were 100 XLFDs attending the council meetings. It's that "let the other guy do it" attitude that will sink the ship. Almost every city, town, village and burg has a grant writer whose job is to go after the coveted "free money" that State and Federal Governments are giving away. The old "if we don't get it someone else will" syndrome is alive and well and used as the biggest excuse to help run up the debt. Mr. Mohran makes a lot of sense and I hope his ideas will catch on even tho I was suspicious of his motives. 

The first sentence in the this link says it all "Grants are a great way for your department to receive funding beyond the limits of your operational budget." And just who are these purveyors of debt. An entire industry has grown around this profession.

[Willy]

By the way X, do you have any information on the new sea wall at the boat launch? It went up fast, was there any mention of it at City Council as to how much it costs, who did the work, where the money came from and was their an open bidding process? Just wondering if you had heard anything.

[XLFD]

Yes, I believe the conversation started and they sought bids as early as October, receiving three bids eventually for the work that was projected to be about $200,000.  They (actually Prein & Newhof) received a low bid of $185,000 from local Hardman Construction, and the details are on p139-41 in the 12-16-19 packet where the council approved the low bid.

[Willy]

Thank you sir! I had no idea where to look.

[XLFD]

Your welcome, and in keeping with this article's motif, a trait of a Strong Town is when a citizen asks a question about public policy that the answer is either at their fingertips with a little research, readily available/known by another citizen, or knowable through a FOIA request that will be granted freely in most cases.  

Ludington is moving towards that ideal, Scottville is currently struggling and their officials seem to be lacking the humility to get back on track.  Not that some of our officials have similar issues, it's just much less pronounced as it was.

[XLFD]

"If we don't get it someone else will" is the mantra of the local DDA, I've heard at least a half of a dozen mutter variations of that phrase and seen the rest nod like glass-eyed bobblehead dolls to it, many with a trickle of slaver forming at the corners of their mouth in anticipation of boarding and raiding the state (or federal) vessels stocked with treasure and reveling in their lustful freebooting fantasy.  

[Freedom Seeker]

Well if our federal government is so lax as to give grants of this size, why not take them? Someone is going to get the money. I think the federal government may have started with good intentions setting aside money for disadvantaged.

It's not the grant that bothers me as much as the lack of over sight by the MEDC and how easy for the receivers to corrupt the process.

Building new bathrooms downtown when there are perfectly fine newer bathrooms already existing should not be a priority in Ludington. The need for a covered farmer's market (multipurpose pavillion) just shows how out of focus the "front row" in Ludington is. That's all they see: how to promote downtown businesses and have a party while a majority of the city walks on goatpaths, nearly break their cars' axles on the terrible roads, drink water through lead goosenecks and suffers with increased water fees to pay for their flings. Just another fling.

[XLFD]

Grants are not inherently bad, but my view on grants is that they exist only because our system of taxation is flawed.  Consider all the waste involved when federal taxes are collected, redistributed to a department, redistributed down to the states, redistributed to their economic development corporations, redistributed to a local government and finally put to use on one of two things:

1) a local project that that the federal government endorses, but not necessarily the local government or citizens

2) subsidizing private individuals or companies in putting money into feelgood projects that free market advocates would laugh at 

Nothing prevents taxation changing to make such redistribution unnecessary, important when you realize that every redistribution step is inefficient, lined with bureaucrats, bureaucracy, opportunists and opportunism taking substantial portions of taxes and spending them on process.  This latest CDBG block grant from the non-government group, the MEDC, has almost zero oversight, with the Legacy Park endowment and three rental rehab projects fitting 1 and 2 perfectly as listed above.  One qualifier here in Ludington is getting $240,000 to renovate four sub-studio apartments  into 'nicer' apartments of the same size.  Net gain for society:  zero, except for the qualifier's and his buddy contractor's dishonorable pocketbooks.

[Freedom Seeker]

Money going to an individual cause is not good, imo.  Like with the Maclean and other "rental rehabs" to fill the low  income need.  If they filled them, where is the oversight?  And why so much more low income rentals needed?  It just spirals down.  Maybe they claim LMI need to the area so the "proprietors" can reap a grant.  Who in the long run wins?  The owners get nice new apartments to sell and make a BIG profit for themselves if they sell out.  That's what is wrong with lack of oversight.