(jobs, prosperity, economic development)

MORE RESOURCES ON THIS SUBJECT

It’s time to rebuild and reinvent our local economy and government funding systems in a new mold that is truly sustainable. The old, 20^th century growth-based model is obsolete. It’s time to step into the 21^st century and foster a community that thrives on being smart, efficient and inclusive.The growth industry had the last 15 years to prove growth of our community leads to prosperity. Clearly it does not. Our system is in a shambles. Our sales tax rate is 35% higher today than it was 20 years ago. Infrastructure backlogs have become the norm. New fees have been imposed. Service levels are declining. The era of growth as a prosperity engine has come and gone.

So, what do we replace that with? We need fresh thinking on City Council. We need a Council willing to stop clinging to antiquated prosperity models and ready to lead a modern, healthy community vision.

Rather than repeat the mistakes of the past, let’s use this opportunity to rebuild using a system that will actually help our community thrive. Here is my plan for a healthy local economy:

1. Give up our growth addiction - Develop a city funding system that doesn’t depend on growth for a quick, short-term sales tax high followed by the long-term costs of serving more and more subdivisions that don’t provide adequate tax revenue.

2. Localized Economy – Nurture our existing local businesses. Instead of the never-ending competition with other communities to recruit new employers and the workers who follow in search of those jobs, we’ll work to enhance opportunities for the businesses and citizens already in our community. Instead of seeking a constant stream of “more” businesses and people coming into our community (which has proven NOT to bring prosperity), we’ll focus on working more intelligently and more efficiently. There are many opportunities to eliminate waste, which reduces costs and allows everyone to keep more of what they earn.

Consumer Buy Local Program – As your City Councilor I’ll champion efforts that encourage buying local. We should enhance opportunities for community supported agriculture, and examine possibilities for local currency.B-to-B Buy Local Program - Implement a low-cost program to connect local suppliers with local customers. Any business in our community that buys products or services from vendors outside our community represents an opportunity for us to plug a leak. Leaks allow wealth to be sucked right out of our town. Plugging the leaks keeps money flowing within the community.

Healthy Local Economy Committee – While the developers are free to fund their EDC and its 20^th century growth schemes, our city, our hospital and our utility should immediately stop funding the EDC. A very small portion of the funds that will free up is all we’ll need to support a new citizen committee to spearhead volunteer-powered initiatives that nurture our local businesses. The citizens serving on this committee will be a diverse cross-section of our community, including owners of small and large local businesses, but also including a retiree, a public safety employee and a schoolteacher. Who else should be represented? You tell me. We don’t need any more multimillionaire developers pulling the strings in our community. This committee’s meetings, activities, and any funding will be completely open to the public, not conducted in secret like the EDC.

Stop penalizing local businesses:

No more sales tax increases - Sales meetings Sales tax puts our local businesses at a competitive disadvantage to retailers on the internet and outside city limits. Sales tax as a funding source for government services is also too volatile. Our city’s viability cannot depend on us going shopping. We should seriously consider reducing sales tax and we must move to more reliance on property tax and possibly land tax. 

No more incentives for out of town businesses - Stop picking the pockets of local businesses to fund tax breaks, utilities connection discounts and other incentives our real estate developers have us handing out to lur businesses from other communities. This brand of economic development just increases the size of our problems. It’s been clearly demonstrated this is ineffective in creating community-wide prosperity, and it unfairly penalizes existing local employers. It’s irrational to expect our City Council, city or utility staff or even EDC staff to be able to pick winners and losers when even professional venture capitalists and stock analysts get it wrong more often than right.

3. Eliminate all growth subsidies - Reinvest these precious resources in our community instead of throwing them away on ineffective incentive schemes. Use these funds to cover the basic services expected by citizens and to properly maintain our existing infrastructure. Since the EDC was founded our city’s per-capita income has just mirrored the national average, as has our unemployment. Builders have sold a lot of new houses, however. And now we have to find a way to provide all those new residents with police and fire protection, light and plow their streets, and improve our regional roadway network to accommodate their traffic. Independent national studies confirm that new residential subdivisions do not provide sufficient tax revenue to cover the cost of serving them.The best thing we can do for the economic well-being of our citizens is to not pick their pockets to fund the EDC, economic development incentives and other growth subsidies. I don’t expect the city to create a job for me. I expect the city to keep my streets safe, parks green, traffic flowing and air clean. 

4. The Truth About Job Creation – We would all like to believe we can take some public money and use it to create jobs where there are none. Most of us believe attracting new employers to town is an effective way to employ more local citizens and increase our incomes. The facts just don’t bear this out. Independent studies show only 1 in 4 of those new jobs goes to a local resident. The reason for this? Over the long haul, people move to where the jobs are. This is why local real estate developers founded what is now the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC). Builders and developers dominate the EDC today, because its outdated style of economic development is to attract new businesses and the people who follow, so there will be an unending stream of new home buyers. This is good for them, but actually hurts local residents.

And businesses willing to let an incentive influence their location decision will be here today and gone tomorrow, as soon as they get a better offer. Communities across the nation are strangled by the same infrastructure backlogs, service declines and rising expenses because they’ve given away the farm to businesses they poached from other communities, and the costs of that growth turn out to be much greater than the benefits.

RESOURCES ON HEALTHY LOCAL ECONOMIES