Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Fountains of Franklin demise: Case Study One for new development task force

ABOVE: Completely arbitrary (and therefor as accurate as any other presented) artist's depiction of planned Fountains of Franklin retail development.

The long-languishing Fountains of Franklin development site faces a foreclosure suit.

The history of this project is, frankly, the stuff of reality TV, complete with "evil developers," a call for an alderman's resignation, sudden city "forgetfulness" regarding zoning, selective enforcement of ordinances, accusations of preferential treatment of developers whose names begin with "C" and end with "arstensen," incriminating spy photos, a comically-perturbed local blogger, startling new definitions for the term "upscale," and, finally, time travel.

That's why this project is a perfect case study for the new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, which was created, after all, to untangle the development process in Franklin.

So: I triple dog dare the Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to look carefully at the development process as followed in the case of Fountains of Franklin. I submit that we would learn more in diagramming the twists and turns in that single debacle than in the pages of any expensively commissioned report.

 

"Tax revolt" fans, meet the piper. Pay up.

I attended a Council of the Whole meeting a few nights back where my city's Common Council discussed funding for the annual 4th of July celebration. Because of a tight city budget, the mayor asked for cuts. Here's what he got:

 
The 4th of July celebration is NOT self-funding; revenue coming in does not match expenditures, and the city generally has to kick in (yet, I think beer is a mere fifty cents at this ostensibly family-oriented event - but that's a topic for another blog Beer is $3 per cup - tickets for beer are fifty cents each.). So, visitors to this year's celebration may well have to go without childrens games, flags and bleachers for the parade. (Update: flags are back).

One more community amenity on its last legs due to budget shortfalls.

There is no shortage of local pandering to tax revolt fantasies in suburban America. In communities where precious few public amenities exist to begin with, the mathematically challenged (is it really so hard to look up the definition of "median"?) rail against what they view as an egregious property tax bill.

These are the same people, of course, who celebrate the 1979 "taxpayer revolt" passage of California's Proposition 13, the result of a campaign funded by eccentric millionaires. It's effects have rippled out across the country, eviscerating communities while perhaps saving homeowners fifty or sixty bucks a year on their property tax bill. 

Why do strip malls and speedway collector roads dominate the landscape where we once enjoyed prosperous downtowns, safe streets, parks, open-all-week libraries, and actual sidewalks? You can trace the genesis of our current "geography of nowhere" to tax freeze enthusiasm whipped up by well-heeled interests. 

Troy Senik in National Affairs:

The two-thirds requirement for tax increases, for instance, is a result of 1978's Proposition 13 ballot initiative, which also capped the state's property taxes at 1% of assessed value and ensured that the assessed value can't increase by more than 2% per year. In the three decades since Prop. 13 passed, it has saved California taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars. But its limitations on property-tax revenues have also led the state to rely far more on income and sales taxes. And with the state's steeply progressive tax code leaving it heavily dependent on the capital gains of California's wealthiest citizens, bear markets inevitably lead to disproportionately sharp downturns in state revenue. The legislature then finds itself unable to stanch the financial bleeding through tax policy, since it is constrained by the two-thirds rule.

Victory for the "tax revolt." Meanwhile, California - its education system and public sector the envy of the nation in the sixties - sinks into ruin.

Read below about another tax revolt victory in Colorado Springs. Facing property tax increases to make ends meet, politically fearful municipal "leaders" bent to threats by "anti-big government" sentiment.

Welcome to the concept of consequences.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Read the rest at:Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post.

And MORE piper-paying: LA City Council slated to consider 1,000 job cuts

Further reading: Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future by Peter Schrag

"Not all growth is created equal. Some kinds of growth are more valuable than others. Where dumb growth is unsustainable, unfair, and brittle, smart growth is sustainable, equitable, and resilient."

Perhaps the statement above, by Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review, encapsulates the conflict between "growth at all costs" economic development and Smart Growth approaches that are scarce in suburban enclaves like Franklin.

It should be noted that, not too long ago, some Franklin elected officials were ousted because they were deemed "anti-development" by a band of leafleters who felt no particular obligation to the truth. Though many officials who were either members of or supported by "Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership" have since distanced themselves from the group, "institutional memory" is strong and bow-to-the-developer habits are hard to break. I see it - and often confront it - at every city meeting I attend as a spectator or participant.

Consider Haque's four pillars of smart growth for economies, communities, and corporations:

1. Outcomes, not income. Dumb growth is about incomes - are we richer today than we were yesterday? Smart growth is about people, and how much better or worse off they are - not merely how much junk an economy can churn out. Smart growth measures people's outcomes - not just their incomes. Are people healthier, fitter, smarter, happier? Economics that measure financial numbers, we've learned the hard way, often fail to be meaningful, except to the quants among us. It is tangible human outcomes that are the arbiters of authentic value creation.

2. Connections, not transactions. Dumb growth looks at what's flowing through the pipes of the global economy: the volume of trade. Smart growth looks at how pipes are formed, and why some pipes matter more than others: the quality of connections. It doesn't just look at transactions at the global, regional, or national level -- how much world trade has grown, for example -- but looks at how local and global relationships power invention and innovation. Without Silicon Valley's relationships powering the development of personal computing and the internet, for example, the volume of trade between Taiwan, Japan, and China, would be a fraction of what it is. Smart growth seeks to amplify connection and community -- because the goal isn't just to trade, but to co-create and collaborate.

3. People, not product. The next time you hear an old dude talking about "product", let him know the 20th century ended a decade ago. Smart growth isn't driven by pushing product, but by the skill, dedication, and creativity of people. What's the difference? Everything. Globalization driven by McJobs deskilling the world, versus globalization driven by entrepreneurship, venture economies, and radical innovation. People not product means a renewed focus on labor mobility, human capital investment, labor market standards, and labor market efficiency. Smart growth isn't powered by capital dully seeking the lowest-cost labor -- but by giving labor the power to seek the capital with they can create, invent, and innovate the most.

4. Creativity, not productivity. Uh-oh: Creativity is an economic four-letter word. Why? Because it's hard to measure, manage, and model. So economists focus on productivity instead -- and the result is dumb growth. Smart growth focuses on economic creativity - because creativity is what let us know that competition is creating new value, instead of just shifting old value around. What is economic creativity? How many new industries, markets, categories, and segments an economy can consistently create. Think China's gonna save the world? Think again: it's economically productive, but it's far from economically creative. Smart growth is creative -- not merely productive.

Read the rest at The Smart Growth Manifesto - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review.

What a tangled web we weave: Franklin impanels a group to examine the development process

As posted by Greg Kowalski on his Franklin Today blog, listed below are the suggested members of new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, proposed by Alderman Steve Taylor and charged with untangling the development process here in Franklin.

At Monday's Economic Development Commission meeting, both James Kerr and I answered the call for volunteers (the mayor requested one each from the Economic, Environmental, and Plan commissions). Given Mr. Kerr's enormous experience in process management (he was Deputy Airports Director/COO for the Milwaukee County Airport Division from 1983-2005), I notified the mayor via email that I think his skill set is exactly what this effort needs.

I'll be attending the meetings, however, because the prospect of hearing developers give real-life examples of their frustrations in working with the city promises to be fascinating.

Suggested step one: Invest in a HUGE whiteboard and create what will likely be a complicated, multi-colored process map. And make sure you have lots of fresh markers ....

CHAIRMAN: Mayor Tom Taylor

ALDERMANIC REP: Common Council President Steve Taylor

DEVELOPERS: Mark Carstensen, Jim O'Malley, and Jim Kupfer

PLAN COMMISSIONER: Randy Ritter

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSIONER: Maryjane Ingersoll

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER: James Kerr

Franklin alderman wants to speed development process - JSOnline

This is a good idea -- as someone who has followed the progress of individual developments, it's abundantly clear to me that creating something worthwhile in Franklin is hamstrung by obstacles that do nothing to improve the quality of our built environment. I've inquired about this very issue in the past and was directed to the inch-thick "Ruekert/Mielke Planning Department Organizational Study" (see above). It's no fun to read.

If a developer wants to build an ambitious, mixed usage, Middleton Hills-type traditional neighborhood development subdivision, for instance, he or she will find ROOM to do so here in Franklin, but will likely look elsewhere after the first few administrative roadblocks and ambiguities appear.

"Speed" is not the specific issue; there are plenty of municipalities that have enviable fast development processes that lead to terrible results. 

The main thing is this: As long as a city's development process is clear and fair for all, that city can and should demand high quality results that will reward both the developer and the community. When a city's development process appears fragmented and arbitrary, you cannot blame developers who do no more than the bare minimum to assure their financial success.  

See Alderman Taylor's letter outlining his proposal at the Franklin Today blog, along with some conjecture by Greg Kowalski as to who might be on the committee.

Franklin alderman wants to speed development process - JSOnline.

Saying it takes too long to get developments approved in the city, Common Council President Steve Taylor is asking his fellow aldermen to create a committee to review the development process. 

Taylor is proposing a Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to study what procedures work best in other communities to see if they can be implemented in Franklin. 

He said some developers tell him that a development proposed in other communities can be approved in 90 days but that it takes nine months in Franklin. 

Taylor is proposing that the committee be headed by Mayor Tom Taylor. The mayor would choose an alderman, three people experienced in development, and one member each from the city plan, economic development and environmental commissions to serve on the committee. The members would be approved by the Common Council.

Cheaper than dinner for two at Olive Garden: The implications of Franklin's new tax levy

Much as I regularly lament the lack of comprehensive local coverage of municipal issues in a new newspaper-depleted era, I have to give credit to FranklinNow for their clear explanation of the ramifications of the City of Franklin 2010 Budget's 2.9% tax levy increase.

The new levy is $5.94 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which is reportedly the lowest in Milwaukee County.

Far from hiding it inside the story, FranklinNow included a "By the Numbers" pull quote that did the math for those who may not understand the personal ramifications of a 2.9% tax levy increase (though they did not do so online).

So, a family living in a home in Franklin with an assessed value of $250,000 faces an annual property tax bill increase of... $27.

Twenty-seven dollars.

To keep the increase from rising over the price of dinner for two at Olive Garden, cuts had to be made. In addition to an across-the-board, 1.7% cut in the overall operating budget (from FranklinNow):

The budget reduces funding to the July 4 celebration and St. Martin's Fair by 50 percent, leaves open a highway worker and custodial position and cuts funding for an intern in the planning department.

Tax dollars to other areas, including the library and street improvement funds, were frozen.

Not great news from an Economic Development standpoint.

How, with community amenities and services dwindling, do you attract to Franklin the sorts of companies that will drive down personal property taxes?

Indeed, the cost of a dinner for two at Olive Garden is not so bad, you may argue, but what about business's aversion to taxes? Conservative dogma states that "high" taxes scare business away; Franklin is a "tax hell," and that's hinders its attractiveness to business and commercial development.

Really?

Robert Ady was a longtime executive at the Fantus Company, the legendary site location business that virtually invented the process. Now the head of his own company, Ady International, Robert Ady is said to have assisted in more site locations than any living person.

Based on hundreds of face-to-face dealings with companies deciding upon the best place to locate or relocate, here are some of Ady's observations:

“[I]n the facility location process, taxes are not relatively important when compared with other cost factors such as labor, transportation and utility and occupancy costs. . . . In summary, site selection data do not suggest any correlation between low taxes and positive economic growth, or between high taxes and slow growth. The location requirements are too many, the process too complicated, and other factors too important to justify a strong relationship.”

As further reported by author Greg LeRoy:

Ady’s finding is consistent with those of others: tax-rate differences and tax incentives are too small to make a difference. Subsidies cannot make a bad place a good place. Good places are competitive because they have the long-term business basics that a company needs to produce supply to meet demand. So if cities and states want to grow good jobs, instead of cooking up more tax breaks, they should focus on improving their business basics—the valuable inputs and linkages they have.

Like, for instance, walkability, which has been shown to increase property values in communities that embrace the concept. This is why the National Association of Realtors is a vocal proponent of Smart Growth and Sustainable Development practices - specifically walkable, less car-dependent communities.

Simply put, it's easier to sell houses in - and attract CEOs to - communities that invest in long-term amenities like non-vehicular connectivity. Even if it costs TWO dinners at Olive Garden per year.

LeRoy explains the importance of creating attractive communities:

There are often personal factors in location decisions. Executives especially like to create a short commute for themselves. They may also locate for amenities such as golf courses or good schools for their children. The smaller the company, the more likely it is that such factors will come into play, but they are sometimes evident at bigger companies, too. For example, a study of 38 companies that left New York City found that 31 moved closer to their chief executive’s home, reducing the average CEO commute to eight miles.6 When the founder of Kinko’s sold the company to a group of New York investors, the company moved its headquarters in 2000 from Ventura, California, to Dallas, where the new CEO lived.

Back to the tax boogie-man. Robert Ady's chart of site location cost factors for an office project puts "Labor" at 72% and "Taxes" at a mere 5%.

Again, Greg LeRoy:

Federal tax statistics suggest that even Ady’s low ranking of taxes is overweighted. They provide even stronger evidence on why taxes—and therefore tax breaks—can rarely influence corporate location decisions. Internal Revenue Service statistics show that all state and local taxes make up only 1.2 percent of the typical company’s cost of doing business, far less than labor, materials, marketing, overhead, transportation—the business basics. And then companies get to deduct those state and local taxes when they file their federal tax returns, so Uncle Sam actually foots up to 35 percent of the bill. The bottom line: after federal deductibility, state and local taxes make up only 0.8 percent of the average company’s costs.

And, in Franklin, we have an alderman wishing on a star that a property tax freeze will fill public safety positions, create a sustainable community, and somehow increase the quality of life for local families.

I'll bet him dinner at Olive Garden that he's wrong.

(Greg LeRoy's book is called THE GREAT AMERICAN JOBS SCAM, and is highly recommended for it's solid research and excellent sourcing.)

The death of sprawl (and the death of editorial responsibility in local news)

New McMansions are demolished in Victorville, CA earlier this year to free the city from liability resulting from possible vandalism, crime and fire danger. (LA Times photo)

I have before me the city of Franklin "Mayor's 2010 Recommended Budget," and it's not a pretty picture. Services are going to have to be cut; fire and police positions unfilled; city staff thinned.

Still think suburban sprawl - "planning" dictated by developers' schemes and their personal ROI - is sustainable? How about another movie theater or gym a mile and a half out of town, standing alone in the middle of a field?

There will be a public hearing on the proposed budget, by the way, on Tuesday, September 17th at City Hall.

Speaking of budget coverage: Another of the unfortunate results of dwindling local coverage by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is the fact that it's become clear that you cannot count on the weekly FranklinNow newspaper to provide clear-eyed coverage of ongoing budget issues. Editor Mark Maley thinks it appropriate, for instance, to reprint in the paper the blog entries of a Republican state senator's aide whose ongoing income and media aspirations are dependent upon maintaining the party line. Even after I successfully forced him to acknowledge his blogger's place of employment in his blog bio (which makes clear his particular bias) Mr. Maley continues to identify this gentleman in print as nothing more than "a Franklin resident," robbing the readers of any manner of context.

When did Mr. Maley relieve himself of his editorial responsibility to his readership?

•••

With our tortured budget in mind, I'm passing along a great two-part post on the connection between our current economic situation and decades of government-aided sprawl.

Some excerpts:

Note the New York Times on November 6 (p.A13):

New research about the recession has also bolstered one of transit's central premises -- that highway-driven sprawl is bad for a city's economic health. Recent studies at the University of Utah, for example, concluded that foreclosure rates in the Washington area were much lower in counties served by the Metro rail system, compared with the next ring of counties farther out, and that home prices in Phoenix had also fallen in direct proportion to the distance from downtown.

...

This is the first time in US history that sprawled low-density suburbs or exurbs have fallen faster in average value than city or inner-suburban areas; suddenly "Smart Growth" is more than a niche market or trend--it will be at the core of financially successful planning and development.

Links:

Death of Sprawl

Death of Sprawl pt 2

Institutionalizing sprawl and looking past existing infrastructure

Shoppes at Wyndham Village: Fill vacant space or BUILD MORE?

So, the Sentry grocery store at the corner of Rawson and 76th has announced that it will close by the end of October. The store was superfluous (throw a rock in Franklin and you'll hit a Pick n Save; I have three to choose from in proximity to my house), but the property will be a blight as long as it stands vacant. Across the street from that soon-to-be-empty building are a vacant coffee shop and vacant martini bar. The Shoppes at Wyndham Village outbuildings are largely vacant as well.

Meanwhile, at the Economic Development Commission meeting last night, I suggested that we focus at least part of our efforts on nurturing small, local businesses to fill some of these vacancies and encourage rehabs and retrofits. A fellow (and long-serving) commissioner responded to my suggestion by gravely reminding all assembled  that "our mission is development of tracts of land to attract business."

Really?

I will argue in a series of subsequent posts (and at the next EDC meeting) that our mission must be much, much broader than that. Stay tuned.

Social media and local government culture

From http://www.governingpeople.com/Home/: Social media and local government culture:

One of the new slides in this deck asks the question “Should local gov be like Apple or Google?”.

When I road tested this question on Twitter, I got a range of responses, some being quite clear cut, others wondering what the hell I was on about. One was particularly clever.

Here’s what I meant.

Apple are closed, switched off from the conversations about them. They keep their customers at a distance and go to remarkable lengths to prevent users from giving them ideas. As far as Apple are concerned, they know all the answers.

Apple’s products are also damn expensive. They charge as much as the market can bear – and sometimes more. So how come they are so popular?

It comes down to the user experience. It’s so awesome, that people like me will put up with all sorted of crap to be able to keep using it. So, an organisation can still succeed, even if it is closed in its culture, if the product is good enough. I think it would be difficult to argue that any level of government’s user experience is up to the same level as Apple’s right now…

Google, on the other hand, take a far more open culture. They have loads of blogs, just about one for every service they operate. They have forums for users to help one another, and to get help from support. An awful lot of Google’s technology is open source, and they run platforms for others to host and share their code, as well.

Google’s pricing model is different to Apple’s, too. Instead of charging as much as the market can bear, Google charges as little as it can bear, as Jeff Jarvis explains in What Would Google Do? Google wants as many people to use its products as possible, because that makes them work better, so they make them free, or as close to free as they can. Google is more a platform, or a network, than just a company that sells stuff.

See what happens when you miss a meeting?

FranklinNOW and the Franklin Today blog report on a common council meeting I could not attend Tuesday night. My unavoidable absence was particularly unfortunate because they discussed the city-owned parcel of land between Fire Station #1 and the Franklin Public Library, which I'd indicated would be a good location for a coffee shop/co-working facility if we could somehow induce that sort of development.

After reading both accounts (FranklinNOW starts out breathlessly: "Officials know that some empty city-owned space at 8921 W. Drexel Ave. has caught the eye of several interested parties, but they will want to continue to mull how to re-use that property."), it's clear that I should clarify some aspects of the concept I'd proposed and the process thus far.

First of all, it's my understanding that the Common Council asked various departments and commissions to submit their recommendations for the city-owned space. So, outside of the Fire Department, the "interested parties" became "interested" only after being asked to do so. (The Economic Development Commission recommendation is pending.)

As for my co-working facility idea, the most important point is this: The specific parcel between the library and the fire department was a CATALYST for my concept of using city resources to promote the idea of a coffee shop/co-working facility in a logical space close to the library, park, and subdivisions, but the concept is NOT dependent upon that specific spot.

In most of my discussions and meeting regarding the issue, this seems to be the hardest thing to make clear. For my part, I was led to believe in my initial inquiries that the fire department had not indicated any particular interest in that land. Therefor, I continued to refer to that piece of land specifically when describing a coffee shop/co-working facility, even though there's an entire "zone" in proximity to the library, park, subdivisions and city hall that could be suitable.

It's been made clear since then, however, that the Fire Department would like to expand Fire Station #1 in the direction of that land. As I've always said, Fire Department gets first dibs.

So, to reiterate: the coffee shop/co-working facility conversation can go on without regard to the specific parcel in question.

I think it might be wise at this point to "rebrand" the proposal as well by removing "coffee shop" from the title to prevent shorthand characterizations like the one I noticed in the FranklinNOW report ("There has been interest in the property for businesses, such as a coffee shop, the mayor said..."). While I think a coffee shop component is very important, more attention needs to be paid to the co-working function of a facility like the one I have in mind, and what such a facility could mean to the community in terms of supporting business development and small business collaborations.

Finally, Greg Kowalski's Franklin Today blog item paints a picture of political intrigue ("Michlig would need both the Mayor and the CCP to support his plan for that parcel, and without it...at this point I'd have to contend that the proposal could be labeled as 'politically dead'....) that simply does not exist. I am not a city employee nor an elected official, and the Economic Development Commission on which I serve is unbudgeted; at best I can afford only to offer my ideas and "shake the trees" in hopes of creating a productive conversation that gets us above and beyond business as usual.

So, back to shaking trees I go ...