George Rebane
The electeds of Nevada County had a two day joint meeting to continue their dubious path toward some or any, for that matter, approach toward economic development (ED). It was marvelous to see an amicable meeting where the city councils of Truckee, Grass Valley, and Nevada City joined with the county supes to discuss the matter. Cutting to the chase, the outcome was to do more of the same – i.e. nothing to put your hopes on – while identifying yet more areas where there is perhaps no understanding, and, most certainly no agreement. The meeting was a success in that everyone could declare victory by tossing the ball to Gil Mathews and the Economic Resource Council, and hoping that he will come back with something to make them all look good, or innocuous enough that it will not show on anyone’s radar and we can go forward with the same ol’ same ol’. Details below.
First off, saying that I was disappointed would be an error. Disappointment occurs when you expect an outcome that is different from the one you get. Ruminations readers were forewarned of exactly what would happen (here), and indeed it did to a tee.
The Friday session began with short talks from four businessmen (CEOs of TeleStream and AJA Video, and CIO of Clear Capital) and one office space development principal (Campus Properties, builder in Nevada City Tech Park). Each is a business that our county is proud to have here. They all extolled the quality of life virtues of Nevada County, told the stories of how their businesses got started and the types of people they employ. They each confirmed that they employ smart, highly paid people who were either hired away from shrinking NC businesses (e.g. Grass Valley Group) or imported from elsewhere in California. All agreed that housing was not a problem because their people could afford what our market offers; all agreed that since California is an expensive place, it was hard to get people from out of state.
A relevant factoid one could deduce from these talks is that over the years the total number of Nevada County’s high tech payroll has either stayed the same or stagnated. GV Group at its height employed about 1,300 people. Many of these were hired away by other NC start-ups as GVG shrank, some moved away. It’s not clear that all today’s high tech firms’ employees again total GVG’s heyday.
Quality of life was repeatedly emphasized as a strong drawing point for attracting smart people. Dan Castles of TeleStream emphasized that such people thoroughly vet the community before accepting employment here. Opportunity for spousal jobs and schools for their kids ranked high – he stated that our school system should be “cherished as a crown jewel of our community”.
All the businessmen acknowledged that Nevada County still has a worldwide reputation as a hub of video processing/distribution technology and development. This was something to build on in some yet TBD (to be defined/determined) way.
But with regard to the ongoing ED discussion, the thing that they all agreed on by omission was that they didn’t use any obvious past ED programs to advantage, and were mainly grateful as all get out that the local governments either stayed the hell out of their way, or, in one case, helped them navigate the byzantine planning and permit processes. Looking around the table at the self-satisfied faces, it was clear that the electeds all interpreted those remarks as an example of government helping business.
After these prepared comments the businessmen answered questions. A summary of additional points brought out here were –
• Hard to get whole families to move here from the big cities; lots of alternative jobs there, few here.
• 75% of people hired already live here. Spousal jobs are mainly in the service sector.
• Sierra College needs to teach people “well rounded communication skills”, i.e. the reading, writing, and verbal communication they didn’t learn in high school.
• Sierra College should provide courses for continuing education in technology (e.g. latest programming languages, new standards, database systems, etc.) so that tech workers can stay current without long commutes to Sac.
• “Tourists are not a problem.”, “don’t keep them out”, “don’t bite the hand that feeds us” because they bring in and make possible the amenities (good restaurants, shops, …) that we all enjoy.
• Don’t overlook the existing asset of “educated and intellectual people” who already live here and will work and volunteer.
• The blot on our quality of life is the drug problem. This is a major and visible issue that is “out of proportion” and a “blight” on our county.
After these positive comments it was time for Gil Mathews, CEO of ERC, to reveal his thoughts since the last joint ED meeting in February. In his prepared speech he made the following points –
• ERC is thirteen years old, now operates on a budget of about $170K and employs 1.8 FTEs. To properly prosecute ED, ERC needs an increased budget of about $250K and a 3.5 FTE staff.
• ERC is currently not properly structured to undertake the leadership role in ED for the county. The 22-member board is too cumbersome for the needed task.
• One important structural change is to form a seven member ED Committee (EDC) with representation from each of the four jurisdictions and three local NGOs.
• Nevada County should work on developing a brand that highlights the region’s benefits and quality of life. Example tag line, “Civilization and Creativity at the Edge of Nature”.
• ERC needs a working definition of ED and wants guidance from the electeds on this important task.
• ERC is working on a “matrix” to define what the benchmarks and measurables of ED should be. (This part was puzzling since any such matrix needs to reflect a specific definition of ED, in other words, a specific view or vision of the goal of ED. At this point it wasn’t clear whether Gil made/understood this distinction.)
• Truckee needs to be brought into the ED effort as full partner and its obvious assets to the county reflected in the ED plan.
At this point the organized part of the joint meeting ended and the electeds began to exchange views on what they had heard and their concepts for the future of ED. The comments and mini-speeches that followed reflected everything from the concrete to the silly. Example of concrete – everyone seemed to like the concept of the business incubator, though no one really got to the specifics of what form it would take or who would use it. Nevertheless GilM rejoined that ERC already had some incubator effort underway and was also working on an “attract back” program. The latter in recognition of the success in getting workers to return who had spent some of their youth in the county. Another notion advanced was to take advantage of all the retired successful business people in the county and organize a business mentoring project.
One supervisor expressed a desire to know the “division of labor” of any future effort as to which organizations would do what, and that we should take advantage of existing programs. Another supervisor expressed a laudable sense of urgency by wanting to “do something now” to help “today’s economic situation”.
The word ‘growth’ kept coming up often, perhaps too often for some of the Nevada City council members. With this we entered into one of the mercifully infrequent silly interludes of the meeting. A council woman sought to ease the pain by observing that ‘growth’ was too “divisive” of a word, and suggested that henceforth we should instead use terms such “evolution” and “change” to salve the harsh sounds of saws and hammers ringing through these hills. In his turn John Spencer would have none of it, saying that if we were talking about growth then we should call it growth – he liked the word.
Then there were platitudes about “respectful use of tax dollars” that should not be ineffectively “sprinkled around”, and that ERC should get “stable funding”. Another council member thought that “job #1 should be to get the economy into a sustainable mode” – that nobody understood that one did not prevent a chorus sagely nodding heads.
A supervisor chimed in at this point to clarify that he was “not thinking of attracting a lot of new people to the community”. One presumed from this that playing musical chairs with local employees would be one of the tenets of the new ED plan. This, of course, is what has been going on as mentioned above. And another elected countered with “growth brings cultural diversity” and that he was in favor of “sustainable planning for the future”. This caused a few of us to look a little puzzled because we thought that everyone was there to get out of the “sustainable planning” mode and finally do something to promote ED. Nevada County has an unenviable record of “sustainable planning” that continues unabated to this day.
A more curmudgeony council member, who had remained silent to this point, finally grabbed the mike and put forth the point that this all sounded good and fine, but it was nothing new. It seems that back in the 1890s NC had a Board of Trade that, truth be known, was the progenitor of the ERC and did basically the same work intended for the ERC. Everyone then looked at each and seemed satisfied that we were proceeding safely within historical precedent. Not knowing what else to do with such a sage observation, it was decided to continue in the established manner.
Then we went around the table again saluting ‘branding’, ‘simplifying regulations’, ‘incubators’, ‘more space for expansion’, ‘reduce commuting’, ‘promote more volunteerism’, until finally someone in a desperate attempt to utter something novel, memorable, and specific came out instead with “sustainable vibrant community”. Oh well.
Then things took a turn toward something concrete when Ted Owenss opened with another branding tag line, “Commuting? Let us help you kick the habit.” and immediately went on to introduce the notion of an ERC “funding model”, which was then picked up by several of the other electeds. When everyone realized that if they kept talking about a “funding model”, sooner or later they would arrive at an awkward point where a decision had to be made about how much money to give ERC and where it would all come from. Abandonment seemed to be the politically prudent alternative here, and the discussion was promptly directed to safer channels.
It was now getting late in the afternoon and it seemed that more serious heads would finally prevail. Nate Beason asserted that however we did ED, he would support including performance measurement in the plan forward. John Spencer in turn seemed to back this new direction by declaring that “we are here to decide” and that he did not want to “attend endless meetings”. Seeing that things were not going forward much more on this day, Hank Weston made the good/bad news remark that he wanted to give “structure and direction to the ERC” (bad news) as the “goal for tomorrow” (good news) ending with the emphasis that the electeds should do some productive decision making TOMORROW.
At this point and out of the blue, Nate came in with a clear conclusion for the day, “If we can create 50 to 100 high quality jobs a year, we will be doing good.” I almost fell off my chair and, biting my lip, fought back a tear of joy and pride. That was MY SUPERVISOR (I live in Nate’s district) who, after hours of wandering in the wilderness, raised his steady outstretched hand and pointed ‘that way!’ In one sentence he had uttered what we in the planning profession call an operational goal AND a quantitative metric to judge its attainment. I felt like standing up and shouting ‘Sumbich Nate, you did it, it was you who finally did it!!’ Fortunately my upbringing prevailed and my rectitude of the moment would in the longer run be vindicated.
Friday’s session ended with members of the public coming to the mike to recount trails of tears that their development projects were seemingly consigned to in perpetuity. Others congratulated the electeds for putting on yet another civil meeting. And as we shuffled out it was clear from overheard fleeting remarks that some naifs actually expected that tomorrow’s session would end with some congruence and a productive decision or two. Read on.
Today, Saturday, the joint session was scheduled for 8AM to noon. I got there a bit late since I had to drop by the NUHS Daggett Theater to see the start of TechTest2008. There twenty of the county’s best and brightest math/science students had assembled to take a very hard four-hour merit scholarship exam sponsored by the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation to promote young people entering technical careers. Now there was a bit of real economic development going on. More on this in another post.
Arriving at the Holiday Inn, I sat by Rick Haffey, County CEO, and immediately asked him if I had missed anyone making progress on defining the goal or objective of ED for the county. He assured me I had not missed such a miracle (my words, not his). Great, hope could still spring, if not eternal, then at least for the next two or three hours.
The electeds were in the throes of gushing about Gil Mathews’ speech of the previous day. Gil would have been red-faced had he been there. While having delivered a workmanlike and professional speech, the Fifth Gospel it was not. Gil simply said what he had to say, and he said it clearly, completely, and concisely. To wit, that the ERC needed direction on what the electeds’ definition of ED was, that he needed more staff and more money, and that the heavy lifting for ED planning should be done by a smaller working committee.
After again cruising up and down the streets of business attraction, expansion, and retention, with quality jobs of course, and lots of branding it became clear to some in the audience that the electeds were still in pursuit of a firm understanding and differentiation of objectives, metrics, and plans. Finally, the same elected (identity left as problem for the reader) who the day before crystallized the gathering with his (first clue) firm pronouncement that this body should decide on the community’s ED vision/objective/goal and communicate it to the ERC, that same gentleman suddenly capitulated with the statement that he wanted the ERC to come up with the “purpose of ED” that the electeds could subsequently assess.
Well, our politicos are no dummies. All saw that as the out they had been looking for; hey, “purpose” is close enough to that ED vision thing. We don’t have to stick our necks out to come up with it, let’s let Gil and his people do it. Then we’ll just cherry pick the living bejeezus out of it without anyone of us having to … , well, you get the drift. To bandaid this relief package someone wanted to make sure that “we are all committed to ED” and that this message needed to get down to the staffs. It almost seemed like they had half the problem solved with these great ‘decisions’.
There was then some more debate on the structure of the ERC’s “small group” and its make-up. Finally it was agreed that everyone would be satisfied with a small working group (Gil’s ED Committee) that would eventually be set up within the ERC. This, dear reader, to the best that I can determine from careful listening and fifteen pages of notes, was the closest this sage council would come to a decision during their two day meeting.
After the intermission the mike was opened to the public again. And after a lot of the same good words from various speakers representing NGOs, non-profits, and businesses, I got up and made a short statement suggesting 1) that any progress in ED required recognition that an objective is different from a metric is different from a plan, 2) that the tighter the ERC’s resources, the tighter should be the scope and definition of the ED objective and planning horizon (otherwise the few tax dollars would be ineffectively “sprinkled about” over too many projects and nothing would happen), and 3) that since the ED objective represented subjective value judgments, it was the job of the electeds to come up with and communicate that to the ERC so that they could go on to define some achievement metrics and a comprehensive plan forward to put the resources to good use.
Peter Van Zant and Fred Buhler followed me to the podium and both included endorsement of what I had proposed. This now represented the same message given to the electeds from a broad political spectrum, professional spectrum, and total years watching local politicians engaged in such shenanigans. We all were elated with the immediate response from the electeds.
Sue Horne (who had not been present on Friday) immediately took the mike and acknowledged that what Peter, Fred, and I had proposed sounded like a reasonable course, but unfortunately she had not heard anyone there yet start the discussion of a specific vision that encapsulated the ED goal for the county. There then was a brief agreement from several quarters that such definition of an ED objective would indeed be fruitful and needed. But then things began to quickly dissemble again when it was pointed out and agreed to that each jurisdiction would probably have its own ED vision (yes, that makes four separate visions). And, therefore, it would be futile to attempt a single vision to emerge from a group like this. All immediately agreed – ‘Lord, let this cup pass … ‘.
It’s too painful for me to write and for you, dear reader, to plow through the rest of the morning’s details. Let me just conclude by saying that it was only Supervisor Sue Horne who repeatedly countered the arguments to not give the ERC any guidance. She did that as long as her upbringing allowed and then graciously relinquished the mike to Chairman Ted Owens so that the meeting could be brought to an end.
Some little burps of reason arose to be salvaged and then sunk again as the hour drew to a close. Nate Beason said something about “going forward in an aggregate fashion” that was understood by wiser heads than mine. GV Mayor Mark Johnson then sputtered the last spark of hope before adjournment. He said that surely there would be some common ground extracted from the four separate ED visions/objectives/goals emerging at some indefinite time in the future from the four jurisdictions. Maybe in that common ground we would discover an operational goal for making an ED plan and the metrics needed to assess its achievement. Yes, maybe.
So there you have it folks. Last February this joint congress of the electeds adjourned with the ERC commissioned to come up with an approach to the county’s new ED initiative. Two months later the same joint congress again adjourns with no definite resolution or guidance to the ERC other than to come up with some approach to the county’s new ED initiative. But this time the ERC may also have to actually come up with an ED vision or two, or do they have to wait until the four jurisdictions come up with their separate visions, or do they wait for the common ground of visions to come into focus, or … ??? Your local governments in peace and war.
(Russ Steele on NC Media Watch has more good observations and suggestions on ED.)
George,
Thanks for the great recap. I could not attend the meeting due to family commitments, but was there in spirit, worried that this was going to be just one more economic development meeting without any definitive results. Unfortunately my worst fears have came to pass, as our elected passed the buck to the ERC. Perhaps the ERC should work with the SESF to produce a definitive vision that can be adopted by the Cities and County. A starting place might be the survey process I out lined for our elected leaders at NC Media Watch. Unfortunately the ERC and SESF cannot take action to revise the byzantine regulatory morass that faces new business developers in Nevada County. That can only be done by our government leaders. What is it our elected leaders do not understand about the concept of leadership?
Posted by: russ | 06 April 2008 at 07:19 AM
George,
Excellent commentary! Thanks for attending...much less painful to read your account than to actually sit though it!
The more things change, the more they stay the same???
Posted by: Dixie Redfearn | 07 April 2008 at 12:50 PM