It’s The Results That Count
Byfrom Netroots Nation in Las Vegas, where it’s 6 a.m. and downstairs a woman is dancing on top of a bank of slot machines
Inventor Charles Kettering once said, “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.”
I’ve been loudly critical of WNC’s ability to attract good-paying jobs to the area for a reason. When I moved to Asheville in 1990, people told me “Asheville is a great place to live, but a tough place to make a living.” Twenty years later they are still saying “Asheville is a great place to live, but a tough place to make a living.” Yes sir, that’s progress.
Pointing that out makes local and regional movers and shakers uncomfortable. It should make us all uncomfortable. The course we chart reflects to a large degree our collective wisdom about where we want WNC to go. But in some ways, we are so cautious about preserving what we have here that the more we tighten our grip, the more we risk having it slip through our fingers.
We saw some data posted here recently – percentages of local efforts devoted to attracting high-paying jobs. It’s a pretty standard response by now. Ask why we aren’t seeing better results, you get statistics on our marvelous efforts. And they may be marvelous efforts. But this isn’t like field day at the Montessori school where everyone gets a ribbon just for participating. It’s the results that count.
People born and raised here are being priced out of the market. I wrote about the phenomenon awhile back, drawing on the example of Daufuskie Island, SC. Families who had lived there since the Civil War – many, descendents of slaves – were being forced to sell out and leave. High-dollar resort development came to the remote coastal island, driving property values up beyond the ability of the local subsistence farmers and fishermen to pay. Developers, of course, touted how resort development would bring jobs to the island. Lordy, yes sir, boss, that’s progress.
But that brings me back to the Kettering quote: “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” If after twenty years of business development efforts, people are still saying “Asheville is a great place to live, but a tough place to make a living,” something isn’t working.
If after twenty years of efforts, people have to hold down two and three jobs just to get by, something isn’t working.
If after twenty years of efforts, middle-aged Ashevillians have to advertize for roommates on bulletin boards, something isn’t working.
If after twenty years of efforts, we’re down to awarding gold stars to merchants who pay their staffs a “living wage,” something isn’t working.
If after twenty years of efforts, new development groups have formed because the traditional ones haven’t gotten the job done, that should be a clue – something isn’t working.
It is past time to chart a new course.
Granted, the real estate bubble has taken a toll. And granted, there is a younger, low-skilled segment of our populace that moved here because it’s a hip place to be. If they are having a tough time, that’s to be expected. But the natives are weighed down under the burden of the high cost of living too. Some of them used to have better-paying jobs that have since gone away and haven’t been replaced with much they can build careers and stable home lives on. Twenty years of development efforts haven’t put to rest the “tough place to make a living” meme I heard upon arrival.
By that metric and by the others listed above, C-minus for results.
So what should we be doing differently? It’s your turn to provide the out-of-the-big-box thinking. No more excuses.
[It's now 3:30 p.m. and they just got the -- very slow -- conference wireless working so I could post this. The hotel wireless wasn't working either. Bandwith problems throughout the hotel. The perils of tech. Good panel this morning on how jobs -- manufacturing jobs -- are a top issue this year. Check out this video.]
9 Comments
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Could it be that the real powers (the behind the scenes string pullers) in this town don’t want progress? So all the talk & efforts amounts to virtually NOTHING?????
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Glad you are still focused on improving WNC’s economy despite the dancing girls and slot machines in Vegas. Here are my top suggestions for long term improvement in the local economy beyond going the way of Cherokee. Gambling doesn’t create wealth, just changing the deck chairs on the Titanic. Having said that, just wish I had a little more Cherokee blood in me than I do!
My ideas aren’t always perfect because I was a big advocate for the spec building at Asheville Commerce Park which two years later (the last I heard) is still waiting for an employer. Long term, still think it was the right thing to do but it’s hard to be patient.
1.) Workforce Development transformation – we have many groups focused on this, excellent educational resources, many people who want a better paying job and we still (even in this truly great recession) have employers trying to find folks for high skilled jobs that pay very well. With virtually every ED project, workforce is always the most important factor. This includes everything from pre K-12, to our community colleges and universities.
2.) Get off the fence and push the completion of the I-26 Connector as quickly as possible along with working long term to expand I26 in south buncombe. Our gridlock pales in comparison to larger cities but our mountains force more traffic in fewer traffic corridors. This isn’t building a new road like 485 in Charlotte, just expanding what we’ve got by a few lanes. Public transit is great especially for those who don’t have private transportation, biking is good, and I need to walk more but we are an auto driven society, get over it!
3.) Land bank appropriate sites for future business development through public funding. Other communities have some creative ways to do this with limited impact on taxpayers. Don’t think it’s fair to do this with regulation since it is a public good where the cost should be shared by us all.
4.) Encourage downtown development (realize everything development is pretty much dead now) that adds height and density to the central business district as well as adding high density along transportation corridors for housing (only way to really ever have affordable housing is to increase density since a brick or 2×4 costs about the same in any market).
5.) Work to expand university programs in the Asheville metro area since universities are drivers of a region’s economy (I am not speaking on behalf of any institution or board that I may serve on). The places nationwide with the lowest unemployment rates and rising incomes tend to have large higher education and healthcare employment.
6.) Focus on regional partnerships with groups like ORNL (East Tenn.) ICAR (Upstate SC), NC Research Campus and the organizations around RTP. Until now most of the groups in the RDU area didn’t pay us alot of attention. With the location of an office of the NC Biotechnology Center here as well as the exciting partnership with the UNC School of Pharmacy and Mission’s affiliation with the NC Cancer Center at UNC that may be changing. Without hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars, we aren’t going to recreate RTP, Oak Ridge or other major resources so our best bet is to enter partnerships that bring their resources here.
7.) Changing the perception by those in our community that growth is bad, what is bad is decline. If you don’t believe that, go to Detroit. Stagnation isn’t much better. A place with a high quality of life, beautiful environment, and growing base of high paying jobs will grow. You can have all the regulations in the world (which in my view is a bad thing) but if folks don’t make enough to buy a decent home, all those rules really don’t matter. And the more rules you have, the higher the cost will be, this is a basic fact of life. For the wealthy, they’ll come here regardless.
8.) Continue on the progress already made to make WNC the most wired region in the country. Wireless is great but for business use and redundancy, the bigger the pipe, the better.
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July 22nd, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Nathan, we’re on the same page. This is a topic that cuts across lots of boundaries. I just got another e-mail on my op-ed from eleven days ago. I love getting the late ones. They confirm that I really hit a chord. That’s very rewarding.
I just spoke with the executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. They’re thinking of holding a forum in WNC on rebuilding the manufacturing infrastructure. We shared similar difficult experiences in trying to communicate with people about reviving American manufacturing.
At last year’s convention (in Pittsburgh), he led a tour of a local steel mill. He said some conference-goers were brought to tears. Some had no idea Americans were still doing that kind of manufacturing work. The workers are proud, hard-working people who take great pride in the their difficult jobs.
Let’s bring that back. Maybe not furniture. Maybe not textiles. But there’s much we could make for ourselves again.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Ashvegas points to this press release from Advantage West about it’s half-million dollar grant via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
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July 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Nathan, a lot of your ideas are sound, but they’re a bit…theoretical. Or at the very least, they are foundation-building measures. But we don’t have time for that. We need jobs, and good-paying ones- now.
I’m afraid Asheville is just experiencing what the rest of the country is. There is no quick fix, and nothing on the horizon that can employ at good pay the number of people who need it.
The way of life we’ve known since WWII is coming to a close. Maybe all the back-to-the-earth awareness in Asheville is really what we need for the future.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
There are no silver bullets that I am aware of. If there are, I hope someone, anyone goes for them. Just like losing weight. If you want to cut 30 pounds, that’s not going to happen in a sustainable way if you want to do it overnight.
Realize our public officials and others are working on addressing these challenges but if someone has some better ideas, they need to speak up and introduce them into the public dialogue. But I do question how back to the earth awareness going to solve this problem?
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July 24th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
The notion of Asheville being a great place to live but a bad place to make a living has been around for a lot more than 20 years, but the overall point is one well taken — all sorts of hand wringing and gnashing of teeth over the difficulty in making a town with low wages and a high cost of living work for anybody other than wealthy retirees and others with the luxury of being able to live anywhere increasingly seems to be for show.
Let’s face it, the status quo works very well for the powers that be. The Chamber of Commerce and its members benefit greatly from a pool of well educated potential employees willing to put up with 8 bucks an hour to be able to live in Asheville and the powers that be will not give anything more than lip service to change a system that benefits them.
That’s a big reason groups like the Chamber of Commerce spend so much time and money promoting Asheville as a place to retiree. Retirees, loving their new found Shangra-la aren’t concerned with living wages and aren’t going to hold community leaders accountable for their failure in reconciling the discrepancy between the low wages and the high cost of living that help define Asheville.
July 24th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Thanks RHS….it’s basically what I said…but got thumbs down for saying it.
However along with you; I still say that the real power in this town, likes things the way they are.
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July 25th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Buncombe isn’t the only county in the mountains and this is a regional problem. I guess according to your rationale there is a vast conspiracy with Chambers of Commerce in Henderson, Transylavania, Haywood, etc. Maybe it’s because the only jobs some of our leaders seem to talk about are “green” jobs, and if it isn’t “green”, artsy, or a government job, then they really aren’t that passionate about the subject.
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