Comments on: City Council Caucus, Plus Other Questions

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:31:13 +0000

Oops, I was responding to discussion in a different article (the one actually reporting the council discussion).

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:55:15 +0000

I agree with you, Dave, and I’m also appreciative of the attention Marcia Higgins gave to these questions. It was clear from the answer she got to one of her questions that the additional $50,000 Ann Arbor gave to SPARK essentially went to support staff and general operations. Since we are cutting staff and allocations to other organizations (yes, I’m still thinking of Project Grow), those are fair questions.

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:27:36 +0000

SAL writes: “You’re asking the LDFA to prove a negative. While they should be able to tell you what they’ve done with their money, and how they evaluate their impact, they can’t really say with any certainty what would have happened without their involvement.”

I think we’ll agree that they should be able to say what they’ve done with the money.

Still, I think that it’s a fair question to ask: What has the impact been on the economy of this investment of tax money? That would be a reasonable question to ask, even if Rick Snyder had not relentlessly pitched the creation of the SmartZone and SPARK as something which impact could and would be measured. That means more than just cataloging activities: bootcamps held, events organized, companies serviced, jobs created in connection with companies who received services, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to catalog those activities … as a starting point.

At Monday’s council meeting Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked Richard King, chair of the LDFA, if the 650 jobs created over three years of work with various companies would have been created without the LDFA, his reply was not, “It’s impossible to say,” — rather, he said, Yes, they would have. What would be hard to say, he went on, is how soon and where exactly they’d have been created.

I can imagine that answer being satisfactory or unsatisfactory, depending on your perspective. One angle might be that it’s not worth investing tax money to create jobs that would have been created anyway. A different take would be that they were created sooner and here, as opposed to later and elsewhere, which is worth spending tax payer money on.

Whatever the analysis of the answer, I just think it’s a fair question and I’m glad that Higgins asked it. To get a more detailed answer, I think it’s important to have a way of assessing how much “economic activity” there was before the LDFA was created — some measurement of what potential for “organic” growth exists here in Ann Arbor. That way we could at least begin to assess whether adding in some tax dollars is helping that or not. That’s not an easy assessment to do, I wouldn’t imagine, even if we ignore the unusual circumstances of Pfizer leaving, plus the overall economic downturn.

By: sal

sal — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:08:35 +0000

You’re asking the LDFA to prove a negative. While they should be able to tell you what they’ve done with their money,and how they evaluate their impact, they can’t really say with any certainty what would have happened without their involvement. There is a large body of research dating back at least to the 70′s that finds that businesses that take advantage of the types of services offered by the LDFA have a significantly higher survival rate than that of their peers that ‘go it alone.’

By: Sam Offen

Sam Offen — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:14:20 +0000

Tomorrow’s (4/21/09) meeting of the Parks Advisory Commission is in the County Commission Chambers at 4pm due to the renovation at City Hall.

By: nancy kaplan

nancy kaplan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:30:21 +0000

Dave
Many thanks for your explanation of city debt. Just wondering at the meeting how a budget could be presented without knowing what the debt obligations are and in what categories (seems like a new category is enlarging the Pittsfield Airport).
Still do not see why the administration will not consider salary cuts/roll-back for the non-union employees. This way,perhaps, we could keep a more substantial police force and prevent cuts in the fire department next year. All should participate in the financial burdens not just the tax payer and union employees.

By: Vivienne Armentrout

Vivienne Armentrout — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:11:00 +0000

Your question to the LDFA supporting SPARK is very good, but should go farther. According to the background provided when the county approved this LDFA under the SmartZone program (July 17, 2002),

“The purpose of the SmartZone is to support small, start-up technology companies, primarily in the information technology field within the Zone”.

It would be nice to know how much of that goal has been accomplished.

Additional background: The LDFA encompasses the area of the DDAs of both Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. The money was supposed to be spent only within that area. There was a news story some months ago that indicated SPARK had spent some funds outside the areas designated and had to repay them. The taxes captured by the LDFA come from school funds, however the state holds harmless the local schools from this loss.

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:47:44 +0000

A question for the LDFA rep: how have the activities of the DDA in blocking access to city parking data in conflict with the LDFA’s goals for locally initiated economic development?

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:46:41 +0000

It's Standard & Poor’s , not Stand & Poor’s . [Editor's note: Indeed. We've corrected one of two instances of the name in the article, the second of which was already correctly rendered.]

By: Patricia Lesko

Patricia Lesko — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:28:29 +0000

In Madison, Wisconsin it costs $120 to rent a shelter on a weekend day (link to Madison park fees). In Columbus, OH (link to Columbus park fees) it costs $600 to rent a shelter HOUSE for 4 hours, which includes a refrigerator, microwave, tables, chair set-up, restrooms and a fireplace. Minneapolis charges between $100-$200 for residents to rent a shelter. In Berkeley, California, with a population of 101,000 and an annual budget of $350 million dollars, residents pay $60 to rent a shelter on a weekend day. At the present $120 Ann Arbor charges residents a higher fee to rent the shelters than do most of the cities in Michigan. At $137, Ann Arbor charges residents a higher fee than most other cities in Michigan as well as much larger cities in the Midwest, such as Columbus (700,000 residents) and Minneapolis (372,000 residents).