We had a great business roundtable with council members Rodney Glassman and Nina Trasoff on December 12th. Nancy Peterson from Tucson City Environmental Services came as well. We have been doing these roundtables every other month. We had about 15 business people attend. There were landlords, contractors, developers, large and small business people. All of the business people were interested in interfacing with the city council members and hoping to build dialogue for change. Our city is known for being anti-business. Yet, many on the council think of themselves as “progressives”. If that is the case, then we should be making progress. To be fair I think there is a genuine desire to change things, because we are in a tough economic situation. The problem is, we are a step too slow. Paul Parisi from the Tucson Chamber of Commerce lauded the council for working with the chamber on a proposal to cut the time for getting approval of plans through the city developmental services from over a year to 7 months. Greg Boccardo who owns GRB Realty and Jacks BBQ asked the question “why 7 months, Albuquerque now has a policy guaranteeing 90 days!”
That certainly got my attention. Albuquerque is where I grew up. When I moved to Tucson 24 years ago, Albuquerque was behind Tucson in almost every way. Today I believe Albuquerque is way ahead. They have attracted quality businesses to move to their community and bring jobs, while we lag behind. As George Larsen of Larsen Baker commercial said to the council members, when you have a perspective tenant that is looking at over a year for the shovel to hit the dirt in Tucson verses 3 months in Albuquerque, where do you think they will go? Some would say this is about political party affiliation. That because we have a democrat controlled council that we are less “progressive” when it comes to attracting businesses. However, the leader of the change in Albuquerque was Mayor Chavez, a democrat. Chavez understood that if he wanted to make things better for the average citizen, he needed to attract high paying jobs to Albuquerque. His foresight paid off, and in these tough times they are picking up businesses that are fleeing California. The council members both expressed that they understand the problems and that they want to work with the business community. I am hoping that they are not only sincere, but that they would look at radical moves to make us competitive against these upstart communities like Albuquerque. We will be meeting with council members again in February. If you would like to participate, email me at:
doug@kvoi.com
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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3 comments:
I'll give Rodney a check on the ice when I see him! Actually yesterday he was playing hockey. Amazing perspetive from your time in ALBQ, and kind of sad, but in my 15 years out here, I can see where half of this city seems to be stuck in 1900 and the other half is ready to go, go, go. Coming from L.A. there is no comparision to what I was used to before getting here.
Doug,
I think a great part of th problem is what I call the Iron Triangle.
If you look at the bios of the Council staffers, there's a plethora of people who formerly worked for leftist enviro causes, or Raul Grijalva, plus some former newspaper reporters.
These three groups mutually reinforce one another (because the papers back Grijalva and his surrogates and the enviros virtually 100%). Some of these aides don't mind that the Tucson skyline hasn't changes since 1986 because they're anti-growth. But I think the single biggest problem is that they're far removed from modern capitalism and have no experience working for a profit-makling enterprise.
This city is not going to move ahead and catch up with its rivals or be an inviting place as long as we have people driving the process whose only experience is running non-profits or holding gov't jobs.
Finally, if something's not done about Tucson's high crime rate, downtown development kis always going to be difficult. Yet the Council chooses not to talk about the crime problems and is all too enthralled with the artists and the warehouse district.
Doug,
I would like to see a similar forum with the Board of Supervisors. Some of Tucson's issues and challenges are controlled by the county. i.e. Tranportation.
I especially agreed and was going to make a similar comment as Iron Viking ... re: councel members whose primary experience is gov and non profit jobs. One will eventually manage from their experience and perspective.
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