Imagine all the fanfare and laudatory rhetoric heaped upon said organization or person for investing in restoring blighted property.

Imagine all the scorn and contempt heaped upon the Council for second-guessing the noble intentions and honor of our local hero by stonewalling their good deeds.

Imagine all the outrage at imposing such extra fees and burdens on such a noble deed and jacking a local group or business.

Imagine the contempt at how we don’t support our local businesses or groups and how we punish them with fees and bureaucracy.

It’s amusing to see the narrative shifted to one concerning taxes by the very same people who would gladly and enthusiastically demolished the properties such that we pay for demolition and hence get zero dollars in taxes. If the properties garnered $99,500 at auction, the city would see less than $2,000 in property tax revenue assuming auction price equals market value and hence valuation. So the financial sages would have you believe that $2,000 in loss of property tax is not worth restoring the properties and not worth avoiding demolition.  Of course, the influx of dollars in goods and services and the potential consumer spend of the new residents does not enter the mix. Let’s remember kids: demand side economics do not matter; it’s the mutated variant of supply side economics coupled with the entrenched cronyism as practiced here that matters to financial thinking.

I just want to scream….

This is one of several reasons we feel strongly that elected officials should have secondary roles in economic development if they have any involvement at all.

Basing a city’s economic development on positions or departments that can drastically change from administration to administration doesn’t provide the measure of consistency necessary to stay competitive with other municipalities.

I’m struggling with this reasoning as departments and policies fundamentally get shifted administration to administration. Just look at federal level Cabinet positions such as Commerce Director or OMB director or numerous committee chairmanships that impact global competitiveness. Why does that work with a global economy but somehow cannot be made to work on a local level?

I think the distinction is that locally, much like the back-and-forth on marketing versus no-marketing, the policy positions of the parties in charge use this issue as a wedge issue so if one party establishes a department distinct from the political pressures argued by the editorial such as the CED, the council then defunds it to pursue the non-marketing policy.  Hence which branch of government is left to pursue policy goals — the executive. And why should we discourage the mayor as the elected executive of the city from promoting the city? Funny how no one tells Mayor Stratton or Jennings that they just need to move on and not worry about promoting their cities.

I also struggle a bit that we view the other agencies cited by the Recorder for economic development to somehow not be subject to political forces. That makes me chuckle like most people who know something of the political landscape here.

Let’s now look at this section:

Realistically, does anyone think Amsterdam can compete with other cities if its marketing efforts are in the hands of a part-time confidential aide and a mayor whose priorities are managing the city’s numerous departments?

If Thane is a marketing genius, she’s in the wrong job. Beyond that, what happens when at some point she’s not in office and the next mayor has no interest or ability to carry on such a crucial role in economic development?

I see a bit of a paradox here where there appears to be some recognition  of Amsterdam to compete with other municipalities via marketing. On the question of marketing genius, I think that misses the question completely. The key question here is why do we as a community advocate against promoting our own city and indeed, believe as a guiding principle that there should be no ownership or accountability for our own city’s marketing efforts. With that as a backdrop, you cannot then frame the issue as one of marketing prowess with an un-marketing climate and with an effort that has close to zero funding. Let’s recall that even creating and launching a Web site was deemed negatively because it may show some nice images of the city. We are nowhere near marketing as we do not have marketing as a core principle in our strategy. In light of that resistance,  marketing has proceeded forward in spite of that resistance.

Let’s move to here:

Thane could meet with Rose on a regular basis to see what marketing and economic development activities his department is working on relating to the city. Another option is to create a volunteer economic development committee that could be a branch of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps an agency could be set up similar to the Metroplex model that has worked so well for Schenectady.

What the editors advocate here is a process with no accountability, no oversight and hence no chance for succeeding. I’m all for volunteer efforts but you do not place core strategy and core tactics in volunteer’s hands if you want to succeed. Let’s be candid: how much sway do volunteer committees and groups have in shaping policy against the entrenched political forces here? Somewhere quite near zero.

Let me end on an up note and that is the Metroplex model cited by the Recorder. I could see some common ground here to explore such an entity. But before we kid ourselves that that will solve our problems, we need to then accept that we, actually and indeedily doodily , need to pursue marketing. A MetroPlex will not succeed if we cannot convince ourselves of that as the very fundamental step in the process.

Let me end with a thought on this debate for a bit of perspective. The CED was created in the Duchessi administration so it’s been something like 10 years since we decided that we needed to market and promote the city via the CED. I’m not sure how long ago it was defunded but in looking at today, do we feel we are better off and materially in better position by defunding it? Since that time, have we fixed all the problems that needed to be fixed before we can market?

It is an ongoing sage and while we dither and seek to win in this perennial battle of attrition on marketing versus un-marketing, our competitors will move on and ahead.

As always.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMjcov8mH-I

and  classic Norm MacDonald :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL0WayC7jW0

For years, the building at 147 Church St. has sat in severe disrepair. It’s the former Bush’s Garage, long designated by a sign on the paint-chipped and graffiti-targeted building. Most people saw the garage as an ideal candidate for a wrecking ball, but local brothers Todd and Kevin Smitka saw the potential home for a full-service motorcycle shop.

It’s people like the Smitkas who create problems for our city now: whereas most people want the wrecking ball, they just had to go transform the building by executing their vision for for what the place could be not for what it is.  That is not the way we do things here.

After all, aren’t most people here always right especially when it comes to razing and demolishing stuff? Good grief, we could have had a nice parking lot.

MOSA

What utter madness is this?!

How is this great news? Should we not follow AIDA’s example and eliminate expenses for writing grants; after all, grant writing is an expense and gosh golly, we can’t afford any marginal expense.  Where is the fiscal responsibility and fiscal oversight with folly such as spending tens of thousands of dollars on grant writing?

We need to cut, cut, cut.

Moreover, we need to reject this money not only for what it cost us but by accepting this state grant, are we not embracing socialism? We do not need the state or federal government meddling in our local affairs. We’ll pay for this ourselves with our own taxes. We need to cut, cut,  cut.

Terrible, dreadful news.

Of course, the conventional and legacy argument states that we cannot market the city unless the city is improved. Perhaps, New and Improved is more likely the unstated goal; nevertheless, the argument states in no uncertain terms that we are  not ready to go to market with what we have.  So the question that is never asked, and is the inherent and natural conflict in marketing and product development, is precisely when — give or take a decade– will we be ready to market? At what point from today, will we be ready to unleash Amsterdam New and Improved, Version 2.0?

I daresay it is never.

Because we will never be able to demolish enough of the city and build a suburban dystopia utopia in the city. Because we will never have the return of large industries reviving the silent factories and mills of yesteryear. Because there will always be some obstacle — real or imagined– which will forever get nearer but will elude our hopeful grasp. It’s an asymptotic process seeking asymptotic success,and  if such a business strategy existed it would entail a centuries long strategy to achieve its ultimate aim of failing to reach its end point. Clearly we have decades to go until the brilliance of this strategy reaches its apex.

If we look at the tactics driving this strategy, we find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum. While we cannot and should not market as a core strategic principle, we meanwhile pursue tactics such as a paid agreement with the county to perform what we deem impossible and undesirable — marketing our city. As marketing the city elicits the same reaction as plunging ourselves in raw sewage, we simply outsource the task so we do not sully ourselves in the process.

Meanwhile we forever look to the great expenses we must incur to keep this city from its predetermined oblivion. Imagine heading a company with a product so revolting, so awful, so ewww!, that your features ashen at the mere mention of even showing it to a customer. So you sit with your team huddled in a conference room nervously twitching lest anyone see your logo upon this dreaded product that could be unleashed upon the world. Regrettably for us, we  reside here, and like it or not, we are inextricably bound to this dismal product as part of its very fabric.  Why, most in the room would feel greater pride and higher moral ground in marketing cadmium-rich toys to toddlers and newborns than to make a salient pitch for someone to live in this city. I feel dirty even writing about it.

It’s more than clear and demonstrably true that the underlying strategies and tactics of the past decades failed spectacularly and epically to position this city in the marketplace of cities of today. Yet if clinging to tradition means not changing and not innovating then certain failure still reigns supreme to uncertain success. It is why fatalism and pessimism is a cause celebre’  here. Nothing elicits more scorn and contempt than a bright vision or a projection for a better tomorrow though innovation and purpose. That simply will not stand. How dare you even consider marketing the city?

If you brazenly err mentioning or endeavoring to pursue such a dark art as marketing, you must not really understand marketing or product development at all — you must be naive at best, delusional at worst.  To the experts who profess to understand such an arcane art as marketing and product development, it is a cut and dry matter: you only market when your product is ready. In their eyes, the product — in this case, the city– should be viewed exactly the same as any  product sitting on the shelf at Walmart. So people view marketing  our city with the same mindset as they would market laundry detergenet. But our local experts know marketing resolves to a simple matter — price. We must be the lowest priced; price reigns supreme and as cities embody the core attributes of any commodity, then low price assures success. Indeed we will out-Walmart Walmart as the price king against our fellow communities competitors.  What folly to compete on anything but price in the marketplace! How laughable we are told that you compete on anything but price. How laughable to consider cities as diametrically opposed to commodity economics.

Indeed the markets do laugh — unfortunately they laugh at us, not with us. Markets laugh at viewing a product and marketing strategy as strictly based upon price. Markets laugh at competing on price when your cost structure assures your price to be your lowest form of competitive advantage . Markets laugh at viewing selling a community with the same principle as selling laundry detergent and viewing a community as a commodity.

To the self-professed experts on products and marketing, the underlying features of the product matter little if at all. This why what I naively consider the competitive advantage and market differentiators of our city– historic and significant architecture, unique neighborhoods, sidewalks, front porches — matter the least if at all unless, as I tend to say, they are at the end of a wrecking ball. Even our historic City Hall building is now too much of a burden to shoulder so the figurative now becomes literal as City Hall may now be housed in our local mall. What should be considered the surreal is instead quite real in our fair city. But if the move were to occur it would be the manifestation of our product strategy — turn the authentic urban fabric of our city into a faux suburbia. Why not, historic architecture remains an impediment, a bug if you will, in our product. If you can’t aluminum side it and you can’t tear it down, just move into the ultimate manifestation of suburbia — our local mall– and be done with it.

Of all the features of our city and amongst the pablum of marketing and products, the feature no one dare discuss is our school system. As we are fond of our acronyms for our public entities to market for us — AIDA, URA, CED, MCCC, WTF, et al — why do we not add GASD to the mix? After all, if our city is a product, is not the school system one of the features of said product? Well, according to our local experts, not really. You might find this counter-intuitive to understand so let me explain the underlying principle.

As the GASD, the city and the county operate under their own charter and their own governance, each is its own entity and operates as such. In product terms, you are getting a package deal — you can’t buy any one without buying the other. As a customer, it seems rational to view the product experience and product quality as the aggregate set of features across all products including the GASD. But wait, you’re not supposed to do that. You must instead view the city product distinctly as if they were wholly distinct and separate. It’s like buying a car and when you ask about the engine, the sales and marketing literature refer you to another company. When you then question how you can evaluate the product functionality of the whole car, you are derided for your foolishness in not understanding how they market and develop products.  You clearly don’t get business.

If you doubt this assertion, it’s easy enough to test drive: ask an elected leader on the role of the school district vis-a-vis economic development and you will see what I mean. It’s amusing then to see claims of marketing and product prowess from the very players acting as stewards of our school district in light of our test scores and our pursuit of the now discredited magnet school approach.

If we truly want to think of products and marketing, it’s important to step back and ask a simple question, 101 at its finest — why do we market and why do we develop products? Simple question, really, why?

[insert long pause here for readers to ponder]

The only reason you market and develop products is to sell them to a customer.  Period. If you do not sell, you have no need for marketing or products or strategy or anything at all. You should just close up shop and liquidate.

And that is exactly the product we are going to market with Amsterdam Version 2.0 to be released in 2057.

Brilliant.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.

Today women not only vote but meddle in the affairs once the sole province of men such as economics and politics and upset the natural order of things with prominent positions in our society. Why it’s nothing short of a takeover of our local culture and an unfolding  harbinger of decline nearly a century in the making.

We have everything to fear especially fear itself.

In my view, demolition should not be bonded nor should it be considered a capital project. Demolition should be an operating expense incurred the year of demolition and budgeted as such. Here’s why it matters.

First, demolition imposes hard costs on tax payers regardless of how much shared services rhetoric you wrap around the topic. If the story above makes one thing perfectly clear, it  is that demolition requires hard dollars; it’s not a free ride. Or put another way: each and every property demolished raises taxes. Or yet another way: if you champion demolition, you are championing higher taxes.

Second, by bonding the demolition expense, the cost gets sprinkled over many years and hence the true cost appears much smaller as a result. This creates incentives to increase demolition as the bonding of the cost makes the impact more palatable on a year-by-year basis. As a rough cut, spending $100K in demolition per year over 5 years is much more palatable than $500K in one year. Hence the incentive to understate the true cost and as a result, pursue more demolition — a disastrous incentive.

Third, the time line of demolition is way out of sync with the bond issue which is not desirable. I may bond the demolition of the house over 10 years even if I demolish the house today but I still end up paying for that over the next 10 years.

Fourth, we should learn our lesson on demolition from past experience when demolition was ‘free’ via urban renewal grants and monies. I think demolition is anything but free and keeping it as an expense would harshly remind us of that fact each and every time. In turn, this would enable alternate ideas and approaches to demolition with financial incentives that would yield better returns to tax payers if we could minimize or eliminate demolition.

Now that would be a capital idea.