Rotary Talk – Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me as your guest, and thank you for your service to this community.

My name is Chris Bzdok, and I have a part-time job as the accidental mayor of Traverse City.

Three years ago I applied for a vacancy on the city commission based on a voice mail from Bill Kurtz, who said I wouldn’t get it but it would get my name out there. I did get it, I was appointed, then ran unopposed for re-election, then unopposed for mayor. I have described this as like tripping and falling onto an escalator and suddenly finding yourself on the third floor.

The point is, I believe you have to make the most of your opportunities, however they come to you.

My opportunity – really our opportunity – is to define the future of Traverse City. To define it, and then to make it happen.

I want to set the stage for that topic with a few statistics so you know I’m serious. Some of these you have probably heard. They concern the current state of the Michigan economy, and they are not pretty.

According to the Citizens Research Council, Michigan employment is down 20% from the year 2000 peak.

According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment here is 14.7%, 1st in nation. The UM annual economic forecast predicts this figure will rise to 15.8% in 2010. 10 years ago Michigan’s unemployment rate was was 3.7%. The UM economic forecast estimates that we lost almost 300,000 jobs in 2009, and will lose another 85,000 in 2010, and another 36,000 in 2011.

The Detroit Free Press recently reported that Michigan’s per-person income has plunged from 20th in the nation to 40th in the nation.

Michigan housing prices have dropped 7.4% in a year and 20.5% over the last 5 years. The Senate Fiscal Agency says we are 4th in the country with almost 40% of home mortgages underwater.

Traverse City is part of Michigan, and we are not doing great. Certain sectors of our economy and our community are hurting badly, desperately. In the aggregate, however, we are at least treading water.

Consider those housing statistics: state housing prices down 7.4% in a year and 20.5% over the last 5 years. Based on new data from Grand Traverse County Equalization and the City Assessor, housing prices in the county dropped 7.0% last year, and only 0.675% in the city. Based on the same data, 2009 County housing prices are actually up 0.678% from 2007, and up 2.5% in the city.

So we are suffering, but we are not drowning. The question that confronts us – everyone in this community – is, what do we do? Do we hunker down and try to wait it out? Or do we try to rise up and meet the challenge with optimism and effort and energy?

You know what my answer is by how I phrased the question. Let me give you two reasons why.

First, Jack Lessenberry wrote a column last November in which he quoted George Fulton, director of the UM research seminar that produces the annual economic forecast. Dr. Fulton referenced a rating agency that predicts it will take 30 years for Michigan to recover to the average unemployment rate in the nation.

I’ll be 68 in 30 years. In my mind, that’s too long to hunker down and wait.  (I can see some of you think it’s funny I think 68 is a long way away.)

Optimism and energy is riskier. If you try, you can fail. But the second reason I think optimism and energy are the path to take is because that is what is sustaining us now. I don’t have data for this argument, but the anecdotal evidence is pretty exciting.

Per the Traverse City Chamber of Commerce: Skilled Manufacturing, predominantly an automotive supplier, will now invest more than $9.5 million to expand into the aerospace sector and produce jet-engine parts in Traverse City. The average wage of the 73 new Skilled Manufacturing positions is over $34,000 per year.

Per the MEDC: Hagerty Insurance has made a public commitment to the County of Grand Traverse, City of Traverse City, Old Town residents and business owners, to provide as many as 226 new jobs in our region. (And to build new buildings on Lake Street).

Optimism and energy and the willingness to take risks are what led to the Munson Medical Center expansion, the entire Village at Grand Traverse Commons redevelopment, the Heritage wind farm (which is not in TC but is owned by TC entrepreneur Marty Lagina), and the restoration of the State Theater, a project that almost single-handedly turned downtown into a lively evening destination.

So I think we have to be optimistic and energetic and willing to take risks if this community is going to weather the storm swirling around us. I think we have to do this just to keep our heads above water in the face of all the downward pressure on us.

What does any of this have to do with local government? Two things.

First, it has to do with what we talk about. City government plays a supporting role in fulfilling our community’s values and goals, not a lead role. But we are the public forum where these topics get discussed. So what we say and how we say it becomes important, because it gets communicated elsewhere and drives the discussion elsewhere.

Second, city government can make the city a better place to live. In mobile 21st century America, with the natural gifts and historic character and emerging brand TC already has, if we build upon the high quality of life in the city, most of the rest will take care of itself. People will visit here, move here, stay here, and open businesses here because they want to be here. Conversely, if we don’t take care of the quality of living in the city, if we allow it to deteriorate, then we will face an obstacle that we probably cannot overcome.

How do you determine what would make Traverse City a better place to live? Ask the people who live here.

The last time the city did this in an intentional way was 20 years ago, with a group called the Residential Retention Task Force. Jennie Nestor in Slabtown turned me onto this. The Residential Retention Task Force went to the neighborhoods and asked four questions:

Why do you choose to live in the city? What is it about your neighborhood that attracts you? What problems do you experience? What is your “wish list” for the future?

The answers were: protect the neighborhoods, calm traffic, improve downtown, and take care of our recreational resources. Some of these goals are on their way to being met, others we have a ways to go on.

We also know that the residents want us to take care of business. By that I mean to ensure that we spend their tax dollars as efficiently and effectively as possible. The city commission is very motivated to do this, and in Mr. Bifoss we have a city manager whose acumen and experience in taking care of business are without equal among his peers.

We know that we need to deal with the city’s very old infrastructure. Under the leadership of Mayor Mike Estes and the skill of the city manager, the city commission has increased city street and sidewalk spending from $100,00 per year to $1.2 million. Now we can sit back and view that accomplishment relative to what was done previously, or we can view it relative to what still needs to be done. The city has 78 miles of streets, and 40 miles of those are rated in poor condition, not including gravel streets. With $1.2 million, plus additional money from other sources, we will fix 1.9 miles of those streets in the next year. That’s less than 5% of the poor streets – not counting gravel streets, or streets without sidewalks.

 So our work is cut out for us. And we have to keep asking the residents for direction, because city projects take a long time and the city is changing. Professional quarterbacks don’t throw the football to where the receiver is. They throw it to where the receiver is going to be when the ball arrives.

That is why I created www.planfortc.com. Actually, Mike Wills’ daughter Chelsea created it – I wouldn’t have known where to start. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to check it out. It’s an open forum using free blog software that I update weekly with news and ideas about what’s going on in the city, and people respond with comments and ideas of their own. In 3 months, we’ve had almost 8,000 visits, 200 comments, and over 800 fans on Facebook. The point is not to have a good website, the point is that a good website can be a tool to help government create a better city – by figuring out what our residents are going to value when the projects are completed. Where the receiver is going to be when the ball gets there.

The Chamber’s socioeconomic and demographic market snapshot says that between now and 2014 we are going to see double-digit population growth in two age brackets: 60-somethings and 30-somethings.

The 60-somethings are coming here because it is a quality place to retire, semi-retire, or think about retiring. Because this is where they want to end up.  The community gets the benefit of importing their money (obviously), and less obviously the community gets the benefit of their time, energy, and volunteer ethic. You know this from Rotary. I know it from my firm’s work for land conservancies and non-profits, and my wife’s work for the Inland Seas Education Association and GT Conservation District. If you calculated the sum of the hours these people put into local boards and volunteer time, multiplied by the rates these people commanded in the market place at the height of their careers, you would have a major explanatory factor of the quality of life in this community.

The 30-somethings and younger are coming here either for the natural amenities or because they grew up here and want to return. They bring their energy and the businesses of the future. Based on the website and the Facebook page, people my generation and younger are moving to the city because we want to live in the city. We want sidewalks and parks and porches and the waterfront and the downtown. We want to ride our bikes to work and walk to the store and walk our kids to in-town schools. We want to be part of a high-quality community because of what it offers us and because even today we define ourselves in part by our associations. We want a city that is unequivocally business friendly, gay friendly, and green.

This is how we weather the storm. By being optimistic, energetic, and willing to take risks. We need to push the envelope. Part of pushing the envelope is knowing where the edge is. Our challenge is to stride right up to the point where vision becomes grandiosity, where optimism becomes utopianism, where community pride becomes parochialism and hubris.

We won’t solve anything with just optimism and energy, but we certainly won’t solve anything without them. They are essential to any effort to keep our head above water, and hopefully make us a bright spot of the future.

I invite you to continue this discussion next Monday night. The City is putting on an event called Traverse City Tomorrow. [Read from the poster]. http://www.facebook.com/PlanforTC

Over 200 people have already responded positively to Traverse City Tomorrow on Facebook, and the first “old media” mention of it was in the newspaper today. There is excitement in this community about the future and we need to capitalize on that, to leverage that.

Come to the Opera House. Hear the panelists’ ideas, ask them your questions, share your own.

The late, great scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn of MIT – one of my intellectual heroes – wrote that science is the product of a community or else nothing at all.

The product of a community or else nothing at all.

So is the future.

Thanks for your time.