Economic Development Failure Shows City Should Focus On Basic Services

"When you hire employees based on politics and not qualifications good results will not occur"

.......150% correct! Look all all the "ratards" that Brown surrounded himself with, Derenda, Karla Thomas, Miller-Williams, Antoine Thompson, Brian Davis. Thats what you get when you place your vote depending on the color of someone's skin and not the context of their character. After all the stuff thats happened to Brown administration it's going to take a lot of free groceries to get him elected.

Economic planning should be done at the regional level with a heavy emphasis placed on increasing regional investment in the city. Doing so would require demising the local Industrial Development Agencies that compete for business. My only concern is giving the County Executive control over a huge regional IDA may backfire on the city.

Finally someone gets it. Get the basics right and growth will follow of its own accord.

I agree with getting rid of BERC and no longer aiding things like restaurants. Really most of what all of the IDAs around here do sounds like dumb corporate welfare that rewards a few and doesn't really grow the pie.

"The best approach to attracting economic development is for local government to focus on hiring talented people and providing quality services in the basic areas of police, fire, building permits, streets, and education."

While that sentence makes very good sense at the local level, attracting economic development also depends a lot on the business environment relative to other metro areas and states.

Compared to those that gained seats, it's safe to say the states that lost Congressional seats due to the Census results announced last week have above-average spending/taxes and more pro-union laws and regulations. Maybe some will say that's coincidence.

Focusing on the proper role of government - or, where government has always been most effective - is likely a key to success. Creating a supportive infrastructural and physical environment for economic development is certainly key.

But get out of the economic development business entirely? Seems a bit broad-brush. Zoning has historically been a failure at creating great places, but good zoning is vital. Traffic engineers have historically made streets in cities worse, but professional street design is vital. Overly restrictive licensing of certain business types has sometimes been designed to limit the marketplace and protect monopolies and high prices, but licensing is often vital to protect consumers. Government-supported loans have sometimes fallen short of expectations, but such loans gave us the country's railroad network, the highest home ownership rate in the world, and at the local level even in recent times bolstered projects like the pending restoration of the Larkin Power House. Today Rocco Termini talked a great deal about the success Schenectady is having with its government-led downtown development strategy. In Buffalo I wish we had more projects that came to fruition because the City stepped in: the restored Market Arcade, Babeville, and the Jefferson Avenue Marketplace.

Maybe this too is a bit broad-brush, but the key is to do it right, not to simply not do it. When private capital ignores the economic development opportunity of urban settings, government capital can do a great deal of good.

Now if only we could get someone who gets it to run for office, or support them financially so that when they DID run for office they would have enough local recognition to stand out on the ballot, so we can stop reading essays and see a little action.

As Chris Hawley points out, it doesn't make sense to "throw out the baby with the bathwater". BERC has been ineffective, even corrupt to some extent but that is not a good reason for local government to get out the business of economic developement. The answer is simply to de-politicize the process and hire competent professionals with experience. I also agree with Peter Parkdale, giving Chris Collins more power with a larger IDA would certainly hurt the City of Buffalo. His record of suburban centric favoritism is clear and he lacks the vision or understanding of regionalism.

If Collins is in fact suburban-centric, it's only because (a) he's the County Executive and 70% or so of all residents live outside the city and his geographic scope entails a much greater area than the city proper.

However, Byron Brown and his cast of merry political hangers-on are unwilling to work with anyone in any collaborative fashion. Brown's idea of collaboration is he calls the shots, everyone else listens.

Economic development, on a whole, is a lost cause. The more decline the region has, the more money they give away. The more money that's given away, the less that's available for basic services, including maintaining infrastructure and other assets valuable to average residents and homeowners. This leads to social and economic decline that is self-perpetuating.

Ultimately, without regional plannig and governance, WNY will continue to decline as each individual municipality does what it thinks is best only for its taxpayers. That leads to many losers and a few winners, that eventually become losers in the lifecycle of municipalities as residents, constantly mobile in search of the things they desire (schools, public safety, parks, low taxes), find the best locale for that bundle of assets.

Until there is a move to a regional government, this place will only decline. Operating under a three-tier municipal structure developed in the early 1800s in an agragian society and based on dispersed, largely rurual, population centers is no longer valid, and in fact is the main reason NYS continues to die.

But people still think boundaries are important so change is unlikely and death becomes us.

If I have to hear that city hall wants to 'STUDY' anything else, I'm going to f'n scream. If after all these decades of 'Studies' and you still 'don't get it', GIVE IT UP!