The first four parts of this series covered the role of government, management, labor and education in the creation of Green Jobs. The take-home message in this final installment is, no one group is responsible for or able to launch a successful Green Jobs initiative alone. This means that any one group can sabotage such an effort, simply by not playing well or not playing at all with the other groups. But this has been the case for Buffalo redevelopment efforts since the decline began.
In the deserts of the southwestern US, there is a toad which lays its eggs when the first rains come and temporary lakes form. The eggs hatch rapidly and the tadpoles feed on insect larva while they grow. As the lakes begin to dry up, the tadpoles become cannibals eating their siblings until they can metamorphose into adults and burrow down until the rains come again. This image has come to me over and over in my own experience in Buffalo and as people have described past redevelopment efforts and failed projects designed to help Buffalo recover something of its former glory. This dog-eat-dog attitude seems so out of place in the city that gave the rest of the world social workers.
Unlike other cities, Buffalo has not learned how to deal with limited resources. Other cities set priorities and work to leverage their assets so they can achieve those priorities. The different factions that make up Buffalo’s culture each want what they consider to be their fair share, which is usually significantly more than what even an equal share would be. In other cities, the different groups work to find common ground so they can partner together for the good of the community, but not in Buffalo.
Buffalo must come to terms with its limited resources and the fair division of those limited resources. This is the single biggest barrier to the revitalization of the city as a whole. Each of the factions will have to learn to collaborate if the city is to have a future.
Being willing to collaborate is not good enough, someone has to make a call or knock on a door. The first meeting is just about getting to know each other’s organization and where missions overlap, but without one, no one knows where a partnership can be developed.
Developing these lines of communication between organizations with similar or complementary missions is the first step to changing the city culture.
Consider what would happen if a local community development corporation, which has a mission to develop both housing and jobs, partnered with a job training center to create jobs in housing rehabilitation and opportunities for home ownership. They could get grants to expand the program to include deconstruction, instead of demolition, and the recycling of the materials. All of these are Green Jobs.
They would share the costs of administrating the funds, housing the program, which means neither one gets any money for those functions; the expenses come out their existing operating budgets. Sure it means more work, but this is what their mission is, the reason why they get their money in the first place. So the dollars invested by a donor go to the new program and the creation of the jobs. Since deconstruction costs 30% less than demolition and creates 10 jobs instead of 3 this would be a boon to the community and give a lot of return for the investment made by the funding organization.
In the second article in the series I said the money for Green Jobs will come from a source willing to provide it for that purpose. That source is probably not going to be interested in spending one dime that doesn’t create a new Green Job. That source is going to want to see that the partnering organizations are putting up an increasing share of the costs and can continue to support the project when the grant funds run out before it will allocate any money to help Buffalo.
Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. Organizations and administrations trying to turn Buffalo around keep trying to do it either alone or in small back room negotiations
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