Reminiscing is not a vision for the future
by Mike Kroll
Celebrating
our community's past through selective positive recollections is not the path
to Galesburg's brighter future. When Register-Mail editor Tom Martin began the
on-going series of brief op-ed pieces entitled ÒGalesburg's TomorrowÓ he said
he wanted to solicit columns from local people and their visions of Galesburg's
future. A number of people have already replied and some have had creative and
interesting ideas but far too many merely lament the passage of time and the
changes it has wrought on our city. Time alone has not led Galesburg to the
dilemma we now face.
An absence
of leadership and vision on the part of our local leaders has resulted in this
community's inability and unwillingness to adapt to a changing world. As you
should have learned in biology the failure of a species to adapt to a changing
environment typically leads to the extinction of that species. If we, the
current residents of the greater Galesburg area, do not stop right now and take
realistic stock of our situation, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our
community as compared to others and marshal the necessary resources and
community will to make the changes necessary Galesburg's future is in grave
doubt.
What worked
for Galesburg in the past, a large blue-collar work force doing low skilled
manufacturing and assembly jobs for middle-class pay is not working now and the
prospects of succeeding in this approach in the future are non-existent. Our
own demands for lower priced consumer goods and the ample supply of cheap,
unskilled labor overseas coupled with advances in the shipment of goods cost
Galesburg and America nearly all of those jobs and they will not return.
Countries
like Mexico and China have large
numbers of people who can be trained to do these same jobs for a fraction of
the cost of American workers and even with the extra expense of international
shipment these goods can be sold in America or Europe at lower cost. The
Japanese and Europeans were quicker to recognize this and have been making
adjustments to their economies. Other areas of the United States have
recognized the changing world economy and adapted but Galesburg, like much of
the Midwest has been blissfully unaware of the world changing around us and too
many continue to be resistant to implementing changes that will permit us to
adapt as required.
Our
economic development officials only very recently publicly acknowledged that
labor-intensive, low-skilled manufacturing or assembly are unlikely to return
to the Galesburg area yet their business attraction effort has barely adapted
to reflect this observation. Instead, they now want to focus on warehousing
despite the fact that it produces far fewer jobs at lower rates of pay and is
far more volatile to a changing national or world economy. They have merely
supplemented one failing strategy for a slightly different and less attractive
one.
If
manufacturing is ever going to return to the Galesburg area it is going to
require a smaller number of highly skilled production employees that don't call
Galesburg home today. If such a manufacturer were looking to relocate to
somewhere there are plenty of other communities with an available, educated
work force we do not possess (That is why Pella Windows located in Macomb). For
such an enterprise to come to Galesburg the managers must presume that the
requisite number of qualified employees will see the opportunity and come
remedy our deficit-- or they can simply choose to go to a community that
already possesses the necessary work force. What would you do?
The only
way that manufacturing will return to the Galesburg area in the near future is
if it is initiated right here and the result of local investment. By virtual
necessity it most likely will need
to start out small and hope to grow. This strategy requires that area people
with capital and business savvy take the risk to invest in creating new
businesses in the Galesburg area. There are relatively few people who have the
requisite resources to make such a venture go but such people do exist and we
must find a way to entice them to participate.
People with
great ideas are often not the people with available capital or business acumen,
that is why venture capitalists exist. If we want this strategy to work for
Galesburg we need to identify good business idea and local capitalists and put
them together for the good of the community. Local area bankers have a good
idea about who has the capital and they can participate by planting seeds in
fertile investor fields. Finding those great business ideas is a more difficult
task but one in which we can all participate. One direction we must not ignore
is potential new products from agricultural products that could be grown in
western Illinois alongside corn and soybeans.
In recent
years many people have jumped on the tourism wagon as the solution to our
economic development challenges. That is why there is so much excitement about
the potential for the National Railroad Hall of Fame but this is misplaced
optimism. While tourism is good for Galesburg and will contribute directly to
our local economy proponents have grossly inflated the estimated economic
impact while simultaneously downplaying the on-going costs of maintaining the
attractions. Nationally very few museums come close to breaking even with their
operational costs much less covering facility maintenance and exhibit updating.
In fact, most museums ans related tourist attractions only survive due to
massive continual fund raising or tax payer subsidies.
While
building modern manufacturing employment will take much more time Galesburg is
well sited to become a non-urban, non-suburban oasis for white collar
professionals who work in small satellite offices or from home. Generally this
is the new American middle-class and is composed of the very demographics
Galesburg most lacks: young-to-middle-aged, college-educated professionals with
families. Reasonable expenses in tourism can help here by attracting potential
new residents to visit our community and see what may be a better way of life
for their family.
Living in
the big city is fun and exciting when you have just graduated from college,
want to live the fast life and still possess the energy to pursue it. But we
all get older and most of us eventually pair-up desiring to raise a family and
it soon becomes apparent that those same characteristics of the city that so
attracted us just a few years ago may not be optimum for raising our kids.
Small town life with good city services and reasonable amenities, as well as
easy and convenient access back to the big city as necessary, suddenly becomes
an attractive alternative. Bundle in a lower cost of living, slower pace and
friendlier neighbors and pretty
soon you can make a strong argument to relocate to a community a lot like
Galesburg.
A small
influx of such people has already begun as a mere trickle to Galesburg and we
can increase that flow by making some wise choices about how we run this
community. So far most of these new residents are work-from-home professionals
and this is the group we should focus on up front. It will take time and the
correction of a number of local deficiencies before we can successfully begin
attracting those satellite offices.
If
Galesburg is going to attract these potential new residents then we need to put
our best foot forward by being attractive as they enter the community. The East
Main Street I-74 exit continues to be an eyesore and the Main Street corridor
needs a lot of attention. Now that the city has created the expanded TIF encompassing
East Main and all of downtown we need to assure that this money funds a variety
of public projects rather than merely becoming a piggy bank for the NRRHoF.
Contrary to
the fond remembrances of many, this cleanup of downtown and East Main Street
need not return these areas to a nineteenth century motif. The facades of
downtown buildings should be addressed in ways that reflect each building's
original architecture and we should celebrate the diversity of building styles
and ages. We need to work fast to ensure that commercial development along Main
Street doesn't reflect all the same mistakes that were made on Henderson
Street. Galesburg needs an improved commercial development code that bans the
commercial use of ill-suited residential structures, enforces setbacks from the
street, limits driveway entrances and buries all utilities from the outset. We
can't do all this at once but we need to get started immediately before it is
too late and city officials need to have the political courage to risk the
necessary funds and not compromise on a development plan in the face of
opposition.
Good
schools are a must and while ours aren't bad they can use some work. We need to
spend more effort and resources on educational outcomes and maximizing the
potential of the kids that are here today if we expect to attract these more
demanding families. Our schools need to learn how to adapt to the individual
needs of our kids rather than merely taking the brightest kids for granted
while shuffling the poorest performers out of school or off to a alternative
warehouse school. No child left behind has been worse than a failure, it has
set our schools and our children back. Math and reading are important, but so
are science, history, geography, writing and the arts.
We should
also pursue year around schools as an option and organized summer day camps for
pre-high school age children that combine outdoor activities with remedial
education opportunities and provide day-long supervision to help keep kids out
of trouble. Such a program would create job opportunities for high school and
college students under the direction of a cadre of adult leaders. This should
be a joint program between the city, the schools and other community agencies
with the goal of providing an affordable and safe place for kids of working
parents who can't otherwise afford to properly supervise their kids.
If Carl
Sandburg College is destined to continue having the highest tuition of any
community college in Illinois it will need to focus on delivering real value,
particularly with regard to vocational training matched to real-world
employment opportunities available in western Illinois. Training people for
jobs that simply don't exist around here is counter productive Meanwhile,
focusing on being a cheaper first two-year alternative for students headed to a
four-year college or university is unfair to both the students and this
community and is not the role for which junior or community colleges were
designed to fulfill.
An
attractive, vibrant community with an array of housing options is also a key
characteristic that we cannot yet claim on our brochure but we must begin to
move in that direction. First, we need to address the many infrastructure needs
of this city and make a commitment not to return to the false savings of
permitting infrastructure to deteriorate to minimize current taxes and fees
only to pass higher costs on to future taxpayers. Such critical infrastructure
not only includes streets, sidewalks and public utilities but also better neighborhood
parks and recreation programs, a larger modern library, improved public transit
and a program to begin the process of converting all existing over-head
utilities to underground utilities whenever they are upgraded resulting in a
cleaner more attractive city. It was a major failure of leadership and vision
to permit the utility lines along Henderson Street to remain above ground and
as we redevelop the Main Street corridor this mistake must not be repeated.
We need to
create (and enforce) stringent rental property requirements and licensing that
force slumlords out of business and reward responsible landlords with a fair
return on safe and attractive rental units that cover a broader spectrum of
price and amenities. New housing developments must be encouraged in
geographically diverse parts of town, not merely to the north, and economic and
demographic diversity needs to be a citywide goal.
It is
astounding to me when I see people complain of a Habitat for Humanity home
going up in their neighborhood because it might help lift neighborhood property
values and hence property taxes. For far too long Galesburg neighborhoods have
been segregated by class and ethnicity and we must not let this practice
continue. Most of the worst homes in this city are slumlord rentals and they
have got to be eliminated while simultaneously we offer a helping hand to
homeowners who want to cleanup of make improvements in their homes but need a
helping hand. This help need not always be in the form of money but also labor
pulled from community service offenders, volunteers and temporary city workers
participating in a Community Improvement Program targeted to neighborhoods so
that an overall visible impact can be seen.
We must
recognize that downtown Galesburg will never again be the primary retail core
of this community (it doesn't matter how many times we try to antique-it-up).
While retail will continue to be found downtown the best future development
will be in offices and businesses that cater to office workers. Rather than
seeking to remodel the second stories of downtown's oldest buildings into
apartments or condominiums I propose offices and professional services with
shared exterior connecting walkways permitting the shared cost of elevators.
And we
absolutely must mandate the installation of sprinklers in all commercial
structures including remodeled downtown commercial loft spaces. This most
certainly places a substantial additional cost in the development of such
properties but using TIF funds to ameliorate much of this cost would be an
especially worthwhile expenditure. While we're at it let's recognize that our
downtown parking is both insufficient and in embarrassingly bad condition.
Redoing the downtown parking lots and making downtown more attractive to
pedestrians and bicyclists should be a high priority of downtown redevelopment.
Retail
recruitment should not be a city function and in fact shouldn't be necessary.
Retailers will come as they see opportunities in Galesburg. The city should
enact a business license program where all business owners must register and
pay a modest annual fee. This program should apply to commercial, industrial
and even landlords and the purpose would be to provide a mechanism to foster
responsible business practices. Registrants should be required to show proof of
customary and reasonable insurance, demonstrate proper payment applicable taxes
and fees, and to insure consumer and employee safety, competence and
responsibility.
The ideas I
have listed above barely scratch the surface of the many things that we can
begin doing right away to move Galesburg toward a brighter future. None are
quick or easy fixes and most will demand allocation of time and resources to
complete. But we cannot accomplish much by continuing to do nothing more than
what has led this community to where we are today. Just as in real life your
personal problems aren't going to be solved by winning that huge Lotto jackpot
there is no free or painless solution to the dilemma Galesburg faces today.
07/31/08