Yesterday I attended the Economic Development Commission to talk about how we move forward on the Economic Development Plan. I had talked to a few people in the community and have some more on my list. And in talking to people about the plan, I came to a few conclusions about what we need to do. So, I pitched it to the Economic Development Commission. Here was my pitch, or at least a version of it, with likely a few more and a few less details as it coalesces in my mind.
WHAT ARE OUR MAIN GOALS?
I started reading the plan and nitpicking it to death. I have many comments on every page. At some point I got frustrated, backed up and took a look at it from a larger perspective. Generally speaking, the plan got us talking. It started some of the very dialog that it says we need to be having. That’s one of the values of the plan. Also, there are some good things in the plan (and what was presented by Ticknor). I can’t say that I agree with everything and some of it is too much detail for even me to care about (newsletter?) and some of it is likely to be a set up for failure and probably doesn’t belong in the plan. What I asked the EDC to do was fix the report, let the Common Council receive it, but then . . . give us a resolution where we approve the top 4 or 5 goals that we need to work on the in next few years. What are the things that will have the biggest impact, the easiest to do and most important? I’d like them to be simple and easy to remember so that staff and council members can rattle them off and recognize them when we see them and we can focus our not limitless resources. And, more importantly, so that the business community and the developers who might work on projects have more predictability. I want people to see that when items come up on the committees and at the Council that it was one of our priorities and that we don’t argue about it, because we’re done arguing. I hesitate to mention what those might be and I might not agree with them in the end, but if we get that far, we’ll have made progress instead of constant fighting.
JOINT DISCUSSION AND BUY IN
In order to get us to that point, I suggested that we have a joint discussion with the Council and the Economic Development Commission. Part of my consternation over the plan was that we asked for a strategic development plan . . . never passed the RFQ . . . approved the consultant . . . and then really weren’t a part of the process. Late notices, inopportune meeting times (days), scheduling many sessions in one day and poor communication made what little process we were invited to hard to participate in. And so many of us didn’t. Unfortunately, I think that led people to believe we don’t care, and I don’t think that is the case. So, I asked that the Council meet with EDC and have a discussion about Economic Development and let that discussion inform the final report and setting the goals.
OTHER PARTS OF THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONTINUUM
This report focuses on “basic sector” jobs. To me, this is the low-hanging fruit where our money might have the biggest impact and create the jobs with a career ladder. I’m not completely convinced and would like to see it discussed a bit more, but it seems to be a good direction. So, it makes some sense to start there. However, there are other things that I think Madison wants to do when it comes to Economic Development. I think we need to acknowledge those things, get them on the radar screen and make them a part of the plan even if it just says we’ll work on them in the next plan we create.
GOALS/OBJECTIVES VS WORKPLAN
The report we have seems to be a mixture of the staff work plan and the goals and objectives. I urged to split the document into two pieces. Let the council pass the goals and verbiage (not verbage! 🙂 ) but keep the workplan a working document for staff and EDC to use to accomplish the goals we all end up agreeing on. If we pass what essentially is the workplan, we’re setting the plan up for failure because something always comes up that rearranges priorities. I think it works better as a living document instead of the static document the council would pass and then have to amend.
I came to these conclusions because one of the things that has been bugging me is that we did our plan backwards. We didn’t take a scan of our community, assess the opportunities and threats, look at what we had to do in the next few years to keep our community strong and then set about a plan to make to happen. Instead, the plan process started with “we need more jobs” and then there was a plan to get more jobs to Madison. Then when we said how we would do it, we plopped in some numbers about how many jobs the plan would create, with no rhyme or reason as to why we needed that number of jobs. I would have rather have come up with a goal for the number of jobs that we needed and set up a plan to get to that number based on what we thought we needed for our community. The whole thing just seemed backwards.
Anyways, I hope the EDC makes the discussion with the council happens and that we get to the point where we can focus the plan. While Madison needs to participate in the regional discussions, we need to have our own plan. The City of Madison needs to come to agreement about how we participate in Economic Development. We’ve been talking around it for years, but its time to have the Council and Mayor make some decisions about what we want to do and let the staff and community (including the electeds where appropriate) get to work on it.
