Multi-jurisdictional
intentional regional communities are, in all cases, “Greater Communities” where
“community motive” is at work at a more than a local scale. This newsletter
provides a scan of regional community, cooperation and collaboration activity
as reported in news media and blogs.
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Top 10 Stories
Regional cooperation has long revolved around
communities playing nice to convince some large business to move here. But now
it’s about simply paying bills.
Northeast Ohio’s economy is not the powerhouse it was in the 1960’s but
we still spend like it is. Here’s the
way the president of the Fund for Our Economic Future, a group of
philanthropists puts it.
“I’d assert that our enemy in this game here is
concrete. And I don’t mean like
practical or tangible. I mean literally
concrete.”
Brad Whitehead is talking about infrastructure
costs. He calls our land use patterns “a
silent killer” of the local economy.
“The rate at which we are developing land has been 70
times the rate and which our population has grown. Which means when that happens you have to
build bridges; you got to repair old bridges. You got to build sewers; you got
to repair old sewers. You got to build
schools; you got to repair old schools.
It means that we’re adding more and more infrastructure costs on to
serve a fixed population which again means money is not being able to be used
to fix other things.”
Even business people are starting to like
environmentalists. The CEO of the
economic development organization Team NEO Tom Waltermire , likens our sprawl
to a drug
"So we’ve got this combination of this economy
that’s not growing and creating enough value and enough prosperity to pay for
our infrastructure habit.”
…
An East Bay state
senator has agreed to back off from his proposal to overhaul the four Bay Area
regional government authorities, allowing them time to negotiate and
collaborate on a reform timed for the 2013 legislative session.
…
The Napa Co. Board of Supervisors voted last week to
unanimously oppose DeSaulnier’s bill, called SB 1149. Supervisors criticized
its provisions that would create the regional commission, which would consist
of popularly elected commissioners from 15 districts whose boundaries would be
carved up from the Bay Area.
Each district would consist of about 476,000 residents,
but only two districts would cover the North Bay counties of Marin, Sonoma,
Napa and Solano. Napa County, with less than 2 percent of the Bay Area’s
population, would not be adequately represented on that commission, local
leaders contended.
While county leaders were critical of the proposal,
DeSaulnier had pledged in committee hearings …to amend it and remove the
election requirement. …
The commission would be installed above the Association
of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission
(MTC), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the San Francisco Bay
Conservation and Development Commission.
These four bodies are tasked with planning for housing,
transportation, air quality and land use in the region. DeSaulnier’s commission
would have had final say over their plans.
The author is executive director of Central Park NC, an
eight-county rural economic development organization …
As with the rest of the nation, the recent economic
downturn has not been good for our communities.
We've lost more than 20,000 jobs over the past several
years, and many of our communities are more cash-strapped than ever before and
desperately seeking new means of generating wealth.
…
Central Park NC's mission is to grow a regional and
local economy based on the sustainable use of the region's natural and cultural
resources. …
…a lot of what
the economic crisis has been about is the disconnect of "place" from
"business." One of the painful results of globalization is that more
and more of our -businesses have no meaningful local connection to our
communities.
… the Yadkin River, which meanders through much of the
center of our state, is one of North Carolina's greatest wealth generators.…
Across the globe, multinational corporations are working
-quietly to control water resources, including rivers and groundwater, because
they recognize the value of water for wealth creation.
…
Create Local Jobs
… Unfortunately, we suffer from a poverty mindset. ….
The Issue of Scale
…
A New Strategy
… We decided to create a "business
-incubator."
…
The Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC), a
public-private partnership project of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group
dedicated to accelerating the clean energy economy… new regional action plan,
Bridge to the Clean Economy: Low Carbon, High Impact Market Initiatives for the
Bay Area,…
Federal, regional and local government budgets are under
pressure. It is especially important now, in this time of government austerity,
to scale clean energy through market-driven action. Drawing on the insights and
innovations of regional clean tech and climate leaders, the… plan showcases key
players and outlines regionally actionable market acceleration initiatives in
electric vehicles (EVs), renewable power, and energy efficiency that support
economic development while reducing regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
"The Bridge to the Clean Economy action plan
outlines strategic opportunities to grow our region's clean tech economy,"
said Chuck Reed, Mayor of San Jose, who along with the Mayors of San Francisco
and Oakland established the BACC in 2009. "While we've made much progress
over the past three years, we must continue our efforts to support innovative
green technologies that will create jobs, protect our environment, and help San
Jose achieve its Green Vision goals."
...
Six area schools will receive funding from the Minnesota
Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to develop Safe Route to School plans
thanks to the hard work of the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development
Commission (UMVRDC).
MnDOT worked with Regional Development Commissions
statewide to solicit applications for this year’s round of Safe Routes to
School (SRTS) funding. Grants were available in two categories:
• Planning assistance – Funding to complete a Safe
Routes to School plan to help analyze existing conditions, gather public input
and identify potential infrastructure and non-infrastructure solutions at K-8
schools.
• Implementation
grants – Funding for education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation
activities. …
… El Paso
transportation titan Ted Houghton wants to fund a massive, $750 million project
in the heart of El Paso.
… Houghton, who is chair of the Texas Transportation
Commission,…
“We’ve had a few sources of revenue pop up,”…
The proposed Border Highway West toll road is one of
nearly 10 projects Houghton & transportation engineer Eduardo Calvo
recently reviewed with El Paso Inc.
The projects total nearly $1 billion & could be
under construction in the next couple years…
…promises of money for El Paso streetcars a few weeks
ago & now this funding for Border Highway West have caused a clash of the
titans, insiders say.
El Paso’s other transportation titan is state Rep. Joe
Pickett, D-El Paso, who chairs the board of the local Metropolitan Planning
Organization. Generally, the MPO oversees transportation planning in the region
& decides what projects get funding & move forward first.
“I’m not sure why TxDOT is picking out certain projects
when all of this stuff has to be approved by the Metropolitan Planning
Organization,” Pickett said.
Technically, Pickett is right, insiders say. But when
hundreds of millions of dollars become available from the state for a certain
project, who on the MPO is going to turn it down?
…
The region’s cultural organizations are showing signs of
recovery from the fiscal crisis and deep recession that began in 2007,
according to an annual survey conducted by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural
Alliance.
Individual giving is up, foundation support is up,
earned income is up, and even some hiring is under way, the survey shows.
“This recovery is a testament both to how organizations
have restructured and how Philadelphians have placed a high value on culture in
their communities,” Tom Kaiden, alliance president, said in a statement. “These
are positive indicators not just for cultural groups but for the region as a
whole.”
Alliance officials report that 43 percent of the
organizations polled said that ticket sales, subscriptions, and memberships
were up in March 2012, compared to October 2010, when 33 percent reported
increased ticket sales and only 20 percent reported increased subscriptions and
memberships. ...
…
The Move Your Money campaign has been wildly successful
in mobilizing people and raising awareness of the issues, but it has not made
much of a dent in the reserves of Wall Street banks, which already had $1.6
trillion sitting in reserve accounts as a result of the Fed’s second round of
quantitative easing in 2010. What might make a louder statement would be for
local governments to divest their funds from Wall Street, and some local
governments are now doing this. Local governments collectively have well over a
trillion dollars deposited in Wall Street banks.
A major problem with the divestment process is finding
local banks large enough to take the deposits. One proposed solution is for
states, counties and cities to establish their own banks, capitalized with
their own rainy day funds and funded with their own revenues as a deposit base.
Today only one state actually does this: North Dakota.
North Dakota is also the only state to have escaped the credit crisis of 2008,
sporting a sizeable budget surplus every year since. It has the lowest
unemployment rate in the country, the lowest default rate on credit card debt,
and no state government debt at all. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) has an
excellent credit rating and returns a hefty dividend to the state every year.
The BND model hasn’t yet been duplicated in other
states, but a movement is afoot. Since 2010, 18 states have introduced
legislation of one sort or another for a state-owned bank.
…
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is eliminating
its funding to regional economic development groups in the Atlantic provinces,
effective next year.
The federal agency has decided to discontinue annual
operational funding to the regional development authorities in Nova Scotia,
regional development boards in Newfoundland and Labrador, community economic
development agencies in New Brunswick, and similar community-based
organizations in Prince Edward Island…
The core funding that ACOA has provided to regional
economic development organizations (REDOs) will instead be invested directly in
small- and medium-sized businesses and communities in support of initiatives
that deliver economic growth and job creation throughout the region.
…
It's unclear if the respective provincial governments
will step up to provide the full funding.
But New Brunswick's economic development plan talks
about "streamlining" its program and doesn't even mention the
economic development agencies.
Spain's wealthiest autonomous region, Catalonia, needs
financing help from the central government because it is running out of options
for refinancing debt this year, Catalan President Artur Mas said on Friday.
"We don't care how they do it, but we need to make
payments at the end of the month. Your economy can't recover if you can't pay
your bills," Mas told a group of reporters from foreign media.
…
The debt burden of Spain's 17 highly devolved regions,
and rising bad loans at the country's banks, are both at the heart of the euro
zone debt crisis because investors are concerned they could strain finances so
much that Spain, the currency bloc's fourth biggest economy, will need an
international bailout.
Catalonia, which represents one fifth of the Spanish
economy, has more than 13 billion euros in debt to refinance this year, as well
as its deficit. All of the regions together have 36 billion euros ($45 billion)
to refinance this year, as well as an authorised deficit of 15 billion euros.
…
+ A
call for expressions of interest for urban and regional analysts to act as
advisors and experts on EU Cohesion Policy
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