On January 21, Barack Obama begins his second term as president. While for many Americans that milestone brings a sense of optimism and anticipation, there is also concern, growing out of a disappointment over opportunities not addressed in his first term. In this space in the weeks leading up to that milestone, three Rochesterians will address key issues that need to be on the agenda of the president and Congress.
Our guest columnists: RIT Criminal Justice Professor John Klofas, on the issues of gun control and criminal justice; Rochester Mayor Tom Richards on the needs of cities; and the Rev. Marvin McMickle, president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, on poverty. Mary Anna Towler’s Urban Journal column will return in mid-January.
Cities across America are in the midst of a sweeping transformation, and the time has arrived for the federal and state governments to play a more determined role in ensuring that these transformations are successful.
Some cities are enjoying record growth, while others are struggling with troubling decline. In Rochester, our transformation is more nuanced – neither boom nor bust – but a transformation, nonetheless.
What all cities share is a vital role in the overall success of our nation. Urban areas can no longer rise or fall in isolation, because their collective success will decide the fate of the entire country.
Before you accuse me of self-serving melodrama, consider this: According to the 2010 US Census, some 81 percent of Americans live in urban areas. That’s a 12 percent growth rate from 2000, compared to less than 10 percent overall growth nationwide. And according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, 85 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in 2010 was generated in 259 cities, including Rochester.
Cities are playing an increasingly important role in delivering services, facilities, and infrastructure that have a direct and immediate impact on citizens’ quality of life and the future of the next several generations. Cities are also home to large populations living in poverty, so they provide crucial services to those with the greatest need.
They’re doing all this at a time when expenses outside their control are overwhelming their ability to raise adequate revenue.
Like most cities, Rochester’s primary source of income is the property tax. But this funding mechanism was created when cities were home to large factories and commercial establishments with vast inventories of real, taxable property.
Those circumstances have changed, and in New York, the change is acute. Rochester’s ability to increase revenue from the property tax is limited by law and the practical inability of residents to carry a greater burden. Before we can put one book on a library shelf or one cop on a beat, the entire property-tax levy has been exhausted by the cost of pensions and the state-mandated $119.1 million payment to the City School District.
The federal government already has several proven funding mechanisms to help cities advance these goals, particularly in the areas of housing, transportation, and the environment. These are funds and grants administered by such agencies as the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Transportation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Rochester has a proven track record of success with many of these programs. For instance, in the last six years the City has leveraged $10.5 million from HUD’s HOME program to yield a total investment of $379 million (36 to 1) to build 546 new housing units and renovate 2,230 housing units in our effort to revitalize neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, programs such as HOME, the Community Development Block Grant, the Energy Efficiency and Conversation Block Grant, and many others are in a perpetual state of decline. Elected officials label these programs “discretionary spending,” as if they were luxury items.
But in cities like Rochester, they are not luxuries. We have blighted properties that must be removed from neighborhoods and no longer be havens for illegal activity. We have emerging market places, like College Town and the Port of Rochester, that can generate new revenue streams. We have environmental brownfields that must be remediated and returned to the tax base. And we have highways and roads, like the Inner Loop and downtown’s one-way streets, that must be reconfigured as conduits of commerce rather than barriers.
We have a transformation that is happening whether we manage it or not. President Obama and leaders of the next Congress have an opportunity to help us shape that change for the better.
They can do this by developing an urban policy that prioritizes and coordinates the activities of the many agencies that have an impact on cities. This is particularly important in a period of fiscal austerity, when budget cuts can leave us with bits and pieces of existing programs with an uncertain overall impact.
Cities are not transforming in isolation. They are changing, and America is changing with them. President Obama and the next Congress must help us direct that transformation with focused investment. They must help us provide our citizens a standard of living befitting this great nation.
Thomas S. Richards is mayor of the City of Rochester.
This article appears in Jan 2-8, 2013.
Funny how this drain on property taxes is never blamed on Richards’ giving a free ride to new construction leading to further abandoning of existing space (e.g. Culver Road Armory drew businesses from downtown), and how corporate chains get red-carpet treatment while local business owners are crippled by exclusively supplying tax revenue, and suffering bureaucratic abuse (e.g. the secret 24-hour permit for 7-11 on Monroe versus the aggressive, illegal restricting of hours at Obsessions Bar and Grill).
And what’s that about his pet project of getting rid of the one-way Clinton and St. Paul streets downtown? One-way traffic creates additional pedestrian safety, and the parallel design affords efficient transit. Maybe Richards’ future boondoggle — the proposed Mortimer Street Bus Barn — can’t function without it.
I hope that one day soon the loyalists to the Democratic Party will realize their representation in this city is a corrupt bunch of opportunists. (Hint: connect the lines between which companies perform patronage jobs and which companies fund campaigns.)
And there is an ongoing migration of Americans (particularly Generation Y Americans) to dense urban centers, which goes to show further the particular importance of paying attention to services in the City. Cities, after all, are our future and are here to stay. Keeping them safe and continuously vitalized, may it be through public services, business investment, and transportation investment, is important for us Gen Y’ers, including myself.
Mayor Richards, it seems, looks at our city from a different perspective than most Mayors. In Providence, for example, their Mayor had a quality of life oriented plan for redevelopment of the urban core. I fear that the Mayor of Rochester has no plan, rather, looks at the city as a tax generator first, lifestyle second. It is a classic “chicken and egg” situation!
Red Light cameras are not an economic development plan! Economic development occurs because a city is attractive for residents to live in. It is a combination of safety, night life, attractions, excitement, and pride! Instead, in our city, we are unsafe, confuse night life with bars, chase out the attractions (with the exception of the jazz festival) and no longer have pride in our city (witness the hole in the ground of Midtown).
Stating problems is easy, vision is another thing. Dear Mayor Richards, “where’s the beef””
Tom Richards wrote “Before we can put one book on a library shelf or one cop on a beat, the entire property-tax levy has been exhausted by the cost of pensions and the state-mandated $119.1 million payment to the City School District.”
Once again, I must admonish our colleagues at City Hall to stop misrepresenting the facts. For 95 years, the state has required that the big cities collect property taxes “on behalf of” their school districts. Why? Because the cities had already developed complete education systems, and because the cities already had a system for collecting taxes when the State mandated public education. Don’t believe me? Look at your city tax bills over the last 10 years. School Tax Levy has always been there.
Smaller school districts were on their own to figure out how to collect the taxes, and what their boundaries would be. They also had both the freedom and the responsibility to put their school tax levy to a vote.
The only thing that changed was that when Gov. Spitzer ushered in the Contract for Excellence funding for schools, which promised a phase-in of adequate funding for education, he turned to the cities and said, in essence, if the State steps up and fulfills its constitutional obligation to fund a “sound basic education”, we expect the cities to maintain their current effort, and not use this new money as an opportunity to reduce the local commitment to education.
Since then, the state has reneged on the Contract for Excellence. The phase-in of new funding was stopped, and then reversed. Even so, the City’s contribution to the Rochester City School District Budget remains only 17% of the whole. Nearly all the funding for suburban schools comes directly from local property tax base, so it hardly seems fitting for the City to bemoan their share of the burden for education.
The City and the School District have one common interest: advocating that the State address the inequities created by a tax system that allows high wealth and high poverty tax bases, but demands the same services be provided without the same resources.
Richards lumps school aid in with the cost of pensions as if these issues were two sides of the same coin. Pension Costs may equal the entire City Tax Levy. Rising pension costs are real, and the City School District is struggling under the weight of those costs as well. But it is unfair to add pension cost and education aid together to make the statement he makes. It is inappropriate to perpetuate the myth that the city has been burdened with an unfair financial obligation to the City School District.
Willa Powell
Commissioner, Rochester Board of Education
@ Ms. Powell – Your insights on the inner workings of the RCSD are much appreciated. Thank you.
I’m by no means an expert on education or on the RCSD, but I do know that (fairly or unfairly) it’s generally believed that the RCSD does not do an adequate job of educating and preparing students for the future (obviously there are exceptions). The reasons behind this can be debated, but the perception is real and is a major factor (if not “the” major factor) in determining where young families choose to locate – if they have the means to choose, that is. Rochester is not alone in this regard.
Stemming the tide of young couples and families moving from the city to the ‘burbs would go a long way in improving/stabilizing the City and the district. As an outsider looking in, I’d offer the following suggestions:
– Get rid of the many different “schools within schools” and simply get back to the “three R’s”… at every school.
– Get rid of the “school choice” program and go back to neighborhood schools.
My suggestions may be simplistic, perhaps I don’t see the bigger picture. As I stated, I’m no expert… but parents shouldn’t have to be experts in order to appropriately guide their child through the school system. Why must it be so (seemingly) confusing?
Signed,
Suburban Parent
There is no vision for Rochester. Residents are seen as revenue-makers (red-light cameras, parking fees, etc) while out-of-town developers and big projects are seen as our “saviors”. There needs to be focus on locally and cooperatively-owned businesses throughout the city, not just in gentrified areas. There needs to be a change in direction and that opportunity is coming.
Most of the discussion about improving urban areas focuses on various government “economic development” programs, whether they be tax breaks, outright grants, or periodic “master plans” drawn up by people who will never implement them because they don’t have the money. All of these efforts have long track records of failure. The only way to rebuild a city is through jobs, and the only way to create jobs is to make your community attractive for job creators. Right now, New York is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to attracting business. Despite the Governor’s endless self-congratulatory press conferences and catchy slogans about NY being open for business, the fact is we still have the highest taxes, most burdensome, anti-business regulations, the most confrontational unions, the highest utility costs, etc etc.
Create the conditions for business to return and grow in Rochester, and you won’t be endlessly fretting about how to divide a shrinking pie. Unfortunately, encouraging business is about as attractive to the liberal Democrats who run our cities and our State as getting the hives.