The Big Questions

T-t-t-t-tech Valley!

The recent announcement about Sematech's relocation to Albany clearly has the potential to be good news in terms of the region's overall economy. Presuming it follows through with the move and projected job additions at least.

How good the news is, however, depends a lot on how well we plan for the impacts—in the city, and regionally. This is good time to remember that Austin managed to grow dramatically while not improving the economic situation of its most vulnerable citizens very much. Many of the companies who came to town found themselves floundering for workers while the unemployment rate in many poor areas didn't decline. So the first thing we need to do is commit to training, job supports, investment in k-12 science education and mentoring, transit improvements, local hiring agreements and anything else that will help our current residents benefit from as many of the new jobs as possible. Bringing people and organizations with this kind of expertise into the Tech Valley development process as soon as possible is crucial.

Some have said that 120,000 people followed Sematech to the Austin region. If we could home grow a portion of the talent they will need here and cut our poverty rate down in the process, we'd have all of the benefits without so much of the sprawl and traffic congestion. This is a vision worth working hard for.

Speaking of sprawl, our center cities can certainly absorb some new residents. But will they go there? And if they do, will the people who were already there be able to afford to stay? These are good questions to get to ask after years of losing population, no doubt. But the time to ask them is now, because they are so much harder to address after the fact.

Luckily, Albany's about to start a planning process. Along with economic incluson, the following items should be on the agenda anyway, but this news increases their priority:    

• Affordable housing development and long-term affordability controls, like land trusts. (Burlington, Vermont has a great land trust example).
• Stabilizing and supporting existing small businesses that serve a range of incomes and needs.
• Regional incentives to combat sprawl and benefit all of our municipalities (outlying municipalities don't actually benefit if they lose all their open space and become a traffic nightmare).
• Fix-it First. Our aging infrastructure needs attention, and we shouldn't be tempted to build new stuff before we attend to that.

This is just a preliminary list. More to come, of course, as we learn more.

A few thoughts on the enabling legislation

Councilwoman Cathy Fahey rounded up her own summary of the last Planning Committee meeting by writing "Though, I was not completely satisfied with the outcome, the legislation is adequate and I plan to vote in favor of it at the May 7 Council meeting."

So it seems likely that the legislation will pass. After all, it's very rare for the council not to pass something that a committee recommended for passage. (Once upon it time it was rare for anyone to vote against anything . . .)

This should not mean that anyone should avoid coming to make comments if they have them. Because the legislation is leaving a lot up in the air, the way the new board will operate is still subject to discussion.

The one main point that has been under contention and will actually be decided in this legislation is that four city employees—the chief of police, the commissioner of development and planning, the commissioner of general services and the director of Albany Community Development Agency—and one appointee, a member of the planning board, will be voting members of the new board.

Many people have questioned both why employees who should be expected to be working on this process as part of their jobs also get to being voting members, and others have questioned why these people in particular; why the police chief for example, as opposed to, say, the commissioner of the Department of Recreation or a member of the Water Board.

These are good questions to ask, and I don't know that there is one perfect answer. There is at least one good reason that I haven't heard mentioned to have these people involved directly: Like anyone else, they are more likely to cooperate with implementing a plan that they feel bought-in to. And you need their cooperation to implement one, especially if you want to get into any changes beyond a simple land-use plan. That shouldn't trump public control of the process, but it's a good subordinate goal.

On the other hand, as many people have said, even the appearance of any back-room dealing or bias could compromise the process by turning people off. There are plenty of people who feel that the presence of city employees might do that.

I understand this, and even sympathize with it somewhat, but I have a couple countervailing thoughts: First, if this process is limited only to people who have set opinions about the trustworthiness of various portions of city government, then it will have been far too narrow.

And second, a planning process should be about working together. It's not about formulating two competing camps and arm-twisting people to vote for one or the other. Decisions should be made by as near to consensus as possible. So while there will likely be conflict and disagreement, and I would be reluctant to file this under the same model as much of the rest of what happens/has happened in this city. Rather, I want to see whoever is on this board enter into a process so open that even if they're used to cutting back-room deals, horse-trading, power-broking or currying favor, that there is no space for it. That would be a far greater success in my mind than flexing the might of the Common Council by keeping all members of the administration off the board.

A while back I was involved in some of the large direct-action protests that followed the one at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999. We knew that our meetings were going to be infiltrated by police. Rather than set ourselves on a futile mission of trying to be more and more secretive and exclusive so that wouldn't happen, or constantly accusing people of being infiltrators, we went the other route, doing everything completely out in the open. It was better for our souls and better for our results.

I'm pretty sure that the people who hold this concern, like Councilwoman Fahey, are not going to abandon the process if the legislation passes as is. That, at least, is clearly the right answer.

It Takes Thousands

The Times Union didn't actually have a reporter at the April 24th Planning Committee meeting, so perhaps they can be forgiven for not quite getting the point, but after hearing so many people emphasize how open a process this should be, it was amusing for me to see that their post about it on their Local Politics blog (which, if I'm not mistaken was their first mention of the issue) was titled "It Takes 30 People to Make a Plan."  I hate headline writing (and have sometimes written about the results of meetings I didn't attend), so I shouldn't throw stones, but perhaps I can throw jelly beans or pillows or something?

This board will not make the plan; it will guide the planning process and ensure that as many people as possible get to help make the plan. No one involved should ever be allowed to forget that.

April 24th, Planning Committee: Some Commentary

If you haven't read the last three posts, they are useful background to this one. I separated this out from the quick meeting summary to make it clear that these are my (admittedly rather pointed) opinions.

Presuming the current enabling legislation passes, all five members of this committee are going to serve on the City of Albany Comprehensive Plan Board, and the board will be chaired by committee chair Dan Herring. That means that the personalities and quirks of committee members, especially their style of participating in meetings, and the dynamics between them are going to affect the process considerably. It is for this reason that I offer the observations below. They have a hard job. What follows should be taken as constructive critique, and nothing personal:

Getting the Basics Right

Plans can do nothing and gather dust, or they can create exciting momentum and catalyze dramatic improvement. The difference lies in how well the public is involved, and therefore how bought in they are.

I started talking about it in my Metroland column of April 5, which you can read in full here. The gist: "When in doubt, think of [public input] like running for office, but with everyone who doesn’t show up counted as a vote against you."