“Let’s look outside the military for brand,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, August 5-11, 2011, 25.

WHAT’S OUR BRAND?

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Despite Ray Dalio’s special knack for humiliating his employees by pointing out their weakness and mistakes so they can improve next time around—perhaps because he’s the owner of Bridgewater, the wealthiest hedge fund in the world, we may want to consider working with our strengths.

City officials and economic development gurus in our town have for years clamored to attract and promote military installations and their subcontractors, after realizing that religious organizations, like Focus on the Family, spend their money outside the city.  They claim that twenty percent of the economy depends on defense-related expenditures at the Air Force Academy, Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, NORAD, and the Combined Services Space Center. It sounded like a good old-fashioned military town, but should it be?

Our very own Chamber of Commerce here renamed the Chamber of Defense doesn’t seem to have an education liaison. Does it have a sports liaison or a hospitality liaison? It has attracted less than fifteen percent of the businesses in town out of more than 10,000 businesses because it prices its membership rates beyond their means. Clue: give out free membership for the first year; after a year begin charging gradual dues; then assess your marketing strategy to attract more members and give a voice to a wider clientele.

According to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International Trade Administration, small businesses “have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.” So, if creating new jobs is our concern, as it should be, why not focus on niche and boutique small businesses, rather than focus on big military contractors?

Besides, what happens once we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan? What happens when budget concessions, as we see them unfold, reduce the defense budget? Our defense spending as a percentage of our federal budget is disproportionately larger than any other advanced economy in the world. Is defense spending sustainable?

If we plan for the future, let’s look into health, education, and new technologies. Having been a tourist and heath attraction from its very beginning, why doesn’t the city refocus its efforts in this direction?

Perhaps the focal point should be the Convention and Visitor Bureau that claims we had 5.5 million visitors in 2010 with an economic impact of $1.35 billion. Now this is a large number. I tried to compare this to local defense spending but websites weren’t helpful nor were city officials (including the Mayor’s office). Instead of the Chamber of Defense leading the economic charge, it will be left to the newly appointed CEO and President of the Bureau, Doug Price to create new jobs.

According to him, there are more than fifty local attractions with more than half being completely free of charge. There are more than thirteen thousand employees in the hospitality industry, as compared to about fifteen thousand in Fort Carson. So, if we add hospitality, high-tech (unrelated to defense), hospital, university, and athletic employees (including physical therapists and personal trainers), I bet the number overshadows that of the defense industry. And if our share of the state’s tourism industry is only ten percent—being the second largest city in the state—we have room to grow!

So, what’s the issue that keeps a military focus on the CS community? Is it our retired military personnel (who don’t like taxes because their kids are no longer of school age)? If it’s nostalgia, why not go back to attracting tourists and patients of tuberculosis? Forget tuberculosis patients, and instead focus on athletes who appreciate altitude training. Though no a ski resort, we are still closer than any other front-range city to the Rockies! The Hill Climb reminds us of Pikes Peak, just as all the other athletes coming to train at the USOC remind us of how special we are. Maybe we should start believing in ourselves again!

So-called liberal states like Massachusetts, New York, and California have many more military and air bases than we do; their economies rely on defense contractors even more than we do; but this is not what they are known for. This is not how they brand themselves. With new city leaders, let’s hope that after attracting defense contractors and religious organizations, they may pay attention to health, wellness, and tourism.

The city wisely chose to brand itself “Proud Home of the U. S. Olympic Committee” and not the “Proud Home of Military Bases.” Pikes Peak isn’t moving away; neither is it dependent on the largess of Washington. Let us make the most of it!

Raphael Sassower if professor of philosophy at UCCS and was formerly involved in the hospitality business in town. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com

      

“Running the city like a business is odd,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, July 29-August 4, 2011, 24.

THE PRICE OF TRANSPARENCY

Not only did the citizens of Colorado Springs want a “strong mayor” with commensurate strong salary, they wanted the city to run like a business, which is code-word for efficiency. They found a perfect match in Steve Bach, a former commercial real-estate broker whose regal appearance bespeaks of a successful CEO and hopefully a Mayor. Beware of what you ask for!

So, Mayor Bach is running the city the way he ran his private business—all communication with the media, for example, is streamlined and must be approved by his office. It’s one thing to tell your secretary that all inquiries about a particular building should be answered only by agent X, and quite another to tell city officials/managers that they cannot answer directly questions by journalists (and a freelance ”rogue”—as I have been affectionately labeled). Really? Last I recall, he and his fellow-council members ran on platforms of transparency and accountability, so why tight controls?

As I was looking through the Police Department annual budget of around $92 million, I reached out to its Chief, the affable and eloquent Richard Myers, only to find out that only if city manager Steve Cox, also an affable and friendly former Fire Chief, is present, he could meet with me. Really? Let’s waste two officials’ time…Is this how efficient businesses are run? To save money and time, I rescinded my request to meet. The reports can speak for themselves.

So far two myths are being examined: first, public entities (like a city), if run like a business, will necessarily be more efficient, and second, that transparency can be simply declared to make it so.

When I reviewed Memorial’s budget for public benefit—limited, of course, to the public that reads the CSBJ—and suggested that there was no hurry to conclude an agreement in principle between the City and Memorial, a council member chided me for being “uninformed” because all the documentation is on the City’s website. Were salary increases for 25% of city employees during the official wage freeze (as discovered only recently by a new council member) also on the website? So, transparency can be accomplished by referencing a website! This is probably a third myth.

It is true that websites in general are open to the public in the sense that anyone with a personal computer or library card can have access to them. But is the mere fact that a website is part of the wide world of the Internet in itself a sufficient condition for public access? No, it is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. Without the website no public access is possible, but with it there is no guarantee that the public will know about it, find it, navigate the data in it that is in question, and be able to analyze its nuances.

For example, having poured over some 200 pages of Police Department reports (courtesy of Chief Myers who provided the links), I was thoroughly impressed by the detail of the reports and their commentaries, especially as the city has grown and the budget has shrunk. As in most budget reports, we get large numbers and not the details from which these numbers are composed. This makes sense, because otherwise I’d have to read probably more than two thousand pages, which is too much for an average citizen (or even for a rogue who is on summer break from university duties). Here and there one wonders if “each Emergency Technician answers nearly 5,700 9-1-1 calls a year” is impressive workload or not. Assuming that person works 250 days a year, this means 22.8 calls a day... Should I have wasted the Chief’s and City Manager’s time to find out if this is what their businessman-boss finds efficient use of resources?

In another report Chief Myers speaks my language: “Enforcement activity for the sole purpose of generating revenue is contrary to the social contract, and outside the ethics of modern policing.” Right on! Social Contract theory goes back to Socrates and his trial in Athens in 399 BCE, and espoused by most political philosophers who recognize that citizens have in fact an implicit “contract” with their representative government to ensure that they receive more benefits from the state while relinquishing some of their rights. Chief Myers knows this, acknowledging the consent of the citizens to be taxed and policed, get traffic tickets, be monitored by cameras. He wants to dispel the impression that ticketing motorists is the only way the department pays its officers (which is true in Colorado’s mountain towns where around 70% of the budget is generated this way). I wish he did more with the “three Es” of “enforcement, engineering, and education,” to emphasize education above all. Are all officers and civilians in the department proud to be “civil servants” constrained by a social contract or are any of them on a power trip? I hereby volunteer free lectures to the department on social contract or any other related topic.

As for enforcement, I have three suggestions: first, given that we are the healthiest city in the country, why not have officers ride bikes rather than cruise-cars or motorcycles? It’s cheaper, more flexible, ever-present (they go slower), and healthy for the officers. This would be like the British Bobby who walks around the pubs with only a club in hand.

Second, if there are dangerous intersections, cruisers should have their lights on (rather than hide behind bushes), so that motorists are warned; likewise on highways and around schools—let the public see where you are! Incidentally, this is true in Israel and France where cruisers have their lights on at all times for easy recognition, immediate warning, and a measure of safety. DC is considering adopting this method of patrolling.

And third, some ideas cost no money to implement: several years ago I suggested that cruisers leaving from or returning to the Nevada station should take different routes (rather than just use Cimarron and Nevada) and thereby cover more terrain—it has been done to the effect that the mixed-neighborhood around the station is safer than when I moved there in 1996.

Running a city like a business is an odd proposition: profit maximization isn’t the goal, but rather public service; tight communication controls don’t bespeak of public access. Transparency is a tough goal to achieve—open forums and websites help, but they must be critically navigated by experts or interested groups (and not the public at large). The media can help, as long as its work is done with grace and respect, humor and goodwill. And finally, officers, please don’t hunt me down and ticket me; despite the rogue label, I pay my taxes on time and stop at red lights!

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He regularly teaches a course on “Politics and the Law.” He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com