Why Rochester Needs a New Economy, and Why RenSquare Is a Missed Opportunity
Last week I started a conversational snowball fight between proponents and opponents of RenSquare. We got into the weeds a little regarding the details and the funding, but it was a good discussion.
All that aside, my original question is forward-looking, and unanswered:
The fact that it’s the best we have to offer shows a fundamental lack of leadership and vision in county leadership. But with the power structures that are in place in Monroe County, how do we create an alternate vision that can gain traction?
Meaning, where’s our sustainable regional plan? A plan that addresses Monroe County as a whole, instead of pitting town against town, suburbs against city? From an article I wrote back in 2006:
Why can’t we do more regional planning, like Ontario, Canada does? I believe we’d have something that looked like their much more robust economy if Livingston, Ontario, and Monroe counties weren’t fighting over the same scraps like a couple of starving dogs.
Here’s a page from Ontario’s official regional planning site. What’s their goal?
The Caucus’s philosophy is that a co-ordinated approach to regional planning is beneficial given that GTA regions share similar challenges, values and are all part of the same economic region. Increasing population growth demands for infrastructure, transportation and human services, in combination with increasing levels of municipal responsibility, underscore the need for a higher degree of planning co-ordination anong the GTA regions.Currently the GTA Caucus is examining Growth Management issues as they impact the GTA. The RPCO GTA Caucus will use their findings as input to the Smart Growth Council set up by the Provincial Government. The GTA Caucus has also developed a Centres and Corridors report.The GTA Caucus has developed a GTA Agricultural Action Plan. An GTA Agricultural Action Committee was formed, and a job posting for the Agricultural Action Committee Executive Director was posted in November 2005.
Imagine a city where 10,000 new jobs have been created during the last 10 years, where the population quadrupled in the last four decades, where the unemployment rate fell from a staggering 14.2 percent a dozen years ago to 6 percent today.This isn’t some Sun Belt paradise. It’s Niagara Falls, Ont., boomtown, part of a vibrant region, some of whose biggest success stories sit 25 minutes from downtown Buffalo.
How did they acheive this success?
Buoyed by good planning and a steady provincial hand, the region diversified its economy. Its leaders decided to treat prospective developers pretty much the same, with no community trying to lure business from another nearby. From Toronto to Fort Erie, competition gave way to cooperation.
It’s head-exploding reading, when you think about how that region grew amazingly while our local leadership continues to “manage us down” (as former RT-er Itchy insightfully wrote). This is what I’m talking about when I say “lack of leadership and vision”. Where’s our long-term vision? Where’s our unified sense of purpose and shared responsibility (I’m looking at you, COMIDA, political cronies, and pay-to-players).
Where’s our regional plan? And if our electeds aren’t able to come up with one, how do we, the people, propose one that has a chance of standing up against the entrenched local powers?
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There was a guy around here that spent his entire career in public service with regional planning in mind. He found out that not one of the 49 taxing entities in Monroe County were willing to give up any slice of their pie for the greater good regardless of anything anyone could say, any benefits anyone could demonstrate, or any other communities they could use as an example. Eventually he got sick of listening to the same people that bitch about where they live, run down every idea anyone could come up with to change the place and quit his job.
He is remembered for buying a boat.