Archive for January, 2013

The world is made up of causes and effects.  Hurricanes cause storm surges.  Hitting a cue ball hard into a break causes pool balls to scatter.  A bad earnings report causes a company’s stock to go down.  And so it goes in business, sports, life and cities.  High crime rates cause visitors to stay away from a city.  High taxes slow development.  High college acceptance rates attract students to schools.  This is what economists spend their time thinking about.

Most people think about these causes and effects abstractly.  Common sense tells them that one thing ought to affect another.   For instance, an after school program keeps kids off the streets and therefore should reduce the crime rate because kids on the streets sometimes commit crimes.    Another example might be, making a city’s inspections process less expensive to lower development costs and stimulate investment.   Or perhaps, opening a new museum will increase tourism.

Most people are comfortable making statements like the above, but generally don’t know the details.  For instance, they can’t answer questions like:  If we spend $1,000,000 on foot patrols how many FBI index crimes will be avoided?  Or, if we lower inspections fees by 50%, how much incremental investment should the city expect to see over the next 5 years?   These are fair and important questions.  Most citizens can come nowhere close to answering these types of questions, and that would be OK but sadly, most policy-makers in a city like Trenton can’t answer them either.

So how can normal citizens get better at thinking through the policy issues that face us every day?

Without researching every policy assertion that’s ever made, how can we begin to really understand causes and effects?

We make better choices by knowing whether a policy has a 1^st order or 2^nd order effect and whether the effect is strong or weak. Of course we need to start with clarity on our goals (investment, crime, education, population, income). But after being clear on goals we must carefully consider causes and effects so we can begin to decide whether policy assertions are important.  This kind of thinking is often called “systems” thinking and is used to better understand complex things, like cities.

There’s a difference between 1^st and 2^nd order effects

In pool, when the cue ball strikes another ball and knocks it directly into a pocket, we call that a 1^st order effect.  One thing caused another.  However that same pool shot may have left the cue ball well positioned to allow the player to sink the next ball.  That’s a 2^nd order effect.  The difference is that  in order for the good “leave” to have happened, many more effects of physics had to take place over and beyond the just hitting the first ball in.  The cue ball had to be deflected just so, the spin had to be just right and perhaps the cue ball needed to bounce off the bumper with just the right angle.  The good “leave”, assuming it was intentional, had a much less likely chance of success than hitting the first ball in.

And so it is with city policies.  An afterschool program will most definitely get some kids off the street.  Getting kids off the streets is a 1^st order effect and can be measured fairly simply.  It’s the number of kids in the program minus the percentage of those kids who would have otherwise stayed at home or in the library.  For instance: of the 100 kids in the after school program we might say 40 of them would have been home.  So the program got 60 kids off the street.

But how does an after-school program affect crime?  It’s not likely that a kid staying home would cause a crime.  But what about the 60 who would have hung out on street corners.  It’s a bit harder to say because crime reduction is a 2^nd order effect.  For example, not all of those 60 kids would have ever committed a crime.  Of the several who might be inclined to commit a crime they might do it when they weren’t in the after-school program.    But then again, maybe the program has a long term effect on the child, or maybe it doesn’t.  As you can see, the 2^nd order effects begin to get murky.  This is why sophisticated policy makers don’t depend on them and often point to 2^nd order effects as “potential side benefits”.

In Trenton, we shouldn’t base our important policy decisions on 2^nd order side effects.

Strong vs. weak effects and the importance of context

Even when causes and effects are 1^st order, the linkage between the two can be weak.  For instance in buying a used car, high mileage may not dissuade you from buying it.  This is a 1^st order effect but not a strong one because you’ve already decided you could accept a few miles on the car.  However, dented side panels may just completely turn you off.  The big dents might be a strong 1^st order effect and keep you from buying the car.

It’s the same with public policy.  Let’s return to inspection fees for a new home.  Let’s say we want to stimulate growth by reducing the fee from $1000 to $300.  That’s a big drop.  And because it directly affects the price of the house, it’s a 1st order effect.  However, that $700 drop in cost is fairly small in comparison to the $300,000 that you’ll eventually spend on the house.  Other things like lumber, labor, land and property taxes easily dwarf the inspection cost.  So while the reduction in inspection fees may be annoying to the builder, it has a weak effect (though 1^st order) on the eventual buyer.

2^nd order effects can be weak and strong as well.  For instance, we can imagine a school retention program that lowers the high school drop-out rate.  This program might have a good 1^st order effect on education but also a 2^nd order effect on crime reduction.  That 2^nd order effect might be considered strong because we know there’s such a high correlation between high school graduation and likelihood of committing a crime in the future.  Compare that to an after-school basketball program which should have a 2^nd order effect on crime reduction (as we discussed above) but that effect may be weak.  Certainly the research and evidence linking graduation to crime reduction is stronger than that linking basketball to crime reduction.  That’s not to say there’s no effect, it’s just not likely to be as strong.

The cause and effect of crime also varies widely.  Economists have shown that each incremental index crime in a city leads to one person moving away.  However, the rate of emigration is 5 times higher for high income people and 3 times higher for families with children.  Poor, single people are much less likely to move away due to a high crime rate.    Therefore we can say that a high crime rate has a strong effect on high income people leaving a city but a weak effect on the poor leaving (likely because they have fewer choices).

Just understanding this differences in the effects of crime, even in the abstract, should have a profound impact on how we think about policy in a city like Trenton.  Sadly, you’ve never heard a government official make the above distinction.

It might be good to focus on strong 1^st order effects rather than weak 2^nd order ones.

In the world of policy making and particularly in a cash-strapped city like Trenton, we need to make hard choices.  We don’t have either the money or the man-power to do everything we’d like.  So it’s important for citizens to lobby for the most important policies and for government officials and activists to help clarify 1^st and 2^nd effects and strong vs. weak linkages.

We can use crime reduction as an example of a good objective.  Criminologists know that high rates of incarceration have a beneficial effect on the crime rate (most people get this).  There is a strong 1^st order cause and effect between building good cases against criminals that lead to long sentences.   On the other hand, we may spend the same money we would have spent on an extra detective on a mentoring program.  The mentoring might have a 2^nd order effect on crime reduction and likely a weak one at best.

When we talk about programs and policies in Trenton politics, we need to keep these things straight and always keep our core goals in mind as well as cost-benefit.

Policies that have multiple 1^st and 2^nd order effects are generally more impactful than others

Finally we should remember that sometimes policies can have multiple effects.  You’d likely trade a $1,000,000 program to reduce crime that has single strong and effect on the crime goal, for a $1,000,000 program to stimulate development that might have a strong 1^st order effects on the economic growth goal, a strong 2^nd order effect on the crime goal and a weak 2^nd order effect on the education goal.  Some policies give us broader “bang for the buck”.

Policies that positively affect multiple goals in Trenton (investment, crime, education, population growth and income growth) will not only strengthen the city and stretch our dollars, but will find broader political support.

Every minute of every day, Trentonians have policy discussion on Facebook, at barber shops, in civic association meetings, over drinks and at City Hall.  We discuss crime, trash pick-up, taxes, parades and any number of topics.  It’s important for Trentonians to move past sentimentality and misguided assumptions in our discourse.  We need to get on the same page.  To do that, not only do we need shared goals, but we need a common vernacular for discussing policy.  To the extent we can begin to discipline our thinking by keeping our goals clear and then breaking causes and effects down into 1^st and 2^nd order and then strong vs. weak, we’ll have a more constructive civic dialogue.

Note:  I wrote this article for my blog 2 weeks ago, before the TESC deal for Glen Cairn Arms came up and was having it edited.  I had no way of knowing we would be having a important policy debate about this very subject.  I held off publishing it in favor of reporting on and  providing thoughts about the proposed TESC deal.  However now is a good time to start talking about causes and effects in policy discussion.

On Friday afternoon, (Jan. 11, 2013) Trenton first heard that Thomas Edison State College was to acquire the former Glen Cairn Arms (GCA) building at 301 W. State St.

The deal is that they pay a one-time fee of $300K and then never another dime to Trenton for all eternity.  TESC wants to construct a nursing school on the site.

To those of us that have observed the RFP process for GCA and the city’s broader attempts to market the city over the years, we know that our failure to interest a developer was due to lack of imagination, financial acumen and hubris.   The city under Doug Palmer had paid a substantial amount of money to acquire and settle lawsuits regarding the building, in excess of $3M.   We always thought we were better than any developer thought we were.  A Walgreen’s wasn’t good enough or a developer wouldn’t pay enough of the demo cost.  Or maybe other payments weren’t made.

In 6 tries over 16 years the city has not found a proposal that it liked enough to accept.  They’ve turned down proposals that would have had a positive return on investment for the city (i.e. paid more in taxes that our cost to make the site read).   And meanwhile, they never presented a plan to make the area around the site attractive to developers.  Over the years both Palmer and Mack have slowly let the city deteriorate in general both in its ability to fight crime but also to function as a working government.

So here we are.

In comes George Pruitt to present a deal to the city for the site that gives us nothing and for all time.

Tonight’s City Council meeting was obscene in the degree to which those of us working to help fix our approach to government were dismissed.  It was as if we were on the wrong side of the negotiating table with TESC, City Council and the administration lined up jointly to oppose us.

George Pruitt and his subjects threw out comment after comment hoping to convince, I don’t know who, that the project was a good idea.  They didn’t need to convince Council because they’d already been dealt with before the deal was announced.   Council and the city administration have given up on the city’s ability to affect change in marginal areas of the city.

This is a scary thought.  By giving up on Glen Cairn Arms, which has quite a bit going for it in terms of location, they’re saying that they don’t know what to do in any marginal part of the city.  They don’t know how to stimulate development.   It’s a hard thing to accept especially when the city administration and council don’t even know that’s what they’ve done.

But back to Dr. Pruitt’s comments on the numerous benefits to the proposed project:  Bob Lowe called them second order effects, which is what they are if you could even prove that.

For instance, he insists that by erecting a shiny new building property values would go up.  However, there’s no evidence in Trenton to suggest that.  It didn’t happen with the ballpark, hotel or arena in the so-called opportunity triangle.  It didn’t happen with the Hughes Justice Complex and it’s not happening with the new County courthouse.   The theory just isn’t supportable with the evidence.  And even if it was, it wouldn’t help our revenues because we don’t revalue our property, ever.

Second, Diana Rogers of the CCRC strongly supported the project.  Well that’s wonderful but who cares.  Ms. Rogers’ contribution to the “logic gone wild show” was to suggest that students at the nursing school would move to Trenton.   Wow! That was a doozy.   So what she thinks is that nursing student from around the world will pass by all of the other nursing schools in between them and Trenton just to come to TESC so that when they get here they’ll need a place to stay.   It’s hard to believe that a person that calls herself a redevelopment professional actually said that in public.

Next we hear the obligatory jobs argument, both construction jobs and permanent jobs.  I’d like for just once somebody to put pen to paper and show exactly how that translates into municipal revenue.  Unless new workers are being recruited from other areas of the country and need housing, and then when they get her happen to decide they want to live in Trenton, new jobs don’t equal new revenue.   Or maybe Dr. Pruitt thought that TESC would be hiring unemployed homeless people already in Trenton.  I don’t know what he was thinking other than he knew the public would like hearing it.

Finally we hear the nursing school compared favorably to other schools like Princeton, Rutgers and The Naval Academy.  The argument goes that those schools spin off industry and stimulate the economies of their host cities.  There is evidence that research universities have contributed to the development knowledge economies.   There just isn’t any evidence that nursing schools do that.  If there was then wouldn’t we be experiencing the boon Dr. Pruitt and others predict given that Mercer County Community College already has a nursing school in downtown Trenton.  I’ve read a lot about the linkage between universities and economic development.  I just haven’t come across the same linkage for nursing schools.

So we’ve got $16.7M in state spending that will make Trenton look a little prettier, give students another nursing option and construction workers another 6 months’ worth of work.  But Trenton gets nothing.

But we expected those banal arguments.  It’s what people say when they have to run away from the hard truth that a public project won’t benefit the host community.  We’ve heard this story too many times to count in Trenton.

What we didn’t expect to hear was the outright hostility to the idea that maybe we should take some time to think about this idea before we act.  I suggested that we form a group to look into the claims that were made by TESC and their paid contractors.   Shouldn’t we verify that there is no hope for site?  Shouldn’t we calculate the city’s cost in supporting this building for all eternity?  Shouldn’t we find a way to determine how nursing student lunches will translate into municipal revenue?   TESC made a lot of claims and didn’t provide any calculations to show how the city would actually benefit.  Shouldn’t we look into that?

And what about the city?  How is it that an economic development department can go 16 years and not figure out how to turn around one of the most trafficked blocks in the city?   How is it that a Business Administrator can’t figure out that a demolition loan at 2% would be a bargain if it generated a 4% return in taxes?  It’s not hard math.

Shouldn’t we do a little due diligence?

Nope rather than allow citizens to help look into these questions, our city council angrily shut the door on meaningful analysis and research.  They literally suggested that if we wanted to, we could  try to come up with something on our own. We could, but we’ve only got two weeks.   I’m sorry but we have jobs.  TESC told the Council that they had been working on this plan for two years.  Trenton taxpayers working as volunteers have only two weeks.

And to top it off, it was suggested that if we as taxpayers were so concerned why we didn’t do something about it before.  With whom?   Tony Mack hasn’t had the same person in the same job for more than 6 months for the past 2 ½ years.  Activists have tried to work constructively with the administration but it’s like walking on quicksand.   Further, I’ve been writing about this very subject for years.   I’ve written post after post about how to deal with land that has negative value.  I’ve proposed that we subsidize demo costs as early as 2008.  I’ve written extensively about neighborhood level development and land value tax.  These are measures to which the Palmer or Mack administrations or Council could have listened.  But instead they’ve chosen to chase business as usual and cede more Trenton land to the State of NJ.  They’ve chosen to be influenced by the same people who have influenced Trenton into the hole it’s in.  They’ve chosen to make us more dependent on the State, not less.

The lack of questions, the suspension of logic and the shutting out of meaningful public comment is proof positive that once again, in Trenton, the fix is in.

Other blogs/write-ups on the subject:

Jim Carlucci’s write-up of the Council meeting

Reasons to be Cheerful. Not.

Glengarry Glen Cairn

Tony Mack’s Worst Deal Yet

Today, Tony F. Mack announced that he wanted to give the Glen Cairn Arms building to Thomas Edison State College (TESC).  They want to put a $16.7M nursing school of some sort on the property.   Right off the bat, unsophisticated Trentonians started messaging that this was progress.

It’s not progress; it’s more of the same.

Every single politician and activist in Trenton for the last 12 years has complained that the State of New Jersey doesn’t pay its fair share in Trenton.  And this deal is simply more untaxed State land.  Do we need another tax exempt property?

Let’s do the math

TESC wants to give Trenton a one-time payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) of $300,000.  One time!  That’s essentially free.

That $300,000 is to cover taxes for all time on a $16.7M building? Spread over 10 years that’s a 0.2% tax rate. Spread over 20 years that’s 0.1%.  Trenton’s tax rate for the rest of us is 5.5%.   Put another way, the State would be paying 1/50 of what you and I and every other private property owner pays in taxes. That’s essentially nothing.    Many private homeowners in Trenton pay more in taxes than this deal will yield.   It comes nowhere near the cost of paying for the police, fire and public works costs to support the building.  The new building’s direct support costs for just those services would be around $700K per year.

Trenton’s City Council should NOT approve this.

Instead, City Council should do what Fix Trenton’s Budget recommended two years ago and approve a standard PILOT for all new development in Trenton.  That standard PILOT should be based on taxing land at 30% of assessed value and improvements at 1.5% of assessed value. This PILOT should be available to all developers.   A standard PILOT like this would be welcome by developers and go a long way to encouraging new taxable investment in Trenton.   It would also serve as a reasonable basis for PILOTs for non-profits and eventually for a Land Value Tax for the rest of us.   This is important in our effort to have our tax system work for us rather than against us.

“Isn’t something better than nothing?”

It’s true that Glen Cairn Arms has sat vacant for many years.  But, as the math above shows, we lose money on this deal.   So no, “Something is NOT better than nothing”

Why hasn’t the building sold?

The City of Trenton owns the building and has been unsuccessful in selling it for many reasons:

1)    The City has maintained a poor development environment for many years due to crime, ineptitude in city government and lack of a plan to improve.

2)    The city always tried to sell it rather than give it away.  It’s obvious the building is a mess and therefore has no value and maybe negative value.

3)    We don’t have a standard PILOT that makes sense for a developer. I’ve proposed one above.

4)    We may have to demolish it ourselves (i.e. because as the building stands it has negative value)

There are several options

• We sell it to TESC using a standard PILOT. The current assessed value of the land is $500K. With a $16.7M improvement and using the suggested standard PILOT rate, we receive $400k/ year in revenue. This is what we should get.   It still doesn’t cover all of our direct costs, but it’s closer.

• We sell it to a private developer with a new package. We would spend the ~$1.4M * it would take to demolish the building in anticipation of a private developer putting a $5M building on the land. With the standard PILOT in place that would yield $225K a year in tax revenue.  This is a 16% return on investment and a pay-back of 6 years.

• However, we should NEVER approve another tax exempt property deal. Increasing ratables in Trenton should be our #1 priority. This deal with the State of NJ is the opposite of that.

But there’s more

Do we as citizens really want to let Tony Mack negotiate development deals for us?  Time and again, we’ve seen in New Jersey that government money is rife with corruption.  Tony Mack has provided us a case in point.  We have no reason to trust him and every reason not to.

Our Indicted Occupant of the Mayor’s office will do anything to make himself look good to unsophisticated voters.  In this case, it appears that he’s working to curry favor with TESC and let that organization’s patina rub off on him.   The leadership at TESC should know better.   Furthermore TESC and Mack are using State money as part of this scheme.

But I’m really confused about the choice of Glen Cairn Arms?
Trenton has a large unused medical facility with multiple buildings that could certainly be converted into a nursing center.  Why not encourage TESC to purchase all or part of the Capital Health Mercer campus.   Isn’t this exactly the use we’ve all talked about for that site?

Finally …

This deal has been presented to citizens without any economic impact assessment.   Certainly our City Council has come too far with this corrupt and incompetent Mayor to allow him to get by with this. But more importantly, if you support this deal, then you have no business complaining about the State not paying its fair share in Trenton. This is just making it worse.

* I originally estimated $300K based on numbers from a previous bid, but understand that TESC thinks the cost is $1.4M so I’ll use their number to be conservative.