An official’s weak arguments don’t become better or more convincing on repetition. On the contrary, stubborn repetition only reveals additional errors and mistakes, offering more opportunities for a robust critique.
Last week, I wrote about the selection of CESA 2, a taxpayer-funded agency, as the anchor tenant for Whitewater’s upcoming Innovation Center, a taxpayer-funded and debt-financed building in a planned tech park. See, On the Innovation Center’s Anchor Tenant. On Tuesday, Whitewater’s Tech Park Board issued a press release touting the selection of the agency as anchor tenant.
In my original post, I offered four arguments against the suitability of CESA 2 as an anchor tenant for the Innovation Center. The Tech Park Board’s press release both strengthens the argument against that selection of anchor tenant, and reveals how flimsy is the case in favor.
First, a summary of my initial, four arguments against a schools agency as an anchor tenant in a tech park:
- What’s an Innovation Center and Tech
Park? - CESA 2 is not a Reasonable Choice for a
Tech Park Anchor Tenant - Carts Before Horses
- Press coverage has been unquestioning and fawning
See, CESA 2 tenant for Tech Park. The story presents unquestioningly city manager Brunner’s opinions on the topics therein.
America has excelled at this sort of private,
entrepreneurial initiative time and again. For it, we are the envy of the world. It distorts and stretches the meaning of both innovation and technology to apply it to any organization, anywhere, at any time.
CESA is, I am sure, a fine organization. It’s just not a technology concern, and it never will be, by any reasonable definition. It’s not even a private organization — CESA itself discloses that “[t]he leading source of CESA funds, in all cases, was revenue from member school districts which totaled $68.1 million, or 63% of all monies received. Revenue from federal ($16.7 million, 15% of the total) and state governments [sic] ($14 million, 13%) were the other major sources of funds.” CESA isn’t a technology concern — not one bit. It’s a state-mandated agency, feeding from tax dollars, that will fill up space in a technology park built on tax dollars and public debt
Having departed from a commitment to following private demand, and thus addressing true community
needs, the City of Whitewater embarks on a presumptuous project of public debt to accommodate a public agency anchor tenant.
There’s now a press release, issued January 26th, from the Whitewater University Technology Park Board that touts the CESA 2 as an anchor tenant. See, CESA 2 to lease space in Whitewater University Technology Park.
I’ll consider the contentions contained from the release, and reply to them. The release’s text is in italics, my replies are in a regular font:
The Whitewater University Technology Park continues to take shape
as CESA 2, the state’s largest Cooperative Educational Service Agency….The agency offers extensive training for more than 70
school districts in southern Wisconsin …. Brunner said. CESA 2 serves more than 135,000 students and 7,200 teachers in 74 school districts in the seven counties of Dane, Green, Jefferson, Kenosha,
Racine, Rock and Walworth. The agency provides professional development opportunities for teachers and helps school districts with its regular and special education programs. Last year, nearly 3,000 students went through the agency’s various driver education
programs.
The size of the tenant across many counties will not benefit Whitewater — services in other counties, or — wait for it — the number of students in driver education programs! — offer no gain for Whitewater.
We have a McDonald’s in Whitewater, but no one would be foolish enough to claim that the billions of hamburgers that chain sells nationally benefit Whitewater’s local economy. McDonald’s employs countless thousands, but no one would say that these are jobs for Whitewater.
Touting the size of a taxpayer-funded agency across distant counties doesn’t demonstrate a local benefit. It certainly doesn’t justify millions in federal spending a municipal public debt.
“CESA 2 is a great match for the Whitewater Innovation Center,”
said University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer. “CESA 2’s mission of providing education and training support services for the area districts is a natural fit with the work already being done on campus in the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s College of Education. We look forward to partnering with CESA 2 and the many school districts it serves.”
Well, I am sure the university gains from a bond (public debt) issue on the city’s tab. I can see why Chancellor Telfer would like an educational tenant for the park. This tenant doesn’t match, however, the Tech Park’s own Mission Statement attributes.
Either Chancellor Telfer hasn’t read, doesn’t remember, or otherwise ignores the attributes of the board’s own mission statement, a board of which he is president.
Here’s what they are:
Attributes
- The park will establish an innovation center which offers space, facilities, expertise and services to
technology-based entrepreneurs and businesses.
- Scientific and technological advancement will be promoted through the development of green and sustainable facilities.
- The Whitewater University Technology Park is established to enhance the area’s quality of life, provide higher property values through improved building standards, and to strive for living wages and sustainable economic development.
Emphasis in red added.
(See, Mission Statement, three attributes.)
This anchor tenant is neither a technology-based business nor an
entrepreneur. It’s not a business, at all — it’s a publicly-funded agency.
[Gary] Albrecht [CESA 2 administrator] said 30 employees will work in the Innovation Center space.
Thirty? That’s 30, a whole number between 29 and 31. I am sure that the CESA 2 administrator, whose agency is renting the space, would know the correct number of employees who will need taxpayer-funded accommodations.
How very odd, though, that only a week ago, Whitewater city manager Brunner gave an interview with the Daily Union, and declared that CESA 2 would have “50 full- and part-time employees to work at the Innovation Center.”
See, CESA 2 tenant for Tech Park.
Brunner’s number is two-thirds higher than the figure that the very administrator of the anchor tenant cites in the Tech Park’s own press release.
Let’s assume that Brunner really meant fifty full-time employee equivalents, and the figure can be reconciled. I’m not sure that’s what the city manager meant, but let’s be charitable. If that’s true, then the earlier declaration of 50 is confusing, and exaggerates the effective number of employees, with a bigger-sounding, but erroneous, number. The earlier interview claim is grand; the actual number is considerably more modest.
Perhaps Brunner keeps a bottle of Miracle-Gro in his desk. In his Daily Union interview from last week, cited above, Brunner contends that the Innovation Center will host daily teacher and administrator training sessions that typically have between 20 and 100 attendees. In the Tech Park Board’s press release, there’s the claim that “upwards of 100 people per day visiting the facility.”
It only sounds impressive until one considers how vague the claim truly is. What does it mean that upwards of 100 people will daily be visiting the facility? To what do these visits amount, and how upward is upwards of 100? Are they the same as the 20 to 100 attendees Brunner cited a week ago, or would that bigger number include anyone — delivery people, lost motorists, vagrants, etc.?
The cost of the facility has been going upward, too, from its initial proposal. That cost, though, will finally settle on a definite amount to taxpayers in federal and local debt. The benefit remains vague and those numbers remain less credible than ever before.
In a more recent interview about the Tuesday press release, one finds that Brunner implicitly acknowledges that CESA 2 is not a traditional business candidate for a tech park.
Laughably, he tries to evade the selection of an unsuitable anchor tenant by contending that CESA 2 really is a support ‘business’:
City Manager Kevin Brunner said CESA 2 might not be a small startup business – a typical tenant of a business incubator – but it offers support to other business and could help attract small businesses to the park.
“We recognize the need for support businesses,” he said. “CESA 2 has the potential to offer support, and we’re already seeing interest from other education-related business in being a part of this.”
CESA 2 is not, itself a support business at all, as it’s not a private business. Using the word ‘business’ does not make the choice any more reasonable, as they designation is itself unreasonable.
(I am sure CESA 2 is a fine and needed taxpayer-funded agency — I don’t doubt they do good work. They’re just not a business. Here’s what they do — CESA 2 is a state-created agency “to assist districts in providing quality educational opportunities for students….[to] help school districts share staff, services and purchasing, and provide a link between local districts and the state.”
More about CESA is available at the following link:
http://www.cesa2.k12.wi.us/about/)
Selection of this anchor tenant is a poor decision, poorly defended.