Evansville Scores high on Potential but LOW on Performance
Excerpts from the Study
“According to the National Broadband Map, Evansville ranks 368 of 370 metros in the U.S. on upload and download speeds (see endnote 8). This is a serious impediment for the attraction of certain IT types of companies, and to mobile entrepreneurs that rely on the internet for their work.â€
“ The Evansville Regional Airport provides good air service for a region of its size. However, the schedule is not necessarily business friendly. For example, it is difficult to do a day trip to and from Atlanta.â€
“During our focus group sessions, many of the respondents who are either employers, or who serve as a resource to help train employees for employers, cited the difficulty to find and retain skilled industrial, technical and managerial talent. There was near unanimity of that opinion from most if not all of the 70 focus groups participants we interviewed.â€
“During our interviews, it was also evident that many local leaders, elected officials and in some instances, economic developers, did not quite understand the economic development process, how industry clusters are identified, how to market the region effectively and what role the EDC and the LEDO’s should undertake so that there is no duplication of effort.â€
“Clearly, one of the most significant challenges in the region is the lack of suitable and available industrial and office space related to industrial parks, industrial sites and available, quality class A office space.â€
“The availability of venture or angel capital for entrepreneurs and start up ventures related to non retail enterprises is virtually nonexistent in the region. “
“However, the general appearance of many of the communities within the four counties we visited displayed blight, an aging housing stock (average age of 52 years), decaying downtowns and central business districts, litter, and in general, a perception of lack of community pride.â€
“Evansville has a lower relative proportion of residents whose highest level of attainment is “Bachelor’s Degree†and above (Figure 8, Figure 9 and Table 6). While the differences are not entirely striking, they may influence the attraction of firms demanding a sizeable pool of highly educated workers, or cause firms to reconsider Evansville for large scale research and development type operations. “
“Evansville and the two benchmark communities each enjoy relatively low Cost of Living scores, all below 100 (Table 25). Utility prices (residential electric and gas) appear the exception in Evansville, scoring at 120.3.†Note: The utility score for the region average the rates of Duke Power and Vectren. If only Vectren rates were used the score of 120.3 would have been substantially higher (lower is better).
Link to the entire study:
http://media.courierpress.com/media/static/EVV_Competitive_Realities_report_final_04032011__2_.pdf
I count nine (9) bullet points on a list. None of these nine weaknesses will change unless living, breathing people are working on it. Groups need to consist of 4 or 5 people, consisting of: a) People who advocate for change (recommend entrepreneurs who had to make it on their own, not the usual heads of Vectren/ONB who really don’t care); b) Implementation people–who can actually manage the plans that result; and c) Governmental Employees (who will likely have to provide all or part of the funding). I would pass an ordinance that each City Council member has to be the lead government rep on one of the 9 bullet points for their entire term in office. I would assure that there was widespread publicity given to the actions plans crafted by the group, perhaps a detailed report in the newspapers (CCO and CP) every 4 months or so.
The reason these things always fail is that the there is never a plan ! The fat cats talk about it, or dismiss it, and then it dies on the vine in favor of running the daily status quo. The KEY: you have to force a plan to be put in place, and then you have to have the ability to pay the implementers. The funding from the implementers can come from the same source which funds the plan. If you get an action plan, publicize it, have people to implement (compensated), publicize both the progress and obstacles, and manage the effort, and the community can start eliminating the 9 weaknesses and thrive ! It just occurred to me: not one of the three studies cited ‘ lack of an Arena’ as a weakness . . . wouldn’t it be great if we could have used that $ 200 Million to seed the action plans and projects which can finally fix the 9 weaknesses ???
I can not say I agree with a lot of this report. It indicates that K-12 education is at an acceptable level here, and also thinks that there is not enough tax incentives for business here.
Anyone who thinks that either of these statements are true about Evansville does not have a clue of what is actually going on locally.
Actually I think that what they were saying about the K-12 scores was that they stack up well against Chattanooga and Davenport. That may not mean any any more than beating a 4 year old in a poker game.
As for the incentives my interpretation is similar. It meant that Davenport and Chattanooga are willing to give away more money than Evansville is to “buy” jobs.
The weakest aspects of the study was its heavy dependence on comparing us to a couple of places that are not exactly setting the world on fire either.
It is easy to convince oneself of inherent talent by competing only with people without talent. Our long term goals should be higher than to be the “Lords of the Flies”.
That study reads like an anthology of Joe Wallace’s articles from the City County Observer and the Courier Press. They should have just hired him to do the study or better yet just download his articles and put a cover sheet on them and get the study for free. I am sure that some of the city leaders are sitting down to a big old dinner of crow now that they spent $230,000 to be told what Mr. Wallace has been writing about for years now.
The report stated that the Evansville Airport as compared to bench mark airports has 40-60% fewer flights. This is the very first place to improve our business community and travel access. The entire air board needs to be replaced with persons dedicated to improving travel access. This has long been the well known achilles heel of business development. I’d support either Mayoral candidate that makes this a top priority. More flights = more business and travel dollars.
2010 census data show Chattanooga with a $25,005. per capita income compared to Evansville’s $22,801.
Chattanooga’s (2010) unemployment rate was 9% compared to Evansville’s 8.9%.
COST OF LIVING INDEX
Chattanooga Evansville
cost of living 89 95
goods & services 93 97
groceries 95 94
health care 92 98
housing 83 87
transportation 99 96
utilities 78 115
From the above figures we can see that the people here in Evansville pay more for everything than their counterparts in Chattanooga, and do so with LESS INCOME.
I would also like to add that according to Money-Zine.com, which used this criteria to calculate the “tax friendliness” of a state:
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In developing its rankings, the Tax Foundation evaluates the tax burden of the state’s residents. That burden is calculated by taking the total state and local-level taxes and dividing it by the average per capita income. The outcome of this calculation is the percentage of income that is used to pay state and local taxes.
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The results are a national ranking of #7 for Tennessee with 8.3%, and a ranking of #23 for Indiana with 9.4%.
Again, we can see that there is also a 1.1% tax advantage to living in Chattanooga as opposed to Evansville.
Your point being that we pay more for governance than the people of Chattanooga pay. Precisely that 1.1% is really 13.25% higher than Chattanooga’s rate (1.1/8.3)*100.
States with no income tax
* Alaska
* Florida
* Nevada
* New Hampshire*
* South Dakota
* Tennessee*
* Texas
* Washington
* Wyoming
*Note: New Hampshire and Tennessee don’t tax wage income, but they do interest and dividends. The applicable rates are 5% and 6%, respectively.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Again, advantage Chattanooga.
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