Budgeting Around Priorities: Can the City Budget Work for City Residents?

Earlier this year, City Manager Matt Horn asked Council to establish a set of priorities for the City that he could draw on when drafting his proposed budget for 2009. “Value for the Tax Dollar” was on the list. If that means no tax increases without a corresponding increase in City services, we’re counting on a “0%” increase in taxes for next year. Especially because Horn has brought straight talk and real numbers to the City’s financial planning process.

In 2006, New York decided that municipalities receiving state aid should be required to submit a multi-year financial plan and keep closer tabs on economic conditions. We thought (and still think) that this is a common sense approach to municipal finance that enhances accountability in government.

In watching our multi year planning for the City of Geneva unfold, we worry the City is headed for a serious financial crisis. The 7%, on average, increase in property values last year put off the inevitable reckoning because tax payers and the local paper focused on the slight increase in the tax rate, and not the size of the check they had to write.

That allowed Council and the City administration to believe its own PR that it was somehow holding the line on taxes. Most people’s tax bills went way up and city spending continued to grow at a faster rate than revenue did. Tax and spend? Why it was tax, spend, and borrow some more. Payment will be due.

The City’s plan (which you can read here) assumes more increases in property values. Geneva, as much the result of the City Council’s own actions as state tax law, almost 60% of its property off of the tax rolls. Some of that includes the government-mandated exemptions for schools, hospitals, colleges, and churches, but there are also big ticket properties that have been granted exemptions such as Guardian Industries, the Ramada, the Hampton Inn, and the Finger Lakes Development Corporation’s Lyceum Street project. You can read more about this topic here.

The growth in assessment is in the remaining parcels--the ones that pay the local, county, and school property taxes. Remember, the tax bill you receive is a function of two things: the tax rate and your property assessment (see our previous post that describes this relationship in more detail).

So, when the City Council is looking at revenue projections for the City, they should be interested in both factors. Property assessments are largely driven by the real estate market. To put it simply: a stronger market means that homes sell for higher prices which means that the relative value of a street increases and home values are likely to go up; if the market takes a tumble and people are selling their homes for less, then the equity of surrounding properties can also take a hit.

Of course, other factors go into home values, and we believe that the City Council is correct in adopting ‘neighborhood improvement’ as a strategic priority because not only do city residents deserve quality neighborhoods, they also deserve to have their home values protected from sharp declines that can negatively impact their overall financial condition.

We’ve said that a multiyear plan is a good idea. But it must be a data-driven analysis. In preparation for the 2009 budget (which will be presented for public comment on October 8th) the new City Manager discussed the city’s current economic conditions at a Council worksession in August. Unlike past years when the City Manager seemed to pull numbers and projects out of thin air and Council had to specifically request documentation to support those numbers and projects, this time the presentation didn’t result in additional requests for information. Was it because Council was asleep at the wheel? No, It was because the Manager actually presented all of the data in raw form and then showed how his calculations and assumptions were drawn from there. In other words, he gave a thorough, transparent, and complete assessment.

The city’s taxable assessment did not grow the 2% projected last budget cycle. It grew less than 1%, in fact, less than .5%. The city’s health insurance liability is growing at a rate of over 17%. Fuel costs increased over 90%, salaries are predicted to rise over 4%, and debt service for all of those projects continues its steady upward climb (with over $1.8 million city dollars going towards debt in 2009).

All of those numbers are best described as a “gap.” It’s a gap between what we expect to receive as revenue and what we expect to spend, if we continue doing business the way it has always been done. Usually the ‘gap’ is filled by increasing taxes. Last year, the City got the increased tax revenue through rising assessments, but this year that won’t be an option. Because your tax bill is calculated by multiplying your assessment by the tax rate, if assessments stay the same, that means the rate must go up, right? But Council’s lead off worksession on the budget identified ‘increasing value for the tax dollar’ as a priority. If services stay the same but the tax rate goes up, the value for the tax dollar is actually declining. The city manager’s budget proposal should provide some solutions to this dilemma, but it’s ultimately up to City Council to break with the old pattern because we know that business as usual hasn’t worked.

What Was Augustine Thinking?

During the September 19th radio interview with Ted Baker, Augustine restated her qualified-- actually, hypothetical-- support for a multi-use/residential building on Geneva’s lakefront. No need to adjust your radio dial. You heard right. Under certain circumstances, she’d seriously consider it. True.

Which is not to say she endorses the current visitor’s center as proposed in the Bergmann plan. The very idea and the process by which arrived on the scene bothers her. She’s opposed to keeping the Chamber of Commerce on the lakefront (granted, it would move a few feet over) and adding condos on top to offset structural deficits.

Meanwhile, Capraro’s been thinking nostalgically about Yankee Stadium. There’s a new Yankee Stadium going up right next door to the old. It will be upscale, with fewer, but more expensive, seats, and more lavish concessions. The old Yankee Stadium, “the House that Ruth built,” will simply be torn down, and carted off to the dustbin of history.

Capraro’s worried something similar could happen in the City of Geneva, if the Bergmann master plan for the Lakefront and Downtown is implemented as currently envisioned. While one of its principal goals is to integrate Downtown and Lakefront, it could well have the opposite effect. The plan could easily become a blueprint for an affluent suburb, between Downtown and the Lake itself, and lead to the further decay and ultimate demise of Geneva’s traditional downtown.

After all, if current residents who live within easy walking distance of Downtown have not supported Downtown, why does anyone imagine that more affluent residents and tourists choosing the Lakefront would? Who’s to say they won’t just hop in their BMW, conveniently parked in a parking garage just down the hall, and head off to some other suburban environment?

Instead, we need to repopulate Downtown itself, at its center, with folks, by definition, committed to small-city, downtown living, in all its interest, diversity, and nuance. Or, we need to make sure any development on the Lakefront, but especially residential, is multi-income, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-use— in a word, diverse. Otherwise, even though there might never be actual gates, the Lakefront could become a de facto gated community, with the existing Downtown further abandoned.

And that’s where Augustine and Capraro come round to agree. Augustine speculated that, perhaps, underlying resistance to residential is the concern that the lakefront would become privatized. After all, during the last election, the Beckley ticket was promoting the idea of McMansions or a condominium development along the waterfront. The community rejected that, for several reasons, including that it might actually be a ‘gated community.’

When people own land near the water, they might start trying to control who has access to that property. We know that the area immediately adjacent to the water’s edge is protected public property that could never be fenced off, but it’s not too far fetched to imagine that people in $500,000 homes would pressure the city to control the ‘type’ of people using that waterfront.

For example, would condo residents resist a public beach east of the current Chamber of Commerce building if it was essentially in the front yard of a new housing development? The interests of the well-heeled private investors would likely trump the public’s right to enjoy their collectively-held amenity. In that way, all the housing that's been proposed for the lakefront thus far equals privatization of the lakefront.

As it stands now, downtown could not survive a ‘new space’ expansion of this kind. New lakefront office or retail space would directly compete with downtown vacancies which is not only unfair to existing property owners and businesses, but furthers the division between downtown and the lakefront.

But what if the City first succeeded in shoring up Downtown as a viable residential neighborhood with a sustainable retail, arts-based, commercial, restaurant district? Then, Augustine believes, there would come a time to extend that configuration of Downtown across 5&20 to the Lakefront. Making a ‘new downtown’ on the Lakefront today will kill the existing Downtown, further drive down property values, and be a net loss for the community and her taxpayers. But pushing for downtown prosperity now and then looking to expand that model to the lakefront in the future could be a win for Geneva all around.

With that guarantee, what the Bergmann plan (final draft, pages 8 and 9) calls for, “development in key locations along East Castle Street that would provide the continuation of downtown’s urban form into the lakefront zone and provide strong linkages between downtown and the lakefront,” might work.

The key, again, is the timing. The sequencing must be correct. To be clear, Bergmann did not tag this action item as ‘immediate,’ so it shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of the visitor’s center concept. Instead, Bergmann listed this development concept in the second column (projects that are 6-10 years out) and Augustine believes that makes good sense.

In 6-10 years, if the City Council has done the work that is immediately pressing, the downtown will be a vibrant mixed-income community. To achieve that, Council will have removed the zoning and other barriers that are preventing upscale housing improvements to be made within existing buildings.

Additionally, new construction on the OEO and Cookery sites (including a new visitor’s center, which we believe should be located in the downtown core so as to drive visitor’s into rather than away from Geneva) will be building the critical mass of new residents and visitors. When the amount of disposable income coming through downtown increases, the retail/commercial climate will be greatly improved and we will see the growth that has seemed to elude us.

In short, if the Bergmann plan’s focus on Downtown can become public policy, if the community can take a step back and not let the Nozzolio money burn a hole in our pockets, then we just might be poised to build on Downtown’s potential and, eventually, we might get to the point where the community conversation, envisioned by Augustine and supported by Capraro, about building on the Lakefront can take place.

$5 million Earmark Drops From the Sky Onto the Lakefront/Downtown Planning Process:Capraro and Augustine Talk with WGVA's Ted Baker

Our latest interview with Ted Baker, focused on the lakefront/ downtown planning process and our two posts critiquing the way in which State Senator Mike Nozzolio’s $5 million earmark for a visitors center influenced the planning that was supposed to be community-driven.
Part of the problem is that this proposed visitors’ center is projected to lose $100,000 per year. So, by putting the need to meet Nozzolio’s initial mandate together with the need to overcome the annual deficit, residential reappears (after being soundly ruled out by the public) with the idea that property tax money from condos would go into one end of the City’s budget and come out the other as a visitors’ center subsidy.  

During the interview, Augustine said she thinks residential, or some multi-use structure of some kind, may have some merit, independent of the visitor’s center. In other words, maybe the idea has a justification that isn’t driven by a need to meet an earmark mandate, but rather from a true community-benefit perspective. At the very least, she indicated that it would be worth discussing.

By contrast, Capraro believes that the community has spoken definitively in opposition to condos on the lakefront and this type of development would never make its way back onto the table through democratic means. The main reason for that opposition is that condos on the lakefront would create a de facto gated community of privileged residents who would ultimately seek barriers to divert the public away from their property. He indicated that condos would create a suburb between downtown and the lake, ultimately hurting downtown. Stay tuned to this blog for more discussion of this.

“Who makes the decisions here?” asked Ted Baker. It’s the City Council with input from consultants, politicians, advocacy groups, and ordinary citizens. So, take a listen to today’s radio session and stay involved!

Stephen King's Men Revisited: Corrections and Clarifications

Our recent post on the lakefront development plan was long and complex, and it has been generating a tremendous amount of buzz. We were trying to connect the dots so our readers could see how, from our fact-based point of view, Senator Nozzolio’s $5 million legislative earmark had impacted the community’s planning process, and even its preliminary results on their way to City Council.

Since the post, we have done some additional fact checking and would like to re-visit the post and offer some corrections, clarifications, and expansions.

First, the corrections. We had a number of anonymous comments challenging our claim that the City of Geneva Industrial Development Agency (IDA) funded Philip Morris’ visit and long overdue consultant’s report. Morris’ visit was touted as an update to the plan he developed with Ernest Hutton several years ago. That report, which you can read here and which we discussed here some weeks ago, was, in fact, funded by the Geneva City IDA. Our source for that is page 8 of the report itself.

But we had it wrong when we said the IDA had paid Morris $10,000 for this year’s visit. The return of Philip Morris in 2008 was paid for by the Geneva Arts Development Council and the Smith Opera House with funds, just under $3,000, provided to them by the Wyckoff Foundation. That is according to information provided by the Foundation’s attorney.

If the comments were from IDA members or Geneva Arts Development Council members, or others ‘in the know’, we can’t be sure, but the only point they took issue with in the entire post was this matter of funding. If they had been signed, we would have posted them (and could have responded more quickly). So, take the plunge. Let us know your reactions-- and sign your name!

In some further fact checking, we found a typo of our own which resulted in our having made contradictory assertions about something said—actually, something not said—in the Fairweather Study. Although no one pointed it out to us, we’d like to correct ourselves.

First, we said that the Fairweather report stated that city taxpayers would likely be on the hook for $100,000/year to cover structural deficits in the annual operating budget for a proposed visitor center. Then we pointed out that the report did not state specifically that city taxpayers would have to cover that amount.

The facts are that Bergmann, not Fairweather, said the taxpayers would have to come up with the money through property taxes. Fairweather said simply that somebody would have to come up with the money, and they envisioned outside fundraising might do it.

When Bergmann presented their draft plan, 8/27/08, at the Ramada, they said that tax dollars from residential would be necessary. When pressed, they cited Fairweather to bolster their case. To repeat, Fairweather never said that. Fairweather did say there would be a deficit, but did not say that the deficit needed to be funded by property tax dollars from city taxpayers, as called for by Bergmann. That’s the critical point we were trying to make and we apologize for our error and any confusion surrounding that portion of the post.

Now for some expansion and clarification of what we said about the Fairweather report, as it evolved over time. According to City Council minutes posted on the City of Geneva website, December 5, 2007, Council approved a resolution for consultant services “for the wine center study.” (Read the full resolution and the discussion of it here, on pages 12 and 13).

During the Council debate on that resolution, Augustine asked what the scope of the study would be. Again, according to the approved minutes, “City Manager Rising said that this is actually a business plan...not a location study.” The initial project, as presented to council, proposed to reuse of the existing Chamber of Commerce building for the wine center. As far as anyone on Council knew, unless they were told something we were not, no other locations were in play.

Despite Rising’s statement that it was not a location study, Councilor D’Amico said, as recorded in approved minutes, that the study should be “looking to see if it is a viable project any place on the lakefront and not just the Chamber building.”

That was December, 2007. Approximately four months later, toward the end of the actual study, when a modest wine center was deemed not feasible, as proposed, Senator Nozzolio announced $5 million to place a visitors’ center some place on the lakefront, not specifically at the Chamber building.

And, as stated in Fairweather’s own introduction to his report (You can read it here. Page 1 of the report is actually page 6 of the downloaded file.):

Nozzolio’s money presented a “significant opportunity” but also “an important challenge,” because, “as a community, Geneva must ensure that it creates a facility that embraces the purposes of Senator Nozzolio’s $5 million funding to create a high-profile, high-impact visitors’ center...while meeting his office’s objective that the operation of such a center be financially sustainable.”

Fairweather then says that “the purpose of this planning study is to move the Finger Lakes Visitors’ Center from conceptual feasibility to operational feasibility.” Because Council did not know about Nozzolio’s money when the Fairweather contract was approved, the study that was expected was the “wine center study” that we voted on. Instead, Council has now received a different study, premised on the New York State funding Nozzolio secured in Albany.

While the Fairweather study is in many ways well reasoned and sound, we object to the fact that it took Nozzolio’s proposal for a lakefront building as a given, apart from the ongoing community decision-making process. We can, however, appreciate the study’s having the courage to assert that the stand alone lakefront facility Nozzolio wanted would not achieve his stated goal of being financially sustainable. But what we mostly wanted to point out is that Council asked for an apple from Fairweather and received a fruit basket. Then Bergmann took the fruit from the basket and turned it into a smoothie.

In our view, in presenting their plan, Bergmann was inconsistent in its application of the Fairweather study in two ways: First, it took a study that was not a location study and used it as an argument for a location. This, it appears, was largely a function of Nozzolio’s initial ‘lakefront location mandate’ that he, or his people, have since changed; then it took a study that was about operational feasibility without assuming taxpayer subsidies and used it as an argument for property tax subsidies, on the grounds of ‘economic sustainability’. That’s nothing different from what we said in the post, but we thought it merited expansion because it was central to our concerns.

In the meantime, the Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce issued a statement on the lakefront plan in their September newsletter. The Chamber accuses anyone who questions the Bergmann plan as being among those “who want to do nothing at all to grow our economy and our community. They don't favor job creation or tax relief, and they don't understand the critical need to attract more traffic for existing downtown businesses.” They then encourage the “silent majority” to attend the meeting on October 1st and speak up. These are typical statements for an advocacy group of this sort, but what is most interesting to us is their description of the way the planning process and the Nozzolio money came together:

“Senator Mike Nozzolio has made funds of $5 million available in the state budget for a Visitor Center for Geneva. That came at a time when a study on the lakefront and downtown was being completed, and when a second study, on the viability of a new visitor center, was also about to be presented to City Council. The confluence of these events makes it possible to avoid the old pattern of developing plans that gather dust, because of lack of funds.”

So the Chamber, too, agrees that the Fairweather plan (which was about to be presented to Council) changed direction as a result of the Nozzolio money. Of course, in their fact-based point of view, that is a good thing. In ours, it was not.

Palin Calls the Question on Motherhood, Apple Pie, and Gender

Polls have been showing white women voters are closely divided between Obama and McCain. Looks like McCain was taking that white women demographic literally when he recruited a self-professed, once upon a time, “hockey mom” to be his running mate. Sarah Palin, McCain’s V.P. running mate, has called the question on gender, in the same way Obama called the question on race.

As he pondered his V.P. choices, perhaps McCain was thinking, that disgruntled Hillary supporters from within the Democratic party (mostly white women) who had threatened to vote for McCain in protest would actually carry out their threat if there were a woman on the ticket with him.

Even after the sensational unity theater that was the Democratic National Convention, it remained uncertain how dependable post-Hillary support for Obama was among Hillary supporters. After all, Democratic primary voters had chosen Obama over Hillary, and then Obama himself chose Biden over Hillary. A double dissing: Not the bride—but, not even the bridesmaid.

In the meantime, within the Republican party, there have been ongoing doubts about McCain. Was he conservative enough to keep the party base engaged? In making his V.P. choice, maybe he thought it could get a twofer-- if he tapped a candidate who is a woman AND right wing. Maybe he could pull in some of those waivering white women and Hillary supporters, and fix things up within his own party. Could it be?

So he does something kooky. He selects Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, to be his running mate: five-time mom; former city councilor and mayor of a small town in Alaska; NRA member who shoots automatic weapons and is comfortable with men in camouflage; wife of a champion snow mobiler; anti-abortionist; pro-creationist; beauty pageant babe, but one with a fierce, competitive streak and unbridled political ambition.

Her main contribution to the ticket has been her apparent authenticity. Regardless of her specific views on the various issues, she’s a compelling candidate in the eyes of the American electorate. She seems also to draw Democrats’ criticism away from McCain and to blunt Republican criticism of McCain by highlighting his maverick streak. After all, what ‘traditional’ Republican would have chosen a woman, let alone a working woman, let alone a working mother of five, let alone a working mother of five with a pregnant unwed teenage daughter?

In short, Palin’s candidacy has called the question on gender demographics—in the same way Obama’s called the question on racial demographics. Would, should anyone vote (or not vote) for Palin simply because she is a woman? Would, should anyone vote (or not vote) for Obama simply because he is black? Palin’s outstanding presence, down to her Lois Lane glasses in an era where contacts are the norm for celebrity women, excepting Palin’s look alike, Tina Fey, has forced the issue.

Historically, the women’s movement has endeavored both to honor traditional women’s work centered on mothering in the private sphere AND to promote equality and the expansion of opportunities for women in the public sphere; to end all forms of discrimination against women in our society. Part of that movement has included supporting women in government so that there would be more representation of women’s experiences in policy-making and more role models for other women to be agents of change in their homes and communities.

Now that she is the V.P. candidate, the intertwined narratives of Palin’s personal life and public service have forced candidates, voters, and commentators to sort out their views on gender and politics. Critics of Hillary Clinton, who said she would have been better off baking cookies than pursuing a legal career now find themselves touting Palin’s ‘independent streak.’

Feminist commentators who typically point out the inequity between the questions asked of male candidates and female candidates with regard to their personal lives now find themselves publicly questioning Palin’s ability to serve while caring for her 5 month old special needs baby. And then there is Palin’s own record on these issues that needs to be squared with her public persona. As governor of Alaska she cut funds for education and denied global warming. But she presents a public face of nurturing and caring and concern for our children’s futures. She has stated an extreme anti-abortion position, with no exceptions even in the case of rape, yet she tells the media that her daughter’s pregnancy is a private matter and the decision to keep the baby, her daughter’s own choice.

In short, Palin has taken the rhetoric of ‘women’s issues’ and tried to have it both ways. In that way, are either of the goals of the women’s movement being achieved via Palin’s candidacy? To whom is she a role model? What woman’s perspective does she bring to bear? In short, when evaluating Palin against her counterpart on the Democratic ticket, the question is this: Is it better to support a man with woman-centered views or a woman with male-centered views?

Palin, herself, threw down the gauntlet in her very first speech as the presumptive Republican V.P. candidate. Within seconds of being named, she praised Hillary’s success in cracking the glass ceiling (a metaphor for the often invisible obstacles to women’s advancement in the workplace and government) which helped to make Palin’s own candidacy possible.

In doing so Palin forced Hillary to respond, and Hillary did--- right away, and in classically Clintonesque terms:
“We should all be proud of Gov. Sarah Palin’s historic nomination,
and I congratulate her and Sen. McCain. While their policies would
take America in the wrong direction, Gov. Palin will add an important
new voice to the debate.”

Palin puts the demographic to the test. In much of the reporting on women’s reactions to Palin’s nomination, we hear that liberal women are insulted that anyone would think just any woman would do. Their point is, the political process ought not to discriminate against women, but that doesn’t mean a woman with the wrong politics ought not to be opposed. Black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a staunch conservative, got the same reaction from liberals in his nomination process, “Sure we want a person of color on the Court, but not that Black man.”

The most current round of polling shows that men largely deem Palin ‘qualified’ to serve while women are of the opposite opinion. Palin’s resume (or lack thereof) is a fact, so how does one account for the differing points of view? Perhaps it indicates that women are looking at the matter objectively and men set the bar a bit lower for a female candidate. Perhaps it indicates that men are looking at the matter objectively and women set the bar a bit higher for a female candidate? Either way, it will be interesting to see how the demographics and ideology sort themselves in this race as we rapidly approach the finish line.

All (of) King's Men:Bergmann, Fairweather, Nozzolio, Morris, and the Fate of the City

[Note: After posting this article, we became aware of some corrections and clarifications that needed to be made. The post below appears in its original form, but please see the subsequent post (of September 17th) for the changes.]

Upon the recommendation of the Quality Communities Committee (QCC), and with former Councilor Capraro casting the lone dissenting vote, the City last year hired Bergmann Associates to run its Lakefront and Downtown planning process. In the opinion of NoStringsGeneva, Mayor Cass had packed the QCC with members favoring residential development (what we refer to in this post as simply residential)on the Lakefront. Bergmann went so far as to include a fast-track development option in their presentation when they tried out for the job. It looked to us like the City would get the same old results from the same old cast of characters.

However, with the change in leadership at the top, a new Mayor and a new City Manager, and some new blood on Council, we thought a new kind of government-- more open to the views of ordinary citizens, and more committed to community-based process-- was in the works. We turned cautiously optimistic about the results. The August 27th ‘unveiling’ of the Bergmann plan, however, has us worried that those hopes might be dashed.

Here’s why. Early on in the year-long process, residential on the lakefront was ruled out at every turn. However, when the Bergmann plan (you can read the presentation documents here) presented a ‘preferred’ alternative development plan that has as its centerpiece a lakefront residential component, people were shocked.

To be absolutely clear, residential does not, in fact, appear on Bergmann’s long list of “consistent themes,” they drafted after a complex public participation process. Consistent themes are development components which continually bubbled up from the community in the process—about which there had been widespread, sustained agreement. Nor does residential appear in either of two plans they sketched out following from the consistent themes list, referred to as “Alternative One” and “Alternative Two”.

Then, mysteriously-- like hands coming back out of the ground in a Stephen King story-- residential reappears in Bergmann’s featured proposal— in their own alternative to the alternatives: A massive structure, a multi-story building with a footprint three times the size of the existing Ramada Hotel, vaguely identified as “Visitor Center-retail-residential” in the talk, was to feature a residential component.

The real source of horror in Stephen King is not the initial crisis, but the set back experienced when a crisis thought to be under control returns—just when people start to relax. The horror is the loss of control.

While many of the public sessions coordinated by Bergmann included discussion of a variety of public structures on the lakefront, with ideas ranging from a museum to the long envisioned ‘interpretive center’, a structure that included residential was never presented for public comment.

More trouble surfaced later that same night when Bergmann explained they had inserted residential into their draft because a “feasibility study” had indicated residential would be required to finance a visitors’ center and to bring in property tax revenue to the City. Say what?

Councilor Augustine’s hand shot up: “What feasibility study?” she asked. The Bergmann representative answered, in effect, “Well, there’s this feasibility study that we’ve seen, that you haven’t, that is not included in our report, and that will not be released to Council until next month, that suggests we need residential in our plan.” He called it the “Fairweather Study.”

Fairweather? Time to back up. The ‘Fairweather study’ was another study that had been outsourced to a consultant by the previous Council. It had been recommended by the former City Manager to ascertain the feasibility of a lakefront wine tasting venue, first proposed by Dr. Harvey Reissig. Capraro, who acknowledged he was a personal friend of Reissig and supportive of the idea of a wine center in Geneva, told the public there was no need to spend money on a study to find out what everyone already knew-- that the idea was not economically viable. Once again, he was the lone vote against it.

Lo and behold, Fairweather, the consultant eventually hired by the City, quickly determined that the wine tasting visitors’ center was not economically viable. However, instead of stopping there, the Fairweather study group, without going back to Council with a request for another sort of study, took it upon themselves to conduct another study of their own design.

The committee took government into their own hands, pushed on with what, in our opinion was an unauthorized study, since Council never approved it. As reported at a later City council meeting, money allocated for the original wine study all went to Fairweather even after the scope of the study had changed. The whole thing morphed into the Geneva Wine and Visitors’ Center Planning Study, known as the Fairweather Study.

According to Fairweather’s calculations, a viable visitors’ center would have to include a much broader scope than wine and, even then, it require massive subsidies by the City of Geneva: in other words, subsidies from already burdened Geneva property tax payers.

More specifically, Fairweather says Geneva City property tax payers would have to shell out $100,000 per year to keep a visitors’ center up and running—that’s to subsidize operating expenses after the building was constructed.

Here’s exactly what the Fairweather Study says about subsidies: “Overall the analysis strongly indicates that it would be very difficult to establish a self-sustaining wine and visitors’ center in Geneva and that any center created is likely to require an annual operating subsidy.” Please note: The Fairweather Study does not specify-- or even mention-- subsidies from City of Geneva property tax payers. Instead, it talks about outside fundraising, from grants and gifts, etc.

It appears, then, Bergmann people took it upon themselves to introduce tax payer subsidies of the visitors’center concept. That then provided their link to the inserting residential into their plan after it had been ruled out.

Is it too conspiratorial or fact-based to question how a planning process overseen by a QCC group biased in favor of a residential component to Lakefront plans ended up with the re-introduction of residential by Bergmann after it had been ruled out in the planning process, and when it was not even mentioned in the Fairweather study that had been used to justify its inclusion?

Embedded within the Fairweather study is yet another problematic issue: the Visitors’ Center itself. The Fairweather Study’s opening sentence declares, “The purpose of this planning study is to move the Finger Lakes Visitors’ Center from conceptual feasibility to operational feasibility.” There is a pre-history to the concept of a visitors’ center, going back to the 1990’s when Geneva prevailed over Canandaigua in a competition to determine where the state ought to site a “Finger Lakes interpretive center.” Funding from that competition never appeared and the project disappeared.

Fast forward to the spring of 2008. That’s when New York State Senator Mike Nozzolio announced a series of earmarks for the City of Geneva. Among those member items in this year’s state budget was a visitors’ center on the lakefront. Nozzolio’s announcement came right in the middle of the QCC/Bergmann/ community-based planning process. We worried back then about the effect it would have on the planning process (see our previous post on that).

Fast forward again to the Fairweather Study. It makes frequent reference to the Nozzolio pork, including the following declaration about funding for a Visitors’ Center:

“Funding provided by Senator Nozzolio has placed this opportunity within reach. In order to meet this opportunity fully, it is essential that the Center achieve financial sustainability so that it can be property promoted, maintained and improved over the years. As the financial analysis in this report indicates, this will not be easy. Indeed, our projections indicate the need for an annual operating subsidy for multiple years.”

If we have our fact correct, our point of view is that there was definitely a link between the Fairweather Study and the Nozzolio money, and therefore, a link between the Bergmann Study and the Nozzolio money. The Fairweather study was essentially over when the Nozzolio money changed its emphasis from wine tasting venue to visitor’s center. It was also just about the time Bergmann wrote a visitors center into to their draft.

In our view, New York State taxpayers’ subsidy of the City of Geneva, secured by the maneuvering of Nozzolio in Albany, trumped what had been a fairly well functioning, community-based planning process.

There are other problems with the use of a Geneva City property tax revenue from the residential component to subsidize a Visitors’ Center, even if, like Augustine, you thought the plan might be not such a bad idea, maybe even a good idea, if the “Sophie’s Choice” for the City were: either a residential component to Lakefront development or no Lakefront development at all.

First, Fairweather says the Visitors Center should not compete with the Canandaigua’s New York Wine and Culinary Center:

In addition, the analysis also strongly suggests that any such center avoid
operations and/or programs that would place the Geneva center in direct competition with the offerings of the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua.

Then, Bergmann locates the Visitors’ Center on the lakefront and calls for Geneva City property tax payers to subsidize it.

On those points, Fairweather and Bergmann are in direct conflict with Nozzolio’s earmark. When Nozzolio first announced the earmark last spring, as reported on his website and in the Finger Lakes Times, he had the visitors center on the lakefront. Maybe that’s why Bergman put it there. But then he changed its location, placing it in downtown Geneva.

Nozzolio’s website, today, September 9, 2008, says this about the visitors center:

“$5 million – New Finger Lakes Visitor Center in Downtown Geneva

A new Finger Lakes Visitor Center located in downtown Geneva will be a signature building for the Finger Lakes region that will serve as a destination for tourists and the Finger Lakes region. The Center will be interactive for visitors and will place an emphasis on the natural beauty of our area as well as the wineries in the region. The Geneva Chamber of Commerce will relocate to the new facility and will continue their work to promote tourism in the region. The Visitor Center will be state-of-the-art and will serve as a destination for all those seeking information on the many attractions of the Finger Lakes region. The Finger Lakes Visitor Center will be modeled after the very successful New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, which highlights the food and wines produced in New York State.”
Note how this leads to the second twist, the earmark calls for a mimicking of the center in Canandaigua while Fairweather says it should not be in competition with it to be viable.

The day after Bergmann’s presentation, in the local paper’s coverage of the meeting, Rob Gladden from the Chamber of Commerce was quoted as saying the Bergmann plan was consistent with one that the Chamber had endorsed, as did members of the Geneva Business Improvement District, and, also, a vaguely organized group calling itself “Geneva Growth.” Turns out Geneva Growth happens to be headed by the unsuccessful Mayoral candidate Phil Beckley, who launched his failed campaign with a call for condos on the lakefront (and who joined the committee pushing the unfeasible wine tasting room).

It was also Beckley who said that the report from Phillip Morris (see our post about his visit to Geneva last Easter) would tie all of this together. The report, funded with $10,000 from the Geneva IDA, has never been released, even though Beckley said some months ago its release was imminent. Could it be that Morris did not fall in line with these other studies, and that his report will never be released to the public?

It looks like all of King’s men—not the king’s men Robert Penn Warren had in mind, but of Stephen King-- are hard at work against community-based democracy in Geneva. They are causing quite a stir. With all the optimism about change, this is where the rubber hits the road. Will the Mayor, Council, and the City Manager stand up to outside interests and take control of the planning process, and return it to the people where it belongs?