Who’s Alameda?

In addition to the gem of a statement made by Edward Hirshberg at the last Alameda Democratic Club meeting, he said a lot of other things about how great business is and it is in fact business, and not schools, the create a wealthy community.   He goes on to say that if the cost of office space etc… keeps rising because of parcel taxes like this then businesses will simply choose to take their off shore their businesses because everything can be done over the internet these days.   He gives a few examples like a newspaper in Southern California sending their reporting to India or Indians designing wood frame houses in the snow even though they have never seen wood frame houses or snow.   Because I guess it doesn’t snow in India.

All I could think was,  I’m sure that the dude in India could design an awesome wood frame house, but personally, I would rather have some dude with actual experience in that particular environment to design my wood frame snow house for me.   But whatever.

My big takeaway from all this was that I really should send Mr. Hirshberg a copy of Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City.   Or maybe he could read a copy of the Bay Area Council’s report on Recession and Recovery: An Economic Reset.  The Bay Area Council, for those who do not know, is not some teacher lobbyist group, but rather a public policy group.    In this report, there is a lot of discussion about the talent that can be found in the Bay Area and it’s important to continue to develop this talent — in the form of educating our children — in order to compete in the 21st century economy.   It is not enough to simply keep prices for business parcels low so some business will think, hey yeah, I was going to send my business to Thailand because of the ultra low rates for an office building, but I think I’ll just set up shop in Alameda now!

It’s not the commercial spaces that are going to bring businesses to the Bay Area and hopefully Alameda, but the people.   And because policy experts have surmised that California’s population growth is no longer coming from people moving to California it is even more important that we invest in educating the little folks who will be the talent to drive future business.

From the Bay Area Council report:

A key pillar of competitiveness is the quality of public education, from K-12 through university. High quality education attracts and retains talent as people seek the best for their children and themselves, providing a reservoir of people trained and skilled to fill the knowledge jobs on which the Bay Area relies for growth. Recent budget cuts have disproportionately affected education. The impact of these cuts may continue for decades in the form of trained workforce shortages. This may be exacerbated by out-migration by those dissatisfied with the local educational opportunities for their children. Failure to generate an environment that attracts highly skilled workers hurts the region’s competitiveness and taken to its logical conclusion can lead to an erosion of its capacity to innovate. This is a major concern since we operate in a global economy where workforce quality and talent are key determinants of business location.

And

Education in the Bay Area is under pressure. Statewide, public schools are lagging by most measures. In the Bay Area, performance at the county level is highly variable…

Student proficiency, student-teacher ratios, funding levels, and other indicators do not paint the state in positive light. By extension, this colors decisions to move to and remain in the state by the very knowledge workers that comprise the talent base. To remain competitive, these trends must be reversed at all levels of education…

Essentially this says, stop investing in education and the people who will create, drive, run, and staff businesses will look elsewhere to create, drive, run, and staff business because their kids are important to them.   It won’t be because a commercial property owner like Mr. Hirshberg has to charge a little extra to his tenants because he will pass on the cost of any parcel tax to his tenants.   It will be because Vermont or Massachusetts or any other of the many other states ranked above California will have put a priority in investing in the education of its children.

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