Few will benefit from Harrison Square
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"At the only public hearing before the Fort Wayne City Council, supporters of the project were easily identified as members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Corporate Council and West Central neighborhood property owners looking for a quick increase in property values."
"Hardball Capital’s investment includes 60 condos priced between $180,000 and $300,000. The condos are supposed to lure young professionals downtown. A January 2006 U.S. Department of Labor study found the median time on the job for those ages 25 to 34 is 2.9 years. Median tenure for professionals is 5.2 years. Turning over 60 condos every three to five years will guarantee business for real estate brokers."
"A strong police presence will be required to make visitors feel safe. Either the rest of the city will have less police coverage or the city will increase property taxes to pay for more police officers."
"Why build more retail space when there are empty storefronts all over the county? Why build a parking garage for Lincoln Financial Corp. and conventions that may never come?"
"I am proud to call Fort Wayne my home. But no amount of Indy envy on the part of our overprivileged leaders and free lunches for developers will ever change Fort Wayne from what it is, a working-class minor league city."
Letters to the editor
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See "Build a casino on the riverfront"
Monday, October 1, 2007
Local Opinion
Posted by scott spaulding at 10/01/2007 08:55:00 AM
Labels: Downtown development, Hardball Capital, Harrison Square
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12 comments:
Hey - There IS someone at IPFW with some common sense ! I had about given up. Thanks for your comments, Mark. John B. Kalb
Not all of the supporters of the project were members of the chamber or from west central.
The second paragraph is an example of the fallacy: proof by example and maybe begging the question. The problem is that just because someone changes jobs does not mean that they will change residences.
The third paragraph is just a typical "either, or" fallacy. It implies that more police or taking police from other part of the county are the only options. This is not necessarily so. There is an increased police presence during games at MS, so they already take police from somewhere else. Also, just because you build 60 new condos does not mean there needs to be more police since there are people that lived in that area before. There will just be more people. This argument is also a false choice because you don't you have to choose between safety and development. Lastly this argument is an appeal to fear. Because your new condo could be broken into just because you built it there. This is hardly a convincing argument.
Paragraph four just shows a lack of understanding of the project. Business might not want to fill a spot in the county. They might want to move downtown, but they are not able to due to lack of space. This lack of space though could be argued as well. The second sentence of this paragraph is the fallacy of appeal to probability. Though the city's response is the same.
The point here is that you can't just attack the project with things like this. You need to come up with real arguments against the project. Even though I bemoan John Kalb's arguments, there are at least logical arguments. While I do not agree with them, they are at least well thought out arguments, for the most part.
gScott,
Is it ok I stop laughing? Why don't you produce the numbers to show the opinion is wrong? Use facts to support your position and then you have a soapbox to stand on.
See, I supported the Harrison Square baseball deal at first. The reason was for dollar investment I could not think of anything that could attract as many people.
However, this project has become a taxpayer financial timebomb. Sadly, I believe it is not if it will explode, but just when.
The other thing that upsets me is when talking heads use the term, "No Property Taxes Will Be Used!" See, in my book when a penny comes out of my pocket and goes directly to the governemnt, it is called a tax.
JG,
The point I was making was that his argument is not logical because of the fallacies that he uses.
I also like in your retort how you use a logical fallacy as well. Your statement "Why don't you produce the numbers to show the opinion is wrong? " This is called a negative proof. It is the writers job to prove his point, not my job to disprove it. It is my job to come up with an argument against his and prove my argument.
I am not saying that his conclusions are wrong, but that he set up his argument in an illogical fashion. Therefore, his argument cannot be argued against because it is not a logical argument.
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Another thing JG, is that in your argument you used an ad hominem to attack me, instead of my argument.
To your last statement, the city is not proposing the use of general property taxes. They are, however, using property taxes from the TIF district. Also, you confused a "tax" with property tax in your last statement.
I actually thought the guest column was fairly decent. Unlike the normal rhetoric, it brought some new talking points. However, it does overstate some things, which I find disappointing for a University Professor. There were many people who spoke in favor of HS that do not fall in the three categories identified by Crouch. The circumstances regarding the change in the hotel is well-documented, and different from his disingenuous characterization.
His last paragraph was just plain hyperbole...probably to get a "you go girl!" from all his buddies.
Like I said, though, I thought he did make some interesting points.
I'm wondering where he got the condo prices from. From my understanding everyone that has requested to be contacted, still has not received a price notification yet.
Or are they just more made up facts?
Also, the AP confuses average time staying at a job, with relocation of living quarters.
I guess I just am dreaming of an economy where I can progress in my career and change jobs, but not move to a different city.
Scott,
I believe that you have committed the fallacy of hasty generalization here. Because you feel that you have refuted many of Mr. Crouch's individual points , you have therefore determined that his entire argument is flawed.
I would point to the final sentence from his letter as what I feel is his strongest point. "Harrison Square and the way it was shoved down our throats by the corporate class will not go down in history as one of our finer moments."
There is a simple reason, I believe, that so many people moved from a neutral position to one of opposition on this project. That reason is because so many of the proponents have been far too reticent in revealing the financial details of this project. These details are necessary for anyone to perform a valid economic justification for this project. Yet the people who say everyone would be for it, if they only understood it, are the same ones who disallow us from really understanding it.
Phil,
What I would have committed is called an argument from fallacy if I would have said his whole argument is wrong because it is fallacious. But if you read my post I said that his conclusions could be correct.
Furthermore, the city has disclosed all of the financial data. It is on the city's website. The have also made no secret as to where the money is coming from (i.e. TIF, CEDIT, money produced by the project, and CRED funds)
I also think it is interesting in your argument that you amount this to some kind of class warfare. What evidence is there to substantiate this claim?
Ha ha ha. Apparently Phil just gave Mark his "you go girl!"
Scott,
Regarding the question of fallacy:
You said “The point I was making was that his argument is not logical because of the fallacies that he uses.” A hasty generalization is when one considers only certain cases and then generalizes from that to formulate a rule that fits only those cases. It seemed to me that you were rejecting his entire argument based upon the certain points that you considered, and I wanted to point to an statement of his that I thought had some strong validity to it. If I’m incorrect in my definition here, I apologize, but I think you realized the main point I was making is that I wanted you to focus on his last sentence.
Regarding the question of financial disclosure:
I will admit that I have never read the city’s official report on H.S., and here are my reasons for that. Earlier this year the city hosted an open forum to educate citizens about the project. Here, Mark Becker explained that if we remained at Memorial Stadium, several millions of dollars would soon have to be invested there to keep it in shape. He correctly surmised that the true cost of Harrison Square would not be sixty million, but rather that it would be the difference between this and the amount we would have to spend in order to keep the ball stadium where at it’s current location. However, he made a serious mistake in his analysis by counting the sunk cost of originally constructing the stadium with the future cost of maintaining it. In doing so, he misrepresented the marginal cost difference between the two options. This gave the H.S. project an unfair spin. Now, either Mark Becker does not understand a very basic rule (sunk costs are irrelevant to analysis of future decisions), or he was intentionally being dishonest. Either way, many people (after listening to Becker) probably left there with a false estimate of what H.S. would truly cost.
Councilman Schmidt asked Mark Becker (at the July 17 council meeting, I believe) if the difference between what the city paid to acquire properties and the amount that they sold these same properties for was a subsidy. Greg Leatherman stood up and said “That difference reflects the cost of moving and equipment loss.” Well, what Leatherman said may be accurate, but it did not answer the question. What he actually spoke of was what this subsidy was used for, but he did it in a manner which sounded to many as if he had actually answered the question.
Schmidt paused for a moment, and then appeared to acquiesce in the realization that he would not be able to get a straight answer to a simple question. If a straight answer were given, it would have been “Yes, this was a subsidy.” Of course, that would have begged the follow up question of “Was this cost fully reflected in the price that you have attached to H.S., or were these funds taken from somewhere else.
Many proponents made a big issue of their claim that the funding for H.S. would not be coming from property taxes. They pointed to the TIF, CEDIT, or CREED funds as if to imply that since this money was already accumulated, using it for H.S. would not really affect the taxpayers. This is tantamount t saying that there is a difference between you taking money out of my pockets or taking it out of my bank account. The bottom line is that H.S will cost the taxpayers approximately sixty million dollars, regardless of which specific source it comes from.
Now that the city is foreseeing some delays with getting H.S. fully approved by the state, they have publicly stated that it may now be necessary to back the bonds with property taxes.
Now, there seems to be a question about how much the walkway will cost us. And of course, if we don’t give them their walkway, they might just back out of the deal.
Jeff Pruitt had to file a FOI request in order to get the city to release information about the details of the H.S project.
Mike Sylvester’s list of questions to the city about this project as apparently lost in the mail.
Overall, from observing how city officials have presented this plan, my conclusion is as follows. Originally, they asked for public input because they thought this would support their plans. When they weren’t hearing what they wanted to hear, they changed strategy. They showed that they would say whatever was necessary (even if inaccurate or incomplete), or simply refuse to answer questions.
Regarding the class warfare:
I believe Mark Crouch’s statement would have still been a very accurate and powerful summary if he had simply said “Harrison Square and the way it was forced down our throats will not go down in history as one of our finer moments.” The fact that “corporate class” was added here was his choice, and I simply quoted his entire sentence. I have met people with much money who are opposed to H.S., and I have met people with little money who support it. I can see how this line, in conjunction with my name, might give the appearance that I am trying to make this a class warfare issue, but I am not. I think it is an issue of the people in power not listening to what the majority of their constituents (rich and poor) are saying.
I agree with your statement on the cost presentation but I don't think it really mattered because people never site that when they talk about the cost. I didn't even remember that analysis and I went to the meeting. In my opinion people see 60mm as 60mm regardless that they were going to spend 12mm of it anyway.
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No one is disputing that this project is costing the tax payers money. But let me restate that they are saying the project will not use general property taxes. There is a difference though. If general property taxes were used there could have been a remonstrance. Different rules apply to different kinds of taxes. So it is not the same as taking cash or money out of you bank account. I do understand your point though.
General property taxes are used to back the bonds not because the project is having problems with the state, but because it will save the city money on interest. It also gives the city's bonds a better bond rating from rating agencies. The project was having problems with the state because of an unrelated issue which concerned the county not providing some information to the state. It didn't have anything to do with the project.
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I also don't agree that the majority of people are against the project. If you look at the candidates for city council in the at-large seats, all of them are for the project. I would have thought people who were voted for in the primaries would have been those against the project, if the backlash was as big as everyone says. This might just be coincidental, but we cannot know for sure since a poll was never done. Everything else is just anecdotal.
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I also agree that it is a shame that the hotel company might bow out because of the bridge. The bridge wasn't a part of the proposal when they first bid on the project, so why would that be a project killer now?
Thanks for the wonderful post Phil.
Non-S Scott - Just when did John Shoaff change his mind about HS? He is on the ballot for "At large" Also, 3 other candidates, Libertarians are not in favor of the stupid project. We have a non-HS candidate in every district also. John B. Kalb
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