Some of you may have heard that there was a small earthquake in Northwest Arkansas last week.  What you may not know is the reason.  Well, it turns out that earthquakes actually have nothing to do with shifting tectonic plates.  According to an Iranian government official and cleric, earthquakes are women’s fault, specifically women who do not dress modestly (think burqa).

Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.”

If you’re keeping up with current science, then you already know that Pat Robertson discovered that gays and lesbians were responsible for hurricane Katrina, and that the earthquake in Haiti was a result of their pact with the devil.  Of course, a major difference is that here in the US we are free to make fun of Pat Robertson-types.  In Iran, these types of lunatics run the government.

Here in the U.S., many women tested Sedighi’s theory by conducting a massive “Boobquake.” News reports claimed that the Boobquake failed to trigger an earthquake.  I guess they failed to notice the small one that hit NWA.

Then again, the local quake could have been our own fault.

The city’s Economic Incentives and Job Growth Group held a public input session on the proposed city business license last night. Based on the report in the Northwest Arkansas Times, it looks like the group received some push back on the proposed license from at least a few local business owners.

It appears that our city leaders do not understand that the burden of proof is theirs. In my view of responsible government , when the city wishes to levy a new tax, they must provide some rational basis for the new requirement. The city could argue that the services supported by the new tax would increase the individual’s welfare or possibly the social welfare of the city as a whole. But, I have yet to see a single city official or chamber staff member make a reasonable case for having a business license.

Don Marr, city chief of staff, has made the argument that the business licence received ”overwhelming support” at Fayetteville’s economic development summit, and that the Chamber of Commerce likes it. He is quoted as saying, “You can’t go to a single place to find this data.”

Karen Minkle, director of strategic planning and internal consulting, continually states that Fayetteville is the only city of any size in the state that does not require a business license.

Well, OK, but these are not convincing arguments that Fayetteville should institute a business license. First, just because some people, mainly the small number that would obviously benefit, are in favor of requiring a licence does not mean it’s right for our city. And second, who cares if several other city’s are doing it? What are the reasons that Fayetteville should do it? What benefit will the citizens of Fayetteville gain through the institution of a business license?

Christopher Spencer over at Ozarks Unbound has had some good articles about this issue lately here, here, and here.

The city’s case for the license was best articulated in a report prepared by Ms. Minkel dated March 2. You can find it here. The city claims that the reason for having a business license is threefold (the following is an excerpt from the study):

1. Economic Development: The lack of data prevents economic development organizations from providing statistics on job growth and business sector growth and ultimately providing meaningful economic performance measures. Some of these measures include new jobs created and new businesses opened. Without a systematic method for collecting this information, confidence in the accuracy of the measures will be compromised.
2. Public Safety: The lack of data also contributes to inefficiencies and public safety concerns. The Central Dispatch Division spends significant time attempting to track new business openings, moves and re-namings. The Fire Marshal’s office also needs this information in order to ensure that new businesses meet current fire codes. In addition, the City lacks information on the storage of hazardous materials and installation of fire suppression systems. The accuracy of this information is crucial for responding to emergencies safely, effectively and efficiently. The Arkansas Department of Health also lacks information about restaurants and food related businesses in Fayetteville, resulting in inefficiencies in its ongoing inspection program. Determining when businesses open, relocate or close also takes significant staff time that could be better spent providing inspection services, according to an interview with James Shumate, Arkansas Health Department Inspector. The haphazard process also increases the likelihood that a restaurant or other food service provider will slip through the cracks, which if a problem arises, could be detrimental to the health of Fayetteville’s citizens and visitors.
3. Law Enforcement: A business registry and license program will also assist the City Prosecutor’s Office in addressing code and tax violations. An ordinance that requires a business license in order to conduct business in the City of Fayetteville will provide additional leverage for the City Prosecutor’s office in resolving code and tax violations before they result in a warrant or criminal summons.

Number one does not hold water upon further inspection.  The chamber already collects information on their members and a large proportion of businesses in the city are chamber members. And, as Aaron Stahl put it in the NWA Times article linked above, “I have yet to find a business that’s not in the chamber (of commerce), that’s not in the Yellow Pages, that’s not googleable.”  The truth is that, in this digital age, promoting your business is easier than ever, and many businesses use internet advertising extensively. Given that it is very easy to find businesses on the web already (have you used Google maps lately), the marginal benefit of economic development activities resulting from a business license is not likely to be worth the cost.  Businesses would be better off spending that money, even if it is a meager amount, promoting their business independently on the web or otherwise.

Numbers two and three could be valid grounds for requiring a licence. If there truly are public safety and law enforcement benefits that might be realized by instituting a business license, then I am all for it.  But, this case has not been the most prevalent in city officials public statements. If these are the real reasons for wanting a registry of all businesses in the city, then the city, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Marr or Ms. Minkel, need to make the case publicly. Let’s dispense with this “We just want to promote you” BS.

UPDATE: Ozarks Unbound links to us today, and the Fayetteville Flyer has an article about the proposed city business license as well.

I have a bone to pick with Steve Clark, President and CEO of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. Recently Steve has been in the news a lot advocating for a city business license and against having event organizers who use city property open their books.

Brian discussed the business license issue last week, but I would like to add a few thoughts. Brian correctly asserted the license fee amounts to a new tax, but the question remains – Why is the Chamber of Commerce advocating for a new tax on business? I think the answer is two-fold. First, in the wake of the financial downturn city budgets are tightening, and Fayetteville has not entirely avoided this pain. A significant portion of the chambers budget comes from the city coffers. So, what is being spun to the public as an attempt to help businesses may actually be an attempt to create a dedicated tax to support the chamber. Second, a list of all businesses in Fayetteville would be extremely helpful in helping the chamber collect more membership dues.

From where I sit, the business license looks like a chamber attempt to reach into other people’s pockets to support their activities while having the city crack down on those who do not comply. The license fee would likely give the chamber a guaranteed revenue stream at a time when membership dues are falling and city funding is uncertain. So what’s with all this, “We just want to help business.” All we ask is for a little honesty, Steve.

Last night Steve showed up at the City Council meeting to rail against councilman Matthew Petty’s proposal to have events that make use of city property and last longer than two days open their books. Look, I do not know if Petty’s proposal was well written legally, and it is possible that the proposal represented an undue burden for event organizers.  That said, the thrust of Steve’s criticism of the proposal did not rest on this perfectly reasonable ground. Instead he tried to make the claim that requiring more openness from people who use city property is equivalent to calling them liars. The Northwest Arkansas Times quoted Steve saying

“It appears — the way it is written — the wrong that it tries to address, is that people cheat on their taxes,” Clark declared, his baritone voice booming. “It tries to say that people are trying to cheat the city.

“This says, ‘You know what, we just don’t trust you. We just don’t believe you tried to do right,’” said Clark, who also serves on the Bikes Blues & BBQ board. “That’s an insult.”

So, let me get this straight, it is insulting to ask people who receive a subsidy from the city (land use is a subsidy) to be open and honest about their financial records? In Steve’s world of good ole’ boys and cronies we should all just trust each other and everything will work out right in the end. But, it seems to me the State of Arkansas already trusted Steve, and that trust was betrayed when he was convicted for misusing a state credit card.

Steve revels himself as the wost kind of  political hack when he advocates for bad policy like an arbitrary tax on business and less openness in government. His latest actions seem to indicate that he cares less about the substance of the policy, and more about whether or not he will benefit from it.

As the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and the City Council debate the newly proposed ”business licenses,” I have been waiting for someone–anyone–to refer to it as a tax (I’m looking at you, tea partyers).   In Newspeak language, as articulated by the Chamber’s manager of economic development, Chung Tan, the “license” is being established so businesses in Fayetteville can be promoted and “helped.”  Tan was quoted in last Thursday’s NWArkTimes:

“A big portion of our economic development is helping existing businesses… so if we don’t know who they are, or where they are, it’s very difficult to help them.”

Hmm.  So, the stated idea here is to require businesses in Fayetteville to pay for a license so that they can be “helped” by the city.

Council members Brenda Thiel and Matthew Petty have expressed reservations about the license being applied to small part-time businesses that are run out of people’s homes.  I’d say good for them, but truth is they’re simply looking out for their own interests.  At some level, they simply want to make sure that their own small home businesses are exempted from the “help.”

Here’s an idea: Why not make the licenses voluntary?  If the stated purpose of the license fee is to promote and help local businesses, then why not give businesses the option of deciding whether or not they would like the Chamber of Commerce’s help?  No?

The truth is that the license is a tax, and the license will further be used as a tool to help enforce sales tax collections.  Maybe that’s an idea that people could get behind, maybe not.  But a little honesty about the true nature and purpose of the so-called license would be a good place to start the discussion.

On Monday, the Northwest Arkansas Times ran an op-ed from a local tea-partyer, James Laubler, that went on at length about the Fayetteville School Board’s plan to use a combination of reallocation and refinancing  to pay for improvements to the current high school.

Laubler made a couple of reasonable points.  It is reasonable to wonder if the Board can make good on their promise of budget cuts (which have yet to be spelled out) and whether or not expected future revenues will hold true.  But it isn’t accurate to say that the board has decided to “circumvent the voters.”  The Board has a budget that they are free to work with, and they are free to allocate the approved budget as they see fit.  Unlike the situation with the proposed millage that was defeated, the overall size of the district’s budget is not being grown under the current plan.  If anything, the Board should be commended for coming up with a fiscally responsible way to improve the current high school.

Laubler even seems to take issue with the very idea that the federal government is subsidizing the rate at which the district will have to pay back any stimulus money it receives, but one can hardly blame the Board for making sure that Fayetteville takes advantage of what’s being offered.  If Laubler has an issue with the provisions of the stimulus money, then he should take that up with federal lawmakers.  From our local perspective, it would be ridiculous to not take advantage of the opportunity.

The real problem with Lauber’s rant, though, was that his arguments dissolved into outlandish melodrama.  He said the Board must be “socialists, communists, or bought politicians with no moral compass,” and he reminds us all that “this is not a socialist or communist nation.”  He says there is a movement in this country to take back “our country from these types,”  followed up with threatening language that he “wouldn’t want to be the one to ultimately challenge these patriots.”  He closes with more threatening innuendo, as he references the American Revolution and tells the Board not to “anger us the way the last king did.”

Ugh.

Ultimately, and with sweet irony, the tactics employed by those who rely on  this type of  grandstanding are the architects of their own undoing.  While there are some segments of our population who may be moved by such demagoguery, most Americans prefer common sense and reasonable discussion.   They respect the opinions of reasonable people, and reject those who aren’t.

If anything, Lauber’s letter assured sensible Fayettevillians that the Board’s plans are sensible.  There’s not many who want to be on the side of the local McCarthyite.

Apparently, political ineptitude runs throughout the “tea party” movement.  Recent events at their national convention were downright embarrassing.

Fayetteville High School students are participating in an annual ritual to raise money for less fortunate families in the district.  Here is the announcement from the district blog:

The annual FHS Student Council Homeless Vigil will be held on Thursday, December 3, beginning at 5 pm. The fund raising goal for the 2009 vigil is $11,000, and all proceeds go to help families in need in the Fayetteville School District. The students will sleep outside in makeshift shelters, warming themselves by a fire in a barrel. Donations of cash and non-perishable food items are greatly appreciated and may be dropped off at the vigil, which will be held in front of the FHS gym on Stone Street.

These students slept outside in the frigid temperatures last night and continue their vigil today.  The students had raised $6,400 toward their goal of $11,000 as of 10 am this morning.

These same students are also assisting with the blood drive at the high school today.

If you live or work in Fayetteville, please consider stopping by the high school to show your support for these kids and their causes.

UPDATE: FHS students raised $14k+!

One wonders what those of us here in Northwest Arkansas have done to deserve so much attention from charlatans lately.  In the last year we have been visited by Eva Klein and Associates, Tony Wagner, and now Sarah Palin.  Unfortunately, the community coughed up money to be wooed by Eva Klein and Tony Wagner.  Palin is at least coming for free, unless you count the cost the English language is incurring by losing any non-ironic use of the word “rogue” henceforth.

The latest sum of money the community will be parting with–$36,000 to be exact–is going to pay Phi Delta Kappa for conducting a curriculum audit of the Fayetteville School District.  Like Eva Klein & Associates did for Fayetteville (for $150,000), Phi Delta Kappa came into town  for a few days and held focus groups with community members to hear their ideas.  In February they’ll provide us with a nifty presentation that summarizes what community members told them.  The modus operandi of these types of consultants is well-known. Dilbert has been lampooning them for years.

To be sure, the report that Phi Delta Kappa comes up with won’t look exactly like the same ideas the community gave them.  They’ll be re-written in such a way that any resemblance or lack of substance will be obfuscated by consultant-speak gobbledy-gook.  For example, when the Rogers School District hired Phi Delta Kappa to conduct an audit, one of the recommendations they received was:

Develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum management system that delineates short- and long-term goals, directs curriculum revision to ensure deep alignment and quality delivery, and defines the instructional model district leaders expect teachers to follow in delivering the curriculum.

Translation: Establish a system to set and achieve goals. And make it a good one.

Here’s another recommendation from the Rogers audit:

Research, identify and implement strategies to eliminate inequities and inequalities that impede opportunities for all students to succeed.

Translation:  Do what you and every other school district has already been doing (or should have been doing) for decades.

I’m willing to bet Fayetteville’s audit will contain many of the same recommendations given to Rogers.  These types of consultant groups have stock boiler-plate language that they recycle time and time again.  I also expect to see some of the views of the community rewritten in consultant-speak.  Here’s some of the comments and concerns the Northwest Arkansas Times picked up from teachers and parents at one of the focus groups:

I got this list from the newspaper, which cost me fifty cents–a whopping $35,499.50 less than Phi Delta Kappa is going to charge for repackaging these ideas in consultant-speak.

I don’t know exactly why organizations pay money to outside consultants, like when the city paid Eva Klein & Associates to tell us that the University was one of our strengths, and that the perception that Fayetteville was anti-business was one of our weaknesses.   Don’t we already elect and pay people to think about these things and have a vision for what we need to do?  So why are they sub-contracting out their duties?

Still, I don’t want to prejudge the Phi Delta Kappa report too much, and I am hopeful that when the report comes out it will be useful.  But my concern and my prediction is that some form of the goals written above, re-written in consultant speak, along with some more generic goals, like the ones in the Rogers report, are going to make up the bulk of what Fayetteville receives.

We’ll come back to this in February when we finally get our hands on the report, at which time we’ll translate it into English and check my predictions.

Yes, as an academic, and as someone interested in the well-being of schoolchildren across the state, I am thankful for the cacophony of voices entering the education policy discussion in NW Arkansas and beyond.

I know that this is not a universal view.  Many of our friends and colleagues working in Arkansas public school districts may not share my rosy view.  Those working in local school districts or at the state level may not be too thrilled that our “genius little bloggers” or faculty in the Department of Education reform are injecting themselves into important policy discussions related to racial integration, school millages, charter authorization, or so-called “21st Century” learning.  I have heard it said that some of the Ed Reform group or our blogger friends are obstructionists to local schools — of course, I think they are wrong.  Disagreement is NOT obstruction.

In fact, they should be thankful for the interest and involvement of outside researchers and observers.  This is the work of the University; indeed, the motto of the U of A is Veritate Duce Progredi (in Latin).  In English, the motto is “To Advance with Truth as our Guide.”  In that spirit, faculty at the University (along with our genius little bloggers) should continue to examine data, evaluate programs, conduct research, rigorously address policy questions, and share our views with the public.  Anything less would be shirking.

And sometimes our (faculty, researchers, bloggers, etc.) view of the truth may not be the same as that of our friends in Little Rock, local school districts, or anywhere else.  And that’s OK.  Everyone engaged in the discussion with an interest in the well-being of our schoolchildren has an equal right to air our views and let the public decide which ideas are best.  Arguments over ideas are good for our democracy and good for Arkansas.  (Indeed, we should work to keep the focus on ideas and avoid personal attacks in these heated debates.)

Those employed by our local school districts do not have a monopoly on caring about children and education.  Sure, many of our school leaders have a deep faith in the importance of public schools and have dedicated much of their professional lives to leading these schools.  But this does NOT mean that they are always right.  They’re not.  And it is unfair to dismiss the views of any opponents of school leaders as “against public education.”

All of us who care deeply about kids and education do not need to think the same way.  In fact, our kids and our schools will all be better off if policy discussions can benefit from a diversity of views.  We can all learn from each other, we can all have the same ultimate objective of a well-educated Arkansas, and yet we can all still be individuals!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday’s Northwest Arkansas Times had a story about Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan’s economic development team. The so-called “Fayetteville Forward Economic Accountability Council” was launched six months ago. You can tell this council is doing good work because acts that are accompanied by alliteration are always awesome. Now, I think the mayor’s done a fine job of running the city so far. Still, the to-do list of the Fayetteville Forward Economic Development Summit’s Priorities that was reprinted in the paper was pretty amusing. It lists all of the projects underway with the mayor bragging that “We’ve completed five of the eighteen projects.” But most of the accomplishments are little more than forming committees and declarations about future actions as opposed to any real accomplishments. Here’s the list for those of you who missed it:

First of all, you gotta love how “pending” sounds so much better than “nope.”

But my real point here is that this list looks more like political showmanship than anything else. I know Jordan is, in fact, a politician, and he is motivated to manipulate the public’s perception of him as best he can. At the same time, smart people read the newspaper, and I think many of them see all of the politico-jargon, such as work, identify, promote, establish, explore, and support, for what it really is–a whole lot of nothing. Most people see this political mumbo-jumbo like employers see puffed-up resumes. Still, to-do lists are important. Just take a look at the to-do list I used to write this blog-post:

With a list like this, everyone can see I’ve accomplished six of eight of my goals! I know it’s probably in Jordan’s best interest to pad his public perceptions with some puffed up press release (gotta love that alliteration!) that makes it sound like he’s getting things done. But I just can’t help wishing our politicians were a little more straightforward, kind of like this guy.

The results from the survey sent to voters shortly after the failed millage election were released over the weekend. The Fayetteville Flyer has a great graphic summarizing the results. As expected, the cost of the plan was named as the biggest reason for voting against the millage. However, viewing this as simply a cost issue would be mistake. The final price tag of the plan was the direct result of many smaller design decisions made along the way.

Superintendent Vicky Thomas has shown good leadership moving forward from the failed millage vote. I am encouraged to see the district  working on what seems to be both an ambitious and prudent “Plan B.” From what I’ve heard renovation may start as soon as the doors close for summer break.