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In Search of Excellence
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Business New Haven
11/16/1998
By: BNH
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Are we willing to stake our futures, and those of our families, on a community which settles for mediocrity? Or will we insist on excellence?
After all, we pay the freight. It's up to us.
They say that people get the governments and leadership they deserve.
What do we deserve?
The city's public school test scores are the second-worst in the state. The superintendent makes excuses, even blames the testers. The mayor accepts the excuses, defends the performance. The rest of us shut up. It's only poor, dumb people in the public schools, anyway.
The airport founders because it's hard to get to, and the political will to improve access and lengthen the runway isn't there. A “regional” group is formed to oversee it, even though one of the airport's host towns doesn't even accept the authority's jurisdiction. $100,000 is blown in a second-rate effort to “market” a facility that has no carriers anyway. Should we all go to the airport and wait around, hoping a plane comes by? But wait -maybe it will get better. If we pray.
A $20 million state-of-the-art tennis facility sits fallow 51 weeks a year. The glitzy men's tennis tournament we killed ourselves and gave away the farm to get to relocate here goes away, and is let out of its financial commitments to the city and the state, because - hey, what are you gonna do?
The city gives a firearms manufacturer a $20 million aid package to keep it here, in return for a “firm commitment” to maintain a minimum of 400 jobs in the city. The manufacturer breaks the agreement. The city's response? To try to retroactively amend the agreement to make the 400 jobs a “target,” not a requirement. After all, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which ought to be a hub of downtown activity and vitality, is allowed to under-perform for years, effectively ignored. Now - finally, half a decade after similar facilities have been privatized - a company is chosen to help run it. But not to worry - the under-performing management will remain in place.
The city and state announces, improbably, that an out-of-state stainless-steel manufacturer is going to open a major new plant in a distressed neighborhood, bringing hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue for all. Only problem is, the “deal” isn't really a deal, and the steel company thinks better of it. But no one is held accountable, and now it's rude even to bring it up.
The Ninth Square development stalls, with tens of thousands of vacant square feet of commercial space, and no second phase in sight. Who cares that tens of millions of taxpayer dollars brought the project as far as it has come? Let's move on to the next plan.
The expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a new “special services” district downtown is defended on the grounds that it will produce a “clean and safe” central business district. Since when are cleanliness and public safety “special” services, anyway? Does this mean we no longer have to pay millions of dollars for police and public-works efforts downtown? After two years should we be happy with a few little flower pots, a spanky new brochure and what else? Don't ask.
The program that was desperately needed to rebuild blighted city neighborhoods itself added blight, as some of the mayor's closest lieutenants are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Isn't it ironic that, in a city that revolves around a university known the world over for excellence, mediocrity is tolerated?
If we fail in setting standards of excellence for our community in things like public education, municipal facilities, public dealings with private companies, accountability on the part of public servants, then who are we to blame when we get less - much less - than excellence?
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