WIKB filed her report about the Iron County Economic
Development Corporation (EDC) January 19 meeting
including quoting board member Tom Lesandrini, “She’s
the reason why this county has been successful with
economic development.”[1] This Lesandrini opinion
alleges that Julie Melchiori’s work at the EDC has provided
success.
As far as Iron County Doings can determine, Lesandrini’s
opinion echoed by Bruce Tusa, has no foundation and we
invoke Clara Peller’s question, “Where’s the beef?”
The only thing missing from the propaganda gambit is
music. It repeats conduct of Bagdad Bob[2] who we
laughed at during the early stages of the Iraqi police
action
If the EDC were a legitimate business venture, it would
be bankrupt. As I wrote several years ago, it all begins
with the mission statement that we copy from the EDC’s
web page[3]. “To implement strategies that will increase
job opportunity, tax base and quality of life within the
County of Iron.”
Despite the fact that we’ve been hearing for years what
a wonderful job the EDC has been doing, we have never
ever had a report card about their failures and successes.
Although we disagree with the propriety of the mission
statement, we can use that document to measure the
success of the corporation and its former director.
How has the EDC increased job opportunities in Iron
County? Can the EDC identify 25 positions that were filled
in 2011 as a direct result of EDC strategies. We don’t mean
a replacement for a position that was filled earlier and that
individual terminated employment, but a brand new job that
never existed before? If not 25, then how many?
How many properties can the EDC identify that experienced
an increase in tax value, and corresponding increase in taxes
collected, as a direct consequence of EDC strategies for the
paired years of 2010 and 2011?
Can the EDC identify any improvements to the quality of
life within the County of Iron during 2011 that result
directly from the implementation of EDC strategies? Your
humble correspondent has not experienced any
improvement to quality of life as a result of EDC actions
and I would be very interested to know some details about
anyone who has.
We take the stance that because the EDC has not seen fit
to report on its successes, there are none to report. That, in
turn, makes Lesandrini’s and Tusa’s opinions questionable at
best in the context in which they were offered. Taken in
absolute context, meaning words like “success” can be
assigned either a positive or a negative value, there is an
inherent truth in the opinions. Let’s reword the quote to
read, “She’s the reason why this county has been a failure
with economic development” we’d have equal validity taking
the statement in absolute terms. But people generally don’t
read in an absolute context. Tusa’s statement was, “She’s
done a great job” is an equally meaningless platitude that
has all the benchmarks of sounding good, but lacks any real
meaning that could be measured. It is very much the sort
of statement made when awarding an equal prize to all
participants, including those individuals who didn’t even
finish a task.
Are the EDC board and the county board supporting the
EDC as it is currently organized as a simple expedient
rather than taking a serious look and searching for a
meaningful solution?
In the same issue of the Reporter, on page 5, is another
article discussing Iron River Township resident complaints
about the inability of government to repave Old Beechwood
Road that the residents have been patiently waiting 30
years to have restored to pavement that has instead been
graveled over. The same article also discusses more people
scheduled for disconnection from the municipal water
system because local government cannot afford to
maintain/improve mains to serve them adequately.
Similar measures have been the way local governments
all over Iron County have been dealing with their
responsibilities. In an economically successful region,
such things could not happen, the money to make
necessary repairs would be available. Where is the
increase…to the quality of life” for those people? Or are
we to use the absolute meaning of the term once again, and
the negative experiences demonstrate the sort of economic
success that the newspaper quoted?
Where is the “successful economic development” touted by
Lesandrini and Tusa? The raw fact is that Iron County is
economically depressed and that the EDC has achieved
nothing worth the money that Iron County and the State
of Michigan have spent on it. Hiring Julie Melchiori as a
contractor economic developer will, in my opinion, only
compound past waste. As far as Revolving Loan Fund
management is concerned, the county would be much
wiser in assigning that responsibility to any bank or credit
union in the county.
The misjudgment on the part of the EDC in helping Kim’s
Restaurant on Stambaugh Hill is a classic failure on the
most elementary levels. You just don’t subsidize a business
like that in a low traffic area. The Call Center[4] was
heralded as “Phase 1” when created in 2006. Where is
Phase 2? How is employment in Phase 1 some 5 years
later? Where’s the promised growth? In fact, isn’t the Call
Center on the wane? None of this sounds like “successful
economic development” to me.
Iron County Doings believes that a better approach needs
to be taken to economic development than has been. A task
force should be organized and economic developers from
nearby more successful counties should be consulted for
their successful ideas. Julie Melchiori attended a meeting
that your humble correspondent chaired and stated her
opinion that our economy is not regional. Lacking such
basic understanding of how an economy works is a clear
signal that Julie Melchiori should seek employment in
some other field. She appears to have had no formal
education and little to no comprehension of the workings
before she started as a political appointee to the EDC.
There was a radio program on National Public Radio
(NPR) last fall describing the joint efforts of at least 6
county economic developers in northern Wisconsin, a
region significantly more prosperous and successful
than Iron County. Those same developers, along with
others coordinating the efforts of 9 adjoining Wisconsin
counties, were undertaking negotiations with a railroad
that was contemplating abandonment of the regional rail
line with the intention of purchasing the right of way and
revamping the tracks in order to maintain economic
viability. It is truly a shame that our EDC, standing in
isolation by choice, didn’t undertake to purchase the
right of way, as several Wisconsin counties are doing,
before agreeing to pay for track improvement. That was
another mistake made by the Iron County and the EDC
based on inexperience and the failure of those bodies to
seek counsel from visionaries. How can we expect
economic growth when such elementary errors are
de rigeur in Iron County?
Such models, ladies and gentlemen, represent models of
vision leading to success such as Iron County presently
fails to enjoy. There’s nothing keeping us from that except
the internal political climate in Iron County that must
change if we are to achieve anything resembling the sort
of economic development we can experience if roadblocks
of personal political power are removed.
It is the opinion of Iron County Doings that repeating
past mistakes can lead only to the continuation of the
failures we have experienced, despite the “success”
that Messieurs Lesandrini and Tusa have falsely claimed.
We urge the EDC and the County of Iron to seek someone,
anyone, better suited to serve as the EDC economic
developer. We recommend the employment of a
visionary outsider to receive minimum compensation
with a bonus compensation schedule based on the number
of new (not mostly transferred, as was the case for Pine
River Hardwoods) jobs created.
In the meanwhile, we ask, “Gentlemen, where’s the beef?”
We see our EDC as a huge bun and very little by way of
protein. Improvement requires action by the Iron County
Board of Commissioners and the EDC.
Bill Vajk
Footnote [1] See Iron County Reporter, January 25, 2012,
Page 1. A Library of Congress registration ISSN, if one
exists, is not readily discernable in the referenced issue.
Footnote[2] Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, usually called
al-Sahhaf, was also known as Bagdad Bob, the Iraqi
“Information Minister” propagandist during the final
stages of the US invasion and takeover. Wikipedia writes,
“His last public appearance as Information Minister was
on April 8, 2003, when he said that the Americans ‘are
going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They
will surrender, it is they who will surrender’.”
Footnote[3] http://www.iron.org/edc-index.php
Footnote[4] http://www.iron.org/callcenter.php
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