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SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option CHAPTER FOUR - Null to Void
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NULL TO VOID For NASA,
space is still a priority. A brain
scan revealed Andrew Caddick is not suffering from a stress fracture of the
shin. Everybody
has a photographic memory. Some don't have film. We will,
in fact, be greeted as liberators. Needless
to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said. During spring 2002 Glenn Perry required surgery that would take him out of the office for two to three months. By this time, the notion of Samardak running the place in his absence had been dismissed. Perry snuck into my office, "You take care of things while I'm away, and see Hank for supervision as needed." While Glenn was gone, I "ran" the place. The extra duties primarily involved signing checks and fielding phone calls Glenn would have taken. I was so disgusted with Samardak that I consulted Atha for advice. He asserted a confrontation with Samardak would not be productive and that termination was not an option. He acknowledged the difficulty in light of a board being involved and the extended time without board meetings. Jana Kooi was complaining that while SAIAT had a governing board, it was going months without meeting. Atha advised (commanded) that I wait for Glenn to return and give him a few days before providing him a report on the situation. In April 2002, Pima County Community Services Dorothee Harmon scored a $500,000 grant in state money for workforce development. Half of it would go to a nursing program run by Hermie Cubillos, Job Path, to pay Pima College to train nurses. The city received close to $90,000 and gave this to SAIAT to pay Pima College to train electronic technicians. I wondered if Hermie paid PCC overhead fees as we did. Goodwill got about $70,000 to prepare the underemployed and unemployed for call centers, probably frustrating PCC by doing the training themselves. The same month SAIAT had its first huge event. The first cohort of the HTHW program graduated, and everyone was coming, including Mayor Walkup, Supervisor Sharon Bronson, new Supervisor Richard Elias, WIB Chair Steven Juliver, PCC Campus President Jana Kooi, Desert View Dean John Madden, numerous executives from Raytheon, Honeywell, Universal Avionics, IBM, DataForth, Lasertel, and many others. Perry was still recovering from surgery. I had to host the event. Not long ago, your humble blogger would be nervous in the presence of an elected official. Now half the local political establishment was coming to an event I had no idea how to do conduct. Fortunately, Atha knew I had no clue and dispatched Jim Mize, past PIC Chair and one of the architects of the HTHW program, to assist me. Jim gave me an event checklist that had over 150 items. His preparatory phone calls and assistance ahead of time made a huge difference. I thanked him profusely. As far as I could tell we conducted the graduation just fine, and if anyone knew I was completely terrified, they didn't say. Two years later, I could interact with such a room as a course leader. Shortly after Glenn's return I entered his office and shut the door. I informed him of the following:
With no anger, no animosity, and no joy, I calmly listed the detailed facts proving each assertion beyond all doubt with names of people who could verify my account. I acted like a professional. I shot straight. I have Perry's notes from this meeting. The next day Glenn met with Samardak behind closed doors, and I considered the deed done. Wrong. Perry's protection for this idiot now exceeded my tolerance. I had to go. I updated the date on my letter of resignation and started a list of people to approach about employment. I thought about speaking with Suzanne about a position, anything just to get started. I thought about calling Steve Juliver. Maybe he knew some people. Until my daughter left Tucson, I would take almost any local job just to be rid of the image of Perry's infatuation with the clown. How could the fiasco continue for so long? The board had no clearly designated Chair. Each board member had a full-time job elsewhere, and none had a particular reason to step forward. Who had the right to step forward? Because Perry received pay from the county through Atha's community services departmnt, one could argue that Atha should have taken charge but the valid counterargument was that this would have been perceived as more of the county's trying to dictate the state of affairs, which Atha did not want. The SAIAT Board consisted of good people who provided outstanding commentary when they met, but none stepped forward to produce more than what one could call loose oversight. We had money in the bank. Staff got paid. Training occurred. Vera and I could feel and discussed the growing dissatisfaction with Perry and and the sense that he was favoring an increasingly problematic employee. Board member BJ Smith wanted both terminated. Atha defended Perry, so the stalemate persisted. Still, pressure mounted, and Vera and I knew the wait would end. The question involved timing and whether anything would remain of the ship. By July
2002, GTEC had 64 Board members. Members were evaluating the first year of
Steve Weathers at the helm. The consensus was that he had devoted his first
year as GTEC's president and chief executive to team building, taking part in
more than a thousand meetings from rooms full of hundreds of people to
one-on-one meetings with just about anyone. Remember, GTEC was supposed to recruit companies, the county was supposed to develop the workforce, and the city was supposed to concentrate on retention and expansion. The county's mission to develop the workforce was almost impossible to measure. What was considered acceptable? The Workforce Investment Act had numbers tied to various statistics, but what did they really mean, other than funding levels? Was the city doing its job in economic development? Both county and city had missions but what constituted success was nebulous. GTEC's
measurements, the number of companies and jobs brought into town at what average
wage, were clear and easy to understand. They were bad. Weathers could take
credit for four companies and 455 jobs during his first year.
Sierra Vista
recruited more companies and jobs with a fraction of GTEC's budget.
GTEC flew staff to
Europe to check out Manchester, England, Lyon, France, and a city in Sweden.
They added that later in the year a new "brand" would significantly boost GTEC's
ability to promote Tucson. "The branding campaign really has to do with a
promise," Weathers said. "You will get the best quality from everybody in the
region." Both Duff
Hearon and Larry Aldrich voiced support of Weathers. The results would
arrive soon, "I have nothing but superlatives," Aldrich said. "He's doing a terrific
job." The GTEC Board met on July 17, 2002. It announced the results of a survey conducted by the Bablove Ridgewood Workgroup. The company had e-mailed 1,200 surveys to companies who had thought or were thinking about coming to Tucson. They also spoke with about fifty businesses / leaders in town. The two main issues? A skilled workforce and availability of existing sites. Remember the town hall in 1991? Eleven years ago, the community identified education and a skilled workforce as the top priority. Availability of sites came in second. Now we were paying consultants to tell us what we knew over a decade ago. Fast forward five years and nothing has changed. Anyone taking bets on July 2012? Perhaps if we recruited enough gay bohemians and esoteric artists, the need for a skilled workforce or existing sites would become unnecessary. No one could believe such a thing. Clearly, the community did not have the highly skilled workers that high-tech companies wanted. GTEC then announced that they would refine recruiting efforts to focus on high tech companies employing high skilled positions. Workers would come from the cloth. Around this time our community leaders discovered the Internet, and the Web site stuff happened. On August 20, 2002, Tucson OED launched BusinessLINC at www.azcsd.com , a Web site designed to connect Tucson businesses to each other and show what each had to offer (familiar?). Businesses entered information regarding their products and services, and could check the site prior to obtaining the same needs from outside the community. What a marvelous idea, but it seemed strangely familiar.
Alan Fischer wrote
about the BusinessLINC in the Star on August 21, noting that according to a study by
the University of Arizona Office of Economic Development, area high tech
companies only purchased 12 percent of their supplies and services from local firms.
The article quoted
Bob Hagen, "There are millions, or tens of millions, of dollars in increased
business opportunity as a result of this program. This one floats to the top of
the list for near-term business development impact." This same month, GTSPED announced its new Web site, www.gtsped.com. It would provide information on all of the economic development programs available to businesses, which included job training incentives, tax incentives, and programs such the Enterprise Zone and Empowerment Zone. The economic developments community loved to discuss the importance of collaboration, yet when it came to Web sites, I guess GTEC had to get its own? Dark clouds loomed for GTEC, and in August blood was drawn. Cristek Interconnects, a major Raytheon supplier that Raytheon had asked to move to Tucson, chose to locate in Sierra Vista. My meters tweaked on the reality versus the hype. Did it get hyped because CEO Cristi Cristich slapped GTEC with remarks like "blew her off" and "didn't even show up for the game"? For reasons unknown Cristi was angry and did not hold back. ITB tried to minimize the damage with an article using the word "hiccup" and stating, "We hope the community doesn't burn GTEC at the stake for its failure in this case." The Citizen felt differently, and reporter Teya Vitu's August 14 article unloaded with both barrels, "GTEC admits it failed at follow up." The article was brutal. Cristek alleged that calls were not returned, that requests for information were not answered, and asserted, "GTEC was a ghost in the process." I was not privy to the reality under the surface, but it smelled, and it definitely threw blood into the water, attracting the attention of the city council. Council Members Carol West, Jose Ibarra, Kathleen Dunbar, and Fred Ronstadt all chimed in with their versions of concern. West noted the need to develop all opportunities. Ibarra accused GTEC of arrogance in its focus on higher paying jobs. Dunbar said her ward needed manufacturing positions more than high-tech. Ronstadt pretty much echoed West, "A job is a job. We should take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself." GTEC countered that it chased all leads regardless of pay, which did not satisfy the city council. Five of seven Tucson city council members wondered if GTEC was focusing too much on top-paying jobs and letting lower-paying companies slip away. If it was true that GTEC had documentation of twenty three follow-up contacts with Cristek officials and sent six follow-up packets of information, and if it was true that Cristek wanted a rural location and Tucson never really stood a chance anyway, games were being played. The Weekly (published by Territorial Newspapers, who also publishes ITB), took a different angle in its October 10 issue. It observed that anyone in Weather's job faced the crosshairs of an old boy's club that cared about selling cars and selling space. They noted that Cristek was after a rural location all along and that the decision on Sierra Vista had nothing to do with Weathers or GTEC. Now that is what you call a red flag. The seas around GTEC were getting stormy and turning pink. Matters for GTEC would deteriorate despite ITB's efforts to generate positive press. Steve Delgado wrote a favorable article in September praising the upcoming October GTEC activity, which included a Canadian knowledge exchange event early in the month, as well as a combined "Idea-Funding" and "Techschmooze" event. It quoted Weathers, "Idea Funding brings together people in the capital industry and the scientists, creating the same energy that's behind the entrepreneurship and the creation of companies. This is about economic growth and getting people excited about doing business here. This is economic development at its core." In September, a month after announcing its first Web site, www.gtsped.com, GTSPED announced another website, www.tucsonhasit.com. They stated, "Envision a Web site that tells you if your business is in an empowerment zone. What if it could also give you a heads up about federal, county, or city grants, link you to business organizations for advice, and give you leads on sales?" Wasn't that what www.gtsped.com did? Now GTSPED had two Web sites. City OED has BusinessLinc. GTEC had no Web site. It was, however, very excited about the results of Bablove Ridgwood Workgroup. GTEC had an exciting new branding and marketing slogan. Their consensus was that images of mountains, sunsets, and gorgeous cacti would not attract high-tech businesses. Instead of selling sunshine, companies would be recruited with images of fighter jets, test tubes, electronics, a terrific image of a yellow streak, and a killer slogan, "Tucson, Opportunity Accelerated." GTEC paid Bablove Ridgewood Workgroup $50,000 to develop the yellow streak and new message. "This is a marketing campaign based on research," GTEC asserted. "It's not just a slogan."
I had no idea if Duff Hearon was being funny or serious when he remarked in the press, "There is no other community that is pulling together like Tucson." GTSPED, now considering itself the joint effort of all the economic development agencies in Tucson (my underlining) spoke through its new co-Chair Sally Fernandez, "GTEC's external marketing effort should position regional attributes to interest cluster company suppliers and customers, as well as new technology companies to want to move to the region . . . ultimately helping to strategically grow and sustain our existing business base." Sally could speak advanced cloth. GTEC
announced it would more than double its marketing budget over the FY 2002 year
and would spend $422,125 in FY 2003, up from $180,000. In reality, they would
spend closer to $520,000 in marketing during FY 03, half a million dollars.
Regarding the yellow streak and the slogan, certain
members of the community were not impressed, and Jim Thornton, director of a
venture capital firm, spoke frankly, "I'm uninspired." The
following italics are (I kid you not) directly from published articles: We were going to paste Bob on a billboard in DC?
Well, to your humble blogger of modest SES origins, a yellow streak conjured up something other than the acceleration of economic opportunity. In light of reductions in H1B funding and eager to please his useless instructor, Perry chose to widely advertise MCSE courses in the paper. Larry Curran of New Horizons Computer Learning Center, and Charlene Peters of DRA Software Training, went ballistic. SAIAT, a government subsidized nonprofit organization, each asserted, was "taking food out of the mouths of the children of hard working Tucson business owners" with unfair competition. The August 16, 2002 issue of ITB featured a Sheila Storm article on the HTHW and included SAIAT. Sheila observed that most of the training was funded with grant money. In the article, Perry reiterated SAIAT's offering of Microsoft Office and MCSE certification courses. Neither Larry nor Charlene knew that our MCSE instructor represented no threat. In a prescription for trouble, Glenn agreed to meet with Charlene Peters face-to-face. Gossip about the meeting spread quickly. Charlene started to speak, and Glenn lasted less than ninety seconds before fleeing the encounter. I had a visual of him, a face as red as a Kansas City Chief helmet, charging out of the restaurant, and CEO Charlene Peters, still seated, reaching for her iced tea, "What was that?" I would eventually meet with both Larry and Charlene. The outcome of the mess was that as long as SAIAT received public support, it had to tread lightly on Microsoft turf. Why was it perfectly okay for Pima College or the University of Arizona's Extended University to teach this material? They were subsidized. Occam's razor, and we will discuss this later, but the simple reality is that those who created SAIAT had no idea what they were doing. I want to underscore one very important point. SAIAT's hands were being tied. They told us to make money and become self-sufficient but nay-sayed any profitable endeavors in a schizophrenic Catch-22 making success impossible, "Make money, but don't do anything that makes money." In reality, SAIAT took no business from either DRA Training or New Horizons. New Horizons operated at 6377 E. Tanque Verde. SAIAT's customers consisted of Raytheon (south of Valencia), Veeco (south of Valencia), Vaisala (south of Valencia), Universal Avionics (south of Valencia), Advanced Ceramics Research (just north of Valencia), EOST (just north of Valencia), IBM (out at the Tech Park), and I could keep going. In reality, not one of these companies had any interest in having employees drive to Tanque Verde north of Pima. We didn't take anyone's business. My efforts to explain this fell on deaf ears on the sides of heads interested in appearances and popularity. SAIAT had no place on the list of factors behind DRA's disintegration or Curran's sale of the New Horizons franchise to Paul Roughton and Paul, with the wisdom of hindsight, would admit he should have bought the Checker's store. On Monday, October 28, 2002, a University of Arizona Nursing student named Robert Flores lost his mind. He entered the College of Nursing and shot three clinical associate professors to death. The terrible tragedy of heartbreaking proportions freaked the community. We all felt sick. Perry was out this week, and the very next day shortly after noon Vera and Samardak came running into my office, telling me that one of the students in our plastics program had said as he left for lunch that he should come back and kill us all. The receptionist confirmed the threat. I called the program administrator, Rafael Leon, at the Pima County One Stop and apprised him of the situation. He returned my call within minutes with instructions to call the Tucson police immediately. Given what had happened yesterday, take no chances. The police arrived silently and parked out of sight. Via a separate entrance, the two police officers went to a room to wait for the student. Vera and I then calmly asked the student to come with us, and we escorted him into the room. The instant he was inside, the police were on him, each taking an arm. He was cuffed in seconds, and the police wasted no time asking him to be very frank and honest regarding what he did and did not have on his person, and they verified that he was indeed unarmed. The Tucson police acted professionally and appropriately. Once it was clear the student had no weapons, the cuffs were removed and he was instructed to remain seated in a chair. He sat trembling with fear as the police did most of the talking. They then turned to me for a thumbs up or down regarding his continued participation in the program. I asked the youth if he understood why all of this occurred and whether I had reason to believe he would be a problem in the future. With welled up eyes he apologized and swore no future problems would come from him. Everyone shook hands, and the student returned to class. I drove home that night, nauseated. Something had gone terribly wrong. What were we doing training welfare moms in nine-month all day programs they could not complete? None finished. The HTHW wage program took over two and a half years of intense evening work. I will spare the reader the Plastics training for at risk youth (caught a couple well on their way to sex in the handicapped restroom, and we found a crack pipe elsewhere). Suzanne and Hermi could handle this sort of environment. SAIAT was not set up for this. I think it is part of the human psyche that when we find ourselves in a particular situation that is not working, instead of getting out, we keep thinking it will get better. We're "making progress" and "wait until next month" and "as soon as we can" then it will turn out just fine. That's where I found myself at SAIAT, but conditions were not improving. They were deteriorating. Samardak fabricated health problems which Perry bought without question, granting him license to come and go as he pleased. This was the last straw. I made up my mind to tender my resignation at the end of 2002. I could not remain at SAIAT. I updated the date on my letter of resignation to 12/31/02. Progress regarding Tucson's economic development appeared equally dismal. The cloth was not delivering. Richard Ducote of the Star did not hold back the gloom on October 20, 2002 and ran an article with the title, "Bad Times Likely to Get Worse Here." Arizona's average wage of $25,600 fell almost 20 percent short of the national average of $31,500. University of Arizona economic development guru Marshall Vest conceded that over the next twenty-five years, the state's per capita income could slip lower, to only 75 percent of the national average. What was our problem? EDUCATION. Did we have a university? Sure. What did our graduates do? Move out of state. Why? They couldn't get a decent job here. Why? There was no critical mass of companies with decent paying jobs. Why? There was no critical mass of workers in Tucson with the knowledge to fill high-paying positions. The next round of elections approached. For Congress, both Grijalva (CD-7) and Kolbe (CD-8) had their seats locked. Redistricting left the new LD 26 Representative Carol Somers exposed to turf she had never walked or wooed, and she fell in the primary to the established Hershberger and Huffman. This would have profound implications for SAIAT.
In November 2002, Assistant City Manager Karen Thoreson streamlined the language of the contracts the city had with GTEC ($540,000), The Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau ($2,025,000), the Tucson Arts District Partnership ($186,300), and for the first time, the Southern Arizona Tech Council ($126,000). Gone from the contracts were performance measures associated with activity, things like phone calls made, number of inquiries fielded, qualified prospects generated, and so on. Apparently the old MTCVB contract had seventy-five performance measures. GTEC's job, everyone now asserted, was getting companies to come to the community. Thoreson added that agencies needed to produce results (imagine), which for GTEC was ten new companies, 1,500 new jobs, and $100 million in capital investment. Both the funding level and the anticipated results remained the same as last year. In FY 2002, GTEC pulled in five companies and 500 jobs. Thoreson said. "The agencies have been complaining that they don't know what we want." Not knowing the source of the confusion, I suspected the cloth. By fall 2002, the SAIAT board had gone over half a year without meeting and still had no chairman. Board member Bob Hagan realized that he could not step into the role. When Carol Somers lost the primary, Bob approached her and voiced his concerns about the lack of leadership and requested she seriously consider becoming the chair of the SAIAT board of directors. Bob and Carol spoke and then approached Glenn Perry. In what I considered incredible, he agreed to the idea. Glenn Perry and Bill Samardak with an intelligent, professional FEMALE board chair?
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