Call it self serving but I think governments get a bad rap.  It’s a shame that nothing clears a room like the line — I’m from the government and I’m here to help.  But face it, we created government to do our dirty work.  Your neighbor hasn’t cut his lawn in 4 weeks, who you gonna call to go knock on his door and get it cut?  Your city worker.  Sewer backup?   Guess who  — another city worker.  Loud party keeping you up at night, 1-800-CITY EMPLOYEE.  You can imagine how most of these conversations go.   Knock, knock…Sir you’re in violation of section such and such….get off my #!&*% property.  None of us in our right mind would willingly put ourselves in that kind of situation so we created city workers to do it for us.  It’s the old adage let’s get the city worker to do it, he’ll do anything.  And that’s what your Code Officer faces everyday.  The good news is we’ve recently hired a really good one who just might be able to turn that government rap around.

These types of calls and conversations go on every day and like most organizations some city employees handle them better than others but any way you look at it these are difficult situations for even the best of the best.  That’s why we’re so happy with our new Code Enforcement Officer, Troy Loomis.  He knows how to deliver bad news with a friendly face.

In the world of Code Enforcment our customers fall into 2 categories: 1)those that are happy to see us; and 2)those that are happy to see us go.  As I’ve watched Troy in action during his first 6 months on the job I’d say he’s still got more people in the second category than the first but he’s definitely working hard to put a new face (both literally and figuratively) on the role of Code Enforcement so that in a year or so he can point proudly to all of the people in the first category that he converted from the second.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s not elected and the success of his job is not measured by his popularity but he is a city employee and that means he’s got an obligation to do right by people even in difficult situations.  People don’t have to always be happy to see him but he always has to give people a fair shake and I know he works hard to do that even when he’s being shouted at.

Like most things in life the majority of the people don’t let their grass and weeds grow excessively high on purpose to spite their neighbors (although that happens on occassion) so much of what Troy does is to be a friendly reminder and a bit of a part time teacher in the real life class of civics.

People love to cheer for anyone that wants to fight City Hall which makes Troy a bit of a marked man on the street but he’s good at depersonalizing the issue which is hugely important in the art of positive persuasion.  Really, it’s not about whether you’re a good or bad person, it’s just that we need your help to keep your grass cut.  That’s it.  Can you help us out?

In keeping with a kinder, more friendly approach, Troy also has started a new tool loan program.  The idea is to show people that we really are here to help and to get results, not pick on people.  The results are usually things like getting grass cut, doors painted, shingles replaced, so borrowing a page from the City of Brunswick Ohio Troy has started a new tool loan program which allows Kent residents to borrow the tools needed to get the results everybody is looking for.

We get that we have a fairly high renter and absentee landlord population that may not always be fully equipped for every maintenance job so we are trying to step in and remove the obstacle of not having the right tools for the job.  The tools can be rented free of charge and as long as you return the item in the same condition that you took it out we’ll give you your deposit back.  It’s as simple as that.

We’re starting small to see how it goes but I was impressed with Troy’s initiative and his willingness to step outside the proverbial box to offer better service.  He’s done his homework and he’s come up with a solid program that should help address a critical need to keep our neighborhoods strong.

If you want to talk to Troy about the program or borrow a tool you can reach him at 330.678.8108.

Here’s a description of the new service from Troy:

Last week in City Council the staff provided an update on the progress of what we commonly call downtown redevelopment.  I say commonly because when we started this effort a couple of years ago downtown redevelopment really was characterized by the City’s and the University’s effort to build a hotel/conference center surrounded by new retail and restaurants in the Erie/Haymaker/Water/Depeyster Street block.  But something happened along the way and names like the Phoenix project, Ray’s Place, the McKay Bricker Gallery and the Water Street Tavern have taken center stage as the showpieces of downtown redevelopment that is under hammer and nail.  Don’t get me wrong we’re still knee deep in hotel/conference center plans but when it comes to evidence of success in downtown, plans have taken a back seat to real bricks and mortar work.  And where there’s bricks and motar work, new businesses and new jobs are soon to follow.  See for yourself.

Planning is great and it’s definitely important but honestly there’s nothing like seeing actual scaffolding go up, roofs repaired, and old buildings made relevant again.  That’s exactly what’s happening in downtown Kent so much so in fact that the scales have been tipped and downtown redevelopment has taken on a new meaning with a new timeframe.  It’s about what is happening right now — not what we hope happens soon.

So in the vocabulary of downtown we can officially get rid of the future tense references and lose all those if only’s and what if’s, and replace them with the current tense – what is.  If it seems like I’m quibbling over vernacular you’re right but it’s for good reason.  From my point of view there’s nothing worse than to watch well intended people let themselves slip into the aw shucks kick the dirt attitude about our downtown, saying that they just wish something would happen to show people what’s possible.

Whoa Nellie, that train has already left the station.  Try $2 million plus in new investment in the last 9 months with another $4 or $5 million more to be spent by next summer.  That’s more than something that’s a lot of thing.  And that thing is downtown redevelopment.

A big reason behind the City’s interest in the hotel/conference center was the catalytic impact we think it would have on our downtown.   By design hotel and conference centers bring people (and their money) from outside of Kent into Kent.  More people and more money means more demand for goods and services in Kent — which means more jobs for people that make goods and provide services. More jobs means more income tax coming in from outside dollars and more outside dollars means less taxes needed out of the pockets of people that live here.  It’s a winning strategy all around.

The theory is still sound but the reality is the redevelopment cat is already out of the bag and rather than needing the hotel/conference center to be the white knight rolling into town to save the day the downtown has started the ball rolling on its own with well planned incremental redevelopment.  Incremental may be smaller but smaller is also easier to manage smartly and integrate well in the mix of the best of the old and the best of the new.

Don’t mistake my cheerleading for incremental redevelopment as slowing us down on the major hotel/conference center project – we’re still full speed ahead – but the incremental redevelopment has created the opportunity for us to not put all of our eggs in one basket and rather than setting the hotel/conference center up to fail from untenable expectations to save us, it can now be another piece — albeit a significant piece — to an overall downtown action strategy that is grounded in what is already underway.

That would make the hotel/conference center more of a multiplier than just a catalyst and I like the non-linear math of multipliers.  Multipliers take $1 dollar in and put out $4 dollars in return.   I think a case can be made that it’s been the progress and success of Main Street Kent and the City’s downtown land acquisition that sent the signal to private investors that this time we’re for real and seeing that signal they decided to stop sitting on the sidelines and get in on the action.

As bold and exciting as the hotel/conference center concept is, the downtown redevelopment that you can see right now is what it’s all about and it’s great to know that what we’re doing is working in the real world.

The Phoenix Project Profile – $6 million project to be done by 7/09, 30 new jobs, new retail, new office, new restaurants.

Last night the members of City Council held a joint meeting with the Planning Commission to talk about the state of the City’s zoning code and other comprehensive planning tools.  The idea behind the meeting was for some joint dialogue about where the city is at and where we’d like to be and how the planning tools can help us get there.   After making the citizen appointments to the Planning Commission there isn’t necessarily a lot of interaction betwee the Council and the Commission so this meeting was arranged to help make sure everyone was on the same page or at least reading from the same book.  I’m sure that the proposed new Sheetz store was on some people’s minds so I thought I’d share an update on that project for anyone that is interested.

I’ve been getting a fair number of emails about the Sheetz project so I went back through my replies and I’ve tried to create a summary letter that answers the common questions.  Here’s that letter and hopefully it answers your questions too:

I appreciate the comments you sent about the Sheetz proposal, they’re exactly the kind of things we’ve been talking about inside City Hall as well.

There’s no question that the corner of Fairchild and SR 43 poses challenges for the proposed new Sheetz store and quite honestly that’s why we tried to get Sheetz to consider a different location right from the start. We didn’t go out and recruit Sheetz to develop Mr. Crock’s site, rather the Sheetz folks hired Jack Kohl as their real estate agent to make the new store happen at the corner on their own.

The City only got involved after Jack contacted us to see how we felt about the concept of a new store at the site. It’s really not all that different from when you plan to sell your house, you don’t need to ask the City’s permission, and neither did Sheetz.

Anyways, we told Jack that even though we’re delighted with Sheetz interest in Kent we didn’t think that corner was a particularly good fit for the kinds of reasons that you shared with me, e.g., traffic safety, etc. We offered to try to help him find a more suitable site for his client in Kent but Jack pointed out that the site is already zoned for a gas station, and he’s right, but zoning aside we still tried to suggest that the typical Sheetz footprint might present a problem for the neighborhood and the traffic at that intersection.

Given our initial reaction to the concept Jack thought it would be a good idea to have his clients meet with us directly so that we could have a chance to talk through the site issues in greater detail. In that meeting we noted our concerns, with a particular emphasis on safety and character of the site. To their credit the Sheetz engineers listened to what we had to say and they did go back and rework their site plan to include a nicer looking, smaller brick building and ground mounted sign and they agreed to a right-in right-out only turns on SR 43. It was a good start but after the standing room only session at the next Planning Commission meeting we asked them if they’d be willing to meet with us again to see what else we could come up with.

It’s important to remember that the City is not part of the critical path for approvals so the Sheetz folks could have politely declined our invitation, but they didn’t. They seem to genuinely want to find an amicable solution. So we met again last week and continued to talk about options on the site, including Mr. Frankhauser’s alternative concept.

The staff and I, and Councilman Hawksley, had a productive meeting last Friday morning with the Sheetz engineers. They seemed willing to listen and willing to consider integrating any of the concepts that had been suggested by Mr. Frankhouser that would actually fit on the site. It turns out that the Sheetz engineers had looked quite closely at a design similar to Mr. Frankhauser’s but they were reluctant to push the noise and lights closer to the neighborhood and they also couldn’t get the dimensions to fit on the site. It appears that Mr. Frankhauser’s proposal may be hitting up against some of the same problems.

Regardless of how the alternative concepts turn out, I have to say that the Sheetz folks have in good faith made some additional changes based on the public comments that they think will do a better job of creating a visual connection between the future park across SR 43 and their site, and they have suggested modifications to the sidewalks to create better separation of pedestrian/biking traffic from vehicular traffic. Whether they’re enough to satisfy the neighbors and the Board of Zoning I guess time will tell.

With the citizens on Kent’s Planning Commission already voting in favor of allowing Sheetz to move forward, the next step for them will be to take their site plan to the citizens of the Board of Zoning in October. As the plans stand today variances from the Board of Zoning will be needed. The Board of Zoning can deny the variances but they have to be made for very specific reasons with good justification that will stand up to court scrutiny. I know that a couple of the Board of Zoning members spoke against the project at the first Planning Commission meeting but I don’t know how the remaining members feel about it.

Since City Council approval is not required, the City Council has not taken a formal position on the project although all of the Council members have been asking questions and offering their comments individually. Without an official position taken by City Council on the Sheetz proposal the staff and I are not really in a position to advocate for or against the project but we thought it was important to do everything we could to keep the dialogue open with Sheetz.

We obviously don’t want to do anything that causes unnecessary delays but likewise we don’t want to miss an opportunity to find a reasonable compromise if there is one to be found. We’re not in a position to make any promises to Sheetz but we felt like we’re in a good position to offer Sheetz some ways to better navigate the process for their’s and the community’s benefit.

I wanted you to know that these are issues that we’re working on.

Thanks.

Dave

To read the previous posting on Sheetz Click Here.

In the spirit of going out in a blaze of glory Hurricane Ike did not go gently into the night last evening. As a matter of fact it went out with a bang which was the sound you heard as trees and transformers were popping all over town from the high winds. Mother Nature happens and when it does your City crews get busy. Here’s a progress report from the front lines.

Here’s the numbers you need to keep handy:

1. If there’s an emergency call 911.

2. For non-emergency public safety calls residents should call 330.673.7732.

3. For tree or leaf collection requests residents should call 330.678.8105.

We do our best to stay current on the progress of the power line repairs but we don’t really have any inside information, we just rely on reports coming off of Ohio Edison’s web site: Outage Status

Below is a sampling of photos from all-around Kent post Ike. Our City crews have done a great job during and after this storm event and its been a reminder of just how important city employees are in our day to day lives – especially when unexpected things happen.

For all the talk of corporate downsizing in these uneasy economic times, two Kent companies saw the softening market as a chance to grown their business. I had a chance to catch up with Karl Warnke, CEO for Davey Tree a couple of weeks ago, and in the course of our conversation he made a casual remark about how busy he’s been wrapping up some $150 million in new acquisitions. $100 million here, $50 million there, these are significant numbers that make a clear statement of the financial health of Davey. And then on a smaller (but no less important) scale, I happened to bump into an article in Crain’s Business Magazine announcing that in 6 months AWP Inc. had already outgrown the new 14,000 sq. ft. headquarters building on Overholt Road in Kent so they went out and bought another 18,000 sq. ft. Unfortunately all this positive business news doesn’t always make its way into the headlines so I’m doing my part to tell the rest of the story.

Davey Tree
Let’s face it, Kent owes a lot to the Davey Tree company, including the title of the Original Tree City thanks to Johnny Appleseed Davey planting trees all over town 100 years ago that dominate our skyline today. Fast forward 70 years later and Davey Tree was an economic engine in our downtown and more recently they built a fantastic Corporate Headquarters that stands as a point of pride welcoming people into our Kent community and creating a great first impression at our northern gateway.

Who we are and what we stand for as a community has deep roots (forgive the pun) in the Davey tree business. Kent, thanks to Davey Tree was green before green was in. Davey was here in Kent’s formative years and they left a strong naturalist imprint on our community that is still seen in everything we do.

At a time when many of our former manufacturing giants in Kent have moved overseas Davey Tree has stuck with us and they continue to call Kent home so when I hear that they’ve been able to make $150 million in growth investments I get pretty excited about what the next Kent-Davey era has in store.

As we enter Davey’s 128th year in Kent, Davey is focusing on innovation, aggressive research and cuting edge technology to lead their corporate success as the experts in the green industry. That also happens to be the same elements of the City’s economic development priorities so in this case as goes Davey so goes Kent.

That’s also the message from Kent State University — more research, more innovation and more technology development. When you’ve got that kind of strategy alignment with the kind of economic horsepower that Davey and Kent State bring to the table exciting things are going to happen and we’re doing our best to be in a position to get those things to happen sooner and faster.

With 13 new acquisitions in 2 years, Davey is well on their way towards meeting their growth goals and they’re also already getting accolades for their innovation winning an EDGE award this year (see below).

Economic Development Through Growth and Entrepreneurship
The Entrepreneurs EDGE is planning a year-long celebration for those honored at the Leading EDGE Awards allowing these business executives to learn from the best practices of others, make connections that will enhance their business, and address specific concerns that will enable them to enhance their growth

Davey EDGE Story

EDGE Value Program

The EDGE has created a unique metric that will enable the region to measure and track companies throughout the 17 counties of Northeast Ohio that are creating the most value for themselves as well as for the community. Value creating companies deserve to be identified, honored, nurtured and supported.

“Value” = EBIT + total cash equivalent compensation for all of that company’s employees working in the Northeast Ohio region.EDGE looks at the absolute figure as well as the growth rate of this figure over the past three years.

Recognized companies should find this prestigious award from unbiased grantors with strong civic backing using objective data to be very appealing. The award should make the recognized companies very appealing to prospective employees, customers, suppliers, and be looked upon very favorably by city, county and state governments.

Qualifying companies will have sales revenue up to $500 million and currently sell some of their goods or services outside the region, or have plans to do so.

Davey Tree

Crains Brian Tucker has to say in support of EDGE Companies

Flying a little lower on the Kent radar is AWP Incorporated located on Overhold Road.  But don’t let their altitude fool you, with some 500 employees in the US, 425 fleet vehicles on the road and 13 regional offices they proudly call Kent home.  The fact that in less than 6 months they need to double their space in Kent is a real testiment to their market position and belief that Kent is the best place for that growth to continue.

Here’s a summary of what they’re up to in Kent:

On August 1, 2008, AWP President, Bill Fink, announced that his real estate partnership, D F Realty Associates, had purchased the property immediately next door to AWP’s new corporate headquarters in Kent, OH for the purpose of accommodating AWP’s growth and expansion.

“We built a brand new 14,000 square foot building that we moved into in December 2007, and already we are out of room,” Fink said. The newly purchased facility, the former home of Consolidated Mold & Manufacturing, Inc. contains 18,000 square feet of office and warehouse space, and was once owned by Bill Fink’s father.

A total of eight AWP employees will be moving into the newly acquired space on or about October 1, 2008.

Davey Tree + AWP = Proof Positive that Business Growth is Happening in Kent