By now you should have received your February issue of our taxpayer-paid propaganda sheet known as “The Spokesman.”  The new issue features a cover article titled “Business retention report shows healthy climate of growth” [pdf] which creates the impression – without actually coming out and saying it – that our local economic development is going great guns.  Which is what Mayor Howard “Growth and Development” Frimark wants us to believe.

But most of what is written is pretty much just factually-unsupported feel-good fluff which, when you really think about it – actually sounds pretty un-promising.

Let’s start with the first paragraph, which states that the City “utilized the data-collection instrument to survey 41 businesses.”  Is 41 a statistically significant sampling, or just a semi-meaningless number?  We’d also like to know what’s a “data-collection instrument” – is that a fancy way to say “broom” or “trash bin”?  And when they say that of the 41 businesses surveyed, “28%” were “retail” and “10%” were restaurants, do they really mean that they surveyed 11.48 retail businesses and 4.1 restaurants?  Why not just name the businesses, which would be a whole lot more informative (but which might explain, come to think of it, why they didn’t do it).

The second paragraph tells us that “growth in product and service offerings” indicates a “healthy business climate.”  We don’t know where that theory comes from, but we’ll take their word for it for purposes of this discussion.  The City reports that 32% of the 41 responding companies (13.12 of them?) “introduced new products, services or capabilities in 2007”; and within 18 months another 17% (6.97) “anticipate introducing new products or services.” Adding those up would still mean that less than 50% of those 41 businesses are experiencing, or expect within 18 months, a “healthy business climate” – and that’s assuming that, for example, a restaurant can satisfy the “new product” standard by as little as offering a new flavor of Jello for dessert.  

The third paragraph gives us some factoids about those businesses.  But does it really matter to the health of our business climate whether “43% are family owned” or “8% are not-for-profit”?  Of course not – just some irrelevant information to create the appearance of substance.  If the City wants to give us some meaningful information, why isn’t there any mention of whether (and if so, by how much) the City’s sales tax revenues have increased? 

The final three paragraphs talk about employment and expansion.  We question how “healthy” is a business climate where  “[e]xpansion/ renovation dollar investment is projected to exceed $22 million” yet only creates “20 new jobs”?  Or how the City administration can appear to brag about an anemic 2.11% “net gain” of “83 full time positions” (out of 3,930 full-time employees of the 41 responding businesses) following a virtually non-existent 0.10% growth (4 full time positions) in 2006?

But of course, in the parallel universe that local government inhabits, all of this makes sense so long as you don’t ask any questions, you try hard not to think about what you’re being told, and you just keep on paying your increasingly higher property taxes and fees for stagnant, if not declining, services.