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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Nick Licata and Jay Westbrook

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from: Nick Licata

One Last Bite

Posted Thursday, June 7, 2001, at 8:02 PM ET

Jay, I'm a late eater, so I'll just sneak in this last bite.

The opportunity to do this running exchange with you has also struck me with the similarities of our tasks. It literally consists of doing a lot of one-on-one politics with constituents, whether it is via e-mail exchanges (which can number over 100 a day) or through community tours or committee meetings. And then still the larger impacts of the national and even global economy affects these personal encounters.

Even though Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle, the loss of about 500 jobs and the greater economic impact actually are as significant as might be expected. Seattle Times columnist Steven Dunphy points out that 80,000 Boeing employees will still be here. However, future expansion of Boeing's manufacturing operations overseas may now be easier to undertake since the company's executives will no longer be subject to local pressure. Chicago, which won the bid for the new Boeing headquarters, may be satisfied to have received that prize and will not have a longtime Boeing employee base to protest any move overseas. Meanwhile, if such a move occurs, Seattle might be relieved if Boeing just keeps their plants open here.

Boeing has the same 3-to-1 ratio of spinoff jobs as Cleveland's steel industry has. I haven't seen comparable figures for Microsoft or any of the dot.com companies like Amazon.com, but I suspect the ratio is much closer to 1-to-1 because traditional manufacturing requires so much more outsourcing of work. In the intellectual, computer-programming-work world there might not be as much outsourcing or it may already be occurring overseas, much like computer-chip-making occurs now. In any case, the dot.com implosion has more than doubled our local office vacancy rate as a number of those companies have either gone out of business or significantly shrunk in size. In response to this trend, the city government has not really played a role--nor, for that matter, has the state.

Although the tax base in Seattle seems to be healthier than Cleveland's (given our higher property values and greater economic growth), it appears to be accompanied by an ever-growing gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in our urban areas. The more revenue we take in, the more we spend on local neighborhood improvements. We have a Neighborhood Matching Grant program that allocates $4.5 million a year to fund capital projects in neighborhoods around the city. Community groups write up proposals and they submit them to our Department of Neighborhoods. The grants are matched on a one-to-one basis with private funds or in-kind community services, which are generously defined. The grants range in size from $10,000 to $200,000. I would say that the majority of the funds have gone to develop new parks and open spaces, although bike lanes, traffic circles, and other traffic oriented developments are also funded.

This program is very popular with both homeowners and renters. However, our parks have seen an increasing number of homeless people living in them, and that has brought about the recognition that more funds need to be allocated to emergency shelter, transitional housing, and long-term housing for the low income. Our yearly survey of downtown still shows about 1,000 people living on the streets or in their cars at night. I cannot help but wonder how the growth of overseas manufacturing by our domestic companies has contributed to this trend.

Jay, it has been a great exchange and one that I hope we can build on. I think that, for better or worse, the future of the United States is being created in the urban metropolises. Now if we can only harness the energy and creativity that occurs within them to shape long-lasting and effective solutions. Here's to the future.

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