Economic Impact, Street Value and Crowd Counts

Three of the most consistently false statistics that we see in our world are economic impacts, street value of drugs, and crowd counts. It seems that these numbers have reached an escalation lately that rivals the height of the arms race, and statistical overkill may break out to such an extent that intelligent people will be forced to give up on numbers entirely.

Economic impact is probably the most profitable lie in civic life. Have you ever noticed that fantastically large numbers get tossed about when we discuss a convention, arts project, or sports team? Have you ever noticed that the fantastically large numbers are calculated by someone with a motivation to inflate them?

Here's how it works. Let's say I announce a convention to be held here in Kansas City for the Association of Middle-Aged Blogger/Homebrewers. First off, you aggressively round up the number of people coming. If there are 40 of us that can be expected to attend, well, that's approximately 100, and then, you never know, it could be 250, and then don't forget that they will bring spouses, so we have 500, and then don't forget that they are all family people, and the entire family will want to come for this event, so now were up to a couple thousand, easily. Now, let's talk about the money they will spend.

Suddenly, we have 2,000 Middle-Aged Blogger/Homebrewers coming to town, and they're each going to need a hotel room (notice that we've converted each family member into a separate attendee - get with the spirit - nobody checks the math on these things!). Let's just assume that they are all going to pay the highest rates at the most expensive hotels, alright? So we have 2000 rooms at, say, $250/night. The convention only lasts two days, but let's assume they will all spend the week, alright? And don't forget that they need to eat - so let's figure that they will each spend an average of $200/day on food and beverage, alright? (That might seem high, but remember, nobody's checking the math, and we want to come up with a high total.) As you can see, the numbers get awfully high awfully quick - my little example is up to over $6,000,000, and we haven't even talked about souvenir shopping yet.

The same thing happens with estimates of economic impact of sports teams and arts events. You just figure that a high percentage of attendees are coming from out of town (round up!), that they will all stay at expensive hotels (round up!), that they will all eat expensive meals (round up!) and they will all stay a week to attend a ballet performance. Then you can claim that your ballet troupe generates millions of dollars of economic impact, so a little public subsidy makes perfect sense.

Police have a similar incentive to inflate numbers, with a similar lack of oversight, when they report street value of drugs. If you arrest a guy with a little bit of crack or crystal, the press release isn't going to say that the guy was peddling poor quality drugs to poor people. No way - you've gone from thrift store drugs to Tiffany's Drugs. A bag of weed that might go for $50 on the street suddenly becomes the finest pot ever sold, and well-heeled druggies would happily pay $300 for that stuff, so the street value of a pound is astronomical! Over the past several days, the KCPD claims it captured $170,000 in street value in the Northeast sweep, and I'm darned happy they did it, but I'm guessing the total value on the street didn't really approach six figures. Who's going to argue with the police when they claim a big bust?

Finally, crowd counts are the most pointless and amusing lies. Recently, several thousand tea-baggers gathered in DC to ride public transportation and complain about paying for it. Sober, legitimate estimates put the crowd at between 70,000 and 100,000, but one participant tweeted that there were two million people there, and the FOX team sprang into action and reported that estimates were that the crowd was 2,000,000, and that word spread through the right-wing fringe. The sadly inevitable but hilarious result was that their inability to find any serious news agencies reporting 2 million people became evidence in their minds that the media was intentionally not covering their "huge" turnout. If they really had 2,000,000, the news would have covered it, and the organizers would have arranged for aerial photos to prove it.

Whenever you see numbers that seem incredible, take a few moments to examine who is creating those numbers, and what their assumptions were. They probably are incredible - in the sense of lacking credibility.

(For extra credit on this lesson in fake math, please calculate the economic impact of the 70,000 teabaggers in DC, adding in the street value of the drugs they must have taken to make them see 2,000,000 of themselves.)

Good Economic News for Good Beer

According to a press release I received yesterday,

From 2007 to 2008, estimated sales by craft brewers were up 5.8 percent by volume and 10.5 percent in dollars¹. Overall share of the beer category from craft brewers was 4.0 percent of production and 6.3 percent of retail sales. More than 1 million new barrels of beer were sold in 2008, and close to half of those barrels were beer from craft brewers.

"2008 was a historic year for beer with the large brewers consolidating and imports losing share, while the top ten selling beer brands dropped in sales. At the same time, small independent craft brewers continued to gain share and attention," said Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association.

With two exciting new breweries on the horizon for the Kansas City metro (Dead Canary Brewing and Doodle Brewing Company) to add to our thriving local beer scene, we could be part of the economic upswing . . .

PIMBY?

Yael Abouhalkah had a funny observation in his blog post about the proposal to stop siphoning money away from taxpayers to support the Costco TIF Plan.

Jan Marcason, a sharp and well-intentioned City Council member, also questioned what happened last week.

Marcason lives in the Southmoreland neighborhood in the 4th District and supports its housing repair program.

While everyone has heard the term "Not In My Back Yard", this presents an unusual case of "Please In My Back Yard". The elegant Southmoreland neighborhood has enjoyed access to free money, and nobody can really blame them for enjoying the opportunity.

But if you spend a little time driving around the old Northeast, or the East side, it's hard to understand why tax dollars should be funding housing repair in such a posh area. The Southmoreland website is a cheery, welcoming place, offering "Up to $10,000 or more matching grants to fix up your house."

Meanwhile, other neighborhoods can't get their weeds cut or their illegal tire dumps cleared.

Southmoreland is fortunate to be on the PIMBY side of the financial seesaw, while others struggle for basic services. Southmoreland doesn't want to share, and they have a brave and articulate councilmember to stand up and fight for the privileges they have enjoyed for over a decade.

Is it a fair fight?

Beer in the Bottoms? Let's Bulldoze the Power & Light District!

Last night, while researching my next homebrew recipe, I came upon a spot of amazingly cool news. In 2009, Kansas City will have another brewery opening up, this time in the West Bottoms. Dead Canary Brewing is a woman-owned and run new brewery, setting up in the West Bottoms down off 12th Street, among the haunted houses and great old brick buildings.

Folks, this could be amazing.

They are setting up Beer Pong and Dodgeball Leagues. They are creating a taproom. They are committed to brewing practices that are green and sustainable. They got started on this journey by brewing naked.

Most importantly, they are creating "high content, high flavor, knock you on yo ass beers." Beers like Cat House Stout - (Dry hopped mint chocolate imperial stout), Local No. 12 - (lemongrass maple strong ale), Speakeasy IPA - (honeysuckle grapefruit IPA), Bathtub Barleywine - (copiously hopped barleywine), and Chickory Rhubarb Imperial Porter.

This could do more for the West Bottoms than any TIF Project ever brewed up in a closed-door meeting between Kay Barnes and Mephistopheles. Really - the West Bottoms could become the new Crossroads X 20, with lots of inexpensive great old buildings around, acres of parking, and reasonable access to the highways.

But, since Wayne Cauthen and the prior City Council have gambled our city's future on the Power & Light District, which is already turning out to be a bit of a flop, I have a radical idea. Let's bulldoze the Power & Light District, and refuse to give any more of our tax dollars to Cordish and their cronies. (Yes, of course they will sue, but it will take years for them to recover anything, and a sensible jury might just rule in our favor if we can introduce evidence of all their broken promises and their racist dress codes.)

Now that we have freed ourselves of the millions upon millions of obligations to out-of-state developers, we can bring in some topsoil and put in the world's most awesome beer garden in all the paved expanse that currently exists down there. Let's be ambitious - let's create something that will make Munich's Oktoberfest seem like an unpopular fraternity's weekend kegger. (We can even, as a nod to our prior mayor, put in a rain garden, just to show we're not angry anymore.)

Then, we take a few million dollars and give them to our local brewers to create the micro-breweries of their dreams on the periphery of our new beer garden. Relocate Boulevard's and its emblematic smokestack downtown. Get 75th Street Brewery to open up a 12th Street Brewery. In a cross-state gesture of goodwill to make up for our outright theft of the 1985 World Series, offer Schlafly a space.

But don't forget the beginners, either! The Kauffman Foundation wants to support entrepreneurship - let them funnel a few million dollars to help ambitious homebrewers make the leap into micro-brewing. And, because cans are so much more recyclable and cheaper to ship than bottles, let the city open up a municipal cannery, offering access to its canning lines for each of the breweries on a cooperative basis - a green infrastructure project that ought to attract funding from every level of government.

As I think we demonstrated at 75th Street Brewery on Monday night, real beer is a big draw. People will come out for something unusual, and they appreciate a good party. Imagine if Kansas City was the undisputed Home of Great Beer. We would have to hire thugs to control the hoards of convention planners! Vacationers would come in year round, just to try the seasonal brews! Hotels chains would pony up their own money to get access to the crowds of tipsy beer-lovers walking around downtown.

Most importantly, it would be awesome.

My point in this flight of fancy is that for the millions of dollars we have blown on a cookie-cutter assemblage of national chain restaurants, we could have had something unique and truly attractive to Kansas Citians and conventions if only we had focused on local businesses and local flavor. This is the sort of impulse that Mayor Funkhouser has pushed with his New Tools initiative. Economic Development does not have to mean sending massive amounts of money to out-of-state developers for massive projects. Let's hope that the Council gets behind the concept and that we see some real Kansas City economic development.

In the meantime, let's raise a toast to Dead Canary Brewing. They might accomplish with beer what politicians have failed to accomplish with hot air and taxpayer dollars.

Marcason Rumor False - Responsive Public Service Alive and Well

Yesterday morning, I posted two rumors and compared the amount of play that they received, while contrasting their importance. One of the rumors that Jan Marcason was working to ignore the Economic Development Policy of the City Council and seek approval of wasteful, unnecessary tax abatements for a wealthy developer.

The rumor is false. I emailed Councilmember Marcason before posting the item, but not at a reasonable hour for seeking her input (I do my blogging in the early morning). Even though I labeled it clearly as a rumor, and the point of the post was that unimportant personality-based rumors get more attention than substantive, policy-based rumors, I wanted to find the truth, if any, behind it.

Sure enough, as always, Jan Marcason responded promptly (though after I had left for the day), with a direct and complete response. She even included her cell phone number for me if I had any questions.

It turns out that Marcason's involvement sprang from her following up on a report that the developer had not had a complete opportunity to do their presentation. She also mentioned that the EDC is going to put on an "Economic Development 101" program to explain to developers what incentives are available and when they would be appropriate, and she plans to attend so that she can be more informed.

So, while the 39th Street Giveaway may or may not be dead (keep an eye on the other councilmembers), the rumor is false as far as Jan Marcason is concerned.

I do have to point out, though, as an opinionated citizen in the 4th District, I have seen that my two council members, Jan Marcason and Beth Gottstein, are unfailingly responsive and helpful. Even as I was expressing my strong disagreement with them over the Anti-Volunteerism Ordinance, they were consistently patient and forthright. At one point, when the ordinance had been changed outside of the public eye, Marcason even called me at home and offered to send the latest version, long outside of normal office hours, even when she knew I was most definitely not supporting her on that ordinance. Jan doesn't try to smooth over her differences with me when she has them, but she has a remarkable ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

A Difference in Rumors - Jeff Roe and Mark Funkhouser, Jan Marcason and Tax Dollars

Yesterday was a funny day for rumors, and provided a great insight into the skewed priorities of Kansas City's political insiders. On the same day, two vastly different rumors hit my email box - one explosively interesting but nonsubstantive, and one explosively substantive but depressingly uninteresting. The former involved our favorite whipping boys, and the other involved large amounts of Kansas City tax dollars being siphoned away from basic services.

The Kansas City Star reported on the nonsubstantive one, of course. It touched off a minor explosion with a story that claims Mark Funkhouser is negotiating with Jeff Roe to bring him into his office in a paid advisory role. Among local dems, it is impossible to describe the furor without bringing Godwin's law into play. If you want to be a proper member of the chattering class, NOW is the time to engage in FULL FREAK-OUT!!! JEFF ROE REPLACING ED WOLF IN THE MAYOR'S OFFICE!!! Panic!!

I received emails and comments from people in full froth yesterday evening. How would I react to this news? Would I be a hypocrite and embrace Jeff Roe, after expressing my disapproval of his tactics many times? Or would I finally break with Mark Funkhouser and join all my friends in the chattering class, who coincidentally stand to make more money if the development dollars start gushing again?

How exciting! A clear choice!

And that is one of the very few areas I will claim to have far better judgment than the average observer of local politics. I prefer to react to facts rather than half-baked rumors. If I see Jeff Roe hired to take a position in the Mayor's office, I will react to that circumstance. Until then, though, I'm going to see what happens.

Meanwhile, I also heard a rumor that Jan Marcason is working on getting a 39th Street Tax Abatement Plan passed from the floor, even though it doesn't meet any of the requirements of the council-approved economic development policy.

As far as rumors go, that ought to be attracting far more attention than Jeff Roe. That would be a HUGE reversal of the city's steps toward effective financial policies. It involves labeling one of my favorite sections of Kansas City as blighted, and surrendering taxes that ought to be supporting our city budget and Kansas City's crushing financial burdens, all to help big time fat cats lock in a super-generous rate of return while ignoring the East Side.

But guess which rumor shows up on the Prime Buzz? Guess which rumor filled my email box last night?

I hope both rumors are false. If Jan Marcason or any other member of the City Council attempts to shovel expensive tax abatements to an undeserving project in a thriving section of town, tongues ought to be wagging, and reporters ought to be reporting.

I promise right here and now that if Jeff Roe replaces Ed Wolf in the Mayor's office, I will express my opinion of the move in terms that even Tony would think are negative.

Now, will the fans of gossip pledge to join me at a similar level of ferocity if Jan Marcason or any other Council Member really does try to steal tax dollars for the Price Development Group? We can't afford to run the spigot anymore, and that's not a rumor.

(Update: As detailed above, Jan Marcason is NOT seeking to give tax abatements to the 39th Street Project.)

Bombs Away, Bombardier

Bombardier will not be coming to Kansas City. It seems like the City and State did a good job of putting an attractive package together, but didn't make the mistake of giving away the farm.

It's sad not to get the plant, but I'm glad we didn't try to win the deal with outrageous, unsustainable giveaways. Perhaps we're learning . . .

Montreal's built-in advantage with a Canadian company could not be overcome with any semblance of financial discipline on the part of our state and local governments.