More Signs May Not Mean More Visibility

With business signs, more is not necessarily better. Oversized signs and signage "clutter" can have a negative impact on how Main Street and its businesses are perceived.

"It also becomes very expensive and cost-prohibitive for...start-up business to have to pay $10,000 or $15,000 on a sign, just to get minimal recognition on the street," says Scott Day of Urban Development Services in an article in the latest edition of Downtown Promotion Reporter. Other common business signage problems are signs not properly positioned for the public to see them, and store windows that are jam-packed with signage.

"Too many signs say too many things," Day says. "It becomes visual white noise. People don't want to take the time to sort through it all. A lot of main street retail corridors suffer from information overload."

City Finances May Follow the Private Sector

Local government economic struggles mirror those of the nation, according to a quick poll conducted by ICMA (the professional and educational organization for city administrators) in September. Decreasing revenue from property tax, sales tax, and new construction permits, coupled with sluggish sales of new and older homes, and rising fuel transportation costs all have contributed to economic anxiety for local governments.

The 339 city and county managers responding to the ICMA poll indicated that they are taking action to mitigate the effect of these declining revenues by freezing vacant positions (55%), reducing service hours (39%), sharing services with another local government (36%), and eliminating delivery of non-required services (34%). Many cities are exploring new ways--from permitting city employees to use golf carts on city streets to implementing four-day work weeks--to lower costs, as well.

Nearly 70% of local governments have increased or added user fees for services, and close to 40% are rescinding previously approved capital expenditures. Thirty-five percent of local governments have increased the rates of those taxes that have showed a decline in revenue--such as sales, property, and utility taxes. More local governments (59%) have raised property tax to offset revenue decreases elsewhere.

The weak housing market has so severely affected property tax revenues that unlike the 2001 economic downturn, those revenues cannot buffer the effects in declining income and sales tax receipts and will most likely have an impact on city budgets until 2010, the ICMA's experts project.

Thus far, the City of Columbia has not had to explore any of these options, but the continuing economic downturn is likely to hit home here eventually.

Meeting: New Sign Code Hangs in the Balance

Recent discussion in the City Council's Ordinance, Planning & Zoning Committee about grants for façade renovations has centered on the need to build a more consistent look, enhance buildings’ historic character, and still support business traffic on Main Street. The catalyst for this discussion has been the provision within the Main St. Façade Program that grants (up to $3000) can be used for signage--and the fact that the types of signage eligible for awards are not defined.

Tonight, the City Council is considering the following actions:

1. For now, withdraw grant eligibility for signage through the Main St. Façade Program except for where the signage is part of an awning;
2. Develop a new sign graphics ordinance strictly for Main St. with assistance from the Civic Progress Committee and the Heritage & Preservation Commission—in the meantime, strict adherence should be maintained to the existing sign ordinance regarding physical characteristics (e.g., height, width, mounting technique);
3. Where the new ordinance requires different types of signage at an additional cost, make the new expense eligible for grants through the Main St. Façade Program.

How would this work? The City could set aside $3000 from the current grant allocation to fund ten (10) grants of $300 each for signage.

Why City Planners Blog

"Blogs are emerging as important information sources in the contemporary discourse on cities and city planning," observes Michael Dudley, Research Associate and Librarian for the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg in a recent post on Planetizen.

Dudley cites several ways in which blogs can help professional planners develop better processes and products, including:

1. Allowing planners to contribute to community debate in a very timely way;
2. Initiating dialogue--postings are always subject to commentary and refutation;
3. Helping planners to keep track of, understand and--more importantly--mentally integrate perspectives from multiple sources to combine them with their own thoughts and observations.

As a form of communication with colleagues and the public, an attractive environment for citizen engagement, a way to track trends and issues, and as a resource for the planning educator--"the blog can become an important and exciting part of the planner’s professional toolkit."

It is becoming relatively common for cities to use blogs for general communication, venues that Oak Harbor planner Rob Voight describes as "a kind of voice mail on growth hormone." By developing project-specific blogs for the issues related to subdivision regulations (as in his site, http://www.cohsubdivisions.blogspot.com/), Voight has pioneered use of these online tools in ways that are innovative for municipalities.

Voight contends that blogging "is not only a tool but an entirely new platform for community engagement."

City Recognized for Outstanding Accident Prevention

The City of Columbia has received an Illinois Municipal League Risk Management Association (IMLRMA) Loss Prevention Safety Award to recognize an outstanding accident prevention record.

The Loss Prevention Safety Award recognizes exemplary commitment to safety on the part of both employees and management of the City of Columbia. “Our City administrator worked closely with his department heads to foster awareness of potential exposure,” observed Mayor Kevin Hutchinson, “and the results are reflected in this recognition.”

Since 1981, the IMLRMA has catered to the risk management needs of cities and villages across Illinois. The leading provider of comprehensive property/casualty coverage in the state, the IMLRMA currently serves 786 member municipalities.

Americans: Entrepreneurs the Answer to Economic Woes

Americans see entrepreneurship as the answer to the current financial crisis, a new survey from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation finds. Still, a majority hesitates to become entrepreneurs themselves because of worries about the economy.

Conducted last weekend, the phone survey found that more than 70 percent of voters believe the health of the economy depends on the success of entrepreneurs, while 80 percent want to see the government use its resources to actively encourage entrepreneurship. "Americans in big numbers are looking to entrepreneurs to rally the economy," observed Kauffman Foundation President and CEO Carl Schramm after reviewing the survey results.

Although Americans appear to be confident in entrepreneurs' abilities, they are reluctant to start their own companies, with 71 percent of survey respondents saying the economic crisis has made it more difficult to become an entrepreneur. Despite findings that 49 percent of respondents see opportunities for entrepreneurial undertakings in the current economy, only 26 percent would actually consider starting a business in the next five years.

The survey also found that 26 percent believe the impact of the financial crisis will be "very bad" or "devastating" for them, while 34 percent said it will be "pretty bad" for them personally. 64 percent think that Main Street will suffer the most severe consequences from the situation, with only 16 percent saying Wall Street will be hardest hit.

By a two-to-one margin, Americans are looking to business leaders rather than the government to lead the way out of the economic mess. "History has repeatedly demonstrated that new companies and entrepreneurship are the way to bolster a flagging economy," said Schramm. "The American people understand this."

Will the Economic Crisis Limit City Resources?

A front-page article in yesterday's edition of The New York Times reported that many local governments have been effectively shut out of the bond markets for the past two weeks, raising the cost of day-to-day operations, threatening longer-term projects and dampening a major source of jobs and stability.

Analysts said the dysfunction in the municipal bond markets "appeared to signal the end of an era of relatively cheap money for governments and, probably, the start of an era of tough choices for communities." When the market starts moving again, they observed, it will look a lot like the municipal bond market of 10 years ago, before the arrival of financial wizardry in the form of structured-finance products, which lowered borrowing costs but added big new risks. Instead, governments will probably be issuing bonds with fixed, higher rates of interest.

Meantime, cities will be doing lots of belt-tightening--forcing them to lower the level of service they provide, cut payrolls, or raise taxes and fees.