The Jack Ford Urban Affairs Center

Ronald Randall and Robert G. Martin

April 9, 1999

Introduction:

Arguments about the wisdom of granting tax abatements of firms often get lost in the fear of city officials that if abatements are not offered, firms will select other venues where they are offered. In the effort to respond to demands for abatements, local economic development officials, city councils, county commissioners, and others rarely question, or are in a position to question, the promised gains from the proposed abatements. Rarely are checks made to determine if the promised jobs materialized. Moreover, if new jobs do materialize, few city officials would be in a position to determine if they are a result of the abatement or the results of other factors, like a robust economy.

This study takes a step toward examining the usefulness of tax abatements as an economic-development tool in one community by comparing the job performance of firms receiving abatements with a matched set of firms that did not. The city of Toledo, Ohio has a list of all of the manufacturing firms that have received tax abatements by year, since 1985. The actual changes in the number of jobs comes from the ES-202, from the Ohio Bureau of Employment Security. This data set provides employment levels by quarter for manufacturing firms in the area since 1989 to 1996. Therefore, employment levels for each of the firms receiving an abatement can be traced over this time period. A set of control firms, matching those with abatements by size and Standard Industrial Code (SIC) has been drawn from the ES-202 data set.

Toledo is an industrial city historically linked to the auto industry in neighboring Detroit. But it is more than a blue-collar, industrial town. Until the 1980s, when it was hard-hit by recession and the merger mania that was typified by the leveraged buyouts of the decade, Toledo was home to six Fortune 500 firms, and there were two Fortune 500 firms nearby-a large number for a city of about three hundred and fifty thousand at the time. The rough economic times subsequently led to a number of economic development initiatives in Toledo, including significant use of tax abatements.

Conclusion:

Comparing the performance in job creation by firms receiving tax abatements with the change in jobs of a set of control firms seems like a straightforward approach to assessing the value of tax abatements. Unfortunately, data problems abound, and, many are extremely difficult to solve. Firms often fail to report information to the city that is required by the abatement ordinance. In some cases, firms also fail to report, as required by law, to state under the ES-202 system. nformation reported to the city does not always square with the information reported to the state. Some businesses are extremely difficult to track over time because of name changes, mergers, buyouts, going out of business, etc. A firm may use one name when reporting to the city and another when reporting to the state.

Developing matches for each of the abated firms proved difficult. The set of matches for a particular abated firm frequently contained firms that subsequently received abatements. In some cases, their employment zeroed out over time; if a name change or being bought out by another firm could not be verified, the firm was treated as if it went out of business. But it is possible that some of these firms are still around in another form; hence the job-creation of the control firms is understated. Contrariwise, a significant number of the firms receiving abatements are dropped from the analysis which means that the job-creation performance of the abated firms is overstated.

There are additional factors which would be interesting to explore. It takes a certain knowledge and aggressiveness on the part of those in firms to seek out, make applications, and receive an abatement. Are firms that seek abatements more aggressive in expanding than firms that do not see abatements? That it, is seeking and obtaining an abatement more a measures of the aggressiveness or competitiveness of those in a firm than of a cause of the enhanced job creation?

The variability in job-creation performance of both the abated firms and the controls demonstrates the difficulty of picking winners and losers.

Whatever the methodological biases of the approach, the job-creation performance of the abated firms was, overall, greater than that of the control firms. However, when the analysis is extended to the finances, the costs of Toledo Citizens in property taxes abated are far greater than the advantages from the enhanced payroll taxes to the city from the additional jobs.

The Impact of Using Market-Value to Replacement-Cost Ratios on Housing Insurance in Toledo Neighborhoods

Robert G. Martin and Ronald Randall

February 12, 1999

Introduction:

This report examines the use of guidelines based on a market-value to replacement-cost ratio as criteria to qualify for purchasing replacement-cost housing insurance in White and African American neighborhoods in the city of Toledo. The research question addressed in whether adhering to such guidelines has a disparate impact on, or systematically disadvantages, homeowners in African-American (AA) neighborhoods compared to white (WH) neighborhoods in the city of Toledo?

Conclusion:

The disparity between the number of houses meeting a qualifying ratio, (market-value to replacement-cost), in the AA and the WH census block groups is so great that the subtle nuances of selecting construction class and refining the input factors to get a more measured replacement-cost, simply disappear. The differences are far too great to be explained by sampling methodology, or by determining replacement-cost, or by the method of analyzing the data.

The analysis of data generated in this scientifically selected sample shows that homeowners in AA neighborhoods are far less likely to qualify at all levels of market-value to replacement-cost than homeowners in WH neighborhoods.

Regression Analysis of Spatial Data

James P. LeSage

February 10, 1998

Abstract:

Practitioners of regional science are often engaged in statistical analysis of regional data samples collected with reference to points in space.

Examples are: cross-sectional observations on county-level income, employment or payroll, cross-sectional observations from a group of neighboring states in a region and firm-level employment payroll, where we have knowledge of the firm address or an approximate location based on postal code.

Ignoring the spatial configuration of sample observations in regression analysis has been found to produce residuals that vary systematically over space, a phenomena known as spatial autocorrelation. This paper illustrates how to incorporate spatial information in regression relationships that exhibit spatial autocorrelation. It is argued that a simple contiguity matrix provides a unified approach that works with cross-sectional continuous linear relationships, as well as binary and censored dependent variable problems and autoregressive time-series relationships.

Arrowhead Park: An Update

James P. LeSage

April 1998

Abstract:

This report contains an update on the historical impact of the Arrowhead Park, Maumee development on City of Toledo payroll tax revenue.

A previous UAC study based on date through 1993 found that 73 of the 252 office suites in Arrowhead were occupied by firms from Toledo. It was estimated that this relocation of firms from Toledo to Arrowhead resulted in 6300 Toledo jobs lost and 134 million dollars in payroll, costing Toledo between $1.8 and $2.6 million in lost payroll tax revenue annually. In that study, projections indicated that continuation of present trends would lead to 94 firms, 8980 jobs, and 3.37 million dollars in payroll tax revenue lost by the year 1997.

This report provides an update to see if these trends have continued as projected.

The report also contains information on firm movements to and from Arrowhead Park during the recent years, an assessment of the survival rates of businesses in Arrowhead from Toledo and other locations, and movement of firms in these categories.

The Titanic, Pizza Delivery, Community Development and the Internet

Randy Stoecker

February 28, 1998

Introduction:

What you ask, do the Titanic, pizza delivery, community development and the Internet have to do with each other? Good question. I have tried for weeks now to decide what I may have to offer here--as someone from far away with no more expertise on the Internet than the best people already in this room.

What I can offer, I hope, is a perspective-one borne of some experience and, I would like to think, much thought.

It is the perspective of a sociologist who has worked for over a decade with communities trying to physically and culturally rebuild themselves. And, most recently, it is the perspective of a sociologist trying to use the Internet in rebuilding those communities and building new communities.

While I believe deeply in the importance of understanding the world through operating in it, I also believe deeply in the importance of reflection and criticism--which is one of the things that marks me as a sociologist.

That gets me in trouble sometimes.

One of my community activist friends describes "an academic" as someone who "likes to come kicking and screaming through an open door." That description fits no academic better than the sociologist.

Well, I am honored to have been invited to address this group which, I believe, is doing some of the most important work of its kind in the world.

The perspective I offer should, at times, sound familiar to everyone in this room. For its pieces are drawn from what each of you are doing.

What I hope to do is bring together each of your pieces into a package that also contains its own critique of what we are all doing.

So let's begin.

Conclusion:

Please don't misunderstand. I am convinced the Internet is the most important thing to happen since...well maybe the most important thing to happen ever.

My point is not to have us focus away from the Internet, it is to focus on it in the context of bigger goals--building and rebuilding real communities in real places with real people leading the way.

The Titanic lives in infamy not because it hit an iceberg, and not because so many people died. The Titanic lives in infamy because it was a promise unfulfilled. Technology built on a foundation of top-down control, destabilizing inequality, and the competition between men rather than the occupation between people can never fulfill its promise. Technology owned by the few, defined by the few, and controlled by the few, can never benefit the many.

With the Internet, not even the sky is the limit, but for it to even be able to reach our neighbor next door we must struggle with the fundamental issues of just and democracy, both inside and outside of the Internet.

Thank you.

Attaching Racial Information to Large Urban Data Sets for Analysis of Political Participation

Robert G. Martin, Ronald Randall, and James A. Woods

April 22, 1998

Introduction:

The Lucas County Court of Common Pleas asked for help to examine the racial representativeness of its source list for juries--the list of registered voters. The problem is that race is not recorded when citizens register to vote and therefore they had no direct way to evaluate representativeness. The Court came to us with an intriguing question: How can the racial representativeness of the list of registered voters be ascertained when there is no racial information in that data set?

The Court also wanted to know if shifting the source list to the list of licensed drivers in the county would improve racial representativeness. That list also lacked racial information.

This paper will deal with the methodology employed to complete this study, the results of the study, and with the results of a check we did on a data set of university students that contained self reported racial information.

The data for this study come from four sources: (1) the list of registered voters as of October 30, 1996, obtained from the Lucas County Data Processing Center; (2) the list of licensed drivers, obtained from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles; (3) the list of students enrolled at The University of Toledo, Fall, 1997 and, (4) the 1990census data, from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Conclusion:

The list of registered voters is the traditional source of jurors.

With the methodology that we developed for this study, we found a statistically significant underepresentation of black voting-age residents in all stages of the jury selection process.

However, we found that the list of registered drivers is less representative of blacks than the list of registered voters. Therefore, shifting from the list of registered voters to the list of licensed drivers in Lucas County for jury selection would increase the black underepresentation in juries.

The comparison of derived and reported race for the university students suggests that our methodology gives less than totally accurate results.

We speculate that the accuracy is inverse relationship to the age of the census data and is a function of student misreporting and affirmative action recruiting by the university.

Economic and Employment Analysis of Toledo MSA

Community Assessment Subcommittee

July 1998

Introduction:

Virtually no local research, of a comprehensive nature, has been done on the patterns of employment among local low-wage earners or welfare recipients.

This means that detailed information related to performance, tenure, work patterns, etc. of local low-wage earners/welfare recipients is not readily available. However, findings from national studies and those done in other local areas present a pattern of results, which are, for the most part, consistent with what we know about Toledo. (Based on committee members' intuitive and experiential understanding of our local labor market conditions and the results of local studies of employer needs and issues related to the local workforce.)

Local studies of the concerns and needs of business relatives to workforce issues have recently been conducted by the Regional Growth Partnership (Regional Growth Partnership Workforce Readiness Leadership Interview Report. November 11, 1997), The Corporation for Effective Government (A Citizen Research Project for the Toledo Area Private Industry Council: Analysis of Current and Future Labor Market Needs. April 1998) and the Urban Affairs Center (Industrial Retention and Expansion Survey: of Firms Located in Toledo's Industrial Core. October 15, 1997). The results of these studies consistently identify a lack of basic skills (reading, writing, interpersonal communication skills, basic math, etc.) in Toledo's entry level workforce.

The patterns and themes that emerge from the studies conducted nationally and in other localities are compatible with what has been done in Toledo and are not at all surprising. They show that welfare recipients have lower educational attainment, less work experience, fewer "hard" skills (reading skills, math skills, specific vocational skills), and fewer "intangible skills" (getting to work consistently and on time, getting along with co-workers, supervisors and customers) (Bartik, Short-Term Employment Persistence for Welfare Recipients: The "Effects" of Wages, Industry, Occupation, and Firm Size, 1997).

These studies also show that low basic skills and low educational attainment severely affect the ability of welfare recipients to gain access to all but the lowest wage jobs.

Conclusion:

If, as a community, we are to successfully move Lucas County's welfare population into jobs that will enable them to be self sufficient, we must recognize the complexity of the task we are undertaking. Nearly every action of every policymaker will have an impact on our success. The information gathering undertaken by the Community Assessment Committee has convinced us that our success will depend upon not only on the results of our immediate efforts, but additionally on our ability to communicate the need for comprehensive thinking, and planning, and action across-the-board. Some of the obvious conclusions we have drawn include:

• As we all know, the availability of transportation, health care, day-care are all important.

• Certainly, decisions in the area of education and workforce training are important.

• It may be advisable to place a heavy emphasis job readiness skills that emphasis the "intangible" skills as well as basic and vocational skills.

• It may also be advisable to place a heavy emphasis on the three-to-six month period following placement for support services to augment retention.

• In looking at the maps we can see how poverty is concentrated. Some interesting distributional patterns for specific industries and types of jobs are also evident. The patterns appear to affect the accessibility of welfare recipients to certain types of jobs.

• We also need to remember that economic development activities that are designed to lead to job creation must be well thought out--in the context of what our community desperately needs. Those decisions need to take into account, not just the needs of the employers, but the needs of the unemployed workforce that will be seeking those jobs--and hopefully supporting their families with the adequate wages provided by those jobs. We also need to think about the types of industries we should be trying to attract and support. We should to pay attention to the working conditions and wages of those industries. The availability of career paths and ongoing training opportunities are also important considerations, as are the decisions about where to physically locate facilities so that the people who need jobs have access to them.

• The Bartik study, along with the other more general research suggests that targeting jobs, targeting job characteristics, and targeting training for welfare recipients may be advisable--this may be undertaken in collaboration with employers and economic development agents/agencies that are attempting to attract and grow jobs locally.

NEIGHBORHOOD COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Urban Affairs Center

December 16, 1998

Introduction:

Our strong local economy has resulted in a situation where commercial developers and retailers are in aggressive pursuit of some of Toledo's markets and customers. In the past, when our local economy was not as strong, the situation was somewhat reversed. We were experiencing substantial disinvestment and were ourselves, in aggressive pursuit of developers. That sense of desperation may have led us to believe that we had to "take what we could get"-that if we implemented or enforced any local development standards, design criteria, or even expressed our opinions, the developers would go elsewhere.

Residents, elected officials and city administrators are increasingly called upon to make decisions regarding issues and opportunities related to the now rapid-paced commercial development activities. Unfortunately, market driven commercial development activities aren't necessarily meeting the full range of consumer or retail needs of our neighborhoods.

In addition, commercial developers are not necessarily locating or investing in established commercial districts-many of which are experiencing decline and disinvestment.

We find ourselves at an important juncture in Toledo. We are faced with increasing commercial development activity in some areas, decline in others, and we are in the process of developing a vision and plan for Toledo's future and that will define how best to manage these conditions. The issued and concerns facing City Council, the City Administration, and neighborhood residents with regard to commercial development should be addressed in the 2020 planning process and the 2020 plan itself should contain some strategies for the city to pursue in this area. It is important, however, to have some sense of the possibilities and options facing us. It would be helpful to know what has worked in other cities and to have some sense of the possibilities and options facing us. It would be helpful to know what has worked in other cities and to have some sense of the resources that are available and the resources we will need to identify in order to pursue a successful, focused commercial revitalization strategy.

Before looking at what is happening in other areas, it is important to understand the conditions under which we are operating here in Toledo. We have compiled a list of what we understand to be the opportunities and strengths as well as the threats and constraints we have to work with in Toledo.

Local Opportunities and Strengths

1. City of Toledo's 20/20 planning process
2. CDC development capacity
3. Existing local and national financing programs
4. Historical character of many of Toledo's neighborhood business districts
5. Healthy local economy and local marketplace
6. Local interest
7. Developer interest
8. Lessons from the Home Depot experience

Threats and Constraints

1. Tradition of no planning or development standards
2. No inventory of commercial districts and buildings
3. A very limited understanding of the full range of possibilities and options that are available
4. Lack of funding and program resources
5. Changing market (including geographic changes)
6. Lack of a clear understanding of our local market conditions
7. Decline and disinvestment in many commercial districts
8. Limited local pride or appreciation for what is here
9. Under funded and under supported planning department which precludes the possibility of strong neighborhoods
10. Site of national chain (drug & auto parts) wars
11. Lack of political will to implement existing standards

It is our suggestion that we take advantage of the opportunities and strengths of our community to put together a proactive and dynamic strategy to address the threats and constraints that we are facing. Our report focuses on the first four constraints on the list.

Northwest Ohio Managing Change Directory: Information & Organizations Promoting Coordinated Urban & Rural Land Use Patterns

Urban Affairs Center

December 16, 1998

Preface:

Over the last few years, many citizens and organizations have been asking questions about land use changes in Northwest Ohio. A number of organizations have sponsored educational events on the subject, and local, state, and national-level elected officials have expressed interest.

Regional land use patterns affect the quality of life in our cities, villages, townships, and rural areas. They affect energy consumption and the impact of human activities on the environment. They affect the resources available to and needed by schools. They affect taxes and the balance of local government revenues and expenditures, and they affect the ability of the private sector to respond quickly to new opportunities.

The purpose of this directory is to provide the best current information available on trends, policies, activities, and issues related to land use in the region. We have invited organizations that are interested and involved in land use issues to contribute brief descriptions of their purpose and their interests so that the people and communities of the region can become more familiar with their work. Because this is intended to be an ongoing project, we welcome your input regarding additions and other improvements to make this resource more useful to you.

The land use issue in Ohio has emerged with the discussion focused primarily on farmland preservation. Consequently, much of the content in this directory addresses that aspect. It is our hope that as the discussion broadens we will be able to provide more information and resources on the interaction between rural and urban policies.

The Center for Governmental Research and Public Service at Bowling Green State University and the Urban Affairs Center of The University of Toledo are pleased to cooperate in providing this directory to the citizens and communities of the region.

Availability of Replacement-Cost Policies: An analysis of Nationwide's 70-percent rule in African-American and white neighborhoods in Toledo.

Samual Attoh, Robert G. Martin, and Ronald Randall

September 8, 1997

Background:

This report provides results from our study on the availability of replacement-cost policies in Toledo. In our first report, "Insurance Redlining: Evidence of Disparate Impact" (Revised, August 10, 1995), we responded to the following issues:

Minimum Insurance amounts: We concluded that Nationwide's policy of not providing insurance coverage for homes valued at less than $45,000 has a substantial disparate impact on homeowners in Toledo African-American neighborhoods compared to white (WH) areas.

Availability of "Guaranteed" Replacement Cost Coverage: We reported that Nationwide's policy of not making its guaranteed replacement cost coverage availability on dwellings over 30 years old has a disparate impact on African-American neighborhoods.

Availability of "Golden Blanket" Policies: When we assessed the impact of Nationwide's Golden Blanket policy, which is reserved for homes valued at more than $90,000 and homes less than 30 years old, our analysis reveled that the combined effects of this policy also results in a disparate impact on homeowners in African-American neighborhoods.

A fourth major issue, availability of replacement-cost policies, is the subject of this report. We have been advised that Nationwide has adopted an underwriting standard that permits the sale of its replacement-cost policy only if the fair market value of the dwelling is a certain percentage-70percent-of its replacement cost (the 70-percent rule).

The research question: Does this 70-percent rule have a disparate impact on homeowners in African-American (AA) neighborhoods compared to white (WH) neighborhoods?

In our original proposal to you, we noted that we lacked the Nationwide formula for determining replacement cost, so we did not know all the factors in it.

Consequently, we were unable to research this question for the initial study.

Subsequently, you have obtained the Boeckh Residential Building Valuation software, which Nationwide underwriters use to determine replacement cost.

The availability of the Boeckh material, including their software, puts us in a position to perform the analysis necessary to answer the research question.

Conclusion:

The analysis of data we have gathered to date shows such different results for the AA and WH neighborhoods that we are very confident that the analysis of the entire, scientifically selected sample, will confirm a significant disparate impact between AA and WH neighborhoods. Homeowners in AA neighborhoods are far less likely to qualify under the 70- percent rule for Nationwide's replacement-cost coverage than homeowners in WH neighborhoods.

Building an Information Superhighway of One's Own: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Randy Stocker and Angela Stuber

April 1997

Abstract:

This paper chronicles the creation of the Urban University and Neighborhood Network (UUNN), and on of its offshoots, the Coalition to Access Technology and Networking in Toledo (CATNeT). The UUNN--a network of researchers from the public universities in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown--formed two years ago to link themselves with neighborhood-based organizing and development groups (NBOs) in their cities. This network of NBOs and university researchers then researched NBO computer and Internet access in each city. At a statewide planning meeting of NBOs and university researchers, we began outlining an action plan. Projects began in some cities to build local community networks, provide computer and Internet training, and help NBOs and other excluded groups find and afford computer and Internet access. Funding shortages and participant turnover, however, led to disunity and internal conflict.

CATNeT is a Toledo-based offshoot of the UUNN which includes a broad cross-section of Toledo residents in creating a community network and access to computers and the Internet.

The emphasis of CATNeT is to involve and serve people normally excluded from power and participation:

public housing residents, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and children living in poverty.

In contrast to the UUNN, increasing diversity in CATNeT was not as disruptive. In evaluating our experiences with the UUNN and CATNeT, we use a model that integrates the collaborative research, popular education, and community-based planning literatures, concluding that the project is strongest when it is directed and controlled at the grassroots.

We also look at some of the issues and difficulties involved in implementing and maintaining such a grassroots model across seven cities compared to just one city.

Limited Access: The Information Superhighway and Ohio's Neighborhood-Based Organizations

Randy Stoecker and Angela Stuber

1997

Abstract:

Of 189 Ohio urban neighborhood-based organizations (NBOs) responding to a survey, three have full access to the Internet. At the same time, they have many information needs that can be met best through the Internet. The small size and small budgets of many NBOs (only about half of Ohio's NBOs have budgets greater then $100,000) make it difficult for them to acquire adequate computer technology, learn how to use it for Internet access, and make the most of that access. Additionally, most NBOs-even those working and middle class neighborhoods-need training and technical assistance especially for advanced applications such as telecommunications and Geographic Information Systems software. Internet access needs to be more uniformly available and affordable to NBOs. Finally, we need to continually think of the Internet as a resource, not a substitute, for local communities.

Growth, Movement, and Decline of Central-City and Suburban Manufacturing Firms

Ronald Randall and Robert Martin

April 16, 1997

Introduction:

Central cities have been simultaneously hit by deindustrialization and an accelerating suburbanization in recent years. Deindustialization describes a process of manufacturing job loss that has had a devastating impact in areas of this country traditionally reliant upon manufacturing for a highly paid employment base.

Suburbanization involves a flow of affluent citizens, jobs and capital that leaves less well educated workers, and most especially black workers in older industrial cities like Toledo Ohio as particularly vulnerable to unemployment.

A Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank study shows that the ten largest Great Lakes cities from Buffalo to Minneapolis (and including Columbus and Indianapolis, but not Toledo) lost 27.4 percent of their manufacturing employment between 1969 and 1989. Because of Great Lakes states' manufacturing "location quotient" (the states' percentage of employment in manufacturing divided by the national percentage of employment manufacturing) remained approximately the same over this 20 year period, the authors of the study assert that "relative to the rest of the nation, virtually all of the shrinkage in manufacturing's share of jobs in these [10 Great Lakes] cities was offset by increases in factory jobs in smaller municipalities or rural areas of the Midwest." The authors cannot ascertain, with their data, the extent to which specific jobs are moving from the large city to more rural area, but they do suggest a one-way flow when they assert "a general transfer of factory jobs from urban to rural locations" and explain this transfer of jobs with reasons why manufactures will "locate outside large-city boundaries, including the recent decline in transportation and communications costs, shrinking plant sizes, greater awareness of the costs of environmental contamination, and union avoidance"

In his new book, William Julius Wilson paints a depressing picture about expanding urban ghettos, which are marked by poverty and unprecedented joblessness.

"In the nation's one hundred largest central cities, nearly one in seven census tracts is at least 40 percent poor." This is a doubling of such census tracts between 1970 and 1990. The levels of joblessness have become truly astounding. According to Wilson,

In the ghetto census tracts of the nation's one hundred largest central cities, there were only 65.5 percent employed persons for every 100 adults who did not hold a job in a typical week in 1990. In contrast, the nonpoverty areas contained 182.3 employed persons for every hundred of those not working.

Focusing on Chicago, Wilson argues that the joblessness is primarily a function of the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the city.

This has led to a "growing mismatch between the suburban location of employment and minorities' residence in the inner city.

Wilson's focus is on the joblessness and its social and personal consequences.

For support of the "spatial mismatch hypothesis," he relies on the work of others who tend to assert a one-dimensional flow of jobs out of the city. Hence, we lack documentation of the absence of manufacturing jobs in proximity to those in the ghetto tracks suffering the joblessness.

The spatial mismatch hypothesis suggests the vulnerability of poorly educated inner-city residents to joblessness. In a careful and detailed analysis of census data, Kasarda (1990) demonstrates a devastating loss of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs in major cities of the Northeast and upper Midwest during the 1970s and 80s.

Simultaneously, he demonstrates a smaller increase in information-processing jobs, which are spatially but not functionally accessible to less well educated urban residents.

In this context, the structural mismatch between city jobs and black labor becomes quite explainable:

"As blue-collar and other less knowledge-intensive jobs dispersed to the suburbs, working-class whites were able to relocate much more easily than blacks.

Based on interviews with personnel and other officers in Los Angeles and Detroit firms, Tilly goes further. He argues that "race as well as space, come into play."

From this interview, it is clear that many manufacturers did select suburban locations for cheap land, but "insurance companies and some manufacturers have identified a target workforce that is non-inner city and primarily white (or in at least one case, Latino).

Some such employers have left the central city to locate closer to the target workforce.

In their analysis of how downtown Cleveland depends upon the suburbs to fill its professional, high-skill, high-wage, white-collar jobs, Bingham and Kalich note the support their data offer for the spatial mismatch hypothesis:

City of Cleveland residents are educationally ill prepared for the jobs the downtown has to offer. The preponderance of jobs employing lower educated workers are in the suburbs, although in metropolitan Cleveland's case, there does not appear to be shortage of lower educated suburbanites to fill them.

Moreover, assert Bingham and Kalich, the manufacturing industries that could provide jobs to lower educated Clevelanders "are either retrenching or moving their production facilities to rural areas or offshore" and "there is no evidence that Cleveland will have any luck targeting manufacturing industries."

A major problem with many analyses of jobs is their static quality.

Census and major economic data series provide snapshots. The dynamics underlying the change from one snapshot to another is often difficult to discern. Indeed, the impression left by the analyses of Los Angeles and Detroit by Tilly and Chicago by Wilson is a virtual one-way movement by firms in search of cheap land, a more desirable work force, etc. From the standpoint of the city, it would appear that there are no positive trends in place.

Conclusion:

Toledo displays the same overall trends that are found in most, older, inelastic cities--a flow of jobs, capital and population that leaves the central city poorer and the suburbs much better off. Unless the City of Toledo and other jurisdictions in Northwest Ohio come to grips with the rapid rate of suburbanization, the future of the City of Toledo becomes increasingly bleak--the home of fewer and poorer residents with fewer decent jobs.

But we see something in our analysis of the ES-202 data that other analysts missed as they developed their evidence for a spatial mismatch thesis.

The change in manufacturing jobs is not the result of a unidimensional flow from central city to suburbs, at least not in Toledo. We discovered a surprisingly high rate of appearances of manufacturing jobs in the inner ring of the city of Toledo and some flow of jobs--albeit lower-wage ones--from the suburbs to the inner ring. Nevertheless, the aggregate flow was outward, as in the cities examined by Kasarda, Wilson and others

The resulting spatial mismatch from the aggregate flow in Toledo has the same racial component as other major industrial cities of the Northeast and upper Midwest. "What is missing from current debate over urban policy," as David Rusk reminds us, "is any willingness to attack the urban problem as a matter of racial and economic segregation." He accuses both liberals, with their efforts to pour money into the ghettos "(Big Buck Strategy)" and conservatives with their enterprise zones "(Big Bootstrap Strategy)" of "selling the same idea: quarantine "them" in inner city ghettos and barrios away from "us" and help "them" build from within.

Rusk insists that "Separate but equal' cannot work."

Rusk's recommendations center around increasing the elasticity of cities so that they can, in one way or another, benefit from the suburban growth, and reducing the concentration of the poor, especially poor blacks in the inner city through such techniques as affordable housing requirements and housing assistance programs metrowide.

Based on the dynamics of the manufacturing sector in Lucas County, with some movement into the city and the record of new appearances in the inner ring, an effective strategy would focus on retarding the movement of firms out to the suburbs. This could be done by eliminating state and local economic-development assistance that encourages firms to make such moves and grater planning controls to protect green fields from development.

We should reject the view that growth anywhere in the region is necessarily good for the region. When economic development becomes little more than the rearrangement of economic activity in a region, then both the central city and the suburban areas suffer--the former for the loss of jobs, income, tax base and an unraveling of its social and cultural fabric and the latter for the cost of duplicating expensive infrastructure, usurping highly-productive farmland and the difficulty of creating a sense of community with urban amenities.

Race, Income, and Test Scores: A Structural Model of the Determinants of Test Scores in Toledo Elementary Schools

Carter Wilson and Robert Martin

April 1997

Abstract:

In this study, we build a structural model for explaining variations in test scores among elementary schools in Toledo, Ohio.

In the process of constructing this model we examine the assumptions underlying theories of the determinants of test scores, notably the family background, inequality, concentrated poverty, subculture, and racial theses. Using Census Tract and public school data for the city of Toledo, we test these assumptions and reach a number of conclusions. First, percapita income is the strongest variable associated with test scores.

Second, although concentrated poverty negatively correlates with test scores, income is a stronger explanatory variable. Third, schools located in low income neighborhoods are more likely to have teachers with less experience and less than a master's degree. Fourth these teacher characteristics make a small difference in test scores.

Finally, race is not a factor in test scores when we control for poverty. The broader implication is that low income is the most serious problem with low test scores.

Reinvesting in Our Urban Areas Will Preserve Our Agricultural Economy

Diane Myers-Krug

July 8, 1997

Introduction:

The Ohio Farmland Preservation Task Force issued its report to Governor Voinovich at the end of June. Typical of Ohio politics, the Governor's charge to the Task Force was to identify only voluntary programs for farmland preservation. That is, the Task Force could not consider anything that would legally prevent development interests form proceeding unrestrained as usual.

The Governor's narrow charge limited the Task Force's ability to make a significant impact and is reflected in the nature of their final report-a clear, concise and thorough definition and examination of the problem followed by weak recommendations.

Conclusion:

The Task Force should be commended for its diligent and thorough work.

In spite of the Governor's constrained charge, they have presented a clear and concise understanding of a complex problem in relatively short time. But we should not be content to think that voluntary incentives will put the problem of farmland loss and sprawl behind us. The Task Force has provided an opportunity to begin a comprehensive approach to resolve the problems associated with sprawl.

The Governor and General Assembly need to continue the discussion and come to workable solutions for the future of our cities and our agricultural economy. State government has the power and the responsibility to meet this challenge. The quality of Ohio's land, air and water, and of the lives of its citizens, depends on it.

Racial and Ethnic Representativeness of The Lucas County Jury System

Robert Martin, Ronald Randall, James A. Woods

August 21, 1997

Executive Summary:

The Lucas County Court of Common Pleas contracted with the University of Toledo's Urban Affairs Center to develop a methodology for evaluating the racial and ethnic representativeness for the annual jury list drawn from the list of registered voters; to evaluate the representativeness of a list drawn from the licensed drivers; and to evaluate a list drawn from a combined list of registered voters and licensed drivers. We evaluated the list of registered voter, the list of potential jurors, the citizens summoned for jury duty, the citizens reporting for jury duty, and the list of licensed drivers.

The racial and ethnic composition of each group in the various lists was different (to a statistically significant degree) from the racial and ethnic composition of Lucas County. However, the list of licensed drivers was less representative of the county voting-age residents than the list of registered voters. We therefore recommend against shifting to the list of licensed drivers for the jury list. We also examined the possibility of a combined list of registered voters and licensed drivers, but found this to be administratively unfeasible. The two lists would have to be merged, using social security numbers to eliminate the duplicates (those persons both registered to vote and licensed to drive).

However, a large number of social-security numbers either are recorded inaccurately or are missing, thus making a useful merge nearly impossible. Developing the list of potential jurors from a stratified sample starting with census block groups warrants further examination.

Community-Based Restructuring?: Institution Building in the Industrial Midwest

Michael, Indergaard

May 1997

Abstract:

The author examines change agents, agendas, and processes involved in community-based efforts to promote collaborative manufacturing in Cleveland, Athens, and Toledo, Ohio. The goals are to redefine relationships of firms with competitors, customers, and community entities and to remake institutions so as to support small firms.

Contributing factors include the threat that communities will be relegated to the periphery, new pressures on small firms to design products for diverse customers, the importation of network models by state governments, and the ability of community-based organizations to translate these models to resonate with local constituencies.

The Development of CATNeT-The Coalition to Access Technology and Networking in Toledo

Angela C.S. Stuber

June 1, 1997

Introduction:

CATNeT in the Coalition to Access Technology and Networking in Toledo.

CATNeT is a recently formed coalition of over 30 community-based organizations, housing complexes, institutions, and businesses whose purpose is to empower low income citizens and community-based organizations through providing or facilitating access to computers and computer training.

The idea behind CATNeT began in multiple places at multiple times but the organization of the coalition began with John Kiely of Vistula Management.

John was instrumental in directing the multitude of ideas into an active coalition. In 1996 Vistula Management successfully applied for $200,000 of HUD (Housing and Urban Development) funding from the Neighborhood Networks program in order to establish computer labs in six Vistula low-income housing sites. As John Keily from Vistula Management was telling others about Vistula's computer project, he found a multitude of organizations and institutions interested in the same issue, that is, equal access to technology. In the fall of 1996, he invited these people to a meeting to discuss our common interests. Over 30 community-based organizations, institutions, and residents of Vistula's low-income housing sites offered a description of their program or their perception of the equal access issue. The result was a decision to meet again to discuss how to collaborate and tackle the issue.

Randy Stoecker and I were invited to the meeting based on our involvement with the Toledo portion of the UUNN-Urban University and Neighborhood Network. The UUNN was a coalition of university and neighborhood representatives in the seven states of Ohio with urban universities.

The UUNN's first research project had focused on the computer and technical access that community groups do not have.

Conclusion:

CATNeT is a project I am very fortunate to be a part of.

CATNeT has drawn lot of people I might otherwise have never met, nor have the opportunity to work with. As the coordinator of CATNeT I learned a great deal about planning meetings, networking, computer and Internet training, grant writing, and working toward a goal I strongly believe in.

Not only is CATNeT's mission impressive, so also are its methods of participation. Both John Keily and Randy Stoecker encourage all of the members to participate fully in the meetings and the planning of the meetings. We have made an effort (that has partially succeeded) to involve our potential end users; that is low-income individuals.

Some Vistula residents have been very active in CATNeT, attending meetings and computer training sessions. I am proud of the participatory methods CATNeT has employed in developing our mission, objectives, and projects.

There are organizations, businesses, and institutions that are probably potential partners of CATNeT and should be contacted but time has limited us from reaching all of them.

CATNeT has decided to I should remain the coordinator and we are actively searching for the funds to pay my salary. One of the partners has agreed to fund my position for the summer while we find money to sustain CATNeT. This summer I will continue the work I have been doing with the addition of formally beginning the Training of Volunteer Trainers Program and the Non-profit Web Development Program.

Interning with CATNeT has been an amazing experience and I will be forever grateful.

Industrial Retention & Expansion Survey of Firms Located in Toledo's Industrial Core

The Urban Affairs Center

October 15, 1997

Introduction:

The retention and expansion of existing businesses is an extremely important contributor to the economic viability and stability of American cities.

This is particularly true for cities, which have a recent history of losing employment via the process of business migration. The post-war experience of the majority of inner cities of metropolitan areas located in the Great Lakes region has been the migration of businesses (especially manufacturers) to suburban neighbors or other metropolitan areas in the western or southwestern United States. From the perspective of economic developers, community development corporations, and others concerned with the loss of employment opportunities and tax revenues, an essential issue is identifying and developing strategies which may slow down, stop, or even reverse existing migration trends. Retention of businesses is extremely important.

Research has demonstrated that between 40% and 70% of new job growth is generated by existing firms.

To this end, an Industrial Retention and Expansion Business Visitation Survey (R&E Survey) was developed by The University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center (UAC).

This survey was part of a broader project designed to assess the feasibility of Flexible Manufacturing Networks (FMNs) as an inner city economic development tool. The purpose of the FMN project was to enhance connections between inner city manufacturing firms, Community Development Corporations (CDCs), the market, and the economic development community with respect to industrial retention and expansion.

The FMN project was funded primarily by the Joyce Foundation. Primary funding for the R & E Survey came from a HUD special purpose grant secured by Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur.

The R & E survey was carried out by UAC and CDC staff between summer 1995 and summer 1996. The survey was a modified version of one conducted in over 100 Ohio communities by The Ohio State University Extension (OSUE) service as part of The Ohio Business Retention and Expansion Program.

Conclusion:

Assisting businesses to improve the viability of their operations at their present location is an important challenge facing our local economic development agents.

Although our small businesses have a strong tendency to be loyal to Toledo they must not be taken for granted.

The firms, through their survey answers, have highlighted many areas in which we can improve our ability to retain and support the expansion and attraction of small manufacturing businesses.

Their answers tell us what we must direct additional effort toward the following:

1. The improvement of basic education and skill training.
2. Lowering utility rates.
3. Renovation and/or expansion assistance
4. Relocation assistance where existing-site expansion is not possible.
5. Dealing with concerns about crime.
6. Enhancement of firms ability to be competitive in the global marketplace.

Balanced Edge Cities II: Wholesale and Social Services

Lynn W. Bachelor & Howard A. Stafford

1997

Abstract:

Three edge cities form this cluster: Tri-County/Forest Park in the Cincinnati metropolitan area and Airport Highway/Spring Meadows and Maumee/Arrowhead Park in the Toledo area. They are characterized by balance among major employment sectors: no one sector is clearly dominant, as was evident in, for example, manufacturing or retail edge cities. Manufacturing has a significant presence in these edge cities, with between 13 and 17 percent of employment, but retail and social services employment compromise the largest shares of employment in these edge cities, followed by personal services, producer services, and wholesale. In this respect, they resemble the Balanced/Retail and Personal Services cluster. However, the employment shares for wholesale and social services in these three cities are generally higher than for the four in the retail/personal services cluster, and their proportions of retail and personal services employment tend to be lower. Although some of these differences were statistically significant, they typically were only a few percentage points, and the addition or subtraction of a few large employers could alter the relative position of the major employment sectors.

Putting Neighborhoods On-Line; Putting Academics In Touch: The Urban University and Neighborhood Network

Randy Stoecker

July 1, 1996

Abstract:

The state of Ohio, in the upper-midwest United States, is relatively unique in having seven large cities, each with its own state university. A network of researchers from those universities recently formed to link themselves with neighborhood-based organizing and development groups in their cities. Our initial project studied the computer and telecommunications needs of those group, collaborating with them in the design and use of the research. We will use the research results to leverage computer hardware, software, training, and Internet access to allow Ohio's neighborhood-based organizations (NBOs) to better communicate with each other and the world. This computer-linked network will then become one means through which to develop further university-neighborhoods and inter-neighborhood collaborations.

Impact of Economic Development Programs: Lessons from Six Ohio Cities

Lynn W. Bachelor

March 13, 1996

Abstract:

State and local governments continue to offer a wide range of often costly incentives to retain or attract business, in the face of abundant evidence that these incentives do not influence the location of economic activity. This behavior may be viewed as irrational, or it may idicate that the tools used to evaluate incentive programs were not well suited to assessing their impacts.

Offering incentives has symbolic and political value, which cannot be adequately evaluated by the cost-benefit models used in most evaluations. Public officials can take credit for addressing important public concerns and protect themselves from blame for not acting to prevent relocation of firms to other communities. They may also reap substantial political benefits "in the unlikely case the incentives were offered and they did work" of suffer significant political costs if they do not offer incentives and firms relocate to communities offering better "deals"; the magnitude of these of costs or benefits is such that they outweigh the more likely, but much smaller, political benefit of "correctly" not offering incentives in situations where incentives would have been ineffective. (Wolman, 1988: 25)

Public officials are hampered in these decisions by their inability to obtain several pieces of critical information. First, they do not know whether any relocation options are available to a particular business. If a firm's mobility is limited by market, transportation, or financial constraints, it does not need any incentives to remain at its present location. But such a firm gains nothing by revealing this information to public officials, and, instead, can benefit financially by accepting assistance. Under these conditions, public officials cannot limit assistance to only those firms which are able to relocate, and, consequently, unnecessarily offer assistance to firms whose locational decisions will be unaffected by it. Such behavior can be considered rational however, because these officials are acting to maximize the expected value of a sequence of outcomes, and lack sufficient information about a firm's likelihood of relocation and the political and economic consequences of alternative courses of action to accurately estimate these expected values. These information constraints create conditions of bounded rationality, in which optimal outcomes are sought but seldom achievable.

Ohio Economic-Development Programs And The Sub- urbanization of Manufacturing

Ronald Randall and Robert G. Martin

March 13, 1996

Introduction:

Although state industrial development programs in the U.S. began in the South earlier in this century, the creation of the full array of programs in other states has been a relatively recent development. Major factors stimulating the development of various kinds of state and local economic-development assistance would include the perception of needing to "do something" in the face of the significant restructuring of major sectors of the U.S. economy which was accelerated by the 1981-82 recession; the increased competition from the coming of the "global economy;" the increasing mobility of capital, which greatly enhances the business's ability to negotiate with government for economic-development assistance; and the perceived need to respond to competition from other states and localities.

Conclusions:

Given the condition of Ohio's central cities and given the changing relationship of large, often transitional firms to the communities in which they are found, we have tried to make a cast for directing state economic-development assistance to smaller firms located in central cities. However, the recipients of the assistance display a significant large-firm and suburban character. We further speculated that the pressure to "do something" would result in economic- development assistance going to large firms in a position to threaten to leave a community and the state if the assistance is not forthcoming, to firms with political connections, and to firms with staff having the time and tenacity to learn the ropes of this programs. We are unable to pursue this latter proposition in detail, but our preliminary assessment strongly suggests that this is a worthwhile avenue to pursue in explaining which firms receive economic-development assistance.

Divided Against Itself: Local vs. International Union Interests in a Toledo Supermarket Strike

Marietta Morrissey & Barbara Thomas Coventry

1996

Abstract:

The paper reviews a case of local/international union conflict in the settlement of a supermarket strike and suggests that the assertion of local labor interests is central to the revival of U.S. unionism. The strike was led by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) against the Meijer supermarket chain in Toledo, Ohio in 1994. The eight and one-half week strike ended when representatives of the UFCW international accepted a contract that differed little from the company's original offer. The strike cost the international a considerable sum in benefits paid to the strikers, but the international also reportedly feared that the strike would endanger organizing campaigns in other supermarkets and in discount department stores. However local organizers and many workers felt betrayed by what they perceived as the international's intrusive and premature settlement of the strike. Their reactions raise the question of whether, in settling the strike, the international risked the loss of worker support within the union and in new organizing arenas.

Making Networks, Remarking the City

Michael Indergaard

May 1996

Introduction:

Flexible manufacturing networks (FMNs) in Europe and Japan give small firms the ability to make timely, innovative responses to market shifts. Using FMNs for community development may boost the capacities of small firms while increasing community assets. U.S. models of FMNs tend to neglect issues of social process. This article argues that FMN programs need to be localized; network arrangements should emerge from local contingencies of group formation and institution building. A project from Toledo, Ohio, is used to present a social mobilization model of FMNs. Firms aspiring to joint production are placed into collaborative encounters with each other, customers, and community supporters. The aim is to usher firms through a development process that brings new conceptions of self peers, community actors, and strategic possibilities. Preliminary results indicate that processes of group formation and institutional change have begun.

Conclusion:

This article suggests that we need more expansive, less static models of network formation. The salience of social mobilization in the Toledo project points to gaps in the resource mobilization model. Network promoters need to attend to social processes of group formation. If FMNs are being cultivated on a larger scale, the process involves institution building and remaking a social system. Using FMNs for community development can benefit firms; communities possess resources for restructuring. Rivalries of the new global economy involve contending institutional arrangements as well as organizational forms.

A Consideration of the Costs vs. Benefits of Distributing Water to Fulton County

James P. LeSage & Lawerence J. Connin

January 13, 1996

Abstract:

The proposal before Council involves a 20-year commitment to supply 12 million gallons of water per day to Fulton County, representing 10 percent of Toledo's current 120 million gallon daily water sales. Six million gallons per day, or 5 percent of Toledo's current daily supply would go to a single firm, making this the largest water user in Northwestern Ohio. An informed decision by council should be based on consideration of both the costs and benefits associated with the proposed legislation. While Don Moline has outlined the revenue (benefits) that will result from water sales at the negotiated surcharge rate, no one has attempted to enumerate the costs in terms of potential payroll and property tax losses to the City of Toledo. This report assesses these costs using information from past studies by the Urban Affairs Center. It should be kept in mind, that time did not permit a detailed study. Nonetheless, the conclusions are qutie clear-cut, suggesting that a more in-depth study would come to the same qualitative conclusions, although some of the numerical magnitude might change.

Sprawl: Farm And City Consequences

Diane Myers-Krug

October 2, 1996

Abstract:

This article discusses agriculture in Ohio. Agriculture is Ohio's number one industry. It employs one in six Ohioans and contributes over $56 billion each year to the state's economy. Yet, over the past 25 years, Ohio lost 2.4 million acres of farmland. That's an average of eleven acres per hour. As farmland disappears, so do the opportunities for Ohio's farmers, food processors and distributors, and other related businesses to grow and prosper.