Archive for October 28th, 2008

Tucson and Arizona in general rely on the big three industries for the bulk of our economic development. Read the post HERE. Tourism, construction and the government sector are the 800 lb gorillas that fuel our local economy. With two out of three of our local drivers in the tank it’s going to be a long winter.

Read the Oct. 27th AZ Republic article HERE.

The weak economy, stumbling stock market and airline flight cuts have crimped travel to the area at a time when new hotels are adding to the room supply at a rate well above the national average.

Hotels around the country are hurting, or at least starting to see a slowdown, leading to the recent national sales launched by Hyatt, Starwood and other large hotel chains to spur business.

The pain is especially acute in metropolitan Phoenix, a major vacation and meetings destination that accounts for $10 billion of the $17 billion in annual visitor spending in the state.

Many of the trips to Phoenix are discretionary compared with trips to, say, New York and other major business centers that have a steady stream of corporate travelers flying in and out routinely in good times and bad.

Reduction in tourism translates into reduction in tourism related taxes like the bed tax, rental car tax and RV taxes. The influx of tourist dollars into our economy  is a multi billion industry. Let’s hope economic troubles facing the US and the world work themselves out before next seasons travelers decide on a staycation.

Small business owners struggling

Oct. 28: Hudson Cleaners owner Brian Ferwerda, one of the nation’s 27 million small business owners, is feeling the effects of the economy hard – and he’s not alone. NBC’s Tom Costello reports on Congress’s plan for ailing small businesses.

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/27425809#27425809

Small businesses employ over 50% of Americans. A poll this month stated 74% feel the economy getting worse and 38% admit having cash flow problems in the last 90 days.

As a community, we tend to belabor the obvious. It’s one of the most enduring of Tucson’s problems.

We act as though we have no idea what to do about issues like transportation, growth, land-use planning and water conservation, as though these topics were so new that the solutions were impenetrably obscure.

In fact, we’ve treated all of these issues as though we were engaged in a complicated basketball game where all the players are watching one another and nobody is watching the ball.

The real issue is not knowledge — we have plenty of that in our three state universities, which are giant information reservoirs packed with experts we can turn to if we wish. The problem is really a combination of civic amnesia, myopia, lethargy and an inability to tap into resources sitting on our doorstep.

It isn’t knowledge that we lack; it’s will.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this malaise. But the journey won’t be easy because people who have organized their lives around little power nodes are most comfortable around others who share their beliefs.

Walls are often easier to build than to tear down, but various private groups can at least make a start.

How would it be, for example, if some members of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, or SALC, a group of senior business executives, were invited to join the board of the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society or the Center for Biological Diversity?

And can you imagine the lively exchanges that might occur if members of the Sierra Club, the Sonoran Institute or the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection were invited to participate at meetings of SALC or the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce?

If members of these isolated little power nodes won’t invite each other in as members, they should at least invite each other in as guest speakers who may share divergent viewpoints. That might help move various groups closer to consensus.

If divergent groups begin to overlap, two things may happen. First, each group will be less inclined to demonize the other, and eventually an actual community will emerge. If that community builds critical mass, it can start looking for visionary leaders who can lead Tucson into a better future.

Diverse groups need to team up for Tucson’s sake

Our idea: Clubs and other organizations should open their doors to mutual efforts aimed at solving our community’s problems

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.20.2007