Hardly had the pixels dried on my last post based on an e-mail by Mayor Bob when I got another one from him, this one in turn based on a poll in The State today:
The State had a poll today about City issues that relate to the race for Mayor. The poll showed remarkable support for Innovista by City residents. On the question of whether Columbia should provide financial assistance to the University of South Carolina’s Innovista research center, 62.6% support Innovista 19.2% oppose and 18% are undecided. I am attaching parts of the article and poll.
That’s particularly interesting in light of the fact that most of what you hear about Innovista — from the highly amplified S.C. Policy Council, from our governor’s few remaining followers and from our own Doug — is extremely negative. It’s good to know that most people still understand that this endeavor was, is, and will be one worthy of continued effort.
But as charmed as Mayor Bob was by that — and I’m with him — I was just as happy to read this part:
Manager or Full-Time Mayor
Well over half (57.7%) say they want a full-time mayor, while just fewer than 20 percent (19.2%) say they prefer a city manager as we have now. Over 20 percent (23.1%) are undecided on this issue, saying they don’t know one way or the other. Question: “Who should run the City of Columbia? Should it be a city manager as it is now, or should there be a full-time mayor?”
Fifty-seven percent — that’s a landslide, people. Yet all we seem to hear whenever this is brought up in the corridors of power is negative. Why? Because the folks in the corridors of power — from City Hall down to neighborhood associations (which have disproportionate power in this system of fragmented accountability, know it, and don’t want to give any up to an empowered executive) — are totally invested in the current system. In a system in which no one has enough power to lead, lots of people have little bits of power, and they don’t want to give it up.
But most folks realize they’d be better off if they had someone to hold accountable.
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What a bogus poll… a generic, fact-free question about something the majority of Columbians have no clue about. It doesn’t say how much money should be spent, what the expected benefits are, or reference any of the past issues
with mismanagement, overspending, and a technology choice that has been pretty much shot down as having any practical value any time in the next couple decades.
The poll was based on the responses of 363 city residents (2/3 women – how can that be reflective of the Columbia)? Bogus…. bogus… bogus…
Let me create a poll that contains factual information about the history of Innovista instead of a generic statement and we’ll see what the results are.
I do want to be sure I understand that you now believe polls are an effective way to gauge the true feelings of the people? Seems like in the past you didn’t give much credence to them.
Now who runs Metromark, the company that did the “poll”? and do they have any affiliation with anyone like the mayor, the Rotary, USC, or any other parties who would have an interest in seeing Innovista presented in a positive light?
Hmmm.. a quick Google check shows Metromark is owned by Dr. Emerson Smith, Clinical Research Associate Professor at University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Gee, that wouldn’t make him a LITTLE bit biased now would it?
It’s also interesting that Metromark has links for both a Columbia dining guide and a Columbia hotel guide:
http://www.metromark.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=31
Seems like if you’d want to get a particular positive result in a poll regarding Columbia, you’d probably pick a polling firm LOCATED in Columbia with travel guides for the city… or maybe I’m just cynical.
By the way, I checked out some of the other polls Metromark did for The State — according to one poll, 60% of Columbia residents think race relations in the city are very good or excellent… you believe that one?
http://www.thestate.com/2010/01/10/1103451/exclusive-survey-columbia-ready.html
Ol’ Bob doesn’t even want to hear what people around USC are saying about the Innovista. Classrooms and office space are approaching the condition of those in the Corridor of Shame. Now Pastides is stating the one-time stimulus funds will not be used for facility improvements but for employee retention so don’t expect work areas to improve anytime soon. Yet employees are told by Pastides to keep their heads up, after the recession things will get better (because they can’t get much worse)… but in the meantime we’ll continue pumping money into empty buildings that most do not think will ever get filled. Now with SCANA leaving downtown, rental space rates in the downtown area just got a whole lot lower.
Actually, Doug, the fact that Emerson did this gives me a high level of confidence (unlike that rather odd survey by Winthrop recently that took up so much space on the front page).
I worked a lot on polls with Emerson when I was the gummint affairs editor from 87-90. He was amazingly accurate, and on measurable things, such as predicting election outcomes. Even on primaries, which were notoriously hard to predict…
This particular poll has a small sample, but I trust Emerson’s methodology implicitly, based on experience.
…and 57% of “city residents said they trust city officals to manage their tax dollars”.
Now, that’s faith. And, total disregard for the facts. Wow.
Is this how we elect the people we do across this state? Do we simply not pay any attention to what is actually happening, what they are actually doing and just vote for a candidate we “like” or who has hit the right hot button issues for our individual litmus tests?
If this is an indication of how voters gather information to decide who to vote for, I find it really discouraging.
Neighborhood Associations OUGHT to have the most power. They represent those of us who constitute the city–have made the greatest investment in it by living here and attending endless meetings where we aren’t there to make a buck and paying taxes and picking up litter and and and….
A strong mayor can be easy to buy if you are Don Tomlin or Joe E. Taylor or or or….It’s more expensive to buy a whole city council.
Strong mayors can be good or bad, just as city managers and city councillors can be bad or good….For every Richard Daley, there’s a Jane Byrne or Michael Bilandic
Kathryn, the single greatest flaw in government in South Carolina is that power is too fragmented, on both the state and local levels. There is nowhere that you can insert a lever to make anything happen. It’s just a pile of mush. There’s no focus.
You’re a small d democrat. I’m a small r republican, because I realized years ago that if you want anything to change, you have to put someone in a position that they have the leverage to make it change. Give everybody a tiny lever, and nothing happens.
People are always going on about corruption — that wouldn’t it be terrible if you had a CORRUPT strong mayor? Actually, that argument indirectly acknowledges my point. You’re not worried about having a corrupt mayor under the current system because THE MAYOR CAN’T DO ANYTHING. He can’t do anything bad — and he can’t do anything good, either.
To get real change, real progress, you have to take a chance. Yes, power can be abused. But without effectively focused power, nothing happens.
The slaveholding gentry who set this state up understood that. They understood that if you took all state AND local power and dumped it into the Legislature, you couldn’t do ANYTHING without a consensus of that body agreeing. This diffuse, spread-the-power system that small d democrats love so much is THE most conservative form of government ever devised in human history, because it is amazingly resistant to any kind of change.
I say, give me a mayor or a governor who’s worth corrupting — because that’s a mayor or governor who has the wherewithal to do some good.
Mayor Bob continues to be enthusiastic about that poll. He send out this missive this afternoon:
“I’m a small r republican”… did I read this correctly?
Look, I live in a high maintenance neighborhood. We have clashing cultures–people with the large reserves of money and patience to maintain beautiful old houses vs. people whose brains aren’t fully formed who want to par-tee; not nearly enough parking for the people who live here; trash/litter; crime; noise….we crave maintenance, fast response, security. Progress is great for all y’all on the periphery, but we need our neighborhood trains to run on time. Having several people to rain holy heck on city people if they drop the ball or flat out ignore us is vital, or folks will just move back out to Wildewood, and we’ll have Hamsterdam around the University.
Your power brokers managed to weaken us enough to get 700 Pickens built (on the former Baptist Student Center site).It was cheaply built and has been a headache, to say the least, since it was rammed through. The windows are the quality normally reserved for single wide trailers, and the trash cans are chronically left out. They finally replaced the sign that had several letters missing, and they have yet to provide the “high-end” security they trumpeted. They cut a deal to put a hugely over-dense property on that site and then reneged on their promises….
and I like progress far more than most….
What makes you think that “small d democrats” by definition like a diluted, helpless government? Why wouldn’t we also like to be able to identify someone who had enough authority to be responsible, and to be able to vote that person out of office if he/she performed irresponsibly?
How about some real statistics that would measure Columbia’s performance?
H.S. Graduation rate
Unemployment rate
Median income compared to national average
Number of homeless
Average commute time
% occupancy of commercial space downtown
I’d also like to see Mayor Bob provide a list of the top three accomplishments that have been a result of the $150 million investment in Innovista and the three biggest disappointments related to the project.
And by accomplishments, I mean specific results, not future hopes.
Walter and Karen — there seems to be some confusion about the terms “small r republican” and “small d democrat.”
What those refer to are people who believe in the actual principles that those terms, “democratic” and “republican,” refer to — as opposed to those idiotic, useless political parties that appropriated the words as their names. Members of those parties would be “capital D Democrat” and “capital R Republican.” Those names have little to do with the original meanings. Oh, maybe a generation or two ago they did, but not any more. Frequently, for instance, you can see Republicans being more democratic than Democrats, and so forth.
You won’t hear me describing myself as either of those (shudder).
And Karen — yes, it’s a democratic impulse to distrust concentrated authority. “Power to the People,” and “If the People lead, the leaders will follow” express democratic sentiments. Note that I call them sentiments, not ideas.
I agree with Doug Ross. As a retired Nurse Practitioner I was reminded often of the median income in SC vs. National. In the State system, which I was a part of for 13 yrs.,NP’s would not get a raise when nurses did because they were considered medical staff. When medical staff received raises NP’s didn’t..they were in the nursing pay band and didn’t qualify. South Carolina HS graduation numbers are abysmal and shameful. That we should still be using the term minimally adequate education should raise the banners and outrage of citizens.
Look, we’re talking the ultimate retail politics–city government. You want a lot more hands on at that level. City government is not about jobs or education or health care–it’s about trash collection, parking enforcement, law and code enforcement….when it’s not working, a BIG mayor is less likely to care about that, imho, than someone who lives a few blocks away.
In matters of state and federal government, I am small “r” republican. That is where policy is important, rather than politics by referendum.