You'd think I'm trying to beat up on Dewey with all the coverage they've been getting, but they have just ended up making the news a lot recently. But, I think Dewey Beach is a very good model in our area for a place that is, like many others across the country, facing the brunt of the economic crisis. You see, Dewey Beach is a curious animal. Back in '81 when the place got its charter, the residents made sure to include a "no property tax" provision in there. That's right, folks. Property owners in Dewey Beach pay no property taxes.
Now, that's a great deal if you own property in Dewey, maybe. Not having a property tax means that the local government must depend upon other, less stable, sources of revenue, including the now-infamous transfer tax (the 3% kickback the government gets whenever you sell your house) as well as things like parking tickets and business license fees (both of which are very dependent upon tourism and, thus, a robust economy). In this economy, all of the sources of revenue that Dewey has come to depend upon (and, let's be honest here, they've made a killing for the last couple of decades) have all but dried up. No multimillion dollar beach houses a selling, and fewer people are vacationing there, so that means fewer speeding and parking tickets. The result of all this is an economic nightmare. The government has virtually no revenue stream to rely on, so now they have to make some serious decisions about what they can and can't afford to do. Today, the Town announced that they will be raising fees and cutting police and lifeguards in order to make up for a current budget shortfall. The leadership there says that these changes will result in a surplus, which is good news for the people who live in Dewey. Of, course, what do they care? Nobody can raise their taxes, and they'll have lots of watering holes to choose from when they need to escape from the Great Depression II.
Governor-Elect Jack Markell held a town hall meeting last night to ask Delaware residents, "what should be done about the state's budget?"
One particularly articulate and adept resident, pictured below, showed up to voice his own opinion on the issue of the failing economy and to present a workable and effective solution to the problem.
His proposed cure for dealing with the State budget?
Environmental groups are trying hard to shame the Bush Administration and the State of Delaware into forcing more ridiculous environmental regulations on our local poultry farms. The main crux of the pro-environment argument being made in the article, which can be found here, is that Delaware poultry farms produce much more ammonia than our state factories. The news release appears in today's News Journal, which apparently is now employing Ric Romero. I'm not a biologist, but I do know that living things produce ammonia in the form of...er...um...waste products. And 246 million living things (the number of broilers produced by Delaware farms last year) probably produce a lot of waste. Anybody who's been stuck behind a chicken truck on some back road downstate can tell you that broilers are basically eating and pooping machines until the day that they're harvested. Sure, our factories might produce some ammonia, but I'll bet a lot of it comes from the living things (i.e., factory workers) inside. I'm not insensitive to the pro-environment folks. I agree that we need to clean up after ourselves. But, hey, it the aughts, people! We have awesome technology that can be used to deal with the ammonia produced by our poultry farms. Instead of sitting up on our high horse shouting "shame shame!" maybe the federal and state governments should give these farmers the information and technical resources they need to install the equipment and initiate the processes needed to keep the peninsula safe from ammonia pollution. But not before they ask some really tough questions of some unbiased environmental scientists about what the real impact of all this ammonia is and our options for dealing with it effectively and efficiently. The last thing we need in these economic times is to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a problem that isn't as bad as we think or even doesn't really exist at all.
On the flip side, we're not talking about a whole heap of poor farmers here. A majority of the land used for poultry farming in Delaware is either owned or leased by the big two: Perdue and Mountaire Farms. These are huge corporation with enough money and people to solve this crisis without a lot of government cheese helping them along. So, it may not be bad to hold their feet to the fire, just as long as we can afford the consequences the next time we go to the grocery store.
Oh, never mind. Ban chickens. Broil me a tree-hugger! Hehe.
Dewey beach was one of the last towns in Delaware to receive a charter and become a municipality. Prior to its incorporation in 1981, though, Dewey Beach was probably one of the most distinct places in all of Delaware. Known for its beach-bonanza craziness, seedy bar life, and a live-and-let-live approach to rule enforcement, Dewey and its denizens had a wonderfully unique character and reputation around the state and around the region. When a group of people got together to trek over to Dewey, they knew what they were getting into. Today, I guess it's a different story. The News Journal published an article here that talks about the increasing anger of Dewey Beach residents over the loud and rowdy nightlife that has always defined Dewey and set it apart from the "Quiet Resorts" of Bethany Beach, South Bethany, and Fenwick Island. Some residents claim that Dewey's restaurants are mainly a front for alcohol sales and that properties end up unrented because they are too close to the noise. Of course, all this hoopla finds a lot of its roots in an episode of the reality show COPS that was filmed there this past summer and aired in September. The backlash against the portrayal of Dewey Beach as a "Daytona Beach of the Mid-Atlantic" was palpable and many residents expressed their anger about it to their local leaders and the media. Within all this bad noise and yelling about nuisance and drunkenness, I can't help but see an underlying tone of puritanical rage and major overreaction. And, above it all, you can hear me shouting, "It's the economy, stupids!" The blend of cheap rooms, high availability of alcohol, and many decades of a reputation as a party town is an economic force that no WASPy, upper-middle-class petition-signing is going to make go away. Dewey is what it is. It is not a "Quiet Resort" and the bars and restaurants that are there know this and respond to the people who come to Dewey. Fifty-million Dewey fans can't be wrong...and they all just got another round on the house.
Let me give you a little glimpse into the near future in Dewey Beach. Those Dewey residents who are complaining will ultimately do one of four things: sell their Dewey property and buy a nice, quiet set-up in Bear Trap Dunes; rent their Dewey property to more tolerant young hooligans and buy a nice, quiet set-up in South Bethany; live with it until they ultimately die of stress and worry about all those darn (drunk) kids on their lawn; or, embrace it and open up a big, gaudy tiki bar that will give the Starboard a run for its money.
Don't fight the powerful force of nature that is the local economy. I would think that people who live so close to the beach (a la "don't turn your back on the ocean) would know better.
This past weekend, the News Journal began its comprehensive examination of the volunteer fire services in Delaware by presenting interactive map data that it hoped would speak to the question, "Has Delaware outgrown its volunteer firefighters?" Based on a critical analysis of the maps and data that they presented, I made a very good case (see post below) that the data and information presented really didn't say anything about the issue of volunteer vs. career firefighters and served only as a sensationalist piece of fake news drawn up to sell papers and agitate/scare the public into thinking about an issue that really does not exist.
Today, TNJ has presented its second part in this series, which looks at how volunteer fire departments bring in money and how they spend it. Again, the article is rife with misinformation, misdirection, and psychological BS, and I aim to do a number on it all right here and right now.
Let's take a look first at the headline and by-line for the story: So, the fire companies are "sitting on" money? To me that language suggests that these fire departments are either unnecessarily hoarding money (to some unknown end) or they're hiding money from the public and it was discovered by TNJ's crack team of investigative journalists. Untrue on both counts. Second, the larger phrase "sit on cash cushions" suggests that the fire companies are so amazingly rich that they can actually afford to make chairs with cushions sewn together from crisp hundred dollar bills...oh, my, what a regal image! The entire headline, however it was meant, is misleading at best and really slimy at worst. No fire department is being accused of illicitly hoarding money nor doing inappropriate things with it. Only when you get to the off-white colored by-line (over a white background...very hard to see even for someone with 20/20 vision) do you get the real story, that our fire departments simply have big savings accounts.
So, our fire departments have become very good at raising money and saving a great deal of it. Why is this bad? Am I missing the scandal here, or is there something else? If not, then it seems a little less than newsworthy. Do you have any idea how much a new ladder truck, fully spec'ed out, costs? Maybe a half-million dollars or more, I'd say. In the event your department's current one gets smashed up in a major accident, wouldn't you like to still be able to save someone's life and property tomorrow morning? If I lived id Magnolia, I think I'd now sleep much better at night knowing about that two million dollar savings fund being "sat on" by my fore department.
Other than the headline, most people who (like me) hate reading will look at the pictures. Let's look at the pics that were meant to reinforce the main ideas of this article:
All of the pictures are photos of "firefighters in action," so we can expect that TNJ is trying to show us what firemen and women do during the day? The first picture shows a firefighter "on an unscheduled break," leading us to mistakenly conclude that our firefighters are apathetic and lazy? Why not show that same guy five minutes earlier or later while he's actually doing work, which is what most of our volunteers never stop doing while at their firehouse. The second and third pictures show firemen calling bingo and selling 50/50 tickets as part of their fundraising activities. So, fire departments are wasting our time and money just trying to raise more money? As we'll see, fundraising makes up less than 1% of the resource use of the fire departments. So, like with their first article in this series, TNJ is trying to show us exceptions to what is the norm in order to defend its indefensible position that the volunteer fire department system should be eliminated.
But it's not over yet, folks! TNJ uses some nicely erroneous and typo-ridden graphics to prove its point about the volunteer "problem" in our fire departments. Let's take a look at those: Corporate organizations that provide a necessary public service and are provided tax-exempt status by the government are called "non-profit organizations" (NPOs). The volunteer fire departments in Delaware are a great example of an NPO. These types of corporate organizations are governed by a board of directors (not a committee of stockholders like private corporations) and must abide by certain standards as established by any government entity (usually the state, along with a national board or chapter) from which the receive grant money, including not using their resources and money to make more resources and money that can be passed on to corporate board members(this can be done only in a for-profit enterprise). By definition, profit is the excess portion of money generated by selling goods and services for more than they cost to the corporation to make or buy in bulk. This excess money is then passed on to shareholders in the form of divided checks that must be declared as income to Uncle Sam every April.
I cannot believe that TNJ, knowing all they know about the function of NPOs, still decided to stick with the term "profit" and "profit margins" when talking about our volunteer fire companies. They could have used the term "budget excess" or "overage" or the term "reserve funds" which is what municipalities have when their utilities (water, sewer, trash, electricity) make more money than they cost to operate. Having reserve funds is an important part of managing an NPO, since it provides most of the capital money that can be used for big-ticket things like vehicular equipment, communications technology, and up-to-date facilities.
And here are the income and spending charts that TNJ published:
First of all, how confusing is the erroneous placement of "Donations and Fundraisers" on the Chart for Spending? It makes everything more jumbled, super-confusing, and less-decipherable to the regular reader.
Second, the American Institute of Philanthrophy (AIP) (charitywatch.org) sets minimum standards for deciding which NPOs people should donate to. One of the most important is the percentage of NPO money used for fundraising. According to AIP, this should be less than 40% for a good charity or NPO. As you can see here, our fire departments spends only 1% of their money on fundraising activities and more than 90% on their actual mission and operations (fire and rescue). Another AIP standard is the "years of available assets," which is the amount of savings the organization has. Well, shoot, TNJ said it was a bad thing to have savings, but not true. Apparently having money in the bank for a rainy day is a good thing! Go figure!
Once again, I am dumbfounded at the level of sansationalism and misinformation that is going on here. And once again, this article omits any comparisons to regional or national numbers, which keeps any contextual facts out of the picture. Once again, I say to The News Journal: why are you doing this to us? However much you think you can fool us, we do have some common sense and we look out for one another. The last thing we need here in lower Delaware is a big upheaval in a major public service that end with many more dead or wounded people who were previously receiving superior service.
Again, please let me know if you agree or disagree with my take on TNJ's numbers and facts. Maybe, as usual, I'm way off base here, but I don't think so.
The running local blockbuster over at the News Journal's website this weekend is an interactive map that purports to provide data regarding whether or not the volunteer firefighter system still works for Delaware. You can find the map here.
I'm by no means a statistical expert, but I do have some basic knowledge of research and data analysis along with a good helping of common sense. Just a basic reading of the maps and numbers that TNJ is using here reveals the truly "geo-centric" and faux-compelling nature of this report and the fundamental disconnection between the headline and the data they present.
To say that the piece is misleading is an insult to spin-mongers everywhere. First of all, here are the data legends for the two statistics that they show us: The first legend shows fire call response times as compared to the standard set by the National Fire Protection Association. They take this entire data set out of context for the reader by not saying what the standard is nor what percentage of national fire stations meet the standard. Second, they have two categories at the top: "meets standard" and "meets standard only." If they wanted to be really clear here, they would have said what they mean here: "exceeds standard" and "meets standard." Unfortunately, they chose to be controversial instead of honest.
The second legend shows the "'profit margins'" of the fire companies. TNJ should know better...our volunteer fire companies are non-profit corporations that are prohibited from "turning a profit" that can be passed on to shareholders, which is what "profit" means to the public. They could have chosen any word for this other than "profit" (e.g., surplus, excess revenue), but they chose the word "profit" seemingly to reinforce the idea that our fire companies "make too much money." The truth, of course is that most of the money is either public funds or donations from local residents, neither of which could be called "profit" since these fire companies do not sell anything to anyone (except maybe renting out their buildings for weddings and bar mitzvahs).
The maps themselves are also misleading because they collapse so much data into such simple categories and nice pretty colors to distract the reader. But more importantly, they reveal the clear and uncontroversial answer to TNJ's headline question.
Here is the map for departments' "profits": I don't know about you, but I feel much better knowing that a good portion of the fire departments have some extra money on hand for building and expanding and buying modern equipment than if it were the other way around. Hey Gannett, what happens when your company doesn't turn a profit? You probably have to cut jobs, right? How would you feel if our fire departments didn't have enough money and started cutting volunteers and using old, outdated equipment?
Here is the map of response times for fire companies up in yankee country: Looks pretty bad right? Oh my! We need to overhaul our fire departments, right? I'm not sure the data fits the question here. The better question would be WHY response times in northern NCC are so bad. The answer can probably be boiled down to three things--Traffic, Development Density, and Suburban Sprawl--all three of which go hand-in-hand...and all three of which have nothing at all to do with whether or not our fire companies are volunteer or paid.
To add to this critical deficiency, look at the maps of response times for all of us down here in the slower lower areas: The entire southern 80% of the state is served by volunteer fire departments that exceed the national standard. So, we're supposed to believe that the companies in the north are the exception that proves the rule?
This entire dog and pony show is an exercise in agitation that undermines a system that, as a whole is working well despite bad state decisions regarding development and infrastructure. So, TNJ wants us to turn the operation over to the state or county governments with their merit employment systems and expensive government benefits? Yeah, because DelDOT and NCC are working and managing their finances so well, it just makes sense! Please.
Why, just why? Why do this? Why agitate the public and upset our many honorable volunteer firemen and women? To the editors at The News Journal: Leave our well-oiled and well-funded fire departments alone! And until you do some real research and get some decent data to throw our way, stop doing stuff like this. We're not fooled and we don't want to be a New Jersey or a Southeast Pennsylvania.
If you have a different read of this data, please respond in the comments and let me know. Maybe I misread the whole thing, but I don't think so. Thanks!
UPDATE: The Sunday News Journal has published the text article to accompany the map data here. The comments on the article page are delightfully ridiculous so far.
As with a recent previous post, this one also grew out of a comment to another blog post. I sincerely thank my fellow bloggers for some inspiring some great of my most epic ramblings. So, here we go...
What a Smell? posted an entry here this afternoon decrying the unions' role in the auto industry crisis and praising Rush Limbaugh for calling them out on it.
Hold it! Beep! Beep! Beep! Back it up just a second.
I'm not sure I would place all the blame for this solely on labor unions. Sure, the culture of American unions has certainly hurt the auto industry. The walk-outs, the shake-downs, the abused grievance system, they all serve to only quash company-wide innovation and accomplish only short-sighted goals. However, both Japan and Korea have labor unions for their autoworkers as well, but they accomplish their goals very very differently. No walk-outs, no "nyet" negotiation style, just social and symbolic pressure and reasoned, stability-seeking deal-making. A huge part of the equation here are the choices of auto VPs about what to produce. The Dodge Challenger? The Ford Excursion? Are you kidding me? The American automakers are mostly motorized "comfort food" and not enough four-wheeled "health food." It used to be that huge, gas-guzzling, space-wasting autos were only "extra credit" for people who could afford it, but today American auto advertising makes us actually believe that these are practical, everyday cars and SUVs that we all have fundamental right to own. Of course, Nissan and Toyota have both made a pretty penny on this SUV-entitlement culture, their mainstays have always been really practical, small and mid-size cars that focus on reliability and simple taste. When you compare the business plans and products of the American and Asian car industries, it's really clear why we've been blown straight out of the water in this sector. While this will be a jagged little pill to swallow for the midwest, I hope that Washington lets the automakers file bankruptcy and ultimately shake out into a smaller and (hopefully) smarter new corporate entity or entities that can truly compete in the market. It would be nice to start seeing American automakers setting up shop in the overseas industrialized countries instead of Honda starting up new manufacturing facilities all over the midwest and south. But, if we do bail them out (I hope with a loan instead of a huge check with no strings), I think we should follow the advice of Mr. Michael Moore and tell the American auto industry that, if we give you anything substantial, "we're gonna' own your ass!" Then, we get these companies out of the economic sector they can't compete in (i.e., consumer autos) and into more "public-serving" and "economic development-oriented" sectors: trains, buses, commercial shipping vehicles, and light rail.
Fix the sprawling cities, keep the jobs, keep the secondary markets, just ditch the non-competetiveness. Win-win. Of, course, it will all go just as easy as I explained it, right? Heh. You betcha' not!
