Looking Ahead to Our Community’s Vision for 2015

This is it, the last day of 2014. Now will begin the many articles and countdowns of the most popular songs, best places to travel, top movies, and a variety of other “best of” lists from 2014. I’ll focus on the city’s 2014 “top” list next week, but this week I want to look forward to 2015.

As we look ahead, many of us anticipate and imagine what will happen in 2015. Some set personal or business goals to achieve and others make resolutions in order to change something about themselves to be different a year from now.

The process many of us go through is visioning. We step back, evaluated where we are currently, determine the trend we’re moving in, and compare that with where we want to be. The hard part is figuring out how to get our business, finances, or ourselves to where we want them to be in a year’s time.

Just like with your personal fitness or finances, towns and cities must also go through this same process to be successful and achieve their goals.

Creating a vision on a city level is much more complex than a personal New Year’s resolution. It involves our appointed officials, our elected officials, and, most importantly, you, our citizens! Our goal is to create a community that you desire to live in.

A community vision brings everyone together and makes sure everyone is moving in the same direction, all striving to reach the same goals and vision. A community vision opens the doors to new ideas of what our community could be and can bring innovative solutions to our city's current problems. A community vision can create new, unknown partnerships between groups, both public and private in order to reach the shared vision. A community visions lays out a specific strategy with goals that can easily be followed and tracked.

These benefits help to create a successful community that you want to live in. Just like your personal goals, there will be hard times, difficult times, and times that you want to just give up, but pushing through and sticking with the vision will get us to the city everyone desires to have.

Creating your vision for the future of Elizabethton isn’t hard. Take a moment right now, imagine yourself holding the Elizabethton Star on December, 31st 2015. Looking at the front page, what do you believe three of those headlines should say? Jot those three headlines down and mail, email, or tell your elected and appointed officials in the city and the county what you think those three headlines should be! Our goal is to make those headlines realities. Let’s talk about it!

Can a High-Density Residential District Survive in Elizabethton

Everyday we hear more and more about how American’s are moving to cities and abandoning rural areas at a record pace; choosing the cities for their variety of amenities, restaurants, shopping opportunities, and bike and walk friendly neighborhoods.

Younger generations desiring to live in low maintenance housing close to a variety of urban amenities and nightlife. We are now hearing about the desire of baby-boomers to live in the similar areas with walkable access to shopping and restaurants as they age. As a professional urban planner, I hear about this at every conference and training session I go to. The question I always have is how can Elizabethton fit into these trends?

I see Elizabethton as a tweenage city – we’re not yet a “big” city, but we’re certainly not a small, rural town anymore. We’re big enough to offer an urban environment and benefits, but too small to provide “big” city life and city amenities. This makes fitting Elizabethton nicely into certain urban policies difficult at times.

Going back to my question, CAN Elizabethton fit into this trend of high-density housing with condominiums and walk-up town houses and make it sustainable?

Right now, the Regional Planning Commission has set a goal for this coming year to incentivize a high-density residential district within a three-minute walk time from downtown Elizabethton. Their ultimate goal is twofold – one, to increase the number of people within easy walking distance of downtown and, two, to encourage young families and young professional to live in Elizabethton.

Locating a large number of people near downtown will help improve the business environment in our downtown. If someone where a short walking distance from downtown, they would be more likely to patronize the retail businesses there or eat at the local restaurants there. Retail business thrives on proximity to population centers.

Encouraging the construction of low maintenance walk-up town houses or small condominium buildings is a trend that we are seeing national-wide with the millennial generation. People from this generation want to be close to restaurants, shopping districts, and places of employment. Creating such a district in Elizabethton could be a way to attract this generation to Elizabethton. They may be young families or young, single professionals, but either way this is a way to move them to Elizabethton and provide them with opportunities to start a business or firm.

So what are your thoughts on this? Would this type of housing arrangement be something you’re interested in? Let’s talk about it!

Start Your Own Business Without Starting From Scratch

No, this isn’t a get rich quick scheme, but it is a way to become your own boss using an already successful management and business operating system. It’s called franchising! The first thing many of you may think of when you hear this word is McDonalds or Subway. Yes, these are franchises, but there are many, many more franchises that you’ve never heard of or may not have even known.

As many of you may know from some of my past articles, supporting our local businesses is a major driver for local job creation and increasing sales tax revenue for your local schools and governments. While small local businesses have a slightly higher economic impact, franchises are local businesses too. Job creation can be just as strong and sales tax generation is the same as other local businesses.

There are many benefits to starting a franchised business locally including bulk purchasing power, having a pre-determined business and marketing plan, a successfully proven system of operation, national or regional brand awareness, and support from a corporate entity; the major downsides being additional licensing fees and less flexibility in operations.

Some can be home-based or brick-and-mortar in a commercial district and startup costs for franchises can vary greatly $50,000 to $250,000 to $500,000 to $1 million depending on the type of franchise you are interested in. Franchises also cover a wide variety of industries including vending machines, handyman services, health and fitness services, ice cream restaurants, home-healthcare services, restaurants, consulting services…well, you get the idea.

According to the Small Business Administration, franchises can be great for those of you who have a skill and have been downsized, have always wanted to start your own business, or those of you who simply want to provide a source of income for your children. To learn more about franchising, visit the Small Business Administration’s website (www.sba.gov) and type in ‘Franchise’ in the search box.

As we look to create a friendly business environment in Elizabethton, business start-up through franchising should most certainly be part of our growth. Because of their brand recognition, people have grown to trust franchise’s names and can sometime help other local business grow. So going into the new year, think about the opportunities to support local business or start your own local business and help make Elizabethton and Carter County a great place to do local business. Let’s talk about it!

Is it time for a Community Asset Inventory?

Although, I’m not originally from Elizabethton, I have come to admire this community a great deal. I remember moving here as a young college student and thinking, there is just so much to do! Being from Ohio’s rural breadbasket there was little else to do other than go to a corn maze or canoe along our dirty, flat rivers.

But here in Elizabethton, we have great community and state parks to visit, different hiking opportunities every weekend, clear, pristine rivers for rafting or fishing, intriguing historic sites that actually have significance in our nation’s history, unique small mountain towns just waiting to put their character on display, gorgeous mountain vistas, beautiful lakes nestled between mountain ridges…well, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. These are the things my family love to see and experience when they come for a visit and I always enjoy the look on their face when they see it for the first time.

In business, the term ‘asset’ has a meaning that is recognizable to anyone that has taken a basic accounting class. In simple terms, an asset is anything that can be controlled to produce value or has a positive economic value of the entity. Each community has its own set of assets that are utilized to make the community better. Do we know what Elizabethton’s are?

There are so many assets in our community that I think many of us (including myself from time-to-time) forget about these opportunities that many travel to come see. We talk a lot, these days, about the benefits tourism can have on our community. It touches every aspect of our community’s decisions. Tourism is nothing more than having a specific set of resources and turning those resources into assets – something that can be controlled to produce value to our community.

It’s time for our community to inventory our community’s resources and create a unified plan to turn those resources into community assets. Tourism is just one set of resources that can be turned into an asset; there are many others ranging from our workforce’s specific skill set, to a niche business type specifically found in Elizabethton. What other resources should we be looking to turn into a community asset? Let’s talk about it!

Next Steps for Improving the Business Environment in Downtown

Downtown serves as a link to the rest of the community. It serves as our link to our past, our future, our retail desires, our culture, and our identity. Thanks to our City Council, the City has been working hard to invest money in downtown by improving crosswalks at intersections, implementing traffic calming techniques, repairing the Elk Avenue canopies, and building a public entertainment venue in Downtown.

All of these investments show the dedication that your local government has in ensuring that our identity, our past, and our culture is carried into the future. The next step is much larger and is required in order for downtown to succeed – the property owners and businesses.

When I first started in my job, I visited many different successful downtowns and neighborhoods and asked about their revitalization efforts. From Chattanooga, to Cincinnati, from Franklin, Tennessee, to Greenville, South Carolina, I noticed the story always began the same – with the downtown businesses or downtown property owners. They were the ones who took control of their downtowns and set the vision for what they wanted it to be by the time their kids graduated High School.

While I certainly understand the lack of capital that many of our property owners have, there are some limited resources such as the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit, which had been used in numerous other cities for building rehabilitations. Another tool that commonly implemented was a Central Business Improvement District.

A Central Business Improvement District is a type of overlay district created in order to make direct improvements within that district. A special assessment would be made annually with the money generated being invested directly back into the district. A board made up of property owners within that district would determine how and when the money would be reinvested into the district. As one downtown property owner put it, it’s like a homeowners association for downtown.

This is a great tool that we believe could be a catalyst to make our downtown standout in the Tri-Cities area. The key is for each downtown property owner to agree and do their part to make the small, annual investment in order to create a better environment to do business downtown. We are waiting and willing to explore these opportunities with you, but downtown property owners must be the ones to initiate the process. Let’s talk about it!

Youth Leadership Visits City Hall

This past week we welcomed the Carter County Youth Leadership to City Hall. We always try to make the experience fun and interactive for the students. After all, there’s no better way to learn than by actually doing! During their visit, the students elected a City Council, elected a mayor, and appointed a City Manager in the same process our real City Council follows.

The controversial topic for this Council to decide was whether or not to expand our Historic District into the rest of downtown. Students were assigned to one side of the issue or the other and were given an opportunity to be heard during the public hearing. As always, the students presented some interesting perspectives and new ideas to each side of the argument. Many of them got up to speak and let their representatives know how they felt about this particular issue.

After the public hearing, it was interesting to see the seven mock-council members debate the issue. Some on the councilpersons where legitimately for the expansion, other legitimately against, and for the majority this was the first time they’ve heard about it. Ironically, there was some of the same angst and back-and-forth discussion that we see play out with our real councilmen on real issues.

In the end, the mock-Council voted in favor of expanding the Historic District to bring in the remainder of downtown. I hope the students (especially the mock-Councilpersons) walked away with a better understanding that each decision is complex and no decision is easy.

Just like the mock-Council, the our City Councilmen are your representatives and need to know how their constituents feel about a certain issues. Let them know by attending a City Council meeting and making a comment during Citizen’s Comments or during a public hearing whether for or against the issue as our students did.

Just like our mock-Council, our City Councilmen are faced with complex issues that rarely come down to being either for or against the issue. The mock-Council asked many questions about the impact on business, on tourism, on city finances, on future generations, and on the larger community. All of these have different answers each with their own shade of gray rather than being black and white.

What can each of us do to better understand the issues before our elected body and what can we do to better communicate how we feel these issues should be resolved to our elected officials? Let’s talk about it!

Elizabethton Employment Portfolio

A few weeks ago we talked about where people who live and work in Elizabethton come from and go to daily. Today, I want to take a look at what business sectors those who work in Elizabethton work in. While the data we have available cannot tell us how many people in each sector commute to Elizabethton, we can tell how many of the 9,356 jobs works in each sector. Much like an investment or retirement portfolio, a city must have a diverse employment portfolio in order to ensure that if one industry type decreases the city will not die or become stagnant.

The largest employment sector for Elizabethton is the educational services sector (21.5%). This would include anyone who works for a K-12 school system or a place of higher education, such as Milligan College, Northeast State at Elizabethton, and Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology at Elizabethton. Milligan College is the highest, non-public employer of jobs in this sector in Elizabethton.

Out second largest category is the retail trade sector (20.2%). The largest individual employer in this category is Walmart who employs around 400 people.

Health care and social assistance is the third largest category, employing 16 percent of the people who work in Elizabethton. Sycamore Shoals Hospital is by far the largest employer in this category employing approximately 400 people. Life Care Center of Elizabethton, however, is another top employer with around 160 employees.

Next, is the accommodation and food services category with 10.8 percent of the people who work in Elizabethton. While we do not have data on any particular employer, this category does include the likes of Applebee’s, Fatz, Beef O’Brady’s, Jiggy Ray’s, Dino’s, McDonalds, and Bojangles, etc.

Lastly, manufacturing is the fifth largest employment sector (8%). The largest employer in Elizabethton in this sector is Snap-On Tools Inc. employing over 330 employees.

Going into the future we see the greatest growth locally in the health care and social assistance sector, educational services sector, and retail sector. And as we can see, many of our top ten employers can be found in these categories. What other business sectors do we want to bring into Elizabethton in the future? What top business sectors do we already have that we want to see grow? Let’s talk about it!

Elizabethton – A Retirement Community…or Is It?

During my time in Elizabethton I’ve often heard many people say, “There are not enough young people here” or “Elizabethton is just a retirement community.” As a planner, my ears perked up when I hear this!

I wanted to explore this topic more to find out if Elizabethton does have a higher concentration of older citizens. I started on the Census Bureau’s website to start by gathering information on age in Elizabethton and Carter County.

I used a formula called a Location Quotient to analyze the information. This analysis is often used in Economic Development to determine if there is a concentration of businesses in a city, but can be used to determine concentrations in other areas.

The analysis returned the concentrated age groups in Elizabethton and Carter County with very little surprise. In Elizabethton, there is a higher concentration of citizens 70 years and older than in the rest of the southeastern United States. An oddity occurred in Carter County’s analysis in that the higher concentration of citizens occurred from ages 55 to 84 rather than continuing after 84. This would suggest that as citizens aged in the county, they were likely to move to the city. This could be because of the concentration of nursing home facilities or older people may desire to downsize and be closer to amenities such as doctors, grocery stores, and shopping areas.

Interestingly, another group also appeared concentrated in Elizabethton. This is the 18 to 24 year old age group – college age young adults. This speaks to the impact that our local colleges and higher education institutions have on Elizabethton. Northeast State at Elizabethton, Milligan College, Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, and Emmanuel School of Religion all are within the Elizabethton city limits and the data suggests that these students also choose to live within the city limits. There is also a likelihood that the city sees some “spillover” residents of East Tennessee State University.

The last statistic that I discovered during this analysis is that out of 5 randomly selected citizens in Elizabethton, 1 will be under 18 years old, 1 will be over 65 years old, and the other 3 will be between 18 and 65. While Elizabethton may have a higher concentration of older folks, I think it is safe to say Elizabethton is far from being a retirement community.

Now that we know who lives in Elizabethton, what can we do to encourage new age groups to move here while continuing to engage our existing residence? Let’s talk about it!

The Importance of Small Business Online Presence

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the effects of small business and local business on the local economy as well as the impact that it has on your local governments. There are many businesses in Elizabethton and Carter County that get passed up every day as people drive to Johnson City to shop because they don’t know either the business exist or what the business offers. There are different marketing campaigns you can do to fix this, but one easy solution is online social media.

A consumer analytics company recently studied the impact of grocery stores engaging customers via social media to the amount spent at the grocery store. Not surprisingly, the study found a direct link between social media engagement and sales. The surprising part is how much of a difference it made – 50 percent increase in sales over time of those who were engaged Facebook fan as opposed to those who were not!

Customers who ‘Like’ or ‘Posted’ something on the grocer’s Facebook page spent $1,000 (95 percent) more annually than those who did not. Those same engaged customers also visited the store 2.5 times more than did non-engaged customers, and purchased 35 percent more items than those were not engaged on Facebook.

I understand that grocery stores are uniquely different, but the data are overwhelming clear. Engaged customers on your social media outlets are more likely to visit more often, purchase more items, and ultimately spend more money at your store and in Elizabethton.

Because of its popularity, Facebook can easily serve as a simple website for a small business. And best of all, it’s free! A simple page lets customers know where you’re located, your hours, and what services or products you offer. Making a one post a day, whether a funny picture or an upcoming sale, is all it takes to engage your customer base.

There are also great options to advertise your business via social media as well. Running a promotion offering a customer 10 percent off for a positive Facebook post or a Twitter tweet and linking it to your

Facebook page or website is a great way to let people know who you are and get free advertising for your business.

Having a small business online presence in today’s world is becoming more and more of a requirement rather than an option. What can we do to make small business better know in Elizabethton? Let’s talk about it!

Where do we Live and Work?

In the past, we have talked about transportation and the importance of having a good transportation system that can get people where they need to go in a timely and efficient manner. One of the main reasons to have such a transportation network in our modern times is simply to get people to and from work!

Where people live and where they work has the largest impact on transportation networks today. Cities all over the country deal with peak traffic hours, which, interestingly, is the hour just before offices open and just

after the offices close. Where people live and where people work creates what we call commute patterns. Commute patterns help planners identify where new roads need to be and what roads need to be improved. Locally, in Elizabethton and Carter County, we use data that show us the relationship between where people live and where they work.

In Elizabethton in 2011, there were just over 4,700 people over the age of 16 employed that lived in Elizabethton. 72 percent of them commuted to work outside of Elizabethton while the remaining 28 percent actually worked in Elizabethton.

In addition to those who lived and worked in Elizabethton, an additional 8,000 people commuted to Elizabethton daily to work. To put this into a little perspective, twice as many people commuted to Elizabethton to work than the entire workforce that lived in Elizabethton.

This information makes clear that Elizabethton is a regional employment center just like Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol – more people are coming here to work than leaving Elizabethton to work.

Now that we have some numbers, let’s look at where they’re coming from. Unsurprisingly, approximately 1,500 of Elizabethton residence commute to Johnson City to work. Next, is Kingsport with just over 300 and third is Bristol with 170.

Interestingly, the most people commuting to Elizabethton to work are from Johnson City! Almost 750 people commute to Elizabethton from Johnson City to work on a daily basis. Just over 230 people commute from Kingsport to Elizabethton and 227 people make the short commute from Hunter to work in Elizabethton daily.

What do you think? Now that we have this data, what do we need to do to improve our transportation systems? What more do we need to do to make Elizabethton a bigger player in the employment market for upper east Tennessee? Let’s talk about it!

The Power of Local and Small Businesses on the Economy

If you are a regular reader of the Elizabethton Star then I’m sure you’ve recently been reading about our efforts to recruit new retail businesses to Elizabethton. As I’ve mentioned before, the benefits of shopping at Elizabethton retailers is key in making Elizabethton a better place to live.

The taxes on the products you buy in Elizabethton go directly back into the community you live in. It provides additional revenue for us to invest more in the community through roads, parks, and better services. It also provides additional revenues for our school systems to provide even greater educational opportunities for your children and grandchildren.

Today, I want to take this conversation to the next level – the local, small business. I’m sure many of you have heard that the money you spend more locally goes directly back into the local economy to create more money. This basic concept creates what is called the multiplier effect.

The multiplier effect happens anytime you make a purchase locally in Elizabethton, but there are varying degrees at which that money creates more money and more economic activity. Buying products from a chain retailer in Elizabethton will return 13 cents for every dollar you spent back into the community. However, buying products from a small business retailer in Elizabethton will return 48 cents for every dollar spent back into the community.

A similar paradigm can be applied to restaurants. In local chain restaurants 34 cents per dollar spent will be returned back to Elizabethton while local, small business restaurants return 65 cents back to Elizabethton. These numbers may not be exact for Elizabethton, but are based on numerous studies in other communities and give us a good idea of what can be expected.

When we apply the multiplier effect to these returns to our community, they will be multiplied by 2 to 3 times creating economic benefits to Elizabethton and Carter County! When we think of the impact that simply shopping local and at small businesses can do this is quite significant!

As we continue to grow our retail base in Elizabethton we strive to recruit new retail business as well as help new retail businesses start up. The real question becomes, what can we do to encourage shopping and patronizing our local, small businesses? Let’s talk about it!

City Taxes, Fines, and User Fees...It’s All the Same, Right?

I know many people I’ve talked to have a hard time understanding how city finances work. I understand - it’s a little abnormal from business finances. In a business, revenue or sales go into one big bucket used to pay for the product or business. However, in local government, there are multiple buckets

Each bucket has its own revenue and set of services it provides. Imagine four buckets in front of you; one has ‘General Fund’ written on it, another says ‘Water/Sewer Services’, another says ‘Electric Services’, and another says ‘Sanitation Services.’

Each of these buckets represents a different type of fund. The general fund bucket collects money from property taxes and sales taxes. This bucket’s job is to help support the operations of the city government.

The general fund bucket provides services like the public library, new and repaving streets and sidewalks, parks and recreation, police services, city financial management, property maintenance enforcement, fire services, city administration, and development services.

The general fund bucket also appropriates money to organizations that provide a benefit to the community, such as the Senior Citizens Center, Carter County Rescue Squad, and the Elizabethton-Carter County Animal Shelter.

Fines are issued often because of violating a city ordinance. The costs of enforcing these ordinances comes from the general fund bucket therefore fines are also collected in the general fund bucket.

The remaining buckets are what are called Enterprise Services. These services are operated similar to a business and cannot use the money in the general fund bucket to operate. Just as their name suggests, these buckets provide specific services such as water and sewer service, electric service, and garbage and solid waste collection (sanitation services). Water/sewer services, electric services, and sanitation services (or garbage collection) can only spend the user fees that their customers pay for the service - just like a business.

The user fees you pay for these services are based on the amount or type of service provided. The rate of these user fees are set based on how much it costs to provide these services, and cannot be used to pay for other services in other buckets.

I hope this has helped clear the muddy water! Next time you hear a friend or neighbor talk about their bills or taxes, take a minute to help explain how this process works to them. Let’s talk about it!

Preserving the Places that have Meaning

Historic Preservation is an idea that has been given a bad rap in Elizabethton. Many people, rightly, associate Historic Preservation with the Historic Zoning Commission here in Elizabethton. Many assume that this Commission will freeze everything in place, stripping the property owners of the right to do as they wish with their property.

Yes, the Commission does regulate some aspects of the exterior of buildings, but this generally is just ensuring that the materials and style of the building remain true to when it was originally constructed and still allow a property owner to make changes as needed. While the interior of all buildings can be completely modernized, one goal is to keep historic structures and neighborhoods in our community, well, looking historic!

Another reality our Commission faces is that an occupied historic building is better than an unoccupied historic building. An occupied building is maintained much better that one that is unoccupied, so limiting the regulation on these buildings to some aspects of the exterior allows the business to modify the interior of the building to however they see fit in order to ensure the success of their business. Franklin, Tennessee and Asheville, North Carolina have done an excellent job of doing this!

The ultimate goal of the Historic Zoning Commission and other preservationists is to preserve the unique and historic places in Elizabethton. In other-words, to preserve the places that have meaning to our community. I often hear from people who tell me the Lynnwood Hotel was so beautiful and such a treasure to this community. I wish I would have been able to experience it as well and I’m sure many of you wish you children and grandchildren could experience it. This is an example of Historic Preservation at its core.

If other buildings that had meaning in our community fell in the name of progress, I would argue, years later, many would feel homesick for those buildings and scenes just like I see for the Lynnwood Hotel. Had the Historic Zoning Commission been around at the time, the Lynnwood Hotel might still be with us, rehabilitated back to its former beauty for another use.

I can understand frustrations with an extra layer of approvals, but take a moment to reflect on the alternative.

What are the places in Elizabethton that have meaning to you? Share with us your pictures of a place and a short sentence about why that particular place has meaning to you. Use this as an opportunity to begin the conversation about preserving places that have meaning in our community. Let’s talk about it!

Getting from here to there in Elizabethton

Transportation networks have been vital elements in cities throughout history. With them come the positive of economic success and the negative of congestion and constant movement. Transportation networks, both motor vehicle and pedestrian oriented, create the bones of a city. Today I want to talk about different types of transportation in Elizabethton and encourage you to help decide what new types of transportation is needed in our community.

Motor vehicle transportation plays a very important role in our community since 55% of the households in Elizabethton have two or more vehicles. Motor vehicle transportation networks consist of three types of road classifications - arterials, collectors, and local roads.

Arterial streets are the major routes through a community with the simple goal of moving traffic quickly and efficiently. In order to do this we limit the number of business entrances allowed, increase lane widths and speed limits, and space traffic lights ideally a half-mile apart.

Collector routes are in between arterial and local roads and serve to move traffic from local routes to arterial routes. These road types are the major roads through a neighborhood instead of a city and may have some entrances to businesses located along them. On these roads, we strive to narrow lanes and decrease the speed limits to make it more appropriate for neighborhoods.

Lastly, local roads are designed to provide access to property, businesses, and homes. These roads tend to have narrow lanes and will allow unmarked on-street parking. They tend to have many entrances for homes or businesses and very low speed limits. These roads are designed specifically for pedestrian friendliness.

I also want to bring up another type of transportation, which is the pedestrian transportation network. These include elements such as sidewalks, bike lanes, and walking and biking trail systems. More and more we recognize the equal importance of these types of transportation options as much as motor vehicle options. They promote good health, are good for the environment, and best of all, are much cheaper options than a motor vehicle.

We can be very thankful that Elizabethton has our new Tweetsie Trail and the Riverfront Linear Path as safe pedestrian transportation options. We, however, do lack sidewalks and bike lanes in our community.

What do you think? How is our balance of motor vehicle transportation options compared with the pedestrian transportation options? Let’s talk about it!

Vehicles Available per Household	1st Congressional District	Elizabethton
No vehicles available	6.3%	5.9%
1 vehicle available	32.7%	38.8%
2 vehicles available	38.4%	35.8%
3 or more vehicles available	22.6%	19.5%

Giving Elizabethton a Green Urban Thumb

We have all heard that certain colors can bring our certain feelings and emotions. Well, what about the color green? Green, it is said, relaxes and renews you; a green streetscape is supposed to bring people together, but is this true?

What if I told you that you could make a little extra on the sale if you started by planting a tree and adding greenery? Well, it's true! A 2010 study in Landscape and Urban Planning Journal found that homes in Oregon neighborhoods with street trees sold $8,870 higher than those without them and was sold 1.7 days quicker on average.

What about speeding traffic through your neighborhood? Trees can take care of that too! The presence of street trees in a neighborhood dropped the average speed of traffic by 3 miles-per-hour, according to a 2008 ITE Journal On The Web study.

Trees even have the power to reduce crime! A 2001 study in Chicago comparing neighborhoods with trees and greenery with those with no trees and little greenery found that property damage crimes had been reduced by 48 percent while violent crimes had been reduced by 56 percent!

Trees even have the power to make us spend more. A 2003 study found that customers were willing to pay 12 percent more for an item if the retail or shopping district had trees in it (hint: this is why you see trees, bushes, and greenery in indoor malls!).

There are many other benefits as well, such as encouraging people to exercise, helping to reduce storm flooding, and cleaning the air and water in our cities. Who knew that trees could make so much of a difference!

In Elizabethton, we require that new construction adds trees, bushes, and greenery to their parking lots, buildings, and along the streets. Yes, it does cost more and creates less parking, but it also makes walking to the building more enjoyable, keeps your car cool while you're shopping, and creates a more attractive community.

The next time you see an affordable tree or bush, buy it, plant it in your front yard or add some landscaping to your house. Buy some pots and plant flowers and other greenery in it and place it next to the entrance to your home or business. What more should we be doing to make Elizabethton more green? Let's talk about it!

Making Downtown Elizabethton a Vibrant Place

There has been talk about aesthetic improvements and new businesses in Downtown Elizabethton recently. This is great to hear! Each community's downtown plays a vital role in the pride and identity of the community. I now feel that downtown Elizabethton is ready to take the next step to become more vibrant, but it will take commitment and working together to achieve this.

Many people have heard of the Main Street Program which has helped hundreds communities throughout Tennessee and the Country revitalize their downtowns. While Elizabethton may not be ready to take this big of a step yet, I believe the concepts of the Main Street Program should start to be evaluated. Repeatedly, these steps have proven to be effective and will strengthen our Downtown as well. The program identifies eight guiding principles, but today I want to focus on just three of those principles.

First is comprehensiveness. In order for downtown to be successful, a plan for comprehensive aesthetic improvements, promotion, and organization must be implemented. All the businesses and stakeholders must take an active role in working together to make downtown one united place instead of multiple individual places. After all, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Next is the principle of self-help. To put it bluntly, no one else is going to help or save our downtown. We must invest in ourselves now and know that rewards will be reaped in the future. After all, we don't build a house and then let it deteriorate. We perform annual maintenance and make improvements so that the house will increase in value. Our downtown is much the same, businesses and stakeholders must invest in our downtown to increase the value. No one else is going to do this for us!

Lastly, partnerships are the third principle for us to consider. This is a very broad principle, but generally, the businesses need to partner with each other, downtown organizations, other business organization, community leaders, and local governments. We must recognize that each partner can contribute something that another may not be able. At the same time, we must recognize that no one partner is more important that the other. Your local governments may only be able to provide improvements to streets, while other business organizations may help provide resources to improve the business environment.

What else can we do to make downtown a more vibrant place? Let's talk about it!

For more information on the Main Street program, visit www.mainstreet.org.

... but I just know Target would do so well here!

Many of you may know that within the past year or two the City Planning Department has taken the lead on retail recruitment, in conjunction with Carter County Tomorrow, to bring more retail options to Elizabethton and Carter County.

The entire recruitment process really takes two-step. First, we, must determine what our local economy can support. We do not want to bring in a big retailer then have them go out of business within a few years, after all. We also must determine where the retailer might be able to go and make contact with those property owners. Not every property is ideal for every type of retail business.

The second step is finding the retailer that matches our local criteria. In Elizabethton, for example, we have a need for more general merchandise stores; this would include stores like Kmart, Walmart, and Target. I have had multiple requests to bring a Target to Elizabethton. This is often followed by, "My friends and I would shop there all the time. I just know they would do so well here!"

Unfortunately, these stores are in this business to make money. They have determined which markets they should go in to make the most money and do not really care much about community incentives or how many people say they will shop at their store.

We then look at the requirements of each of the retail stores we want to recruit to determine if they are a match for us. Target, for example, requires a minimum of 40,000 people in a 3-mile radius of their location and an average household income of $45,000 before they will even consider looking to locate in your community.

In Elizabethton, we have about 19,927 people in a 3-mile radius and an average household income of $42,218. We could say we are half way to a Target!

Many times, we cannot provide the exact retailer our citizens desire simply because the business is not a match for the community. But we do strive to bring in retailers that provide the same or similar products and services and that are a good match for our community. What other retail opportunities would you like to see in Elizabethton? Let's talk about it!

Impact and Importance of Property Maintenance

Last week we talked about that state of housing in Elizabethton and took a brief look at future demands for housing. There is one element of housing that I did not discuss which is home values or property values.

The city and other local governments have a responsibility to help reduce and even deter the effects of one property owners choice on another property owner. Enter property maintenance regulations.
Property maintenance – this word is almost just as bad as any four letter word for a person who believes in strong property rights. I have heard many times that an owner can do whatever they wish with their property. For the most part, they are correct! However, because cities have high densities of homes, what one property owner does with their property often times directly affect the value of their neighboring property owner.

Now, don't get me wrong, I most certainly believe that by owning a piece of property entitles you to a great many rights and privileges that other citizens may not have. We must recognize, though, that what we do on our property has a much greater impact on our neighborhood and our community at large.

By simply making small repairs to guttering or slapping some fresh paint on your shutters has a positive impact on your property, your neighbor's property, and the community's property values as a whole. Conversely, a broken window left unrepaired has a negative impact on your property, your neighborhood, and your community and will eventually lead to lowering the value of neighboring properties. I don't think this is something your neighbors would appreciate!

The impact and importance of property maintenance are essential to protect neighbors from negatively impacting other’s property values. In Elizabethton, we have adopted a minimum standard for property

maintenance which still allows property owners to do as they wish with their property, but not to the point of negatively impacting their neighbor's property value.

The next time you consider making a change to your property, ask how would I feel if my neighbors did this to their property? What else can we do in our neighborhood to encourage better property maintenance? Let's talk about it!

Finding a Place to Call Home – The State of Housing in Elizabethton

As I discussing in my first column part of my job is to look into the future of Elizabethton and prepare the city to handle any issues that might arise. This week I would like to look at Housing in Elizabethton. Often housing is one of the more difficult areas for a city to prepare for simply because cities do not build houses!

When urban planners look to into the future, there are a few indicators we consider to determine what direction housing needs to be moving in. Vacancy rate and housing mix are two of the big ones that give us a sense of what cities will need in the future.

In Elizabethton, our housing vacancy rate gives us a good indication if we need new or additional housing. We have a vacant housing rate of just over 12 percent currently. This number typically is close to 10 percent, so 12 percent would indicate that there is not necessarily a high demand for new housing units.

To determine our future housing mix we look to current vacancy rates in owner-occupied and rental-occupied units. Elizabethton has a vacancy rate of 0.9 percent for owner-occupied homes, while the rental vacancy rate is around 9 percent. These vacancy rates should typically be around 2.5 to 3 percent for homeowner units and 5 to 6 percent for rental units. This gives us an indication that we need more owner-occupied units and less rental units.

But wait, we just said we did not need any new housing! Well, this is correct. The existing housing in Elizabethton is enough, but it needs to be transferred to owner-occupied rather than rental property.
These statistics show that there is definitely some work to be done to prepare Elizabethton’s housing for the future. What do you think? Do we need more housing or not? Do we need to provide more housing that can be rented or purchased? Let’s talk about it!

(The data used in this article comes from the US Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey.)

To Plan or To Be Planned, That is the Question

Think about the last time you decided to take a road trip. How did you know where you wanted to go? How did you figure out how to get there? How would that road trip have turned out if you didn’t know how to get to your destination, or worse yet, if you did not even know what your destination was! My guess is you would have had a very unsuccessful road trip.

Just like planning a road trip, urban planners sit in the navigation seat of our cities and help its residents determine what their destination is and on what roads to turn to get the community there.

During my time here I have heard a variety of destinations for Elizabethton. From a tourist destination, to the best place in the Tri-Cities to live, to the most business friendly city in the state. All of these are great destinations, but just like your road trip, everyone in the car has to agree to go in the same direction and to the same destination.

One of my favorite quotes as a planner is from Mahatma Gandhi. He says, “the future depends on what we do in the present.” This is wonderfully applicable to cities! The policies, ordinances, the agreements we make today in our community will shape and create what the future of Elizabethton will be. Without a collective destination, we don’t know on which road to turn or what policies or ordinances we should be making today. We have to know where we want to go.

No matter what decisions we make today Elizabethton will continue to move forward, but are we going to plan our own destination, our own future? Or will the community be planned for us by the decisions and unknown outcomes we choose today?

“Some communities allow the future to happen to them. Successful communities decide the future is something they can create.” one National Civic League saying states. It takes work, it takes time, and it takes energy. We have the power today to make our community what we want it to be in twenty years, so what’s our destination… let’s talk about it!

Introductions

I want to take a few moments in this first column to introduce myself and what I do at the City. I was born and raised in rural northern Ohio. I moved from Ohio to Northeast Tennessee to attend Milligan College where I received my Bachelors of Science in Business Administration and Legal Studies in 2009. I had started working for the City of Elizabethton as an Intern in the City Manager’s Office during my tenure at Milligan and shortly after my graduation I applied for and was offered a position working under Mr. David Ornduff as a Community Planner. I had worked for Mr. Ornduff for two years when he announced his retirement. I applied for the Directorship and was appointed to the full Directorship the following January of 2011.

In my position as the Planning and Development Director for the City I am involved in, well, just about everything! The core of my position is to plan for the future of Elizabethton, to see where the citizens of Elizabethton want to be in ten or twenty years and guide them on a path to get there. I work closely with developers in order to ensure that the type and look of developments is what this community desires. I work with surveyors and property owners to create new lots of land and decide where new roads will go. I work with the Parks and Recreation Board to help them choose new locations for parks and recreational activities within the community. I work with Carter County Tomorrow to ensure that the city has available industrial and commercial property as well as a viable workforce to meet the needs of existing and future businesses. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.

In this column, I will be touching on these various aspects of Elizabethton. Most importantly, I hope that this column can be a conversation between you and me on what you want to see in Elizabethton whether it’s housing, transportation, economic development, utilities, education, or any other aspect of the community… let’s talk about it!