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Russell Investments has finally made their decision regarding the location of their headquarters.  They’re moving to Seattle.  You should see the look of surprise on my face.

But will this be the end of the downtown pipe-dream now that the ‘Financial Services’ pipe-dream is gone for good? Will the next mayor and city council drop the idea of a glorious downtown while it and the rest of the city’s infrastructure fall into decay? Will they finally use the money we give them to fix the potholes that keep showing up?

I doubt it.  There’s no limit to the stupidity of politicians and bureaucrats.  Wasn’t it Einstein who defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over expecting different results’?

So how will they justify their ridiculous spending on the ghost town we call downtown?  Will they spend the hundreds of millions of dollars they were planning to keep Russell in town on some other pointless projects?

Or will the voters of Tacoma finally find people who love the whole city instead of just part of it?

Here’s my suggestion:  Stop trying to fix it.

Government doesn’t decide where businesses work.  Targeted incentives don’t work.

Tacoma city government needs to get back to the basics and stop trying to fix a problem that it can only make worse.  Government cannot fix the slump that downtown Tacoma has been in for decades.  It tried and failed and tried and failed and tried…  The best thing it can do is to get out of the way and let business do what business does: bring prosperity to the community.

Government should just back off and let businesses decide for themselves.  Roll back the taxes.  Take the restrictions off of parking (there are a lot of spaces about to open up.)  Time the traffic lights to favor streets instead of almost empty streetcars.  Enforce the law. Fix the potholes.  Clean the streets.  Shut up and stay out of the way.

Funding for the current economic development board should be dropped immediately.  A business friendly options should be found to replace it.  The replacement should be people who won’t say things like “we want the kinds of businesses that WE like” (see paragraph 6).

Beggars can’t be choosers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Campaign 2009, FeedTacoma.com, Tacoma Contradictions, Tacoma Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.