Friendly or Not

So, what constitutes business friendly? As written by Andy Peterson of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, Business friendly is anything better than Baghdad or Paris. I beg to differ. To put Duluth on the same plane as Iraq or France is like comparing competition between two 8th grade football teams with one from the NFL. We are part of North America and better yet, the United States of America. We are part of the single most competitive, successful, capitalistic, free, prosperous and thriving society the world has ever known. With that comes advantages but also huge competitive challenges. If we are better than other parts of the world, well, good for us, but if we are at a competitive disadvantage with practically every metro area within a 300 mile radius, then the reputation of a tough place to do business is well deserved and has become our achilles heel.

Simplistic and Euro-Centric Intellectualism serves no purpose in our struggle to understand why we are less competitive than our Northern peers. Duluth is an incredible City with enormous natural assets, several exquisite man-made beauties and a small population characterized by views as divergent as the climates on Venus and Pluto. To compare Duluth in it's current state of affairs and competitiveness to a City outside of a 300 mile radius is comparing Duluth to, well, a place that has absolutely no bearing, impact or relevance to our reality.

Duluth is centrally located on the North American Continent, is the world's largest inland port, has access to rail, interstate, an international air terminal and intellectual assets that boggle the mind. As a City we seem all too willing to dismiss the exodus of the thousands of UMD graduates every year, too willing to embrace our shrinking population and tax base. We turn a deaf ear to the plight of struggling small businesses and focus our attention instead to the influx of homeless and criminally inclined. We build massive and expensive public entertainment facilities that have never been self-sustaining and should be privatized yet end up subsidizing them with millions of tax dollars each year. We promise our public employees wage, benefit and pension packages completely out of reach to those in the private sector.

So, dispensing with platitudes and getting to nuts and bolts, how does Duluth turn the corner and become a haven for successful business? Should we as a City be refusing business when few want to locate here or should we turn our focus to attracting so many who want to locate here that we have the luxury to pick and choose? I choose the latter. How do we get from here to there?

This is the question I pose for all of Duluth. How do we get from here to there? How do we stop the brain drain, the slumping economy, the exodus of families, decreasing tax base and increasing tax burden? How do we get businesses to be climbing over one another to locate some aspect of their business here? What will make us the single most attractive place to conduct commerce in this geographic area?

The answers to these questions along with pragmatic, palatable solutions will put Duluth on the fast track to economic vitality and fiscal strength. This should be the underlying mission of our Chamber of Commerce.