Published Monday, September 23, 2002
'elastic' city growth here
EDITOR'S NOTE: As Farrell, Sharon, Hermitage, Sharpsville and Wheatland discuss the possibility of a merger or consolidation, Shenango Valley Initiative held a summit in June to add lifestyle issues to what SVI has predominantly seen as a discussion about finances and government structure.
SVI invited David Rusk, a consultant on urban and suburban policy, and John Powell, founder and director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, to see the Shenango Valley, examine its history and offer their thoughts on a boundary change.
Rusk wrote the following piece to expound on many of the points he made during the summit.
Rusk is a former civil rights and anti-poverty worker for the Washington Urban League, and legislative and program development director for the U.S. Department of Labor. He served in the New Mexico House of Representatives and was mayor of Albuquerque from 1977 to 1981. He is the author of "Cities Without Suburbs," "Baltimore Unbound" and "Inside Game/Outside Game."
"BIG BOX" CITIES PROSPER
Over the past 50 years the central cities of the Sharon-Mercer County peer regions divided into two distinct groups.
One group was like the city of Sharon. In an age of sprawl, these cities remained trapped within largely inflexible city limits. These were the "inelastic," or "little box," cities.
The second group expanded their municipal boundaries, doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling in territorial size. These were the "elastic," or "big box" cities.
"Big box" cities did what is being proposed now by the merger of Sharon, Farrell, Sharpsville, Wheatland and, most importantly, Hermitage. They absorbed most of their growing suburbs. Most expanded steadily through annexation, but the city of Battle Creek actually merged with its surrounding township in 1982, expanding from 10.5 square miles to 42.8 square miles overnight.
The proposed city of Shenango Valley would have led the list of elastic cities. It would have expanded its municipal territory from 3.6 square miles (that is, the city of Sharon in 1950) to 37.8 square miles (the present combined area of the five municipalities). Though the city of Shenango Valley would still have been geographically smaller than Anderson, Battle Creek or Waterloo, its rate of territorial growth would have been phenomenal -- some 950 percent.
Whether a central city was "inelastic" or "elastic" had major consequences for its health in 2000. Over the five decades, Sharon lost 38 percent of its population; inelastic cities as a group lost 32 percent of their residents.
By contrast, elastic cities gained 26 percent in population. Expanding from the city of Sharon's base population in 1950, the apparent population gain of a merged city of Shenango Valley would have been 62 percent. (In reality, the combined population of the five municipalities dropped 18 percent since 1950.)
A city of Shenango Valley would have had a composite poverty rate (15 percent) measurably lower than Sharon's poverty rate (19 percent) -- more in balance with the countywide rate (13 percent).
"Big box" regions beat out "little box" regions
"Big box" regions grow jobs much faster than "little box" regions.
That's the message the analysis of peer regions sends. Metropolitan areas with growing, healthy "big box" central cities outperform metropolitan areas with shrinking, poverty-impacted "little box" central cities like Sharon.
The dominant story of Sharon-Mercer County for the past three decades was loss of its traditional industrial base. From 1969 to 1999, Sharon-Mercer County lost 54 percent of its factory jobs. Its "little box" regional peers lost heavily as well (- 41 percent).
"Big box" regions were also hit by factory closings, but they bounced back better, losing only 12 percent of their manufacturing jobs.
And overall, during the past half century, "big box" regions grew total jobs at twice the rate (121 percent) of "little box" regions (68 percent) and Sharon-Mercer County (61 percent).
Likewise, since in past decades people followed jobs, the population in "big box" regions grew at twice the rate (43 percent) of the "little box" regions (21 percent).
Their growth rate far outstripped Sharon-Mercer County's meager 7 percent population growth.
Finally, adjusted for inflation, a typical family's real income grew slightly faster in "big box" regions (102 percent) than in "little box" regions (98 percent).
Sharon-Mercer County's lagging growth in real income (79 percent) was second worst (only ahead of Steubenville-Marietta's 75percent growth rate) among all 15 regional peers.
Hermitage and Farrell --
convincing the "bookends"
My colleague, John Powell, has called Hermitage and Farrell "the two bookends" of the consolidation decision. Convince the voters of those two jurisdictions to support consolidation and you'll have a deal." Let's address each community's concerns in turn.
Why should Hermitage support consolidation?
Isn't Hermitage the only one that is growing? Didn't many residents move to Hermitage to get away, for instance, from Sharon and Farrell? Isn't Hermitage doing all right? Why should it link up with its troubled core communities again?
Hermitage is doing well only by comparison with Sharon and Farrell. It is part of a region that is economically stagnating, steadily aging and may be even slowly dying off. In fact, during the 1990s, 84 percent of Hermitage's net growth was accounted for by the increase in people 75 years and older.
During the same decade, Hermitage's 25- to 34-year-olds declined by one-quarter and it fell to the third lowest percentage of households with children (after Grove City and Wheatland) in all of Mercer County.
Hermitage cannot build a future solely on local retirees. (In the last census, over 91 percent of Hermitage's population was local long-term residents.)
And Hermitage won't be the foundation for rebuilding a dynamic, growing region that attracts the kind of creative people that now fuel economic growth elsewhere. (Now jobs follow creative people who seek a certain quality of life.)
Undoubtedly, Hermitage offers a comfortable lifestyle. But to an outsider's eyes, Hermitage is standard-issue suburbia. (John Powell asks, "Will your children come back to the Shenango Valley because Hermitage has a new super-Walmart?")
The area's unique qualities are found not on Hermitage's Route 62 but on Sharon's East State Street; not in Hermitage's cul-de-sacs but in Sharon, Farrell and Sharpsville's historic neighborhoods where, if the burden of poverty were lifted, re-gentrification could take root.
Hermitage needs healthy neighbors if Hermitage is to have a future.
And what are Farrell's concerns? Fifty-two percent of the Shenango Valley's African-American population lives in Farrell (and 86 percent in Farrell and Sharon combined). Having just won two seats on the Farrell city council, African-Americans are afraid of losing their political voice again. From a near-majority in Farrell, the black population would drop to only one out of eight residents of the new consolidated city.
Losing representation is a legitimate concern given the political history of major consolidations elsewhere and no local track record of large numbers of whites voting for black candidates.
However, assuring African-Americans of continued political representation can readily be accomplished if people of good will agree that it's a valid issue that must be addressed.
The Intergovernmental Study Commission has proposed a system of 10 wards with one of the wards to be majority minority. That's one solution (though it implies that African-Americans are guaranteed a political voice only if they remain in highly segregated neighborhoods).
Other methods of organizing elections (proportional voting, cumulative voting, etc.) can assure representation of minority interests without being dependent on continued segregation.
The challenge is to agree it's a problem -- then find the best solution.
Farrell's black residents should not reject consolidation with the hope of ultimately winning control of Farrell city hall. That's becoming captain of a sinking ship.
Becoming part of a bigger box opens doors to new opportunities. During the 1990s, residential desegregation of Sharon-Mercer County's "big box" peers improved at twice the rate of its "little box" peers.
The University of Pittsburgh's Dr. David Y. Miller has found that "jurisdictional diffusion is significantly and unquestionably linked to black segregation in metropolitan America." Regional societies are divided more by race in "little box" regions than in "Big Box" regions.
A city of Shenango Valley can mean both a political voice and greater social justice for the area's African-Americans.
Why consolidation might jump start Shenango Valley economy
Could merging Sharon, Heritage, Farrell, Sharpsville and Wheatland into one, unified city be the catalyst to break the Shenango Valley out of its decades-old stagnation?
That's the real issue that area voters must answer.
The Intergovernmental Study Commission is currently examining the nuts and bolts of a possible merger. Could taxpayer dollars be saved by combining duplicative data processing systems? Could street maintenance equipment be used more efficiently within one department than within five? Getting more bang for the taxpayer's buck is always important.
But the overriding question is whether or not consolidation would open the door to new economic opportunities for the Shenango Valley.
That was certainly the case for Indianapolis, Nashville and Jacksonville.
They leveraged city-county consolidation ("big boxes") literally into big league status. All subsequently experienced dynamic population and economic growth. And Louisville-Jefferson County will merge on New Year's Day with the same goal.
Let's forget about these large metro areas. The same pattern holds among Sharon-Mercer County's 15 peer regions. Nine of the peer regions created their own "big boxes." Battle Creek merged with its surrounding township in 1982. Anderson, Elkhart, Kokomo, Muncie, Janesville, Mansfield, Parkersburg and Waterloo all absorbed surrounding suburbs through steady annexation.
Three of the nine "big box" cities already are bigger geographically that the proposed 38-square-mile city of Shenango Valley (a working title suggested by the Intergovernmental Study Commission). Eight of the nine "big box" cities have larger populations. All the "big box" regions but Anderson grew jobs much more rapidly than did Sharon-Mercer County.
This is not an implicit Sun Belt vs. Rust Belt comparison. Sharon-Mercer County's peers are all neighbors in what I have called the "Industrial Heartland" that stretches from upstate New York through Minnesota. "Big box" regions consistently outperform "little box" regions economically.
My observation has been strongly endorsed by a new book, "The Regional Governing of Metropolitan America," by Miller, associate dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at Pitt. Miller writes that "more unified metropolitan regions are better able to organize to support economic competitiveness."
On Miller's Metropolitan Power Diffusion Index Sharon-Mercer County is the most governmentally fragmented region among its peers. (Williamsport, Pa. naturally ranks a close second.)
On the other hand, state governments that decentralize broad authority to local governments aid economic development. Pennsylvania ranks 17th best out of 50 states in empowering local government.
"Power devolved to the local governments within the state creates the necessary condition for greater economic performance," Miller writes. "However, when local governments fail to unify that devolved authority at the metropolitan level, the opportunity is lost." That is the Shenango Valley's situation.
Consider the advantages of the proposed city of Shenango Valley over the existing city of Sharon as the region's acknowledged central city.
» The city of Shenango Valley's population would be about 44,000 compared to the city of Sharon's 16,000, giving its leaders more weight in county and state circles.
» The city of Shenango Valley's property tax base would have a market value of over $1.1 billion compared with the city of Sharon's less than $250 million, giving the central city a better credit rating and greater capacity to support economic development initiatives.
» The city of Shenango Valley would probably be able to attract and maintain a more professional corps of experienced, highly skilled city administrators.
» The city of Shenango Valley would unify planning and zoning authority over its 38 square miles rather than having such powers divided among five "little box" governments with (frankly speaking) their more parochial viewpoints.
Having a "big box" city of Shenango Valley undoubtedly would not have prevented Westinghouse and Sharon Steel's closing their doors. The de-industrialization of America has been driven primarily by broader global trends than by strictly local conditions.
But having had a "big box" city might well have allowed the region to make a faster and better economic recovery. For example:
» Unlike Sharon, would a city of Shenango Valley have allowed the abandoned Westinghouse plant to decay untouched for 20 years without money or ideas to do anything about it?
» Unlike Sharon and its four discordant neighbors, would a city of Shenango Valley have allowed the state university to leave Penn State-Shenango housed in an old, largely un-renovated high school building rather than lobbying successfully for a major downtown campus?
» In a region one of whose prime attractions is its beautiful countryside, would a city of Shenango Valley have permitted sub-divisions and strip shopping centers to gobble up farmland and open space at over 30 times the rate of population growth, as occurred during the 1980s?
» Would having a vigorous central city/job center of 44,000 have persuaded the Census Bureau to continue designating Sharon-Mercer County as a stand-alone metropolitan area rather than limply appending it to the Youngstown-Warren region, one of the USA's most depressed areas?
What if a consolidated city of Shenango Valley had been created several decades ago? Would subsequent events have moved Sharon-Mercer County onto the high-growth track of its "big box" peer regions rather than kept it on the slow-growth track of its "little box" peers? Many past precedents argue that the answer would have been "yes," but history never answers the question "what if? conclusively."
Will the door to future success be unlocked if the five municipalities are consolidated now? Nothing is guaranteed.
But the region desperately needs to do something dramatically different to break out of its stagnation.
Why should local residents expect better future results from simply doing the same old thing?
Sharon-Mercer County's "kissin' cousins"
Who were the peer regions of the Sharon metropolitan area (Mercer County) 50 years ago? To identify the regions that were most like Sharon-Mercer County, I sifted through data from 320 metro areas to find those that most closely matched Sharon-Mercer County's demographic and economic profile in 1950 on four key criteria:
» total population: 112,000 residents (range: 56,000 to 168,000)
» median family income (adjusted for cost-of-living): $3,400 per year (range: $2,900 to $3,900)
» factory jobs as a percentage of all jobs: 46 percent (range: 30 percent to 60 percent)
» minority population: 3.2 percent (range: 1 percent to 6 percent).
Furthermore, I excluded metro areas that otherwise matched up but had special advantages over the Sharon area, such as
» state capitals (which eliminated Madison, Wis., for instance);
» big state universities (which eliminated Kalamazoo, Michigan); or
» being on the fringe of major metropolitan areas (which eliminated Lorain-Elyria, Ohio; Racine, Wisconsin; and Joliet, Illinois, among more than a dozen examples).
Winnowing down the list, I came up with 15 regions that were practically "kissin' cousins" of Sharon-Mercer County in 1950. They were
» Anderson, Elkhart, Kokomo, and Muncie, Ind.
» Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Jackson, and Muskegon, Mich.
» Mansfield and Steubenville, Ohio
» Elmira, N.Y.
» Janesville, Wis.
» Parkersburg, W.Va.
» Waterloo, Iowa
» Williamsport, Pa.
None of Sharon-Mercer County's peers were found in Sunbelt states that invariably experienced explosive job and population growth. Like Sharon-Mercer County, all were located in what I have called the USA's "Industrial Heartland."
The 15 peer regions represented as close to an apples-to-apples match as could be reasonably achieved.