Radio Free JoJo

In the final article of this series, I wish to celebrate the excellent work of our arts community. When you think about it, Erie is really blessed with a broad arts community, quite beyond what our population and economics would indicate.

For example, I lived in Nashville, TN for a few years in the late 1980’s. Now before you turn on your “hick voice” imitation and start singing a country song, let me assure you that Nashville was and continues to be an affluent and sophisticated city. Beyond the record studios and honky-tonks were corporate headquarters for insurance, banking, and publishing, as well as all of the resources of a state capital. One of the things that struck me however was the lack of diversity in its arts community. Back then the Nashville Symphony was on life-support, trying to maintain a full-time orchestra. Their ballet company and Equity theater had just started and were under-marketed. It just didn’t seem like much was going on considering the city was four times larger than Erie.

You see, I had been exposed to the arts since my childhood in Erie. Some of my favorite memories are linked to the Arts Festival, which used to be held in Perry Square. This was a life-changing way for a city kid to see great art, listen to jazz and classical, and maybe play in that space for a little while. When I was a teenager, I volunteered as an usher at the Erie Philharmonic, serving the paying public while hearing the beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Handel. In college I participated in Gannon Theatre and many of my friends have had roles at the Playhouse, Roadhouse, and the other area theatres.

It’s really easy to be enriched by the arts in Erie. It’s an organic, Erie-thing. Even the crustiest line worker at GE will take his wife out to dinner and catch the latest show at the Playhouse. How about the would-be stage mommies signing up their daughters for classes at Lake Erie Ballet? Or the huge crowds for the jazz festival or Eight Greats?

That is the rub, though. We love our arts in Erie, however, we love them cheap. The same people that will pay Jerry Seinfeld $70 to tell jokes for an hour choke on $33 to hear the whole Erie Philharmonic perform their best.

We have to be careful with our artists because the real expenses of providing that quality that we expect have to be met. Every once in a while you hear whispers of how this organization is doing poorly, or how tickets are slow for that show. If we want a vibrant cultural community in Erie, we have to support it with our feet and wallets. Perhaps there is something to be said for using gambling money for endowments for our most critical arts organizations. Meanwhile, through their ongoing outreach efforts, the arts folks must develop a new generation of appreciative patrons, lest we all lose their beauty.

So we may not have a Betty Ford, or a Promises complete with a Hollywood starlet-filled waiting list. There’s no Dr. Phil or Dr. Keith. But when it comes to human services, Erie is known as a recovery town.

You may not believe it, but our area is considered a retreat or respite. Children, men and women living difficult to tragic lifestyles in places like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh are rescued to some of the finest physical and emotional rehabilitation and recovery facilities in the nation. The list is long: Harborcreek Youth Services, Perseus House, Catholic Charities, Safe Harbor, Stairways, Sarah Reed, Bethesda, Barber National Institute, Erie City Mission, Women’s Care Center, Salvation Army…I could go on and on. You could say that from Erie’s heart, an abundance of love is shared.

I’m very acquainted with the work of the Erie City Mission, having assisted with their advertising in indirect and direct ways for over five years. As their website says, the Erie City Mission is a Christian social outreach program created in 1911 by the famous evangelist Billy Sunday. Their ministry is broken down into three areas: Samaritan care (“three hots and a cot” emergency food and shelter), the New Life program (residential recovery and life skills training), and their treatment services for drugs, alcohol and gambling addictions. They also run a terrific Family Care Center sharing food baskets and clothes.

When you see the numbers behind just one of the agencies like the City Mission, you get a grasp of the depth of need in our region. Here’s how the Mission stacks up:

• 150,000 free hot meals to the public yearly
• 2,200 families served with free groceries and clothing each month
• 500 men in recovery each year

I’ve heard it said that the Mission’s work with homeless men represents percentage points decrease in crime in our city. As their President, Jack Kovacs, said in their latest newsletter: “Without the Mission, what would happen to these men? Would they revert to the streets again, committing crimes to support their addictions? How safe would our community be if these men would be turned out to “make it” on their own? Who in our community would come forward to help them, and at what cost would it be done?”

That’s just one agency, catering to one slice of our area’s population, and they are making a huge difference to all of our quality of life. With human services in Erie, you can’t always place a dollars and cents value on their institutional impact. Indeed, many of our most-beloved caregivers work for peanuts. However, it is the question of what would happen if we lost them, how would life in Erie diminish without their good works, that must be asked. The answer is not governmental harassment or their being taken for granted, but celebration and appreciation for their efforts, often acting as the hands and feet of God.

This was a big news day for higher education in Erie. Mercyhurst College announced the receipt of $150,000 in state aid for its nursing program at its North East campus. Down in Edinboro, EUP leadership rolled out a $115 million comprehensive plan to build new student housing and a dining hall. When you look at the kind of money that gets thrown around by our institutions of learning, you get a better understanding of the importance these organizations have on our local economy.

Let me say upfront that I’m an ardent admirer of the academy. I was fortunate to spend four years as a student and five years as a professional adviser/adjunct at Gannon University. I like the whole context of expanding a young person’s mind, challenging them to find answers to new questions, the older imparting wisdom and lessons learned to the younger, the whole “beret wearing and pontificating” deal (JK). Our area colleges and universities are incubators of idealism and forward-thinking; there’s just a higher-density of smart people hanging around.

Our community has greatly benefited both directly and indirectly by the strength of Gannon, Mercyhurst, Penn State-Behrend, Edinboro, and LECOM. Those who lead our educational institutions are also board members of our organizations, researchers and advisors to government officials, and of course, taxpayers of an upper-income who, in regards to Gannon and Mercyhurst faculty and staff, are more likely to live in the city enjoying the classic housing stock in the Glenwood and Frontier neighborhoods.

Then of course we must consider the students. Close to 20,000 of them are enrolled, equivalent to 7% of our metro population (that would be quite a voting block!). Each one student could represent as much as $30,000 of direct impact into our economy, just for tuition and fees. When you add the trips to Wal-Mart, Wegmans, and multiple other establishments, you are talking many, many millions invested in our community. Indeed, these kids are customers that we want to keep happy!

With the city’s financial predicament causing tension between City Hall and Old Main, there needs to be mutual understanding toward shared goals. For example, it seems reasonable to me to have student housing taxed at normal rates, at minimum, upperclassmen’s apartments, since they have the option to live off-campus. The city should acknowledge the great lengths the colleges have gone to increasing security in their neighborhoods, greatly benefiting those areas.

Finally, I think we should continue to lean on our learned professors and administrators to help provide answers to our regions’ problems. Use their great data collecting and processing capabilities to conduct research and project outcomes. Encourage them in their health and growth. As they educate our young brains, we must work on plugging up the “drain.”

When you are a dad of three active children, you are bound at some point to find yourself sitting in an Emergency Room waiting area holding a hurting kid. For those of us living in the Erie area, we are fortunate that within minutes of a mishap, we can experience those wonderful waiting room moments at one of our three area hospitals.

But Erie’s health care system is no longer just reactive to illness. The excellence and sophistication of our organizations have allowed them to turn the page to wellness and a proactive posture in making Erieites healthier. Their commitment to best practice, growth, and forward thinking make our lives literally better.

Don’t forget, however that health care in Erie is big business. Hamot, Millcreek, and St. Vincent’s employ between them over 6,000 workers. According to the 2006 annual reports of Hamot & St. V’s (Millcreek’s was not available), the hospitals generated over $635 million in revenue and spent into the Erie economy almost $620 million, not including the building they both are doing on a regular basis. The hospitals combined were over half as big as our local Fortune 500 member, Erie Insurance, which had operating revenues of $1.134 billion in the same year. You also have to consider the “ripple” effect each hospital brings to the region, greatly exceeding the direct spending the organizations do.

While we are talking numbers, we must consider the amount of free health care that these facilities provide, which is well into 8-figures combined. The economic impact is unquestioned. I think about what incredible machinations our government officials will do to bring in 300 jobs for a juice plant into our area. Meanwhile, Hamot alone in the past five years increased income by $128 million and employment in the hundreds.

What about “outside” money, meaning not just recycling local income but bringing in from outside the area? This will sound controversial, but consider this: St. Vincent’s report indicates that half of their operating revenue comes from either Medicare or Medicaid. That is equivalent to a $142 million federal subsidy of our healthcare system, just at one hospital.

But what about all of that tax-free land they use up? The land that these facilities are buying at market rates has been available for commercial concerns, but no one was willing to pay the freight. The benefit to their building programs will mean higher quality office space stock being built adjacent to the hospitals, and those developers will pay the taxes, after the LERTA period is up.

Good paying, family-sustaining jobs. High technology and constant investment in our community. Thank you to our friends in health-care, who help provide a high-quality life in Erie, the city we love.

Beginning with this post, I wish to write a series of articles of how specifically the non-profit organizations in Erie are vital and add so much to our quality of life as a community. In recent years, perhaps driven by our whacked-out municipal structure, taxation system, and the current moribund state of the city’s finances, our governmental officials have taken to attacking those non-profit organizations which are exempt from property taxes. My agenda is that these organizations should be treated like the essential pillars of our community’s vibrancy that they are. They are to be recognized as significant economic engines and job providers, some with high-income family-thriving jobs. At the same time, I agree with some that there may be some kind of revenue solution needed from tax-exempt organizations, especially when they are engaging in parallel activities to a for-profit entity far from their core mission. But they are not the enemy; they are us. Now to celebrating the non-profits, an important part of why we love Erie.

It is interesting timing that Peter Panepento in GlobalErie wrote a post about negativity in Erie. You see, in looking at my last few posts on my blog about Erie, I was feeling like I was adding to the negative vibe, always pointing out shortfalls, without being on the solution side or seeing the hope.

It’s almost the cool thing in Erie to be negative, not get too excited about neat stuff, that whole “if I can make it in Erie, I can make it anywhere” deal.

It reminded me of the master of alliteration, Spiro Agnew, who in a William Safire-written speech blasted the media, calling them “the nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Erie certainly has quite a few “nabobs” in dominant, opinion-leading positions, consistently complaining about our regions short-comings, lack of vision and leadership, that victim mentality, and pining for the good old days. I felt in reading my posts that I was getting sucked into all of that. So I’m turning the page.

Unless some crisis occurs that really lights me up, I’m going to focus my posts on a positive vision and solutions for the future of Erie. I think I’ll start with sharing my take on the non-profit sector in Erie: the health-care, educational, human services, and cultural establishments who although they may not pay taxes, add so much to the life and health of our community.

A nabob? No way!

This week’s Time magazine cover was a major story on a new book containing decades of letters from Mother Teresa of Calcutta to her spiritual mentors entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. It turns out that she confesses through the missives that while she was doing incredible work for the poor, she was herself “poor in spirit,” admitting that she felt no presence of God.

It’s a challenging story to read; about a woman who has universal respect and love. We who are believers would understand that good works such as Teresa’s spring out of a desire to love God with all of our “heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30) as an act of worship. No doubt that was her motivation. But her writings perhaps indicate an additional dimension.

Throughout history, some of the greatest people of God cried out in pain at their inability to sense His presence. In Psalm 88, the writer questions “Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (v. 14). Job complained about his losses and isolation. Jesus himself at the critical moment of our redemption shouted “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46).

Thank God for those times where we see and feel God all around us; in the laughter of a child, in His creative beauty in nature, or in the blessing of a friend. But often our faith grows even stronger in the dry times; when it’s hard to see Him. It is His grace that keeps us going. Could it be that Mother Teresa associated her passion for saving the helpless and hopeless with The Passion of the Christ? That her work had to be sourced from the divine, that because of her despair she had nothing in and of herself to give.

It’s difficult to get your arms around, but it certainly elevates further my opinion of this amazing woman of faith.