December 9, 2004

Project aimed at improving village’s image underway

By Diane Chiddister

Over the next three years Balancing the Scales, a public information project, will spend $100,000 to address what its backers see as Yellow Springs’ negative image. The effort has garnered considerable support and its financial backers include local foundations, governmental bodies and business organizations.

“I’m passionate about Yellow Springs. There’s no reason not to tell people who we are and what we are,” said Richard Lapedes, a member of the Men’s Group, which is coordinating the effort. “We have something wonderful here but people are uneasy about us.”

Some villagers, though, have reservations about the image project, and question its necessity.

“I think the Men’s Group orientation is very conventional, and in my opinion this is not a conventional village,” said Tony Bent, who served for 18 years on Village Council. “If they succeed we run the risk of looking like Oakwood, and I don’t want to see that.”

Still, Bent said, he appreciates the willingness of the Men’s Group members to put their time and money into the project. “I think it’s a good effort,” he said.

According to organizers, the idea of conducting the image project began at last spring’s economic planning forum, an invitation-only gathering attended by about 70 village leaders and sponsored by the Men’s Group. The event grew from concerns about Yellow Springs’ declining and aging population, as identified in the Men’s Group 2002 “Cost of Living” study, along with concerns about the village’s shrinking business tax base.

Balancing the Scales promotional materials state that at the forum “participants identified a negative image of the community as an important factor which might discourage both economic and population growth.”

According to Ron Schmidt, the Men’s Group vice president of planning and research who is leading the Balancing the Scales effort, people at the forum “felt Yellow Springs is known more for what it’s against than what it’s for. There’s the perception that it’s antibusiness. Forum participants believed that something should be done.”

A summary of the forum, available at www.45387.com, indicates that participants did discuss what they perceived as problems with Yellow Springs’ image in the wider area, but the image effort was not identified as one of the forum’s action items.

Schmidt said that Community Round Table, a group of forum participants that is overseeing the implementation of forum action items and of which he is the chair, charged the Men’s Group with taking on the image project, although the Round Table’s minutes do not indicate such a charge.

Rather, said several Round Table members, the Men’s Group offered to take on the project, and they were happy to oblige.

“The Men’s Group seized upon it themselves and thank God they did,” Lapedes said. “They decided to fill the void.”

Balancing the Scales promotional materials indicate that the project has three stages. The six-month planning and design stage includes efforts to “research and review all previous efforts to compile and distribute useful information about the community and update and expand that information.” This phase also includes identifying a steering committee to guide the effort, which would include those previously involved in an earlier image project; and identifying a budget and efforts to “develop a complete plan for public information materials and information delivery systems and specify each.”

In the materials and methods development phase, estimated to take 12 to 15 months, the project will “engage a local individual or team to undertake the specified activities over a three-year contract period.” Those activities include the development of informational materials, the “planning and implementation of informational events” and reporting to a broad range of constituencies. The second phase also includes identifying a “model for long-term continuation of the activity and identification of an appropriate agency to serve as the manager of the activity.”

The project’s longest phase, implementation, will include events such as “real estate broker, builder or developer receptions, ongoing information source systems such as an active and dynamic website, periodic news releases to media,” according to the promotional materials.

The project’s budget identifies over $100,000 in expenses for the three-year effort. The first year’s budget of $36,000 includes $18,000 for contract personnel, $6,500 for a Web site, $1,200 for hospitality, $5,000 for printing, $1,000 for advertising, $1,200 for a survey, $400 for office supplies, $600 for mailing, $600 for transportation, $600 for telephone and $400 for publications.

According to Schmidt, the image project is currently on track, and has received most of its funding for the first year. For this year the project has received commitments for $14,000 from the Dayton Foundation; $3,000 from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, with the agreement that the group will request $3,000 more after completing its planning stage; and $6,000 from The Antioch Company. Village Council also agreed to provide $3,000, the Miami Township trustees contributed $1,000 and the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce gave $3,000. The project has also received commitments for future funding.

The group has also identified a steering committee, which has met twice in the past month. Committee members are Lisa Abel, Jim Albright, Tony Armocida, Fred Bartenstein, Mark Crockett, Rob Hillard, Denise Swinger, Jeanna Peifer, Fran Rickenbach, Phyllis Schmidt, Bambi Williams and Ron Schmidt.

Council president Tony Arnett, who is also a member of the Round Table, said that his experience in the economic subgroup at the economic planning forum influenced his decision to vote for contributing Village funds for Balancing the Scales. Council members unanimously supported the funding for the first year.

“We spent so much time talking about this point, what is Yellow Springs’ image to the outside world, and how that has gotten in the way of both trying to retain businesses in town and to attract new businesses,” he said.

Schmidt also made a presentation over the summer to the Yellow Springs Board of Education requesting $3000 in funding, but the board chose not to fund the project at this point. Board members sought a clearer connection between the image project and the schools’ welfare before they would be willing to commit funds, Superintendent Tony Armocida said.

One board member, Bill Firestone, said that he has several concerns about the image project. The project “seems more like a criticism of people who live in Yellow Springs than a positive statement,” he said. He also feels uncomfortable with the effort, he said, because of “a concern that a small group of people who were not elected have mandated to themselves a position of authority over governmental bodies.”

Firestone, who attended the economic planning forum, also said that while forum participants discussed the image project he did not feel they identified it as a priority.

The funding request for Balancing the Scales sparked controversy at the October meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, and led to the resignation of the Chamber’s secretary, Pam Adams, who was formerly president of the Chamber.

Schmidt gave a presentation to the Chamber several months before the October meeting, asking that group to give more than $11,000 of its general budget over a three-year period.

Adams said that she opposed committing funds to the project because she opposes the project’s goal.

“My personal opinion is that this group wants to change the very things that people love about Yellow Springs,” Adams said. “If they accomplish what they want to accomplish, they will ruin everything.”

Most troubling to Adams, she said, was the October vote itself, which led to her resignation. Adams believes that a number of new Chamber of Commerce members who were associated with the Men’s Group or the image project, including Ron Schmidt, joined the Chamber right before the vote for the purpose of approving the funding. Several members told her that they were encouraged by Arnett to attend the meeting, which he described as important.

“I felt the room was packed on purpose to do that,” Adams said, “And I don’t think we need $100,000 worth of PR.”

The Chamber of Commerce easily approved the funding request by a 13–2 vote, with 6 abstaining, according to minutes from the meeting.

Several other Chamber members who attended the meeting said they did not sense that there was an attempt to stack the vote. Rather, they said, they believed the new members had responded to a recent membership drive led by Denise Swinger, who is president of the Chamber as well as a Council member.

Schmidt said his decision to join the Chamber had nothing to do with the vote on contributing funds to the image project funding. Rather, he said, he joined because he believes that “the Chamber needs to broaden its focus for economic development to take place in the community.”

Schmidt said he did not see his vote for the funding of the image project as a conflict of interest because “I don’t get anything out of it except more work.”

Some who question the image project’s activities wonder what, exactly, is the negative image of Yellow Springs.

“My problem with it is, it’s a stealth issue when you ask them, ‘what’s the problem?,’ ” Firestone said.

According to a report from the economic subgroup at the economic planning forum, available at www.45387.com, Yellow Springs is seen as a “village of hippies, not very friendly to ‘outsiders,’ highly educated residents with a high level of tolerance for ‘own thing,’ healthy — with alternative or ‘holistic’ services, environmentally sound, artistic community, perhaps ‘aging’ activists, with a local media which often chooses to reflect/promote a negative image through its articles.”

Swinger said that she often encounters negative perceptions about Yellow Springs among her acquaintances, especially those who are developers.

“There are business developers out there that would not touch Yellow Springs with a 10-foot pole. There’s an image from without that we’re difficult. And we’ve shown that recently, with the no sprawl effort,” she said, referring to the group Villagers Addressing Land Issues and Development, VALID, who are opposed to annexing the Fogg property into Yellow Springs so it can be developed.

Armocida said that in attending regional meetings with peers he does sometimes encounter negative images of Yellow Springs, though not as much as when he first began his job eight years ago.

He said he supports the Balancing the Scales effort, noting that the village’s declining population has resulted in the loss of about 50 out of 700 children in the school system over the past eight years. However, he said, the schools have made up that loss through an open enrollment policy that allows children from other communities to go to school here.

The image project needs to address the village’s declining population and commercial tax base in a “two-pronged” effort, Armocida said.

“It’s not just getting more commerce or industry, but how do you do all these things with respect to the important values of this community?” said Armocida, who cited as values diversity, the preservation of green space and the preservation of a “vibrant downtown.”

“That’s the challenge,” he said. “How to protect those things and still try to increase the population and the commercial tax base.”