items tagged with Davenport Promise

The Davenport Promise Referendum was defeated by voters 61% to 39% at the polls, Tuesday March 3, 2009.

The Promise program was modeled after the pilot program started in Kalamazoo, MI. Organizers wished to reallcoate 30% of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) from the capital improvements fund to a new scholarship fund as an economic incentive for families to move to Davenport. The fund would be used to pay for up to $20K in college tuition for students that lived in Davenport and went to high-school in Davenport 9-12 grades.

The program in Kalamzoo was funded by private donations. The Davenport Promise, as proposed, would have been funded by a portion of the LOST.



Opponents of the Davenport Promise rallied around a new PAC formed by Mark Nelson, called Opt4Better. Opt4Better produced detailed financial analysis refuting the proponents proposed benefits. Opt4Better hosted several news conferences, launched a website www.nomorepromises.com, produced a slide show, recorded presentations, and engaged in a Quad City Times sponsored debate. The over arching theme of Opt4Better's counter campaign was that the proponents over estimated the benefits and underestimated the risks to taxpayers.

The Opt4Better volunteers gathered at downtown Dvenport's Front Street Brewery to watch the election returns. KWQC's Erika Cervantes interviewed Mark Nelson live for the 10 o'clock news cycle.

The Quad-City Times' management, most especially the disgraced editors, get to evaluate whether their decision to smear local appraiser Mark Nelson was worth what it has cost them -- the last vestige of credibility they had in the community as reliable news providers. In what it tried to pass as a news story in its print edition on Tuesday, March 3, the Times disparaged Nelson with myriad unsubstantiated claims about an alleged cover letter he sent with an appraisal that discouraged Royal Banks of Missouri from approving a loan to Amy and Amrit Gill of Restoration St. Louis for the redevelopment of the Blackhawk Hotel as a boutique hotel.

Editor's note: This letter was submitted in response to the article "Blackhawk Hotel project threatened by critical report," by Tory Brecht.

An open letter to Quad-City Times readers and fellow Lee Enterprises shareholders.

Tory, I read your article with some degree of skepticism this morning. On March 10, Lee Enterprises, the owner of this newspaper, has their annual shareholder meeting; in the past year their stock has tumbled from almost $20 per share to 24 cents at the low. (38 cents as I write this.) I am not only a subscriber but a shareholder. Apparently the newspaper industry and now you have been oblivious to the traction radio commentator Rush Limbaugh has gotten with his "Drive-by Media" characterization. It is sticking no matter how you folks in the media protest. And it is sticking because you allow your personal opinions and the opinions of the editors to creep into your reporting. The only thing you folks have to offer is credibility, and unfortunately your piece in today's "noospaper," as Bill Wundrum frequently refers, does little to lend credibility to this newspaper or you as a reporter.

Here are the ABCs of the Davenport Promise.

A. Promise is a scheme to take city taxpayer money from improving Davenport streets, sewers, and other infrastructure and use it to try to attract residents with children to bolster enrollment in Davenport schools.

B. The Upjohn study funded by Promise backers says the likelihood of the plan working as hoped has "a high level of uncertainty." Those are fancy words for "don't hold your breath."

C. The plan contains no commitment by Davenport schools to improve graduation rates and student academic performance, measures currently below neighboring Iowa districts. It divides students within the district between Davenporters who are eligible for scholarship help and those in the district but outside the city who are not eligible. That doesn't sound right.

Summary: A. Unwise, B. Unlikely, C. Unfair.

Vote "No" for the Davenport Promise referendum March 3.

Keith Meyer

The Quad-City Times endorses the Promise program in Sunday's edition. "Put Faith in Davenport's Kids" is the editorial's title. One commenter noted that this endorsement was from the "Staff" and not the "Editorial Board," suggesting dissent between the staff and board.
The Times' all-percieved-growth-at-any-cost/risk-if-it's-taxpayer-funded record is consistent here. They admonish opponents who spent too much time on spreadsheets.  "Astute analysts have poked and prodded Promise to assert it cannot pay for itself. That’s a standard we’ve not applied to other government functions and won’t apply to this one." This comment brings into focus the proponents' acceptance that providing for one's college education should be a municipal "government function."

I just wanted to provide an insight from a family that left Davenport because of the schools. I grew up in Bettendorf, moved to Davenport, and after having children moved them to Geneseo, as I refused to put them in the Davenport school system. As a parent, I would not subject my children to 13 years in that school system to earn money for college. Not only is the crime rate in that school system high, but the schools do not adequately prepare the kids for college.

I was chairman of the board of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce when it successfully promoted passage of the one-cent sales tax. There was enthusiasm for infrastructure improvements then and, clearly, that enthusiasm remains.

The most recent Davenport Community Survey finds residents give their highest priority to continue improving the city's streets and infrastructure. That is fact.

Approving the "Promise" proposal would divert millions of dollars from such work. That, too, is fact.

The various claimed benefits of Promise are not facts. They are estimates and questionable ones at that.

For the sake of argument, let's say that the Promise program will be the panacea for Davenport that its backers claim it will be. People will flood into the city because they've been promised college tuition, vocational training, or (if they're in the military) a homestead grant. Enrollment in the Davenport Community School District will reverse its nearly-two-decade-long trend of decline - thus ensuring a greater amount of state education funding, which is distributed on a per-pupil basis. And the increased aggregate property value will bring new riches to city government and the school district through property taxes, thus allowing them to lower the property-tax rate.

Even if all that is true, the backers of the Davenport Promise have structured the program all wrong.

Now that the Davenport City Council has approved a March 3 referendum on the Davenport Promise proposal, one can be certain that the coalition that has been built over the past year-plus is being mobilized to demonstrate broad community support.

It will not be technically affiliated with any major community player, but it will include a lot of familiar names and faces behind the scenes. It will undoubtedly feature "real," everyday citizens, so voters won't feel like they're getting bullied by the heavy hitters. And the campaign will basically argue that there's no sensible reason to vote against the Promise, that there's no way the program could fail, and that the risk of voting the proposal down is too great.

That style of PR push was the successful approach of backers of River Renaissance in 2001. And the work in 2007 and 2008 of a Promise exploratory committee and a Promise task force has looked less like objective analysis than propaganda.

But don't mistake the marketing for unanimity.