The Numbers Speak for Themselves
Guest post by Alex…
Lakewood government, for over a decade, has been leading the city down the path of economic and environmental peril due to a seemingly intentional disregard for true economic development.
This became painfully obvious at the city council meeting on the 7th of November, 2022. An in-depth presentation by Elizabeth Garner from the Department of Local Affairs showed just how poorly positioned Lakewood has become from the perspective of generating local, well-paying jobs and attracting a vibrant pool of talent to fill them. Of course, the council majority wasted no time in boiling everything down to “well, it’s the old people’s fault for not shopping more and we need more housing.”
Around 28:30 mark, an interesting point comes to the fore – not only are there no well-paying jobs in Lakewood (i.e. $100,000+) in significant numbers, but even for the jobs that are here, there is not enough local talent to fill those jobs.
Furthermore, younger, skilled people that do live in Lakewood are forced to join the tens of thousands of other residents who drive OUT of Lakewood on daily basis to DTC, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Aurora and other municipalities that wisely invested in massive, high-tech, quality, job creation for decades. This amounts to hundreds of hours per person, per year, instead of spending that time exercising, taking care of choirs and spending time with loved ones. Plus, the additional pollution.
This is not a surprise as Lakewood government has conflated economic development with haphazard development and sales tax revenue instead of working on attracting world-class companies and guiding the build-out of well-planned middle housing which would attract and help the younger generation.
Enter the Propaganda
The city publishes “Looking@Lakewood”, in which the city is never shy to twist the narrative in order to mask its failures. But even in the propaganda, the truth slips through.
Looking at the November 2022 issue of “Looking@Lakewood” further confirms the decline of the city:
4.2% loss in the number of jobs from 2010-2020, while the city had added over 10,000 people. How is it possible that during a decade of robust economic growth around the state and in the neighboring communities, Lakewood has actually lost jobs?
According to a presentation by Mr. Robert Smith (Director of Lakewood Office of Economic Development), on November 5th, 2002, at the Ward 5 meeting, there are about 71,000 jobs in Lakewood, with tens of thousands driving every day in and out of Lakewood for work. That would imply that Lakewood has actually lost about 2,900 jobs in the last decade. While the neighboring communities have added thousands of localized, well-paying jobs. During the same presentation, it became quickly obvious that Lakewood has no world-class companies present as the primary drivers of the economic activity in the city.
Another worrying sign is the slowing in the growth of the younger generation. This bodes poorly for the future workforce, which is vital to keeping the local economy vibrant. Combined with the city’s failure to establish a robust local high-tech economy, what few younger people are around will be apt to leave the area in the coming years, further intensifying the economic death spiral of the city.
The Affordable Housing Lie
$400/month. $4,800/year. Is the amount of metro district fees paid by a citizen in Solterra as was testified by a citizen at a Lakewood City council meeting a few years ago. That is in addition to what they already pay in property taxes. How does this make the housing in Lakewood more affordable?
$1,600-$2,000/month. Is the cost of a one-bedroom rental in Lakewood. So much for “affordable” housing. Forcing more and more people into rental-only dwellings puts them on the path to financial servitude instead of providing an inventory of middle housing which would be an asset in attracting younger, well-educated potential talent in technical fields, thereby creating an incentive for high-tech world-class companies to consider Lakewood as a potential location for their offices.
So not only is the Lakewood city government destroying the economic potential of the city, they are also making sure that the housing is less and less attainable for people of all socio-economic levels.
Destroying the Economic Potential
in Rooney Valley in the early 2000s.
1,000,000+. That is how many square feet of commercially designated space was wiped away by the vote of the joint Lakewood-Morrison committee in 2018 in the Red Rocks Ranch. 300+ acres that were originally planned to support the generation of thousands of well-paying, localized jobs – gone. And a representative from the JeffCo EDO spoke in support of this, while the Lakewood EDO was nowhere to be found. Take a guess how many well-paying, localized jobs are in Red Rocks Ranch now?
Here are some video captures of the joint Lakewood-Morrison commission voting to wipe away any chance of real economic development in Red Rocks Ranch:
and
The same commission (and the town of Morrison) were presented with a document, by the developer, which clearly stated that:
“The cost of servicing residents for most Colorado communities exceeds the revenues those residents generate.” (Memo RE: The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of the Red Rocks Ranch Development – Page 7)
Yet, Lakewood government wanted to push through an annexation of the same area, to saddle the already economically struggling city with more municipal expenses. Even the former city, attorney, Tim Cox, clearly stated that residential units are an expense to the city:
59 acres. Is the amount of space adjacent to the Federal Center which could’ve been used, over a decade ago, to entice world-class companies, such as Google, Amazon/AWS, Arrow Electronics, Charles Schwab to locate hundreds, if not thousands of jobs which would’ve served as an economic engine of its own. Instead, the city manager and some on the city council have been tripping over themselves to provide a sweet-heart deal to those looking to make a short-term profit instead of creating an economic engine for the city.
It is not as if some of us did not try to plead with the city about the need for true economic development:
And the City Keeps on Spending
Despite the numerous failures to build up a localized high-tech economic engine, which would boost the city in other areas, the city is not slowing down in its spending habits.
$203,000/year. Is the salary of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. A person who can induce trillion dollar market movements by uttering a few sentences. Guess who makes more than that? Lakewood City Manager. The same person, whose office alone is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars per year, while Lakewood is rapidly heading for economic stagnation. In addition to the compensation, the Manager was also recently given a $10,000 bonus by the City Council majority.
And now, the city is planning to spend an additional $17,000,000 per year to hire more staff. While the country is potentially heading into a recession. Instead of working on bolstering the local economic engine, the city wants to spend additional millions of dollars at a time when the local businesses have been closing, more retail locations are about to close and tens of thousands of residents have to waste hundreds of hours per year driving elsewhere for better job opportunities. Corruption, incompetence or both? The budget alone deserves a whole separate discussion.
Economic Destruction Continues
Lakewood City Council intentionally omitted Economic Development from the list of priorities for this year. Judging by the numbers and the voting record of the majority of City Council, even prior to this year, the Council has never been that interested in true economic development. So as the city continues its economic decline (along with the inevitable increase in crime, and other side effects), remember who has brought our community to the brink, under the guise of “affordable” housing and fake sustainability.