From Governing’s
November 2006 issue

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Shrinking Cities Q&A

Jay Williams

Jay Williams was elected mayor of Youngstown in November of 2005. Before that, he was the city's community development director, where he became the public face of the Youngstown 2010 planning process. We spoke about what it means to be a "shrinking city," how that translates into public policy, and whether a city's population really matters anyway.

—Christopher Swope

What does it mean when the Youngstown 2010 plan calls Youngstown a "shrinking city"?

It means a lot of things. First and foremost, there's a psychological and emotional acceptance that has to occur and this city struggled with that for decades. So we didn't arrive at this epiphany, just one day and said "Okay we're gong to be a smaller city." There was a lot of fighting it emotionally and psychologically, and the city was fighting it in the way we operated.

After you accept it on emotional and psychological level, you accept it in terms of how you begin to plan the city and how you begin to allocate resources. What it means is in many instances you have to start saying no. That's not easy as a public official, when it comes to people with all sorts of ideas that are well intended but not necessarily realistic.

Can you offer some examples?

Housing, for instance. There are an excess number of housing units based on the fact that the population contracted much more rapidly than the number of housing units.

This year we'll demolish 300 to 400 homes, just dilapidated units. And there's a group of preservationists, who I respect, saying we need to save them so board them up. Well, board them up and wait for what? People won't come in at 5,000 or 10,000 at a time buying these houses and moving into them. So we've been very aggressive in demolition--still respecting that some of these houses can be preserved, but understanding what the realistic market is going to be.

Also in terms of new housing development, the city went through a period in the last 10 years where several hundred tax-credit housing units popped up over the city. We didn't have a plan and they popped up in areas that just didn't make sense. A brand-new house constructed between two houses that need to be demolished--we're not doing anybody a favor. We had to change our policies, and put a moratorium on these. It's not that we don't need decent quality housing for low-income individuals, but where we house them in the city has to be well thought out. That's what the plan is allowing us to do, as opposed to ten years ago, when we said "Oh, it's new housing, fine put it up wherever you want."

Also in terms of resource allocation and the city's capital expenditures--we have to provide police and fire for every citizen in this city. And it's strategically easier to provide police and fire if we have densely populated areas of city, as opposed to a person who lives in the furthest reach of the city where there were once 1,000 people but now there are 100. They still deserve police and fire, but if we can incentivize people to be more densely located within the city of Youngstown that also helps.

What could the city do to incentivize people to live closer together? I've been out in the neighborhoods, and while many have lost lots of people, you don't find many blocks where there's nobody living there.

One way is through housing rehabilitation assistance. The city spends upwards of $40,000 or $50,000 for income-eligible citizens to rehabilitate their homes. We've just done that based on a first-come-first-served basis. Now we need to start trying to look at the decisions--does it make sense to invest $40,000 or $50,000 in a home that is on a street where more than half of the other homes have to be demolished?

Maybe we can say to Mrs. Jones--we're not going to force anybody to move. But Mrs. Jones, would you be more interested if the policy was that we're willing to invest $40,000 or $50,000 in a home in a neighborhood that is more stabilized? And if the answer is no, then maybe we have to tell Mrs. Jones that the policy as it exists now doesn't allow us to invest this money here right now. We're not going to let somebody freeze, or live in completely uninhabitable conditions, but can we afford to keep investing that money on a randomly chosen basis and think that we're affecting sustainable positive change?

Would the city consider using sticks such as eminent domain, in addition to the carrots?

We're not going to eminent domain anyone who's living in a residence or simply say the neighborhood isn't sustainable, you've got to get out. That's not the policy we've adopted. But we do have to shift to get people thinking differently about how the city is laid out.

Is the goal to ultimately close streets and decommission infrastructure?

That's one thing that needs to be on our radar screen. If there's a section where the number of residents has dwindled to a point where it becomes almost impractical to provide services and we can get those residents to another areas of the community, then that may become the case. But I don't want this notion out there that will be blocks upon blocks where there will be no snow plowing or fire services. Our obligation is to provide services to all 35 square miles of the city.

Isn't that the basic problem, that you've got fewer people in Youngstown but the same geography?

Exactly. And the same cost structure. So while the tax base is weakened, the cost structure is the same--and in effect with inflation it has gone up. So that's why it's increasingly important. We're always looking to solidify and expand the city's tax base, but from the cost side we have to manage that side of the balance sheet.

Which is why it's also important that while we're talking about a shrinking city, we're simultaneously pushing regional initiatives, which would potentially expand the tax base or the number of people contributing to the benefit of the city.

Right now we're conducting a study that will examine the possibility of using the city's water distribution system as a means to promote regional cooperation from a tax basis and business investment basis. The city services a large majority of the suburban areas outside of city with water and wastewater, and we're examining how we can use that as a tool to lower the city's income tax rate and expand that rate to a larger base of individuals. You'd have more people contributing a smaller amount. And at the same time you'd provide incentives for development to occur inside the city, and if it occurs outside the city then we'd still benefit.

Why is Youngstown coming to this reckoning with its smaller self now?

I was born in 1971, so I was about 6 years old on Black Monday when the steel mills closed. I think it's generational in the sense that you do have young people in key positions. The congressman Tim Ryan is younger than I am. The county commission has two members in their 30's. Some young people are taking corporate positions locally. So that's part of it.

Another part of it is maybe we've come to the point of recognizing that doing the same thing in the same way will yield the same results. That's what's happened here for past two or three decades. Youngstown 2010 was an epiphany to a lot of people because it had people from the city and people from suburbs, transcended socioeconomic barriers and political barriers, and had a lot of people coming together saying we do believe we can shape the future of this community. And it's not necessarily going to be done from outside forces, which for a long time is what people waited for. That white knight. Whether it is the federal government or state government or someone coming in and saying we're going to build a plant in the middle of the valley and employ 5,000 people and all your struggles are over.

So it's a lot of things, time being one of them. The generational shift is one of them, but even some of the older generation is recognizing that we've gotta try a new approach.

Does Youngstown represent a model for other cities, or is it in some ways behind the curve?

Ten years from now, I hope that yes, Youngstown will be a model for others to follow. I don't know that we're there yet. But we're on our way to accepting some obvious things about what the city is and isn't going to be. It was unrealistic to think we'll be a 100,000 person city. But why not be an attractive city of 80,000 or 85,000 that offers a quality of life that competes with other cities across the state and across the country?

Akron has done a phenomenal job of what we're trying to do. The caveat is Akron did it 20 years ago. Well fine, 20 years will come whether we bury our heads in the sand or not. So I'm hoping over these next 10 to 20 years we are looked at as a model to follow. This city has advantages that other struggling cities don't. We have Youngstown State University. There's a good cultural infrastructure here. We have things we'd never have had we never been a city of 180,000 people. So the fact that we were a much larger city who has shrunk in population--there are still some institutions here we can capitalize on. Whether it's the arts and culture, whether it's the Mill Creek Park system or the University, whether it's the fact that we're still the center of county government. So we'll play to our strengths, but we shouldn't keep fighting the fight that we're a city of 100,000 plus.

Does population matter?

Yes and no. When you're a kid you want a 100 percent on your test. We think the bigger number is better. So you think boy if I'm a mayor of a city of 100,000, boy I'm really there. And then if you have a mayor of a city of 60,000 it's hey, we're just automatically better and bigger and stronger. Well what if the mayor of that city of 100,000 has got a crumbling infrastructure, eroding tax base, and all sorts of social issues, and the mayor of that city of 60,000 has a strong and vibrant economy? So it's not just the numbers but that's the psychological battle that exists.

But population does matter because a relatively poor city of 500,000 still has some advantages over a struggling city of 100,000. People always ask me why there's not a Wal-Mart in Youngstown. If you have 500,000 people from various economic backgrounds, you have a critical mass of people who buy and consume and need certain services. There's a business model that says even if these people aren't on the top of the economic ladder, they still need things, so we can still put a store there and meet our bottom line. In cities with less of a population, that argument becomes more difficult. In that regard, population does matter. From downtown Youngstown, you can get in your car and in 15 minutes be pretty much anywhere in the county you need to. So why put a Wal-Mart downtown when we can hop in our car and in seven minutes be at a Wal-Mart on either side of the city?

When we dropped to 95,000 in the 1990 census, a lot of people thought, well they just missed 5,000 people, we're really 100,000. So our wakeup call was the 2000 census. Between 1990 and 2000, we lost 14 percent of our population. So when you go from 95,000 to 82,000 and lead the state in population loss, all of a sudden it's like, whoa.

The latest stats I've seen show that the population loss has flattened out. I think come 2010 we'll probably still see somewhat of a decline. I seriously doubt it will be 14 percent like last decade. I think it's realistic to think that in the next 10 or 15 years it'll stabilize in the high 70s. Ten years from now, I'd hate for it to be 75,000 and on its way down. But I'd be shocked if it was 85,000.

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