F-R-O-E-D or F-R-A-U-D ?

Flanagan wants to reopen bidding on Durfee Tech project.


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By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Dec 07, 2009 @ 08:17 PM

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FALL RIVER — If Mayor-elect Will Flanagan has his way, Peabody Properties Inc. will not develop the site of the former Bradford Durfee Textile College for a mostly affordable-housing project with an arts component.

“It is my wish not to see the Peabody project go forward,” Flanagan said Monday after speaking with a company advocate, the head of the Fall River Office of Economic Development, congressional leaders and others, he said.

“I’m concerned about the number of low-income apartments at 64 Durfee St.,” Flanagan said of the 1.3-acre site. “We should be concentrating on something more commercial that has arts and entertainment and food and retail.”

Those types of developments, he said, “would increase the tax base, create jobs and act as an economic engine for the city.”

Once again, I stand (or, sit, to be more precise) before you all a happy man. Tonight, when I read that Mayor Flanagan (no more"elect"..the other guy quit being Mayor about a year and a half ago) had communicated his desire NOT to allow Mr. Fish and Peabody Properties to develop the building at 64 Durfee Street into additional low-income housing untis I became an instant fan of this Mayor.

He's smart to do this, not just because he is maintaining the City's right to bring more businesses into the vacinity of the Central Business District (CBD), but the why and how he did it. The why, I think, is simply to prevent Ol' Hamhocks from ramming one last major thing through that will benefit only a chosen few, and place the City one step closer to bankruptcy and years futher away from building the Arts development nexus that currently provides this City with it's most commercially viable business opportunity. Nature abhors a vacumn, and Mayor Flanagan decided to fill it before Ol' Hamhocks got a chance to do so. I don't want to hear anything about Industrial Parks or Bio-World. Until I see real businesses there with real jobs, say, 500 jobs going primarily to people living in Fall River, making salary sufficient to purchase their own homes to build this City's tax base, it just doesn't exist for me.

Now, the "how" comes into play. This could not have been an easy decision to make given the cast of characters arrayed in support of the project. The deal's major sticking point was the lack of federal tax credits going to the developer for building low income units. No tax credits from Uncle Sam, no project, is usually what happens these days, when even cash rich local banks are reluctant to take on ANY risk when the rates of return on their cash reserves is so great in comparison. Peabody's lobbyist, "Biff" McClean, Peabody Properties, and FROED are solidly behind this project going forward, versus Mayor Flanagan and most citizens of Fall River. The federal delegation is probably doing nothing until the local situation is settled. So, unless FROED wants to go against Fall River's newly elected and popular Mayor, 64 Durfee Street will NOT include low-income apartments.

Now comes the question of FROED. The Mayor of Fall River is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. However, FROED has recently decided to expand it's territory to include several adjacent communities. It appears to be a straight financial decision to take advantage of what they believe will be access to a larger market area. I think it's more than that. I believe that this is a way to 1) expand the area for banks to make more low-risk, government backed loans and increase their profits as a primary objective, as oppossed to building Fall River's tax base and employment, 2) expand the number of well paid positions which are essentially patronage plums for the current administration, and I would look for a placement or two of Correia's long time friends and helpers getting these jobs, 3) a way to justify the current salary (the unheard of sum of $170,000), and eventually grow the salary, for the FROED Executive Vice-President, Ken Fiola.
This is when I say to myself that the name of the Economic Development agency for Fall River is wrong...it should not be F-R-O-E-D, it should be F-R-A-U-D! How many jobs has Mr. Fiola produced in the last year....last 2 years...try 3years? I'd love to know so that we could see how many jobs per dollar paid to Mr. Fiola we receive. FROED members should want to know this, because it's one of the most critical financial ratio's available to measure efficacy of his work for the citizens of Fall River. They understand financial ratio analysis and it's importance to a venture like FROED.
How about growth in the Fall River tax base? How many hundreds of millions of dollars of tax base growth has FROED delivered in the last five years...3 years...last year, versus the amount paid to Mr. Fiola and the other employees, including a systems administrator? I venture not much new tax base has been added. I hope I'm wrong but I doubt it.
FROED is suppossed to attract new and productive businesses and solid, good paying jobs to Fall River. In my opinion they are failing, badly, to do so.  I think  that everyday staff has to be accountable for a lack of productivity. For $170,000 a year the citizens of Fall River deserve to see Mr. Fiola responsible for a minimum of 2-3 % increase in the tax base of Fall River each year. Such a goal MUST be a way to measure the efficacy of the programs FROED, and Fiola, are creating for tax base and job growth in Fall River for what we are all paying for their development services. What FROED cannot simply be is a patronage haven and repository for gaurenteed profits for the local banking community due to leveraging of federal loan programs, be they tax credits or direct loan gaurentees. For too long now all FROED has done is provide jobs only  for a favored few who work there. This must change immediately. Hopefully with Mayor Flanagan it will. It's a good start.

ADDENDUM POSTED 12/8/09 @ 10:48 pm

I thought about it very carefully, and after an extensive search, I think I found the perfect parcel for the kind of development we have come to expect from FROED....

I hear Lizzy gets lonely!