Strong black type proclaimed that a strong economy is forecast for the coming summer but troubling labor shortages are causing anxiety.
The headlines in the local papers this past week were predictable: Strong black type proclaimed that a strong economy is forecast for the coming summer but troubling labor shortages are causing anxiety. The labor shortages were attributed to the lack of affordable housing although students from foreign (almost exotic) countries have arrived to take up the slack. This trend has been evident when middle and eastern Europe accents provide clues to the nationality of the staff. This has lead to interesting conversations as these summer workers confide that they will return home to take a bar exam or sit for a graduate degree in the fall so are taking an opportunity to travel. But there is another looming problem which we need to seriously consider. While it is true that the lack of affordable housing is dramatically affecting the Island, there is another factor as well — and it is a much harder nut to crack. This is our economy. As we all know, our economy is based on a smoke-and-mirrors fluff factor: Second homes, tourism, the real estate market and all the ancillary and peripheral businesses. You will notice that most are seasonal. Thus many Islanders have patched together several seasonal jobs in order to earn an annual income while moving seasonally to keep ahead of the eviction notice. Did I mention the second home factor?
As the last 10 days have unfolded, the rush to summer has built up exponentially and the amount and rush of traffic on roads has built up as well. With a short spring after a harsh and extended winter, the contractors (all the construction trades and landscaping) and merchants, even the farmers, have found themselves caught short. Last week as merchants were arranging their wares on shelves, stocking their pantries with food for the coming weeks and decorating their windows, painters were scraping and sanding the window frames — prepping for a coat that they hoped to apply before the first shoppers. Inevitably the shoppers arrived first, entering through doors propped open to keep people from brushing against a still-wet coat of paint.
Meanwhile, road crews were out mowing and pruning the sides of the roads, and crews were up poles or laying wire in trenches for communication lines while crews were repairing and even repaving some roads. Farmers were struggling to get seeds and seedlings in and established while their counterparts with animals were wringing their hands over another dry spring and little native hay; for both this means more expense for irrigation and hay bought in from off-Island. On the second home and tourist front, homeowners (if they could get a reservation on the ferry) were arriving to clean and gussy up their houses and to check on projects. Many, if not most, of those houses are part of the very lucrative (for them) rental market and as has been reported, many houses are already fully booked for summer. (I won’t even mention the substantial sums that some houses rent for weekly or that if they are treated as investments, as so many are, the owners receive a healthy income stream and generous tax benefits).
As many owners arrived, they found that winter projects were incomplete and unfinished as contractors struggled to catch up with delays caused by winter storms, or rushed to answer calls for emergency repairs where the harsh weather had caused damage — a flood-damaged ceiling, rotted out deck, broken pipes leaking into a cellar, or a septic system blocked by roots.
As we all know, Memorial Day weekend is actually the shakedown cruise for many Island businesses, with several weeks to go before the real summer season begins. Most, if not all, problems, delays and deficiencies will get sorted out — houses and businesses will begin to sparkle (and the toilets flush), roadsides will be cleaned up and trimmed, seasonal stores will get staffed and stocked, potholes and crumbled edges will get repaired and ruffled feathers will smooth down. Farmers have some crops such as asparagus and pea shoots, early greens and herbs to sell as well as plants for home growers.
But this year there seem to already be a large number of summer visitors from all over. It is as if May is our new June (and we already know that June is our new July, and July our new August). A brief bit of anecdotal evidence, confirmed by comments from around the Island, is revealing. In a small shop in Menemsha, open only on weekends so far, there have already been visitors from 18 out of the 50 states and from China, Puerto Rico, Yugoslavia, Sweden, India and Hong Kong. Of course these visitors provide a large opening burst to the season and many merchants will be clapping their hands with glee, although after a few weeks of long hours and too few staff they may feel otherwise. But to ask the hard question, does this seasonal economy help with our largest year-round problems? I don’t think so.
On Memorial Day I was listening on WCAI to a program about innovative businesses on Cape Cod. A business named Hydroid was mentioned as one of about 80 Cape businesses which hires over 100 people (Hydroid currently employs 147 people).
It is a high-tech business for automated underwater exploration devices and techniques, so it fits in nicely with our world class ocean science community just across the Sound. It is located in Pocasset. In fact, Hydroid provided a REMUS system for WHOI as well as other sophisticated pieces of innovative gadgetry. The program went on to report that while the bulk of the Cape economy is made up of small businesses employing four to eight people, the year-round ripple effect — all positive — of a business such as Hydroid is incalculable. Particularly as the business, and so many others, are year round, sustainable, broad-based, green, and they provide good wages with benefits. Honestly, what is there not to like?
This small example highlights what many Island planners and leaders know but haven’t yet begun to address. And that is that our economy is strangling us — too many cars, too many people and totally unsustainable. Jobs, often seasonal and/or part time, carry with them no benefits (no health care, no pensions, no anything) although they may have a high wage, particularly as some are paid under the table. Meanwhile, homeowners are encouraged to charge rents that make your eyes water (can you really enjoy a house that costs $25,000 a week?) and much of that money goes off-Island rather than being thoughtfully reinvested into projects and businesses that truly benefit the Island and Islanders.
So here is my annual plea to Island planners and leaders: We need serious sessions with some clever and innovative lateral thinkers, folks who understand and appreciate Islands, as well as a constructive, well-funded planning effort to modify our economy so that it works for us. There is a role model. We can look to the Island Institute up in Rockland, Me., for guidance because they seem to get it. Meanwhile put your thinking cap on and come up with some sort of new mouse trap. It could be something like a call center (why should Comcast customers be talking to someone in Mumbai, India?), or a small research lab working on arthritis cures (I’ll volunteer), or a group figuring out how to truly eliminate ticks (plenty of research material here). It could even be a mouse trap modified to catch rats (and we all know that we’ve got plenty of them here too), an “energy efficient” bike, or a way to deal with red tide. It could be something like Chilmark Toasted Sesame Seed Dressing (no GMO, although actually made on the Cape now). Or taking a look into the recent past, Woodchips, which was just one (and very successful) of Ralph and Millie Briggs’s business, or ORE (Ocean Research Equipment) started by the late David Frantz in 1961, could help to set a course.
Put your thinking cap on, and see you again when summer is winding down.
Virginia Crowell Jones lives in West Tisbury.
Comments
Brava, Virginia Crowell Jones
Bruce Nevin EdgartownBrava, Virginia Crowell Jones! Your Op-Ed piece "Seasonal Economy Not a Sustainable Model" (Vineyard Gazette, Friday, May 29) speaks my mind.
Our economy demands perpetual growth. "Good news!", we are told, "The GNP went up 2%!" Or "Bad news, housing starts are down a fraction, and the market is faltering." This myth, so pervasive that it is scarcely noticed, is running into the non-mythical facts of physics and biology. We do not have infinite resources at our disposal. The vast ocean is filling with our refuse, and its much plundered populations of sea life dwindle perilously. The very air we breath is filling with our waste CO2, pushing a growing cascade of catastrophes.
On this small Island, those limits are right in our faces.
In the 1890s, one of my grandfathers, Capt. Ellsworth Luce West, saw that the whaling trade was on its last legs and moved to other endeavors on the sea and finally as a farmer. My great-grandfather on the other side, William Channing Nevin, moved here from Philadelphia in the same period, and as a Selectman in Edgartown was instrumental in promoting tourism as the way to maintain our economy. In the years when my parents were born and came of age, most Islanders still grew their own food, even as more and more folks visited and then moved here, all needing to be fed and served, drawn by our quaint preservation of older ways in the face of all-engulfing change. The challenges of town and gown in a university town are nothing in comparison.
A late lamented Vineyard Wizard, Milton Mazer, the prime instigator of MV Community services, knew us well. (I am happy to say that his gifted portrait, People and Predicaments: Of Life and Times on Martha's Vineyard, is back in print.) He saw the corrosive influence of this hat-in-hand dependency, of the balooning and collapse of incomes with the seasonal flood and ebb of people who are here to get away from somewhere else. He saw the need for year-round business. But what?
The dead trees in the State Forest are the legacy of a failed attempt to establish a furniture industry here. But even had the trees thrived, chairs and tables are heavy and bulky. The problem with establishing a profitable industry here has always been the cost of shipping.
Today we have new opportunities. Specialized electronic devices are smaller and lighter, and far more lucrative. Most importantly, bits and bytes are cheap to ship. Telephone calls are free, given an Internet connection. Some years ago we had the opportunity for a dedicated T1 connection to service the Island that was scuttled by inter-town rivalry. (Ask Jim Norton about that.) But even under the duopoly of Comcast and Verizon opportunity beckons.
What is needed is the convergence of three factors. Imagination to envision possible businesses. Practical business people to bring an idea down to earth, meeting the tests of a well-grounded business plan. And venture capital to comprehend the vision and the plan together and bring financial support to establish a working business.
Here's an example that has seemed to me hard to implement, because there are so many moving parts. We suffer in summer from too many cars on our quaint 17th-century roads that we love so well. Many people bring their cars over essentially as jumbo suitcases to carry all their vacation gear. Imagine: The family stops in a parking lot somewhere around Bourne, and loads said gear into containers of moderate size. They shuttle down to the boat with just some light day luggage. They ride the bus or a cab, or rent a small electric vehicle for the duration. Later in the day or the next morning, when a truck has a full load of the containers, it comes over to a depot here. The containers are delivered or the contents can be picked up.
Virginia, you have put forward so many excellent ideas. Brava! Let's hear more. Can we create a Facebook group (we have some wonderful MV this and that groups now!) dedicated to a new Island economy? No idea too foolish sounding. Even the silliest notion can hold some kernel of new possibility waiting to be recognized. Then let's bring solid business thinking to bear, putting ideas to the test of practicality, hammering out a real business plan. Not a cheap, smug "that won't work"; rather, "can we make that work?" And finally, you who have 'made it' by the world's standards, you who come to us in the generosity of desire to give back, please keep an eye on the main chance for our sustainability, and help to foster this.
Yours in hope,
Bruce Nevin
I have been talking and
Jim Malkin ChilmarkI have been talking and thinking about the issue of of on-island careers vs. summer jobs etc for several years. It is a significant issue that needs to be addressed unless we want the divide between "destination vacation" and "permanent location" to widen. There are two major stumbling blocks to career creation, as I see it: 1/the lack of affordable year round living (rental as well as ownership) and 2/the competition posed by not for profits to private enterprise on the island (take farms and theaters as examples.) This is a tough issue. There are businesses that could be established here but we need places for the staff to live on this island where teachers et al are out of housing and on the street at end of May each year.
My hope is this will become a
Richard Toole Oak BluffsMy hope is this will become a priority for our own MV Commission under the leadership of its new Executive Director, using as a blueprint the Commission's community developed Island Plan, created under the guidance of their retiring Director Mark London. Thank you Ginny for reminding us of the need for a sustainable year round economy not based on boatloads of more and more short term visitors.
it is also worth noting that
michael johnson oak bluffsit is also worth noting that as all businesses and business people trend towards catering to seasonal business models catering to tourism, the quality of life for year-round people diminishes because there are less and less goods and services available to them. this lack of availability and lack of competition for buyers creates paucity of supply, high demand and exorbitant prices for the things vineyarders need. summer tourist prices have become year-round prices with no respite. in 30 years as the year-round population has increased the amount of year-round businesses serving the basic needs of the community has decreased exponentially, creating considerable stress financially and psychically for those who choose to live year-round. this is also unsustainable.
Forcing an issue or cause
J C Murphy West TisburyForcing an issue or cause that many times is illegal and economically unfeasible to prevent the conclusion of supply and demand seems to be a common endeavor on the island. The motives are arguable. We have a tremendous tourist attraction. We have a plethora of winter housing & available classroom facilities. We have a plethora of elderly people. We have a plethora of young people that refuse to work the jobs that are available to them and force the use of foreign green card imports.
My opinion would be to encourage a specialty small college or a group of educational environments that would allow the existing assets of winter housing and the existing unused structures in the winter, build cluster developments so the elderly can easily migrate from their larger homes into communal type housing and receive inexpensive transportation to their door, and stop giving hand-outs to wealthy children who refuse to be productive at a young age. This would take a concerted effort in sound planning and a change in the mind-set of the entire community which presently has no countervailing balance.
If you have a natural resource, use it to the fullest and do not pretend to save the planet with untimely economic endeavors because timing is everything. Untimeliness is costly and totally unproductive. Education is one of the most profitable, necessary and timely endeavors in the world now. A specialty education program of higher learning would increase the supply of teachers and professors. The Island possesses that seasonality and protective environment for learning which would attract professors and students of many specialized disciplines.
This would eliminate the inordinate labor costs of present day teachers. When you examine the salaries and pensions of the educational community of the island, you will find the educational burden of teacher’s earnings with benefits approximates $130,000 for about nine months work. When you extrapolate the two ends of the normal distribution curve you will find them along with municipal employees to be the most highly paid on the island. The approximate median FAMILY income for a family in Washington DC is $53,000, which has one of the highest in the country.
While many of the points you
tom hodgson wtWhile many of the points you raise in your comment are excellent, your figure for and your opinion about median income in DC are questionable. You might read the attached article for more complete, more nuanced, and more accurate median income information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
You are correct in regard to
J C Murphy West TisburyYou are correct in regard to my statement on Median Income. I made a bifurcated statement.
Washington DC is a little under $60,000 for the Family Median Income statistic. Washington excluding DC itself is a little under $90,000 for Family Median Income which is the highest in the country. That is where only 1% of non-government employees work. I find that to be an interesting economic number. Sorry for the confusion, but Washington has always been confusing to me. It kind of reminds me of Martha's Vineyard.
Other resort communities have
Meg Bodnar Aquinnah, MAOther resort communities have the same issues. We need to talk to other resort towns for ideas that already exist that might be adaptable here. One resort town, Telluride, CO, has developed a program for attracting entrepreneurs (from within, and outside community) to develop new businesses, many of which stay in that location, diversifying job options for locals and creating a dynamic layer to the economy and experience there. Telluride Venture Accelerator - check out www.tellurideva.com.
Our internet connectivity is
Ken Esq EdgartownOur internet connectivity is becoming increasingly important. There should be an Island-wide initiative to bring fiber and gigabit speed and above connectivity to our homes, schools and businesses.
That access will enable our residents to work here for anyone throughout the world as well as allow Island entrepreneurs to provide services globally.
Depending on a single, for-profit company to provide that access is risky at best.
Meg is so right! There is
Julie Anne McNary Vineyard Haven, MAMeg is so right! There is such opportunity here if the island is open to new, alternative, and entrepreneurial economic models. Hoping such avenues will open in the near future, as it could be a very empowering game-changer here.
Virginia, I was always
Nancy Carol Gardella Vineyard haven ,MAVirginia, I was always astounded by your writing skills and ability to put together a thoughtful piece. You do not disappoint.
The writer makes some very
Isaac Newton XIVThe writer makes some very good points, and for those with some time on their hands, a full read and re-read could be valuable. A bit of editing would be useful for next year's plea, so that the important points aren't lost in the story. In my opinion, the core issue driving this island down the wrong path is corruption. Not in its most obvious forms. I have no knowledge of bribes or payoffs. But we do allow these seasonal businesses to operate without regard for tax laws. Our fire departments don't enforce safe occupancy codes all that often, and when they do violators get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Health departments are incredibly lax on the restaurants here. Many of the islands's largest businesses employ illegal workers (not the J-1s, they are here legally even if the conditions of their employment are usually broken). If the IRS did an audit of these businesses the proprietors would be jailed for tax evasion and benefits fraud. Yet we support this outlaw business mentality. It is changing...word of lawsuits at major businesses for employment law violations is starting to surface. Good. The natural economy of this island could be more balanced if the seasonal employers were held to basic legal standards already part of society back in "America." Enforce the laws, and you will get your island back.
Thing is, our economy is a
Susan Johnson Vineyard HavenThing is, our economy is a microcosm of national & international economies. Tourism is the number one industry worldwide. The larger picture is industry and the nature of product. The real issue at hand has to do with consumption as opposed to sustainability. am not an economist, but through my research as an artist and philosophy student, this is what I see. Tourism was the fall back industry of the industrial revolution, and the Island industry can must definitely be traced to post civil war years. A number of projects were attempted, such as the Brickworks, clay exportation, and salt production, and salted cod production -and wool. Interestingly enough, pre-industrial revolution, the Island was a major supplier of wool for international textiles (and of course whale oil was directly responsible for the development of industrial technology). Otherwise, our traditional industries were based on local sustainability. I wonder if a reverse back to a neighborhood economy is on arising through grassroots- simply because there are no jobs and one must become an entrepreneur. If not exactly, then I wonder if that is what we actually need to aim for. I guess that would be a market economy, but it seems to offer a more vital relation between consumption and production. To illustrate - when 19th C Paris was remodeled, the economy drastically changed from neighborhood service to city wide. The reality of community changed from local relationships to objective consumerism as local shops disappeared in favor of department stores. Tourism went hand in hand with that. It is not an incidental that Impressionism is still a huge draw. In any case, my point is that identity, culture and community align with economics. As a microcosm, the Island problems make evident larger problems, which is good. Bad thing is the Island may no longer be a place of residence. It may be too late, but maybe not. Thing is, lack of sustainability means one cannot make a living and reside here. The only solution I can think of is a change in our notion of consumption and live off what what is available here, produce food and goods. Anything is possible if we want it to be so. That is the good thing about an Island. But have we sold too much of ourselves? Is there anything left for ourselves? Have we sold ourselves down the river, i.e. out loss kf a dedicated island rep in state government?
(Sorry for the typos-
Susan Johnson Vineyard Haven(Sorry for the typos- dratted ipad. I type too fast for it)
To add a hopeful thought-
Susan Johnson Vineyard HavenTo add a hopeful thought- there is Venice, our sister city. Tourism has always been a key industry, along with trade. Venice, like much of Europe, does much right with tourism- -and considers local industry a priority too. Venice does have real neighborhoods & caters to Venetians as well as tourists, although it is true most workers do not live there. Venice has the Biennale too, the best of them all, IMO
I think we should focus on
ChetI think we should focus on the title of this article to find some suggestions and not try to reinvent our local economy. Our economy is tourism, this will never change, nor should it. The only reason we are "not sustainable" is because of the seasonality of it. Connecting the dots will show that we need to increase tourism year round.
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