Profit motive? Not THAT!
One of the bright spots in my life right now is the stuff happening towards becoming resilient as a community. Our town is shockingly active in a lot of fronts with an over-arching concept of becoming more sustainable in a Peak Oil world. So we've expanded our bus and train access and we've put solar panels over the capped landfill and we've set up a couple of community gardens. The downtown is more alive than nearly any downtown I know in the United States. I just went to a meeting with some people in Boston and they were stunned by what we've got going on here. The consultants said that they usually have to set the train in motion. In our case we've got a train leaving the station every hour and their project is to harness the whole thing into a cohesive plan and brand and market it somehow.
The meeting I was just in was mostly to come up with a plan to do energy efficiency retrofits to 100% of the buildings in town. The tax incentives and 75% matching grants that have been offered for the past few years have gathered in maybe 5% of the buildings. 73% are at least partially tenant-occupied, though, and hardly any of them have had insulation upgrades. The elderly don't like having strangers come to their houses. The incompetent poor can't manage to make a phone call and fill out the paperwork that would qualify them. It's a puzzle. (Clarifying note: the *competent* poor can and do and aren't the problem. How to provide one-on-one outreach to people who cannot meet us halfway is the issue.)
Meanwhile, the green jobs training program at the community college is churning out earnest young people who want jobs installing insulation and rubber gaskets on switch plates. The hotline to coordinate this is up and running and waiting for calls to come in to channel work to these crews. But the calls aren't coming in. Even with free money, people just aren't showing up. So, how to get people to come get these services?
I suggested we divide up several dense urban areas into overlay districts and parcel out data from the assessor's office to four energy retrofit subcontractors and have them go knock on doors to see if they could get people interested in free (to the resident) retrofits. After all, I pointed out, the guys who wanted to do the jobs had a profit motive.
Full stop. I'd laugh it it weren't so sad: nearly everyone at that table thought that was a really distasteful idea. One woman actually SNEERED. It was as if I'd used the term "motherfucker" or something. In polite company we do NOT appreciate the profit motive, apparently.
Looking around, nearly everyone at that table was a worker in the public sector. In fact, I was - once again - one of the only people at the table who was not being paid by the taxpayer to be there.
The discussion evolved into which agencies could bring on workers to do the work of outreach to building owners.
The mayor mentioned that there was a mass mailing going out to every homeowner in two weeks with the real estate bills and we could put an insert in there essentially for free. Too soon, they all agreed. They need to form a committee to work on the message and produce something that can be ready in, say, three months.
Good thing we don't have no stinking profit motive here.
The meeting I was just in was mostly to come up with a plan to do energy efficiency retrofits to 100% of the buildings in town. The tax incentives and 75% matching grants that have been offered for the past few years have gathered in maybe 5% of the buildings. 73% are at least partially tenant-occupied, though, and hardly any of them have had insulation upgrades. The elderly don't like having strangers come to their houses. The incompetent poor can't manage to make a phone call and fill out the paperwork that would qualify them. It's a puzzle. (Clarifying note: the *competent* poor can and do and aren't the problem. How to provide one-on-one outreach to people who cannot meet us halfway is the issue.)
Meanwhile, the green jobs training program at the community college is churning out earnest young people who want jobs installing insulation and rubber gaskets on switch plates. The hotline to coordinate this is up and running and waiting for calls to come in to channel work to these crews. But the calls aren't coming in. Even with free money, people just aren't showing up. So, how to get people to come get these services?
I suggested we divide up several dense urban areas into overlay districts and parcel out data from the assessor's office to four energy retrofit subcontractors and have them go knock on doors to see if they could get people interested in free (to the resident) retrofits. After all, I pointed out, the guys who wanted to do the jobs had a profit motive.
Full stop. I'd laugh it it weren't so sad: nearly everyone at that table thought that was a really distasteful idea. One woman actually SNEERED. It was as if I'd used the term "motherfucker" or something. In polite company we do NOT appreciate the profit motive, apparently.
Looking around, nearly everyone at that table was a worker in the public sector. In fact, I was - once again - one of the only people at the table who was not being paid by the taxpayer to be there.
The discussion evolved into which agencies could bring on workers to do the work of outreach to building owners.
The mayor mentioned that there was a mass mailing going out to every homeowner in two weeks with the real estate bills and we could put an insert in there essentially for free. Too soon, they all agreed. They need to form a committee to work on the message and produce something that can be ready in, say, three months.
Good thing we don't have no stinking profit motive here.