Lessons From The Task Force Trenches | The co-chairs of Worcester's business group share how they found common ground on controversial issues
Photo/Christina H. Davis
GROUP THINK: Shyla Matthews and James Leary were tasked by Mayor Joseph O'Brien to co-chair the city's 36-member task force on job growth and business retention, which made 16 recommendations on how to improve the business climate in Worcester.
How do you get 36 different people, all with different viewpoints and priorities, to come together and agree on recommendations of how to improve Worcester’s business climate?
That’s the task Worcester Mayor Joseph O’Brien gave to Shyla Matthews and James Leary, co-chairs of the task force on business growth and job retention. The task force released its report, which made 16 recommendations across four categories, on Aug. 9.
The recommendations are broken into four categories: municipal staffing and organization; promoting a fair and equitable taxation system; business incentives and branding and marketing.
Matthews was a representative for residents of Worcester, although she works for MassDevelopment, a quasi-public state agency focused on economic development. Leary is the assistant vice chancellor for community relations at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Both Matthews and Leary said they were excited about the opportunity when O’Brien asked them to get involved, but they admitted that the entire process was more than a little daunting.
So, how did they manage to find consensus and what lessons did they learn that can be applied to the business world?
Who’s Who
The most basic part of setting up the committee, according to Matthews, was the membership. O’Brien, Matthews and Leary wanted a broad spectrum of interests to be represented.
That included everyone from big business leaders to small businesses, from nonprofit organizations to business representatives that have not been civically engaged in the past. And O’Brien had an overarching goal of getting people who have a stake in Worcester to be involved.
More than three-quarters of the task force membership resided in the city.
Once they had the membership, the hard work began.
Open & Honest
After the committee was set up, Leary and Matthews scheduled a series of weekly meetings to begin the discussions.
“The process was literally, ‘Let people have their say, and just listen to their concerns,’ ” Leary said.
Matthews said a priority was to provide a comfortable environment for the participants.
“You really have to create that atmosphere of honesty, an area that will allow for the whistle-blowers and free ideas,” she said.
Even Matthews said she had to deal with that herself.
Before going on the task force, Matthews said she had a fairly idealistic view of the city’s interactions with businesses. It was eye opening to hear concerns from business leaders about the struggles they’ve had in the city, she said.
Divide & Conquer
One strategy the duo used to organize the meetings was to divvy up the tasks to accommodate the strengths of each. Leary, for example, many times led the large-group discussions. Matthews, on the other hand, kept meetings on task and within the focus of the topics.
At some points during the meetings, Leary and Matthews also broke the group up into smaller subgroups to have conversations.
The task force met with city representatives and workers, business owners and had seven formal sessions, as well as one public meeting.
Once the discussions and fact collecting were done, they compiled the information and boiled it down into various recommendations.
Don’t Get Too Specific
There was no shortage of information to consider and base the recommendations on, Leary remembers.
The bigger issue was choosing which ones to focus on. Fairly quickly, Leary and Matthews, along with O’Brien, lumped the discussion points into four categories, including municipal staffing and organization, promoting a fair and equitable taxation system, business incentives and marketing and branding of the city.
From those, the group came together to discuss various recommendations that would be made within each category.
Leary, who had also chaired a committee a few years back examining how the colleges can help to better market the city, said it’s important to focus on the areas of agreement.
“There are going to be a lot more points where people agree than disagree,” he said. “You just need to make sure everyone has an opportunity to put their two cents in and focus on those agreement areas.”
A discussion about the tax rate proved to be one of the hottest topics the task force tackled.
The task force ended up recommending that the mayor and city council narrow the disparity in property tax rates between business and residential owners, as well as utilize better existing tax exemption programs.
“It was really about starting a discussion and presenting alternative options,” Leary said.
While various members of the task force had different points of view on the tax-rate issue, a generic recommendation that called for reducing the tax-rate disparity between residents and businesses seemed to be something that all members could agree on.
Capturing Momentum
The report was released, but work hasn’t ended.
“The mayor has now been given a toolbox. Now he brings it to the council,” Matthews said.
Neither Matthews nor Leary expect that all of the recommendations will be implemented immediately. Some are short-term goals, some are longer term. Some take a change in municipal law while others may require changes in state law.
The point is not how the laws will be created, but instead, how much progress is made. Leary and Matthews expect to meet semi-annually to check back in on the task force and O’Brien’s movement toward achieving the goals.
“One of the most important parts of this exercise is setting up a forum to discuss these issues,” Leary said.
While some of the issues may be addressed, new ones will arise, and the long-lasting benefit of having the task force is that it has the potential to provide an ongoing dialogue, Leary said.
Get The Data
Even with a 36-member group, Matthews, Leary and the rest of the team felt like they needed something more.
O’Brien arranged for a four-member research team made up of two interns from Clark University and an AmeriCorps volunteer, plus a representative from the Worcester Business Development Corp., to aid the task force in collecting data.
While it’s one thing to make suggestions, Matthews said having the research to back up those recommendations was invaluable.
For example, one recommendation calls for increasing the size of the city’s economic development agency. The task force was able to use data to compare the size of Worcester’s business development office to those of similar-sized cities to justify that proposal.
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