from staff
Steve Halverson came to Jacksonville 11 years ago and runs Jacksonville-based Haskell company, a design-build firm, as president and CEO. Rising quickly in the ranks of community leadership, he was a founder of the recently formed Jacksonville Civic Council, which replaced the former Non-Group of business leaders focused on civic issues. Halverson also has risen in state business circles, chairing the Florida Chamber of Commerce and soon the Florida Council of 100. He’s a lawyer by training. He and his wife have two grown children - a son with an eye on professional golf and a daughter heading for law school. Halverson met with the editorial staff of the Daily Record in his Riverside riverfront offices Wednesday.
You’ve been deeply involved in the community and in the state. What are your primary concerns?
In terms of Jacksonville, I don’t tend to think in terms of concerns. I tend to think in terms of opportunities. I am not prone to hand wringing by nature. What merits close attention is a continuing lack of appreciation of the value of education. We have not had the kind of powerful conversation we need to have around education and its implications for the long term on the health of our community and our state, and that concerns me.
The second issue that is increasingly on my mind is we don’t have a common community point of view about whether we should be in investment mode or in cost-cutting mode as a city and I find that a fascinating reality.
This won’t sound very Republican, and I am, but I think the city is underinvested in itself in pretty fundamental ways.
We would do well to create a large caliber vision of the city, calculate what that means and figure out, year over year, what it costs and, in all likelihood, that would lead to increased investment, which would mean increased taxes.
I would love to see that kind of conversation occur and the logical time for it to occur would be around the mayoral elections. I’m not optimistic it will occur, but it ought.
Who calls that conversation?
The traditional answer is mayors start that conversation. I don’t know that we live in traditional times and maybe that conversation needs to be started elsewhere.
Where? The Jacksonville Civic Council?
That’s a possibility. It’s not exclusively the domain of business people that they can be conveners of a conversation, but it will fall under its own weight if it doesn’t get beyond a bunch of self-appointed business people. But that could start the conversation. It would be important that it not conclude there.
How do you start a conversation like that?
My personal answer is all conversations start with data. This is a building full of engineers. If you can’t prove it mathematically, it never really happened here. For me, it always starts with data and what that data suggests is there’s a better picture for Jacksonville. Other communities ... have created better places for themselves and for their children and their grandchildren. And they’ve done it through targeted public sector investments that matter. But I’m not sure that is the right answer for everybody. It’s whatever persuades, and data persuade me.
Where is Jacksonville in that process? We’ve had a lot of visions and plans and strategies. Are we making headway or are we just kind of doing what we can, when we can?
My sense is the latter, we are doing what we can, and I don’t mean that to be critical of anybody or any institution. We have survived or are surviving the worst economic recession in any of our memories and the memories of the generation before us, and that’s no small thing, and when you are in survival mode, you’re in survival mode.
We tried to keep the community stitched together and keep the schools relatively funded and keep crime relatively at bay and that’s about all you could expect. We are emerging out of that now and I don’t think it’s healthy to stay in that bunker mentality.
I think it’s time to get our head above the hedge-rows a little bit, look out and say, ‘OK, the earth is trembling, but it stopped shaking.’ It’s time to move on.
Will the Civic Council be involved in the mayor’s race?
I can’t speak for the council. I can speak for my hopes for it. I hope it doesn’t get involved in the mayor’s race in the sense of endorsement or supporting Candidate A over Candidate B. I hope it gets involved in the race in the more general sense of helping forge that community vision for what could be, what might be and what ought to be and to the extent that influences candidates, all the better.
Is the Civic Council weighing in on any of the city budget issues?
I am hoping to. The council (performed a) survey of the most important issues facing the city and certainly the city budget, the city’s financial model, was clearly among those top issues and I would be surprised if the Civic Council didn’t engage in a very robust way in helping this mayor think through that, and any future mayor think through that. The prevailing sense is that all budgets and all financial models start with a vision. So, you have to answer the fundamental question, what do you want to be and once you decide that, what is the most effective way to capitalize that effort?
Knowing what you know about Jacksonville, what do you think would be the biggest roadblock to that happening?
All communities are different. What could make it difficult in Jacksonville is there are some pretty sharp schisms in the community. We have the racial divide that is enduring and deep. Not that other cities don’t, but ours is particular and it’s strong.
In terms of income, it’s a relatively poorer community than most. I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe the wealth is concentrated – fewer people have more resources.
It’s a conservative community. A lot of people value lower taxes more than a better city, and that has to be respected.
Until you have a picture of what might be, it’s difficult to say people don’t want that because you never asked the question. Should we raise taxes or not is the wrong question. If you start with the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. You have to have a vision of what the city might be, and then people will react to that.
I think the Better Jacksonville Plan was a precursor to the larger conversation. That was $2.2 billion. That’s real money.
You didn’t mention business as usual, as in the “Good Old Boys,” when it comes to hindering the growth process. Is that something you think needs to change?
I’ve only been here 11 years so I don’t have the context of even 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago.
But my sense is that Jacksonville is like most cities. The idea there’s a small network of very powerful, interconnected business leaders that control the resources in the city, I just don’t think that’s true anymore. I think it certainly has been true, but I think leadership is much more variegated now than it ever has been. That’s probably a good thing. It’s not a very efficient thing, but it’s a good thing.
Are the business leaders stepping up?
I am a natural born optimist, so I tend to see things that way, but what was instructive to me was when we started the Civic Council, and I was part of a small group working to organize that, we identified 52 people. It was a good starting group, much more diverse than the old Non-Group. We made 52 calls and we had 52 people say they wanted to be a part of it. That told me that there was a hunger to be engaged, there was a hunger for a better community.
Dues range by the size of the enterprise, between $5,000 to $15,000, so it’s not a king’s ransom, but if you are writing a $10,000 or $15,000 check, you are committed.
We are hiring a staff, so we’ll have an executive director.
What direction do you think Jacksonville should take for economic growth?
There are lots of ideas that are kicking around. Should we concentrate on being a medical destination and build on some wonderful assets that are already in place? That’s a worthwhile idea, but it’s expensive.
There are less sexy things. On my mind is to picture a map of the western hemisphere. You see the Panama Canal expansion and the trade flows and how that expansion will fundamentally alter the east-west trade flows. Florida is right in the middle of all that. There are 14 ports in Florida and there will be winners and losers. Should there be a concentrated policy to make sure Jacksonville is a winner? I happen to think there should. It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but it’s real jobs and high-paying jobs. It’s wealth creation.
What’s the best barometer for economic progress?
For me, the single biggest indicator of the health of a community is rise in personal incomes across the board. If the lowest 10 percent are making more money this year than last year, that’s a pretty healthy sign. If my income goes up, but a single mom who lives on the Westside’s income doesn’t, that’s not doing much. (Following economic growth is) when neighborhoods start to heal and schools get better and crime goes down. The correlation is pretty strong.
Do you think the current federal policies will help or hurt the country’s economic recovery?
Mostly hurt. I don’t view that as a Democrat or Republican, just in terms of economics.
We have in a healthy way de-leveraged the private sector, which was much too leveraged. The banking crisis was evidence of that, but we have replaced that with public sector leverage that is unsustainable. That’s not a very good trade. We can’t sustain deficits that we have written for ourselves. I don’t believe there’s a practical way to tax our way through it. I don’t think there’s nearly the tax elasticity that the administration believes there is. I think we have set a very difficult bar for ourselves
I think the impending rising tax rates are going to hurt job growth a lot. The worst possible recovery is one where jobs aren’t created. We have to create an environment that will allow the private sector to generate jobs.
The Haskell company designs and builds things. What perspective does that give you in terms of the recovery process?
Think about it. Buildings are expensive and they’re a bet on the future. You’re not going to spend $10 million on something like that unless you feel you’re going to make productive use of it for a reasonably long period of time.
Uncertainty is death for capital investment. We need for people to feel optimistic and confident and want to put their money into the ground to make money for a long period of time.
You are involved locally, you’re the head of the Florida chamber, running a company, you’re involved on boards and you are involved in nonprofits and you have a family. How do you do that?
I wish I had a precise construct. I can’t imagine not doing all those things. Everybody will say the family is the first priority. Our kids are grown ... so that part’s easy. Haskell is my first priority and I would give up anything else on that other list if it was in the best interest of Haskell to do so. But I think, especially now, business leaders really have an obligation to try to reach out beyond the boundaries of your own company. It’s good for your company and it’s good for you. It makes you a better leader.
It’s important to get involved in civic matters and my interests run toward public policy, so that is why I like the chamber. I am incoming chair of the Florida Council of 100, so I will continue that.
Right now being on (corporate) boards is not a popular thing to do because there is risk and liability and you get criticized. A lot of CEOs are shying away. I think that’s wrong. We have an obligation of good corporate governance and you have to step up. It makes you a better leader, a more grounded person, and it makes the community better.
Has the way a person leads been affected by the recession?
Clearly, it has. In perverse ways, having endured a recession is a good thing because things are not always expanding. It was a real object lesson for me when we were in the absolute teeth of this recession and you could see the fear in peoples’ eyes.
I have told many people the last year and a half were the toughest period I had, maybe ever. It was also the most rewarding because I watched this leadership team develop, drive through some tough adversity and do so with grace and dignity and values and compassion and now they are just much more self-confident.
You’ve seen a major league fastball, you know you can hit it. And so the next one that comes, you say, we can handle this, and there will be a next one.
Are things getting better?
It is very slow and it’s not linear. It’s frustrating because you can’t pin it to a trend and there isn’t a trend. I think it is going to be tough. ‘When is it going to bounce back?’ I say, ‘bounce?’ Bounce isn’t in my vocabulary right now. I say crawl out, fight our way out, but I don’t see a bounce. Clearly there’s healing going on and the country is enormously resilient, and so it will resume growth again. I don’t rule out the prospect of a so-called double-dip recession, which would be awfully painful, but there’s a possibility that will happen.
How deep is that second dip?
It’s hard to say. It’s hard to imagine it being anywhere as deep as the first dip, but any dip is bad because we are still dipped. The short-term prospects are blurry, but the long-term fundamentals are pretty strong. The biggest fulcrum for change in this community and in the nation remains education.
What do you do for fun?
That changes as you get older. My wife and I like to travel a lot. We play golf a lot, read quite a bit and then I have a real passion for music.
I don’t have a single favorite author, but it tends toward nonfiction. I am finding I am re-reading books that I read a long time ago. ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ which I read ages ago. I forgot how long and impenetrable that book was, but it was a great read.
I read any of the books that are written by current political leaders. I’m always interested to read to gain some insight. President Obama’s books, Mitt Romney’s book, Newt Gingrich’s book. And I got him to inscribe it to my daughter, who is a diehard Democrat.
What do you see in Jacksonville’s future?
I’m a big believer in Jacksonville. I think its best days are ahead and there is real reason for optimism.
We don’t have as intractable problems as other cities. I’d rather be here than Miami. I lived in Los Angeles and in some respects it’s a magnificent city, but it’s a spectacular disaster.