Jobs creation

Last week County Commissioner Warren Yeager and the majority of the Board of County Commissioners said they’d like a look-see at a new organizational structure for economic development of the county.

Essentially it would be an attempt to “consolidate” five agencies under one umbrella.

However, the proposal wobbles on a faulty foundation and asks a fundamental question of local government.

The foundation is that these agencies – the Gulf County Chamber of Commerce, Gulf County Tourist Development Council, Gulf County Economic Development Council, Port St. Joe Redevelopment Agency and Port of Port St. Joe Port Authority – are like-minded in mission and scope.

But the Chamber, while receiving some county funds, is effectively a private organization with a mission to promote and sustain local businesses.

The TDC has a state-mandated charge to use taxpayer money – primarily bed tax revenue – to promote outside the county limits the joys of visiting inside the county’s limits, especially taking in the sun and the sand and the local happenings.

The redevelopment agency (PSJRA) is specifically charged under a provision of state law to invest a small percentage of property tax increases – an important distinction given the downward trend of values – in specified ways within the boundaries of its legally-mandated territory.

The Port of Port St. Joe Port is a special district created in state law. By definition, it is only an economic development agency to the extent that the port is developed, another distinction of note.

The Economic Development Council is a public/private partnership with a defined mandate to attract business to the county, its private partners invested in the county through a membership fee and devoted to growing jobs in the county.

These agencies, put in a barrel, would be neither apples nor oranges.

There are sporadic overlapping missions, but put together this would be a quagmire of duties and spending of funds that would, based on the mission statements of these organizations, be destined to fail.

So the question for commissioners is what do they want economic development to look like.

Barely two years ago, the Board of County Commissioners entered into a five-year plan with the newly-configured board of the Economic Development Council to bolster that agency.

Less than three years later, the BOCC had already reneged, cutting funding in half, from $73,000 to $30,000.

There is history.

County commissioners have rarely resisted the urge to scratch the economic development itch whenever it has been politically expedient, and there have been at least four economic development directors since the closing of the paper mill who would likely agree.

In 2008 came a new EDC board of directors, new funding sources, new commitments and a general sense that things were moving ahead.

But the county is now holding hostage the last portion of its yearly monetary commitment, about $12,000 to the EDC – which was less than half of what was agreed upon in 2008 – and proposing a restructuring that leaves unclear where the pledge of less than three years ago stands.

While some commissioners were mindful that the five-year plan entered into was in significant part due to the history in this county and nature of economic development – the realization that any sustained and viable job creation was going to take a period of time.

The goal, as one consultant brought in by the EDC said several years ago, is to put the county on the radar, be on the list for businesses looking for a place to locate or relocate.

No one should understand that more than Commissioner Bill Williams, who has contended – as he did last week when questioned about his local-taxpayer-paid travel expenses as an officer of the lobbying organization for all Florida counties – that the goal is raising the profile of the county.

And no organization could explain the formula better than the Port Authority which has discovered that staying on the radar as the lone undeveloped deepwater port in Florida is no guarantee of the partners and funding to turn rock into diamond.

So the returns to what does the county want economic development – after this proposed consolidation – to look like?

If it is to put some sort of financial overseer at the top of any organizational chart in order to ensure fiscal responsibility and communication, then the county should go all in.

Hire a financial officer. Sacrifice the dollars for a financial director who will map out a vision for county operations and put actions to vision in a fiscally-responsible method for all county funds, spending and departments.

There has long been such a need at the county level.

And there is likely to be some savings realized from a reduction of other’s responsibilities.

But if the goal of consolidation is job creation, no flow chart will perform the task.

The county entity most maintaining a profile for business – and in turn the pipeline to what the idea is, job creation – is not a fit for any other agency. The EDC must be a vehicle all its own, with private partners and local governments working in unison to bring about the kind of job creation that sustains a community.

That organization also cannot be a political football, which only undermines its charge to bring sustainable jobs to the county.

Government alone can not create jobs.

So, county commissioners must choose a role to play in economic development – partner or obstacle.