Filling the void

An e-mail last week and comments made during a public meeting provide some basis for the recent debate over how the county sees the jobs creation end of operations.

The e-mail concerned one of several business models out there for putting public agencies tasked with some form of economic development, be it Chamber, Tourist Development Council or the like, under a single roof.

There seem to be as many permutations for such a model as there are dots on the map.

But that one e-mail underscored what was said during a meeting last week concerning the county’s proposed consolidation.

Economic development was for decades what The St. Joe Paper Company decided it was going to be.

For six decades The St. Joe Paper Company was the community, from phone to water to the mill whistle that marked the time.

This was a company county, and life was not bad, with a strong small business sector and folks flush sufficiently to lift all boats.

The paper mill went through several years in a spiral to closure, the gates permanently closed in 1998.

And the community, the county, had a few years of double-digit unemployment as it struggled to get a grip on moving forward after all the jobs the paper mill provided, in a ripple effect across the county, declined to near extinction.

Then the rise of real estate and the economy again hummed, though in a different fashion, fueled by land speculation and development with gas provided by The St. Joe Company as the company morphed from making paper to land development.

For several years times seemed good again.

However, within discussions during that same time period between The St. Joe Company and the Port Authority regarding future development of the port could be found a distinct turn away from the old model for creating jobs to a new one.

The pros and cons of that evolution of the local economy can be argued by the experts.

The discussion here is that now there seems a desire, a clear need, to return to at least an aspect of that old model. That the county remains an attractive place to bring in industry, to create jobs and that ripple effect that St. Joe Paper offered for so many years.

The problem is how to fill that void and with what.

That seems the piñata the county is swinging at as they consider putting various agencies under one roof.

Specifically, though, it is clear from last week’s meeting on the issue that the commissioners’ true agenda is to put the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Council beneath one umbrella.

Those two agencies represent the county’s, and in turn property taxpayers’, direct costs for economic development.

But the county’s investment in those two agencies is less than 1 percent of the property tax budget, and not even a quarter, at least in this fiscal year, of the money put into the Port St. Joe Redevelopment Agency.

Government plays a role in that it should be on the same page, consistent of message and stable, in the words of a consultant brought in several years ago to assess the county from an economic development standpoint.

It was critical launching point, he said.

That the city of Port St. Joe and the Board of County Commissioners are treating a joint meeting with important issues on the table as if negotiating a peace treaty is all one needs to know about how local government fits in that mold.

The most workable models provided in the past two weeks for the public role in economic development involved some sort of buy-in to private sector goals from local government.

The St. Joe Company, despite travails the company is experiencing elsewhere in the region and on Wall Street, remains a key to any movement forward. So, too, the private partners who have bought into the model, by putting their money down, of the current Economic Development Council.

That kind of private sector investment has potential to grow jobs and light industry, specifically in the fields of energy and health care, seem the right fits, melding a dash of the old – the land holdings and clout of St. Joe – with the new, such as producing renewable energy.

What is needed is local government that basically stays out of the way – buying in, not as much with tax dollars as with vocal and political support and the fostering of a low-tax, low-spend, smart regulation atmosphere that promotes sustainable job creation.

And government that is stable in message and direction.

The county is wrestling with the same issues that are caving in on communities across the country. The old jobs are gone and a void has been left for creating new ones.

Water and its cost is an issue of short-term importance to all residents and their elected representatives.

There is no bigger long-term dilemma that what fills the current void to create jobs to sustain the county in the future.

And until local governments can invest enough to sit down at the table for sensible, intelligent, even pointedly lively debate on the issues facing residents, there should be no surprise if the private sector is hesitant about investing in the county.