Costs of Economic Development

What are the costs of having an economic development program in Batesville? What will we be spending the tax dollars on, and how do you determine the amount that you spend? These are two very important questions, and ones that are the most common from people who want to know more about a proposed tax. The last thing I want my tax dollars doing is being spent on something that will not be of benefit to both myself and other citizens. Government as a whole has over time taken tax dollars and spent them on things that have not benefited tax payers, and in fact, have benefited the governmental entity, and in turn, have benefited no one. What is different about this effort is that your tax dollars are going to be spent on things that will positively effect jobs. Period. The group of people that have committed to being on the initial board of the non-profit group that will make the recommendations to the Quorum Court are people that understand business, they understand what it means to do business well, and they will apply their experience to this process.

What makes that important is that too often we may expect our governmental agencies to make business decisions when they are not necessarily geared to do so. That is no slight to any of our governing bodies, but they specialize in ordinances, legislation, protection, and services. Think about it this way; if government existed to make a profit, something would be terribly wrong with that picture! Enter in this group of business people who understand what it will take to grow business. They understand, based on their industry segment or service sector what success means, and what we need in our community. We have purposely worked to get people from all across Independence County from our various employment areas that understand this. It’s the balance between government and business that we need. The two must work together to be successful, and if they don’t, we will be successful in doing nothing.

The cost of economic development varies, but its important to realize that we have to prioritize these monies to what our needs are. Right now, its important that we assist local companies that have expansion projects or needs for retraining. Currently, we have some employers of all sizes that are doing well and are expanding and will be adding jobs to our local economy. Success in economic development requires planning, and not just for the addition of jobs, but the kinds of jobs. We have a very diverse local economy that we need to have someone with experience in doing this in other communities come in and help lay a vision with this board to determine what our strengths are and what we will need to be doing to be competitive and retain, recruit, and enhance the jobs in our area. We will not sit idly by and let people come to us looking for assistance in their expansion efforts, in their efforts to bring a new business to our area, or looking for some training assistance. We will seek those out, and will solicit from the community the needs of our employers so we can utilize these funds in a responsible manner.

The price that we pay for this kind of effort is priceless in that the steps we are taking to take care of ourselves will pay off in the long term. The money that we will be offering companies with this tax goes a long way in their minds in that we have money that will help them in either the retention efforts or their expansion. But once we all begin to work together on this effort and we all know that we are taking steps forward to secure our future that is an investment in this community that no company can ever make, no person can ever contribute to, because it is larger than that. An effort like this is our county coming together through a collective effort that we all say without hesitation we are going to do something about our future, and we are going to start now. The reality is the communities who have the resources to market themselves, to put incentives on the table along with the state, will be in the game and will vie for jobs that are out there. Even in these challenging times, there are companies looking at growing.

On December 9^th, everyone in this County will have the opportunity to voice their opinion on this matter and cast their vote. As a community I urge you to, as one group of citizens, vote yes for a priceless investment in our collective future, and one that will reap dividends for us, our children, and our grandchildren.