Wrapping up ED

Tuesday night's work session for the Oconee County Commission was the first, serious public conversation held by local officials regarding the proposed regional economic development partnership, and, as one attendee told me upon leaving last night, it reopened the door to getting something done.

A little more than a year ago, Oconee County Chairman Melvin Davis joined with Athens-Clarke County Mayor Heidi Davison in calling for a regional partnership to maximize the area's economic development efforts. The resulting task force, populated with various public and private officials, produced a final report calling for the consolidation of those efforts between the two counties.

Since then, Davis has cooled to the idea. Likewise, two of Oconee County's four commissioners, in Chuck Horton and Margaret Hale, are also wary of the proposal, while the other two in John Daniell and Jim Luke, are supportive of the proposal.

On Tuesday, Horton, Daniell and Davis debated the merits of the proposal and listened to feedback from those involved with the report's preparation.

As Rusty Haygood, Oconee County's economic director, noted, an earlier economic development initiative for the community stressed a marketing strategy geared toward the bioscience, retail and construction industries. That strategy worked tremendously toward the latter two, but tapered off regarding biosciences (as it has regionally as well).

However, as Daniell said at the meeting, the potential overall impact of those latter two is limited and not a viable long-term strategy ...

We're getting jobs, but the amount people are making is dropping, and that's just not a good long-term trend

Ed Perkins, the chair of the regional economic development task force, stressed the need for regionalism to use multi-faceted approaches to address multi-faceted problems. There were ample references to comparable efforts across the state, as well as opportunity and potential for new, innovative projects that could result from the partnership ...

You can hire someone else to look at these same things, but (the task force) has already done that. We looked at communities that have solved these problems, and that offers a lesson for us.

Horton's two primary concerns appear to center on the local autonomy of Oconee County. The first deals with the ability of the community to continue to fund its own economic development operation. According to Haygood, Oconee County spends $149,000 on local economic development and another $125,000 on debt retirement for the Oconee Gateway Business Park.

I'm not going to vote to close our office. That's just something I won't do. There are some fine details with (the partnership) that just need to get worked out, and I haven't seen them worked out yet.

Daniell, however, indicated he was open to utilizing the money from the Gateway debt - which will be retired next fiscal year - to at least partially fund the regional partnership. According to Perkins, Athens-Clarke County has contributed, on the whole, roughly $225,000 for the partnership (with $150,000 being directly allocated from the Athens-Clarke County Commission).

In addition, Horton expressed hesitation regarding diverting funding away from existing efforts to more regionalized ones without the appropriate work done in site targeting, product development and other infrastructure issues. This was a concern echoed by Davis.

I understand those concerns, however, I think the commitment to the local office represents an allegiance to what is quickly becoming an outdated model. The various members of the task force who attended the meeting repeatedly focused on the successes of consolidation and collaboration in various communities across the state. A direct reference was made the work of Hart County in partnering with various neighbors, including those in South Carolina, to attract reinvestment in abandoned industrial sites.

Likewise, and Daniell noted this when Horton raised this at the end of the meeting, focusing on 'wasting money' by writing a check to an organization in advance of, say, product development doesn't make much sense to me. Because it's already going on at the local level, and Daniell said that funding is already being allocated to local development efforts without the necessary zoning research or infrastructure planning. As a result, the latter must be addressed regardless, and funding exists to support this project.

To Daniell's credit, he displayed a solid pragmatism in wanting to advance the project and was eager to protect local development investments to soothe the concerns of some commissioners ...

If this is as important as everyone is saying, and the task force did great work in this area, then let's double-fund some things to get us moving forward.