WaWa Comes to Escambia County's District 1!

I was invited to attend a community celebration of a new business coming to town today in District 1.

WaWa stores are a staple all along the East Coast and even in the peninsula of Florida.

But the panhandle of Florida does not have a WaWa.

That is about to change, and today I was invited to the groundbreaking of the first area WaWa store in my district, District 1, in Escambia County.  As a matter of fact, there will be, within the next two years, a total of THREE (3) WaWa stores in District 1.  One will be at the Ransley Station Development on Pine Forest Road (the site of today's event) and the next two will be at Beulah Road and 9-Mile Road and Blue Angel Pkwy and U.S. 98. 

 

So D1 will be getting 3 WaWa's.

Some might say--why get excited about a gas station?

But WaWa is much more than that.:  

At today's celebration (which drew nearly 200 citizens, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce, our County Sheriff, myself, and State Rep. Michelle Salzman)--it was shared with the group that several locals had been BEGGING WaWa HQ to bring an outlet to Escambia County.  In fact, one couple was recognized by the WaWa executives present because for the last 10 years they wrote letters to WaWa HQ pleading with them to bring a WaWa to Escambia County!

The culture of this company is exceptional.  They are privately held, with employess holding a 38% stake in ownership.  And it was announced that after only one (1) month--newly hired associates can begin participating in the WaWa stock ownership program.  Eecutives from the company thanked our local community for the warm welcome, and described the WaWa Foundation's $160 Million Dollars in donations to local nonprofit organizations in communities where WaWa has a presence.  They even donated $2,500 to Feeding the Gulf Coast today at the groundbreaking!  On top of this--the welcome celebration included food, beverages, smoothies, a coffee bar, and give-aways including WaWa T-shirts and other knick-knacks.

This is the way to enter a market.  I was really impressed with these folks I met and spoke with today.  

I think what they bring to our community will be an opportunity for many of our citizens that want to work and grow with an established, reputible organization.

I look forward to watching thier success!

Out To Lunch......

For anyone to say EDATES' profound positive impacts on our community provide no benefit to the average citizen is a postition that is uninformed, ignorant, and incorrect.  It is an opinion that's "Out to Lunch."--and when stated at a public meeting will be immediately challenged with the truth and facts.

Yesterday the Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved the addition of an EDATE (Economic Development Ad Valorem Tax Exemption) extension referendum, for a 10 year period, to be added to the general election ballot this November.  

EDATE's are simply one economic development tool in our "tool kit" of incentives that allow for time limited (10 years maximum) forgiveness of some county ad valorem taxes in exchange for certain committments by large employers in our area.  These are allowed under statute, but the voters must approve these every ten years.  And the tax forgiveness only applies to county taxes--such businesses that receive EDATES must still pay 100% of school taxes from day one.  So these are actually good for us--but even better for the school board.

And not every economic development deal we do includes EDATES.  ST Engineering Aerospace, for instance, didn't get one.  Others have done deals to build jobs here without EDATES.  But still others required the use of EDATES to either keep an employer here, induce an employer to come, facilitate a developer to build (As the case was for Quint Studer's 'SouthTowne' building downtown) or to allow for an existing employer to expand their footprint.

A couple of years back the BCC was being relentlessly attacked by our liberal daily paper's cartoonist over EDATES.  And I pushed back with a three part series of posts that completely and thoroughly explained EDATES, described and provided documents about the then current EDATES the county had outstanding, and in the process totally obliterated ignorant Andy Marlette's position on EDATES.

Now we are asking citizens to renew our ability to offer these selectively and judiciously when and if they are appropriate------- and one member of the board is apparently staunchly, stridently opposed.

That's fine--one member of the BCC can say whatever he wants and in his circle of influence he can

EDATES--Good for our Economy, Part II

EDATES allow the county to give valuable incentives to targeted industries in exchange for job-creation and footprint expansion.  This is not a bad thing, this is a GOOD THING!

In part one of this series I talked about the recent baseless and ignorant attacks on EDATES from the local media.

In this post, I want to talk specifics about EDATES....who gets them locally, what it costs the taxpayers in unrealized ad valorem revenue, and the value created by the BCC approving these agreements.

The complete list of all recipients of EDATES locally are contained on the spreadsheets here, here, here, and here.  The spreadsheets, provided to me by the county's budget and finance department, highlight the areas where we exempt taxes;  County, Library MSBU, and the Sheriff's MSTU.  In the header of the vertical columns, you will see the value of the  subject property to be exempted, expressed in three ways:

1.   Market Value of the Property
2.   Assessed Value of the Property
3.  The Amount of the total Assessed Value that will be Exempted via the EDATE

At the far right, the value of the exemption received is listed, and at the bottom of the sheet the grand total of all exemptions is listed.  For the four years I have included, the average yearly total of these exemptions given (which equates to the unrealized tax revenue)-is roughly $1.7 Million Annually.

Some things to consider when looking at EDATES as an economic development tool:

1.  The period of the incentive is capped at 10 years, after which time full tax is paid on full taxable value of real property.
2.  There is a ying and a yang to these agreements; something is given by the county, and for that something is given by the entity receiving the EDATE (additional jobs commitments usually)
3.  The local School Board receives full tax revenue on the full taxable value of properties that the County provides EDATES to, from day one of the agreement (school taxes cannot be diminished via EDATES under statute, and neither can the Fire MSBU)
4.  The county does not have to give EDATE exemptions on the full amount of the taxable value of a property; the BCC can give an exemption on a portion of the value and collect taxes on the rest--and this happens frequently.

Look over the list of recipients on the spreadsheets I have linked.  These are good companies, that pay good wages and support thousands of jobs locally!

When IP received their EDATE in May of 2008 (before any current member of the BCC was on the board)--it was given in exchange for a massive expansion of their production and an investment of over $200 Million dollars to their plant.  It was supported unanimously at the time, and signed by my predecessor's predecessor, Mike Whitehead, then chairman of the board and D1 Commissioner.  It did give IP an exemption of roughly $1.6 Million yearly for 10 years.  And this exemption has expired as of 1/1/2018.  With IP supporting 500 personnel and 100 contractor personnel and having an economic impact in our area that is calculated to be $250 Million annually over the last ten years--I believe what the BCC did in 2008 was a good move----especially given the dire circumstances nationally that were occurring at that time....Someone should wake up and remind the local media personalities about the great recession of 2008 that served as a backdrop to this BCC decision of 2008, and tell them it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback but not easy to make tough decisions in real time--and this is what distinguishes the "doers"  (us) from the "pundits" and "gadflys" and "critics" (them).

EDATEs--Good for our Economy, Part I

Fake News Media locally is now attacking EDATES.  They are so ravenous in their new attack they have overlooked the fact that several of us on the dias didn't even vote for these--we inherited them.  Fake News.

Reading some of the garbage in the news lately can bring on a migraine style Excedrin Headache fast.  I mean really fast.

Because a lot of it is garbage, pure rubbish. 

Much of it is opinion blended with half truth, spiced with innuendo, and topped off with ad hominem attacks.  Pertinent facts are left out, lies are inserted, other issues are hyper-exaggerated, and the overall goal becomes to enrage the reader--not inform the reader.

At it's core, it is nothing more than opinions paraded as news designed to stir up animosity toward "some" elected officials. 

Local print media has changed and evolved, and it is now all about "hits" and "clicks" and "shares" and other statistics that lead and compel writers to stir division, stoke anger, push boundaries and run up the click counts--hoping for the next big "viral" story.  This is also how the writers are compensated in many instances--it becomes a glorified "popularity contest."

Good news stories by and large do not stir big numbers, and this leaves attack pieces and contrived controversies to carry the slack.

A recently departed PNJ reporter, who actually wrote really well and put out good stories, is no longer there because the pieces written by this individual, according to someone with whom I spoke who is very familiar, just did not stir up enough clicks. 

So now the focus is not on who, what, when, and where--it is  "Let's Get Salacious and Controversial!!!---Let's Get CLICKS!!" 

Take for instance this tripe about EDATES for area employers.  Somehow, this is now twisted into some kind of a bad thing for our area and economy.  This is an opinion piece, but it infuses some information purported to be factual, and devolves into one messy, sloppy attack piece. 

The target?  County Commissioners like me who support economic development and EDATES.

(EDATE stands for  economic development ad valorem tax exemption.  You can read all about them here.  What they are, how they came to be, what they are for, and how they are approved.) 

We have a number of companies that currently receive these incentives, and over the past four years we have exempted an average of $1.6 Million annually from these employers.

And for this, we generate jobs in manufacturing, we incentivize expansion of existing footprints, we get agreements for new equipment to be purchased and put on line locally, and we diversify our jobs base.  These are good, tangible results for the revenue we forego.

In one instance and for one company--we have exempted millions of dollars with EDATES.  We have also paid incentives from a different pot for additional jobs to be added.  With this one company--that total may well approach $50 Million Dollars in incentives.  And for that, we have a company that has invested $1.2 Billion in facility construction locally and employs 8,000 Escambian's currently with an annual payroll of $400 Million Dollars!  So yes, this incentivization pays back for years and decades to come--it pays back in spades.  No mention of this in the Sunday attack piece, though.

International Paper is now targeted because they have received EDATES for equipment purchases.  I am told by a source very familiar that the large investment made by IP may have gone to a different location were it not for a generous EDATE provided by our county a number of years back (before I was elected to this board).  Had that investment gone elsewhere--there is no guarantee the new IP jobs (or the existing jobs) would have stayed in Pensacola.  So now we have IP with 500 employees, 100 Contractor Employees, and a $250 Million Dollar yearly economic impact in our area --and the cartoonist is mad about the less than a Million dollars yearly over the last 20 years that we have exempted for IP.  Do the math for yourself, do not simply buy what the cartoonist wants to feed you in his ill-conceived, slanted, half-truth hatchet pieces.  He is a biased partisan hack, nothing more.

The intelligent strategy, looking at what IP has invested and what they are working to accomplish here in Escambia County-- is to keep their jobs here and work with IP to help them come into compliance with the environmental regulations that are required.   It is simple, it is a no-brainer.  It's what we are doing and IP is following the process to do this and they are in compliance with the law.

More about our EDATES in part II....

A Burger King and a Bunch of Ugly Buildings!

The Board of County Commissioners will discuss several topics at tomorrow's Committee of the Whole Meeting.  Two that are of particular interest to me are the Beach Access issue and the issue of finalizing the language for master planning OLF 8 in Beulah.

We have talked a lot about OLF 8 on this blog.  It is important-- and however that property is developed-- there will be impacts on nearby residents like me (I live right across the street, where I've owned a home for nearly 15 years).

It has been astonishing to watch how--as we have come closer and closer to acquiring this property--opinion about using this property to generate jobs has been pushed further and further from the forefront.  It's almost as if, in some strange way, these these items are inversely proportional.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a well-known community leader that lives in Beulah.  This individual has had a stellar career, and he is actively involved in business development.  So I asked him his opinion about why, suddenly, everyone is running away from the original plan of building good jobs with this property.

"Where are the renderings, where are the drawings" he said.  "I support whatever happens out there, but I want to see what we're talking about---right now all I have heard is it will be a Burger King and a bunch of Ugly Buildings."

"You know I'd never support that, right, because I live right across the street like you do?" I told him

He went on to discuss the fact that he wears multiple hats and his opinion on the project hasn't really changed but he has to be careful about what he says publicly about the project.  I get that, to a point.

But I also think there comes a point when something that was proposed and submitted as one thing is being pulled in opposite directions due to some strong special interests that want something different--something has to give.  At some point, if we whittle that RFP down to the point where the planner is told "Do whatever you want--do not focus on creating jobs at all" --then we will get a plan that resembles nothing close to what was initially proposed.  And at that point, our $30 Million Dollar Triumph grant will evanesce and that money will go to some other community in the panhandle.

Maybe that's what the special interests wanted all along......

For my part and my vote, and I have not wavered, I want to recoup as much of the county's LOST funds as possible by re-zoning (HCLI) the frontage acreage on 9-Mile Road--as suggested in our Brantley Appraisal. I do not support any more residential construction in the area or on this property (there are 1,200 condos, apartments, and homes currently under construction within walking distance from NFCU already--and our infrastructure can't take much more!)--however I will look at what our planner comes up with if this is what he/she honestly, independently believes is needed.   I do want to see some restaurants developed there for the community, an urgent care facility, and perhaps a postal annex store. I'd like to set aside space for future use for a second elementary school that Beulah desperately needs.  I want a world-class biking, hiking, walking trail all around this property for use by citizens, and a regional park with amenities for residents. We could use some of the triumph money to make a regional stormwater basin and we could enhance Frank Reeder Road to Beulah Road on the North side of this OLF 8 property if we can secure our Triumph grant money.   Also, set back from the road, in the interior of the parcel, I want to see us set aside space for us to create a minimum of 700 more good jobs so that we can stay in the running for as much as $30 Million from Triumph Gulf Coast--this is a fair compromise that gives everyone something from this property, and this is what I support.  This is what I will say at tomorrow's meeting, because it will not be, and never was going to be, just a "Burger King and a bunch of Ugly Buildings"