1 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
The Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors held a joint meeting on March 28, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. at the Appomattox Municipal Building, 210 Linden Street, Appomattox, Virginia.
Town Council Members present: Timothy W. Garrett, C. Lewis McDearmon, Jr., Mary Lou Spiggle, Steven T. Conner, Claudia G. Puckette, and Mayor Paul D. Harvey.
Absent: M. Erin Finch
County Board members present: Sara Carter, Sam Carter, and Chad Millner.
Absent: Bill Hogan and Bryan Moody
Others: Tom Utz, Jeff Garrett, Brennan Hefty, Bill Hefty, Clarence Monday, Interim Town Manager, Susan Adams, County Administrator; Vicky Phelps, and Roxanne W. Casto, Town Clerk.
At 6:35 p.m., Mayor Harvey called the Town Council meeting to order. Mr. Carter, Chairman called the Board of Supervisors to order.
Mayor Harvey led those in attendance in prayer.
Mayor Harvey – We are pleased to have Brennan Hefty and Bill Hefty with us tonight to give us a presentation to help share ideas on how we can move forward with economic development and good thoughts on how to move forward ideas on a marketing plan.
Mr. Bill Hefty – When I was here last time we talked about combining the EDA’s and it just does not work very well and partly because one of the EDA’s has debt and it’s hard to dissolve both of them and reconstitute an EDA and there is no statute that says you can joint 2 EDA’s when one of them has debt so the issue really makes that (combining) impossible.
So, you’re going to have 2 EDA’s – a Town EDA and a County EDA. The other thing we talked about was the EDA’s are financing mechanisms, but the nuts and bolts of economic development is administrative, Town staff and County staff. Here you also have the regional organization that is doing economic development and the problem with that is it is regional; do they focus on Appomattox or other areas? In looking at it, we think you need to work together, that’s obvious and I think that you have some unique capabilities in the Town and the City [County]. You seem to look from the outside to work together pretty well and you have water and sewer in Town and the business park in the County. One thing that is missing is a person to coordinate the economic development function and having done this over a lot of jurisdictions in Virginia it is really hard for the County Administrator and Town Manager to be in charge of economic development because it is not their primary jobs. Even places not much larger than Appomattox have one person dedicated to economic development.
2 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
Our first recommendation is that you think about hiring a combined economic development coordinator. It is the only way, I think, to take what the Town has to offer, what the County has to offer and market those two (2) things together from the standpoint – everyone else has too many duties to focus on economic development and if you’re serious about it – having someone who that’s their responsibility working with Clarence and Susan, is, we think, the best approach. It doesn’t have to be a high paying position. I have a draft here, we call it an Economic Development Associate and a draft Memorandum of Understanding basically a shared position – basically for VRS purposes, an employee of one or the other and we have it being an employee of the County (could be town) and that persons job would be to focus on economic development for the County and the town, to apply for grants, to try to find prospects try to talk to prospects, to try to interest prospects, scheduling meetings, showing them advantage of the Town, advantages of the County, basically marketing Appomattox as one area.
You are much better off if you are willing to market it as one area because the County obviously has land and the Town is just beautiful with a lot of attributes to shop, eat, all sorts of things.
The associate would be responsible for coordinating everything between the Town and the County. Benefits – tailored to the County or Town. Obviously, there are some businesses that are smaller and would just go in the Town – I think it just makes sense. I don’t think that an economic development associate needs to focus on just huge businesses. It’s the smaller businesses that come into the town – that can add to the tax base of both the Town and the County and also add to the quality of life. I think, it would be a huge mistake I think to only focus just huge business with lots of employees. It’s the stores I think they need to focus on as well. Looking at starting July 1, 2017 if you’re interested in starting that and you have someone on board who could coordinate all that stuff.
Incentives that the Town can offer such as water and sewer, the County can offer land, development fees, forgiven of taxes or tax rebates these are things the Town and County can work on together. One of the things we put in here is joint meetings, I think this is a great idea. You guys are already doing something that a lot of Town and County’s aren’t doing. I think around economic development is a way to do that – recommend that there be 3 meetings/year among the governing bodies to talk about economic development along with the EDA’s. The EDA’s need to be involved in these too since they will be financing those initiatives.
Joint marketing materials – Paul spoke to this – we don’t write joint marketing materials, so we did not bring marketing materials on Appomattox. You need to have some, and it needs to focus on what the Town can offer and what the County can offer. The joint presentation makes the economic development effort a lot better and more palatable to small businesses or businesses that may want to come in. They need to know that the Town and County are on the same page and working together. It just works much better for businesses. The goal would be for the associate to have marketing materials by January 1, 2018.
Sharing of tax revenues – I put in the memorandum of understanding not particulars about sharing of tax revenues but that the Town and County agree to explore options. We had hoped that with the Go Virginia initiative that there could be an application from both the Town and
3 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
County (2 applications) to apply for some of the funding. We think now that some of the regulations that are going to come out are going to say that the town and county cannot be the 2 that apply. It has to be either 2 county’s – a city and a county, but not a town within a county. That’s not what the statue says but what the regulations say and that part of the Go Virginia initiative you are not going to be able to do together but you can do it with another county. The MOU being put forward is subject to approval of the Town Council and Board of Supervisors, both of you have to approve it and anyone can end it whenever they want to. It is if you are happy with it you can continue with it.
If you are not happy with it, you can dissolve it and the joint funding would go away. So, each of you would control how long you want to be in this relationship. The question is to look at if you want to hire someone to oversee economic development functions and then work with Susan and Clarence or whoever to make that work going forward. The results are not guaranteed but I think your chances of getting people are a lot better together than if you just rely on the regional effort to bring you prospects. You are competing against other jurisdictions that have people who oversee economic development.
Brennan Hefty presented a Power point presentation on economic development incentives.
Incentive options are tools to use but the prospects may have a different idea. Not knowing when a prospect is coming, and their timeframe may be very short – having someone on staff dedicated to economic development helps in this area.
All of these incentives funnel through the EDA’s. One of the obvious ways to incentivize is through a cash grant. In all of the agreement there are “claw backs”, so if a company falls short of its goals there is a provision that you get your money back because it is taxpayers’ money. Another is the façade improvement grants, which make a huge difference. It’s a matching grant. The benefits go a long way. You can donate property and it doesn’t have to be at fair market value and the EDA is not required to have a public hearing. Issuing bonds is another way to finance other companies coming in. Richmond does small loans for business start up but you need to be careful with that – EDA’s are not bankers and you don’t want to get burned on that. Running the incremental tax revenue back through the EDA and the advantage to this is really you aren’t taking existing taxes – it’s new taxes. Another popular request is waiving of fees – building permit, zoning fees, water and sewer connection fees.
Utility costs seem to be a major issue. They are expensive costs and are going up. Sidewalk improvements are constantly being negotiated.
Another option is something called enterprise zones. The locality must apply to DHCD for designation of the zone in the locality. The concept is certain areas can expect certain advantages for fees, permit fees. There is currently a cap on the number of enterprise zones in the state. You have to wait until one of those expires before applying to the state.
The Local Technology Zone basically established by local ordinances and incentivized through locality funding. Lynchburg was one example of reimbursement of BPOL fees paid.
4 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
Lastly, there are state funds and grants that you could be eligible for with regional cooperation.
Questions:
Mr. Carter – asked about the “Go Virginia” through the VEDP – The VA Opportunity fund, yes but the “Go Virginia” goes through a new board that has been created. The Tobacco Commission also has their own board.
Mr. Carter – going back to the beginning – how much time do you think an economic development director or associate should spend in Richmond?
Mr. Hefty – I don’t think you need to spend a lot of time with the people at Virginia Economic Development Partnership. That isn’t the duty or the job of the people. I think you need to know the people, have contact with them on a regular basis. A lot of the time, the prospects will have already talked to VEDP. You must have a relationship with VEDP, so they will send people your way.
Mr. Carter – that’s exactly my point – you can show or see what’s been brought in from Region 2000 and that’s zero.
Economic Development is a full-time job and if you fully commit to it – there are no guarantees and you truly are competing against everyone else. You really have to get there and market the area.
You have transportation and railroad nearby and you are centrally located. You really do have to spend some time doing it (economic development).
Mrs. Puckette – I think you really need to have a good job description – see some job descriptions, of a successful person.
Mr. Conner – need to pick one boss – the person can’t work for 5 people.
Mr. Harvey – this person will have to answer to 2 EDA’s, 2 government bodies, a County Administrator, and Town Manager.
Mr. Hefty – If the person is good – they will know how to keep all those balls in the air. You need good personalities.
When you asked us to come here originally it was to try to look at things the Town and County could do together which is I am a firm believer you can do more together than doing it separately and to the extent that the Town can pay we will let the County do it because they are bigger, I think the town has a lot of things to offer in this partnership in terms of enticing businesses to the area. In terms of you are the place where people come to do a lot of business, grocery shop that
5 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
sort of thing. The town is an integral part of this – it is much stronger if the town and county do this together than if the county does it on their own – that’s just my opinion.
Mr. Conner – I agreed about 4-5 groups to answer to – we are going to suck it up, pick on person.
Mayor Harvey – Have to interact with both; a person with strong character. You may have to pay a little more for this kind of experience. I would like for the board of other council members to speak up and tell us what you think of it.
Mrs. Sara Carter – I think the logical answer to our question about how to obtain our goals of working together [so when we looked at this at our previous meeting] some of the ideas we had before turned out not to be feasible. This looks like a good opportunity to find a way to thread that needle to work together. For the person chosen – it will be critical to hit the ground running and have the expertise to work with the two groups.
Mayor Harvey – If they know how to do the job, they are going to simplify it for us. They take the lead and not create more complications for us. They control the information and what is presented.
Mrs. Puckette – They will have to be a great communicator. The boards have to feel like they are in the loop. This thing of not being in the loop – that’s where all kinds of stuff goes wrong. They need a job description with measurable timelines – if in 18 months you bring someone to town or you bring no one to town. We’ve got to set goals. I don’t’ want to pay big bucks for someone to drive around in a car and has lunch and whatever.
Mr. T. Garrett – Pay them a salary and if they bring someone in here – reward them – let that person know that if they bring businesses here – we will reward them.
Mr. Conner – Kind of a like a commission.
Mr. T. Garrett – A lot of what’s been discussed – we’ve been doing. I think you need to find the person with the talent we are talking about and brings jobs here.
Ms. Spiggle – The last economic development director, he got mixed up and thought he was a tourism director and we needed an economic development director. He was just confused but a likeable person. You can’t bring a business without telling them how nice Appomattox is.
Mr. Hefty – Businesses want to be in a nice place but it’s a business decision. So, they are looking at your incentive packages. First, its important to understand what the points of the business are.
Mr. Conner – The prospects want to know what type of workforce you have today – not 5 years from now. Also, if their first question is what the incentives are then they aren’t serious. If the workforce is ready, then the incentives are not a major thing.
6 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
Mr. Hefty – I tend to agree with you Mr. Conner. The companies that get funneled have done their own research. They are looking for workforce/skill levels, schools/workforce, quality of life.
If they fund those things in a community then it becomes crucial how responsive you are with incentives.
Cooperation between the Town and County speaks to the region getting along.
Mrs. Puckette – How do we get in front all of these other people?
Mrs. Adams – Luck
Mr. Hefty – It’s going to take a while. Going to see the VEDP folks, marketing materials to get to companies, networking with other economic development directors, get to work to get your region noticed because a lot of people go the regional entity. Show yourself above others in the region.
Mrs. Sara Carter – we are doing a lot of right things. We are the only school system in the region that is fully accredited – the only one comparable in the state that is accredited. You do the fundamentals and what the Town is doing appealing to the attractiveness, park improvements, and the county has to work those things like schools and appropriate services and the town does a lot of those quality of life things together and we work together like we are supposed to then that is a very appealing package. Then you get someone out there marketing this appealing package; we’ve got accredited schools and quality of life and start with the fundamentals and then get someone out there to market it.
Mr. Conner – Manufacturing – we need a really good work ethic amount of people looking for full time jobs.
Mr. Millner – There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and we are a lot closer than we thought – so how do we get them all together and working together as a unified team and marketing ourselves.
Brennan Hefty – Everyone in the Unites States knows where Appomattox is located.
Mayor Harvey – Is there somewhere other than just advertising for this position –is there a source we can go to that has these kinds of people that we can talk to without necessarily advertising this position getting a bunch of unqualified people?
Conner/Adams – ½ of the previous VEDP staff that were just fired – VEDP Association.
Mayor Harvey – Someone who is qualified working with 4 bodies – don’t want to be behind the eight ball.
7 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
Mrs. Adams – I think they need to be strong in technology and social media – databases that need updating. A lot of information needs updating first.
Mr. Hefty – Consider paying more to get more.
Mayor Harvey – Sharing the expense between the Town and County.
Mr. Hefty – Think about working together – joint meetings – Town and County EDA meetings.
Mrs. Puckette – Someone to keep us all informed and up to date.
Sam Carter – To Mrs. Adams: Because of your past economic development director experience – the businesses you attracted Garet Bosiger and the cabinet making company – how did you attract them? Mrs. Adams – it was luck. The prospect went to Halifax and they didn’t have natural gas and then they came to Charlotte County and we didn’t have natural gas either but it’s called “court”, the prospect – so you just continue to court them and work with them at the state level representatives and finally they had confidence in us that we could get them natural gas and they located there.
Mr. Bosiger, a company from Indiana purchased it from him – basically finders’ luck – with oversees connections and the gift of the building, she got grants – all with no help from the region.
Mr. Millner – the prospects how many started inquires through the internet, regional, VEDP?
Mrs. Adams – They contacted Charlotte County directly and then the County contacted VEDP, always good to have the Governor’s cabinet at that meeting – especially if they are coming from out of state. So, we would just have a round table discussion with all the parties. Tobacco Commission, Workforce Development, one stop shop because you only get one opportunity to sell yourself. I sold myself to the cabinet company because I like Conway Twitty.
Mayor Harvey – any other questions –
Adams – There is an area of economic development we need to keep in mind and that is the level of confidentially that all the bodies need to be informed and there’s a timing factor on that – when the bodies need to be informed.
Mr. Conner - Keep it confidential. Turn them lose and let them go and do their job and keep their mouth shut.
Mr. Sam Carter – Mr. Bob Goode – what do you think?
Mr. Goode – there is a lot of wisdom in this – it takes the burden off a lot of people and
puts in on one and they will work with it much easier than a bunch of people.
8 Joint meeting - Appomattox Town Council and Appomattox County Board of Supervisors March 28, 2017
Mr. Conner – If you want to be informed on everything (prospects) that person is working on – then you might as well forget it – because it won’t work. Give them guidelines and let them go.
Mrs. Puckette – I understand – in some manner we have to hold them accountable – to employ someone for several years and have nothing…
Mr. Conner – I hate to tell you this, but you might – it’s a gamble you have to take.
Mrs. Puckette – If he/she can provide a report – Richmond & prospects – then we will give them enough time.
Mr. Conner – It could take 3-4 years…
Mrs. Adams – I think they could give you a spreadsheet with activities. WIG is one we are working with now. It doesn’t give you too many details but lets you know they are doing something.
Mayor Harvey – How long did it take [Charlotte County businesses]?
Adams – typically they have to take it back to their boards. Oh, the timeframe of those entities – less than a year.
Mayor Harvey – Thanked Mr. Bill Hefty and Brennan Hefty for attending the meeting and providing the MOU.
On a motion by Mr. McDearmon, seconded by Mrs. Puckette, Council voted to adjourn at 7:40 p.m. All members present voting aye. Motion carried 5-0.
On a motion by Mr. Millner, seconded by Mrs. Sara Carter, the Board voted to also adjourn at 7:40 p.m. All members present voting aye. Motion carried 3-0.
Roxanne W. Casto, MMC Clerk
Paul D. Harvey Mayor