BCC Work Session April 8, 2026 — Transcript

All right. Good morning everyone. Today is Wednesday, April 8th, 2026 uh meeting of the board of county commissioners, a work session on economic development. We're here at the that's a zoom there on the computer. We're here at the beautiful Braton Area Convention Center and we'll get started with a pledge of allegiance led by myself followed well with an invocation by Commissioner Ballard and then the pledge of allegiance for myself. So, please stand if you can. >> Lord, thank you so much for this day for bringing us together to talk about uh the success and economic development of our county. Uh help us to have respectful discussions and to move our county forward in a positive way. Amen. >> Amen. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. You may be seated. >> I'd also like to acknowledge Commissioner Dr. Bob McCann on the on Zoom and then eventually Commissioner Bearden will be on Zoom as well. Well, thank you very much for joining here today. It's a very special meeting. We have a number of guests, a lot of policies that members of this board have been working to to bring forth on economic development, and we're coming hot off a meeting where we approved and renewed our contract with the Braden Area Economic Development Corporation. So, thank you all very much for working at the EDC and our business community and our board on that. To start, we have uh some guests from the University of Florida who'll be leading us off. I actually met Dr. Nathan Polardi through the advanced county commissioner class with FAC, Florida Association of Counties and we'll actually be running up there right after this almost. We have the last class tomorrow. I had had an incredible session. That handout I showed to this board showing the BLS statistics on the workforce wages, wage growth, and job growth in our county actually came from it was a handout Dr. Polardi provided to us. So I reached out and said, "Well, we're we're looking for new and novel ways to promote economic development policies. What have you seen across the state of Florida and other states that have worked and that we could consider implementing in the at the county level?" He says, "Well, I you know, we have we have these experts we can bring in. I actually know Dr. um a number of our guests today, Dr. Hawkins, Professor Hawkins, excuse me, he actually delivered one of the Landes classes that I was at too. So we'll be talking about form-based code, affordable h sorry not form based code, land's policies inclusive of form-based code um affordable housing with with professor um Hudovich and then we'll also be discussing some ideas from within our own community. We have Sun Coast Prosper with SCF and Upscale Manity with Career Source Sun Coast and a number of other things as well. I'll kick it off to Dr. Polardi. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you, Commissioner, for that very generous introduction. And I'm going to try to stay in front of the mic, but I tend to have wandering feet, so I apologize. Uh, luckily I have a voice that also projects. But if anyone has trouble hearing me or if there's any questions or something wasn't clear, please just raise your hand at any point and interrupt. Um, I'm very grateful to be here today. Thank you so much for inviting us to be here. Um, I am, uh, an assistant professor and an extension economist. And if you're not familiar with UF extension, uh, come talk to me. I'm more than happy to talk about it. Uh, one of the things we do is we like to evaluate all of our extension activities so that we can assess our impact. There was a survey up front. If you didn't grab one, please uh uh go ahead and grab one and uh before you leave for lunch, just go ahead and turn it in at the box. For all the county commissioners here up front, I have gone ahead and given uh you all uh one of the surveys uh at uh at your table. Um, uh, we would really appreciate, uh, uh, uh, you know, everyone just filling one of those out so that we can assess the impact of our extension activities. Um, it's how we, it's how we gauge our impact in the community, um, at UV. With that, I'm just going to go and kick things off. Uh, um, as was mentioned, my name is Nathan Polardi. I'm an extension economist. uh very excited to be here today and I'm going to be talking about incentive uh incentivizing economic development specifically strategies for incentivizing e economic development and how those strategies can be made more comprehensive. So the common perception of economic development strategies are massive incentive packages. That's what makes headlines and that's what the public tends to be familiar with. Whether it's Fox Con, which I don't know if if anyone remembers Foxcon that went in Wisconsin. Wisconsin gave $3 billion in tax incentives to Fox Con uh with another $1 million pledged in infrastructure investments. Um what ended up happening is this mega facility that was supposed to produce flat screen TVs never really materialized. What did materialize was much smaller in scale than what was promised. Wisconsin was able to claw back some of the uh uh tax abatements that they had given, but they had already invested at $750 million in infrastructure improvements that were no longer needed for this mega facility that never materialized. Uh so uh there was also uh uh in Alabama way back in the 1990s, uh I say way back as though never mind. Um doesn't seem like that long ago, but uh Alabama uh attracted MercedesBenz. Uh this was really controversial. Um it seems quaint, but 250 million was actually the biggest incentive package that Alabama had given out at the time. Um and the governor was actually voted out over it, uh saying that it was a big waste of money. In hindsight, that was recognized as very forward thinking and is credited with uh creating over 30,000 jobs in the automotive industry in Alabama. Now, Alabama probably wouldn't have the automotive industry that it does today was this initial uh economic development incentive package not given. And then of course there's Amazon HQ2 uh which was very controversial. Amazon kind of pitted state and local governments against each other. Amazon had complete information about what location was going to be best for them. Um but what they did was they created this competition which encouraged county governments and state governments to kind of outbid each other. Um, and that created a lot of controversy because there was NDAs. People didn't know what was being offered until after the competition ended. And um, uh, I I throw all this up there to say that economic this is what economic development incentives are perceived as, but it's a lot more nuanced than that, as I'm sure you as county commissioners are aware of. Um, and I'm going to talk to uh, today about some of the nuances uh, that go beyond the headlines uh, that we see here. So there's four waves of economic development strategy thinking uh at least when it comes to modern economic development strategy. Uh from each wave come different tools and a toolkit for incentivizing economic development. So even though the first wave uh started in the 1930s uh that doesn't mean that the second wave of thought replaced it. It just means that we gained better understanding as the economy changed. we adapt uh different strategies for incentivizing economic developments and we gained more tools. So we still use tools from the first wave of economic development but we've added more tools as our understanding and as research and as as our economies changed and progressed. So just jumping right into it. The first wave of economic development focuses on industry recruitment. This arose from efforts in the 1930s to aid recovery from the great depression and to diversify local economies. Uh the uh Mississippi balancing agriculture with indust uh with industry act was the first example of this and it's the very first time we see creating a positive business climate appear in language for incentivizing economic development which nowadays that's ubiquitous. We've all heard creating a positive business climate. Uh what this tends to mean is affordable land and labor. Often surplus land uh may even be in uh given and included as part of a economic development incentive package. Uh public dollars are invested in infrastructure like we talked about with Foxcon. Uh it's about limiting regulation, limiting red tape to reduce the cost of compliance, uh reducing the tax burden on corporations, and providing tax abatements uh uh to companies. This can be summed up by this quote from the time by Charles Wilson who's the former CEO of GM uh who said what is good for General Motors is good for America. And again this comes from a time back in the 1930s and 40s when the US economy was structured very differently. There was much more parody between goods producing and manufacturing and service producing sector in terms of employment. So manufacturing provided a lot uh a much greater share of jobs than it does now. And I'll show how the US economy has changed over time in some later slides. But that's kind of where this mentality arose because manufacturing and industry was such a big share of of jobs in the US economy, especially from these major uh uh uh uh uh corporations uh these major manufacturers. Uh the big takeaway from this is that counties uh this is uh there's a lot of truth in this, but counties need to know the ROI. Thinking back to some of the uh uh um uh uh examples from the headlines with Foxcon or Amazon HQ2, what is the ROI for these tax abatements? What are the uh uh how is the uh business that is coming in uh how are the benefits of that being distributed amongst the community? And it's not just how much are you getting uh in return or how many jobs it's creating. It's who receives those jobs. uh if the community doesn't feel the tangible impacts, if those aren't distributed throughout the community, then the size of the uh uh benefits uh doesn't matter if it's concentrated or if it's not manifested in a way that is tangible to members of the public or or the constituents of it. So these ideas, you know, from that first wave of economic development are still very prevalent today. We see them in just about every single states uh and usually at the state level uh although we see them at the county level too um and all of their economic development goals. So the Florida Economic Development Organization in their pitch to businesses says that Florida's consistently ranked one of the best states for business. Florida's committed to keeping regulatory requirements and business taxes low and that a strong economy and zero personal state income t tax tax makes it a great place to do business. So we see these first wave ideas in that statement. Um that last part uh the zero personal state income tax is more about improving the quality of life of workers and attracting labor. Um that's actually a fourth wave idea and I'll go into more uh that later in the presentation. Uh if we look at Tennessee, this is just another example that I pulled. Proud to be a right to work state. Uh no personal income tax on wages. State and local tax burdens are among the lowest in the country. And our state budget operates with a healthy healthy surplus. um they've overhauled uh Torton worker compensation laws uh uh to reduce the liability uh and exposure of businesses to that risk. So again, it's about reducing the cost of business. >> Second wave uh uh economic development incentive strategies focus more on uh business retention and expansion than uh um uh than industry recruitment. And this comes from emerging research in the 1980s that kind of challenged that idea that we should exclusively focus on recruiting manufacturers. Um this is because what what what we were finding with better federal data was that existing firms account for a substantial share of new job creation. Um and that increasing attent we should uh spend more attention, more energy and more resources on those businesses that are already in the community rather than trying to attract ones that are outside of the community. Oops. Additionally, entrepreneurship was being recognized as an essential driver of job growth. When we think about net job creation, this is driven by new and young firms. Um and this was being uh uh more more more intensively studied and how do we uh strategies were being developed for how do we promote entrepreneurship. Um additionally as I mentioned earlier the national economy had shifted from uh the first wave uh uh in the 1930s to the 1980s uh shifted from goods production to much more towards a serviceoriented economy. So it expanded uh uh kind of the ideas of where economic growth comes from from attraction of external firms as a way of growing the local economy to also encouraging the growth and expansion of existing firms and the creation of new firms uh through entrepreneurship. So I just want to get into some of the data uh uh more recent data uh in particular. So this graph shows net job creation for the entire economy as well as select industries. On that yaxis of all these graphs we have net job creation. So if it's above zero that's job uh that indicates that new jobs are being created. The red line indicates young firms. So firms that are 5 years or younger. And the blue line indicates firms that have existed for at least 6 years. So if we see net if we look at net job creation we see that it almost entirely comes from young firms. Uh and this holds true not just at the total overall economy level but in just about every single sector shown here whether it's manufacturing retail information we see that big dip that's the dot bubble bursting um but then it bounces back healthcare accommodation and food services net job creation is driven by entrepreneurs and younger firms now those older firms are essential for job stability so when you're thinking about maintaining jobs uh those older firms are still very important uh uh in that respect. So it's not that they're not important, it's just that if you want new jobs in the economy, that is really being driven by those new and young young firms that have either uh just started or started recently. Uh and this graph shows that transition of the US from a you know relative parody between service producing economy to much more skewed. It's at this point uh about 7 to one. So for every job in the goods producing sector, there are seven jobs in the service producing sector. And when I say service producing, I mean much more than leisure, hospitality, food services. This includes health care. This includes legal services. This includes financial services. This includes private education services. So this is much more than just when we think of services, we tend to think of food and accommodation. It's much much bigger than that. Um, and this shows that again it's not that manufacturing is not important. It's that if you only focus on manufacturing, you're leaving out a huge portion a major driver of jobs. Again, 7 to1 uh at the national level. What about Florida? The data doesn't go back quite as far, but it shows the same gap. Uh, at the state level, it's actually about 9:1. So, for every nine jobs in um uh uh service producing sector, there's one job in the uh goods producing sector. And I've also added to this graph you can see government jobs. So government job uh government jobs are about uh the same level uh uh in terms of providing employment as as um um goods producing. And then what about manity? Full disclosure, the uh Federal Reserve doesn't release county level statistics uh for for these levels, but they do release metropolitan statistical area level statistics. Uh so this includes some of Sarasota, some of the surrounding area, but it's about as granular as I could get it to focus on Manatee County. And again, we see that same pattern. We see that it's uh at in at the metro statistical area level, it's about 7 to one again in terms of service producing uh uh jobs in the service producing sector uh for so seven jobs in the service producing sector for every job in the goods producing sector. And we see government jobs is very low. that just reflects where state government is located in Florida. It's, you know, much uh the state government is doesn't have as big of a a presence here in Manatee as it does when you look at it at the entire state level. Are there any questions about Yes, >> I did have one and and for Commissioner McCann, if you want to ask any questions, uh please just raise your hand. I'll recognize you have the Zoom screen next to me. Um, one of the things that I've seen in in other counties, uh, talking to other commissioners is the education system uh, is a massive employer. In some cases, for small counties, a large one. You just said state government. Is this data factoring in local government and school districts, too? >> It does. It does factor that in. >> Got it. That's all I had. Thank you. >> That's a great great clarifying question. >> So, moving on to the third wave. Uh the third wave uh comes out of research from the 1990s and 2000s that looked at firm location theory. So why do firms locate where they locate? Um and what we were finding is that uh firms in some industries find it optimal to locate close to one another. Whereas kind of neocclassical economic theory says that firms that compete with each other shouldn't want to locate side by side. But anyone who's driven down a commercial strip and seen Lowe's right across from Home Depot knows that that's not necessarily true or a Walgreens across from a Wraid. So um uh what we were finding is that in certain industries it makes sense to colllocate together and there's examples of this right here in Florida. Uh so I I live in Elatcha but right south of us is Marian County. Uh anyone who knows anything about Marian County knows it's the horse capital of the world. You can look at that from an economics perspective and say they have been remarkably successful at uh creating economies of lomeration there. So they've encouraged collocation within the equin industry to attract um not just the um uh uh uh people who show um and you can tell that I'm I'm not necessarily an expert on horses, but people that show horses, but also all the veterinary services that support them, all of the trainers, all of the people that have to take care of them, all of the feed providers, all the people that have pastures that the people who are visiting Marian County for these big events, they rent out because they got to have their horses uh uh accommodated. Um so it's created this whole industry there uh and it's become an industry cluster uh uh when it comes to equin services. Um and that's because that it makes sense for some industries to tighten the supply chains uh uh share a thick skilled labor pool. So if you've got a lot of people in Marian County that really know how to take care of horses, then you're going to have a lot of businesses that want to locate there because of that thick labor pool there of people who are really specialized in that niche. Um and then networking as well. You've got business owners or future business owners who are coming up in the industry together who are talking to each other. Um uh another great example of this is Silicon Valley in California. So you're thinking about Silicon Valley. You've got these tech workers that go there. They work for these major companies. They rise up through the ranks together. They go through all kinds of experiences that they hang out. They talk about them and then they get ideas and then they launch their own companies. So you get these economies of lomeration um from these industry clusters uh that form and the key takeaways from this is as local governments your resources are very scarce. You can't afford necessarily to be handing out these massive incentive packages from that first wave all the time. That's more of a game that state governments play. Um you've got to be really strategic about your local resources. So how can you attract an industry that once you get a few of those key players, how can that create this virtuous feedback loop that then brings in more people from that industry? So you use that seed money, you attract a few people and then that creates a cycle where more and more members of that industry uh uh come to your county. Um and then again uh uh uh or going back to the top, how can we invest in public institutions that help create the conditions that create those clusters? How can we create that labor pipeline that really attracts businesses within certain sectors to Manatee County? So, I want to uh talk about some uh industry clusters here in Florida. So, Florida is known for aerospace. So, we could say that Florida has a aerospace industry cluster. Um where are those clusters located? Well, we can immediately see that they are located at deep water ports, which makes perfect sense when you think about the type of equipment that is needed in the aerospace sector. They're shipping uh large pieces of equipment, very specialized pieces of equipment. Uh they're located at these deep water ports, but they're also located along major interstates and they're located where airports, military bases, and space ports are located. So, you've got these industry clusters that are are located throughout Florida. And uh with these key infrastructure pieces, um uh they they locate close to each other. they share those the the thick labor pool that is in those areas because again aerospace you need a highly technical highly trained workforce to work in that industry. Uh and that's how you can get that that kind of virtuous feedback uh loop going. Um third wave uh oh so on the third wave when you're thinking about industry clusters uh it's helpful to think about what are the county's strength or what are our comparative advantages. What does Manatee County excel at or what does it have that other counties don't? This can be uh either something within your talent pool or it can be whatever natural amenities uh that you have. What gives you a comparative advantage over other counties? Um and how does that complement uh certain industries and how can you leverage that? Um this really helps incorporate a systems thinking approach to economic development that really goes beyond just a positive business climate. Because if you're creating a positive business climate, that's kind of like step one. That's great. So you you make it friendly towards businesses, but what businesses in particular do you want to attract? How can you be more strategic about it? Thinking about all of the uh amenities that your county has to offer, the labor, the natural resources, and how can we use all of those things together to uh uh attract industry. So just some food for thought. Uh you know, don't have to answer it now, but uh what industry clusters exist or emerging in Manity and what opportunities exist to support these clusters? Moving on to the uh most recent wave. This is the one that we are in now. This is where a lot of the most recent articles are at. Um and it's finding that Oh, yes. >> Sorry, one quick question for you. Going back to the >> Why don't we go to the map? Actually, that'd be a good visual aid. >> One of the things I've always been curious about is how these clusters form over time. So when our staff and myself and others went to Pittsburgh, their natural you know one of the natural uh one of one of their comparative advantages massive amounts of shale that that have been leveraged to promote everything from building an airport to now attracting data centers which rely on natural gas to to fuel their data centers. But the other natural the other advantage they've had is car is Carnegie Melon massive institution there that has become an attractor. But Cambridge is Harvard and and you don't exactly see similar levels of of investment industry there. I guess I'm curious. How do these clusters build up over time? >> Sure. No, that that is a really great question and it uh the answer as an economist I've got to say is it depends, right? Um that that's our usual answer which kind of gets us out of a lot of trouble. Um but no, it it really depends on the cluster that you're trying to attract. I think that uh partnering with local institutions and having public those private public partnerships that um kind government can kind of set the seed and that provide that direction and that comprehensive vision and with concertive effort over time those clusters start to form and as they're continuously supported they get growth but they do have to reach a certain critical mass in order to really start attracting industry. So it can't just be a one-time thing. This is something that takes concertive effort over time working with industry. This does not happen overnight. Um, another example uh uh is Napa Valley with the wine industry or Asheville, North Carolina with the brewing industry. Uh, full disclosure, my background uh back when I was doing my PhD uh in college was the beer industry because it seemed like a great thing to study in college. Um but uh when you think about beer industry and wine industry clusters, it's like why did these places why did Napa Valley become the epicenter for wine in the US? And how did it grow to rival the quality of French wines and be worldrenown? How did Asheville, North Carolina attract over a 100red breweries in a town that is smaller than Gainesville, Florida? Um all of these like what what about these places makes them unique? Um and a lot of it just has to do with one the right place at the right time. Napa Valley has very unique growing conditions that supports uh uh the growing of extremely high quality grapes. Um but also it couldn't have done it without public support and public investment and university extension, not to toot our own horn, uh but but California's extension program with the Mandavi Institute and all these other resources spent a lot of money uh and concertive effort promoting and growing the wine industry there over a long period of time. Does that answer your question? >> That helps. Commissioner Commissioner Ron, >> thank you. I appreciate the map. My my big question is is that where you see these clusters at are located close to military bases. >> Yes. >> Port Jax is Port Jacksonville is the benefit of >> with Cape Canaveral. So that has that driven a lot of that those clusters of being just with those economies be it aerospace or avionics or whatever have had the advantage of being right there. >> No doubt. deep port there. The um Key West, >> even Key West has a military base. So I, you know, I and the changes that have gone on at McDill, it's gone from a fighter base to a I guess a tanker base now that flies around and brew fuel. But we've worked very hard. I think you were starting to see the birth of it at our airport with our EDC with a avionics type ecosystem to be built. We have some jet manufacturers avionics companies coming. So are those kind of the birthplaces of where these I know it didn't happen overnight, right? >> You know, it's years and years and years, but when you see the that's the type of birthplace we want is that to start to be being born being given birth to and attracts more businesses here. um with those I think one of our uh biggest issues is that you had in the previous slide is lack of a talent pool. >> Mhm. >> Um to be able to drive those industries here because I think they're going to have to bring them. >> We also have the benefit of a deep water port which we're trying to build some stuff around. But I think the the biggest concern is a lot of these companies brought in their own talent. >> Sure. >> You know, um and that's what we hope to see and we hope we can attract here in Mante County to bring your own talent. But I I I love how that just I mean it really shows where the hubs are at and what they're what surrounds them, what gives the birth to those hubs. But um no, that's kind of my point. I mean, I think we can we have a good starting point, but I think we we do have some uphill challenges here to to become, you know, this is Cape Canaveral 100 years, 50 years, 30 years, whatever it's been, >> and to bring all those companies there from the very start of it. So, um but this map is very telling. Abs. And by the way, all these slides are are are going to be available. So if you have any questions on them, please feel free to ask. And what you're saying goes exactly to >> sorry. Promote the growth of an industry cluster. >> And just for the just for the record, Commissioner Bearden is on as well. And Commissioner Bearden, I said this to Commissioner McCann, just raise your hand and Zoom and I'll call on you for questions. Thank you. >> And and what you said about uh getting the talent, that's a per Thank you for a segue. That was actually I asked I had asked him to ask me that question at that time so I could segue into the fourth wave here. So recent economic development studies suggest that uh jobs there's been a shift and this happened sometime around the 2000s. Um jobs tend to follow people now more than the other way around. I'm not saying it doesn't happen the other way around, but in terms of flows, jobs are following people now more than people follow jobs, which means that we need to really shift our thinking when it comes to incentivizing economic development and how we go about it and adapt to that reality. Um, there's some implications, there's some challenges, but there's also some opportunities, especially being in a state like Florida that is really attractive to live in. So the entrepreneurship literature has long shown that quality of life is one of the most important factors in uh where where at least entrepreneurs decide to locate. What they found is that quality of life factors were far more important the taxes and infrastructure to startup. The one exception for entrepreneurs was that they need overnight shipping. If you don't have overnight shipping, quality of life doesn't matter. They need overnight shipping. But if you have overnight shipping, this explains why uh Colorado and California, when you think about having a positive business climate, there's so many other places that have much more positive business climate than those places, but they are consistently top in entrepreneurship because quality of life there is so high. When you're thinking about entrepreneurs, they're not just launching a business. Oftent times they're early stage life, young adults, raising families. They want to be in communities and locations where they can do that um and not potentially destroy a marriage. Um so, uh Florida again, I think has some comparative advantages in this area. We are a wonderful place to live. Uh when I think about my own quality of life, uh anecdote for my own life, when I was on the job market, um uh freshly graduated uh from uh uh grad school, I was looking at Gainesville, Florida. I was looking at Fargo, North Dakota, and I was looking at Manhattan, Kansas. When I broke down the quality of life and what my life would look like at these places, Gainesville, Florida was kind of a no-brainer there. Nothing against those other towns. They're lovely. But quality of life is ultimately one of the uh reasons why it's probably the most important uh uh driving factor in why uh uh I took the job where I did and I'm very grateful uh uh that I did that um for many reasons. Um but this quote really sums it up. Um people tend to find an area where they want to live and then they start a business. When it comes to entrepreneurship, and this is also how you keep people in your community, a lot of people want to stay uh uh stay where they grew up uh for many reasons. This can be taking care of their parents or they just really like the area. But if they don't have uh a high quality of life there, if they don't have access to certain services or certain amenities, then they're going to go elsewhere. Uh so again, just a shift in focus from jobs, jobs, jobs to people, people, people. How am I on time, by the way? Am I over? Bye. Uh so I'm about 35 minutes. Oh, I'll wrap it up. Okay. So just to say that um uh placemaking is how you uh uh the fourth wave of uh economic development. Uh uh uh really focus on uh the things that improve quality of life. The one thing I want to focus on here is early childhood education. This might be one of the most important factors. Um and what I should add here too is not just early childhood education but also elder care. Because when you have when you think about the American dream and home ownership, it is a almost a prerequisite that you have a dual-income household nowadays to be able to afford a home for most families. And if you don't have affordable and accessible early childhood care, if it's a 4-year wait to get into daycare, that is just not a reality. Uh and one of those working adults might have to leave the workforce, which hurts your workforce and it can drive actually people out of your uh economy if you don't have it. Elder care is just as important. The reality now is that a lot of people have to uh uh take care of their parents and the option uh uh u whether that's bringing them into their homes and having affordable care for their parents is often just as important as having affordable care for children. Um and again support for entrepreneurs and a welcoming community. Um so uh Commissioner Sadi was uh uh um kind enough to share with me some of Manatee County's economic development incentives. I'm sure there's even more than this. Uh and looking at them, I found that there is uh uh uh Manatee County is doing a great job of implementing first and second wave incentives at the local level. Um and I think there's some opportunities to also incorporate some third and fourth wave strategies in here. And I provided some model third and fourth wave uh county incentives from around the country. Uh in Hillsboro, there's an academy that provides targeted workforce training in certain industries towards uh uh certain segments of the community. This is focused on quality of life and growing industry clusters. Uh Fort Food in Franklin, Ohio is focused on a food incubator and food entrepreneurship and really becoming a hub uh for for food food services and food businesses. And uh new beginnings initiative in Alama, California is focused on providing job skills through a youth youth intervention program for at risk youth. Uh so again quality of life, but it's also targeted towards certain industries. And then the infant and toddler development program. So, I'm over time. I won't go into this dashboard, but uh uh uh speaking with uh uh uh uh we we mentioned that uh handout that I gave that was really a uh inspiration to create a dashboard for counties to track economic indicators using using federal data. Federal data is great, but it's also horribly organized. It's spread across a bunch of different organizations and it's incredibly difficult to navigate and some of those tools to navigate those dashboards have been discontinued. So, what I've done is I've scraped the federal data, pulled it all together, compiled it for every county in Florida, and you can go to this dashboard and track economic indicators. And say you launch an initiative to an e economic development initiative, you can track those indicators here. And I'm more than happy to go into more details with this with the commissioners later if they would like. And with that, I don't want to take too much of more of my fellow presenters time. Thank you. Please complete the survey. And uh I have my business card up here if anyone wants to contact me later for for questions. Yes, >> Mr. Cruz. >> Yeah, this is Oh, it is on. All right, this is helpful and honestly a little disheartening when you talk about the waves in terms of Manatee County. Uh look, been pretty public like I I know companies like the short-term bribe to come here. I mean, you saw with Amazon, even the biggest companies, just give me free stuff and I'll I'll come to your town. But I I've always been more a proponent of the third waves and fourth waves anyway because I think you improve your overall community, whether the company comes or stays or not. Most companies fail at some point in time. You look at Kathy Wood with Ark. >> She didn't go to St. Pete because St. Pete gave her a bunch of money, whatever. She tooured all over and said, "Where's the best quality of life? Where do I want to work? where where can I find a workforce? And she's become transformative to downtown St. Pete. Not that it wasn't already on its way, but she has Ark Labs. She has lots of stuff. You know, I think the problem we get into is everyone wants an immediate fix to something like workforce. So, it's like take a bunch of tax money, run out and find someone the next six months. In fact, we just talked about this yesterday. Look at all these metrics. We got to go find someone tomorrow. But I don't believe Manatee County has positioned itself to go find somebody good tomorrow. We may find somebody if you give enough money. >> But we don't have a workforce here. It's not affordable to live here. We don't have all of the infrastructure set up to to bring somebody in here. Now, if you want to buy like you forgot what wave it was, first or second, the the industry clusters, >> if you want to go effectively buy yourself an anchor, >> you want to go get your Elliot Capital, your Arc, you want to go get some big headquarter, you're going to get all the tangential services coming down. They create their own universe, and it's it's self-fulfilling. But outside of that major anchor that you can point to and say, if I bring this guy in, I'm going to bring a hundred other businesses that that need it. uh you bring in finance, you're going to get the other financial advisors, you're going to get Bloomberg, you're going to get everyone else come down around them, >> you know, where do you see the biggest impact that that you've seen in experience? Like Gainesville, you guys have the innovation hub. >> Sure. >> And they've got one in St. Pete. We have 26 West Center, but we're not feeding it properly to to grow it the same way like Gainesville is for instance. You know, I I feel the best step is to kind of look five years down the road and use this time to create and build on. You know, educating our if we can educate our workforce and make this dynamic enough to keep them here. >> Mhm. >> Businesses will come here voluntarily. We don't have to bribe them to come here. And if that business fails, we already have we already have an educated workforce >> and they can go to another business or start their own business if we feed that side of it. We need to make it affordable to live here, right? We need to build on the infrastructure. We got the seapport. We've got we got the airport, you know, we we've got a great base of quality of life, but it's just not dynamic enough because Commissioner Ron, you know, said something that I >> kind of led to the disheartening comment was saying, "We're going to attract businesses. They're going to bring people here." I don't want them to bring people here. I want them not if I'm going to use if I'm going to use your tax dollars, I want to help you get the job. I don't want I don't want someone to come in and bring 100 people with them. further exacerbating my housing problem while simultaneously bringing in new people and leaving my current people to to die. So where do you see the success? Like most people focus on wave 1 and two because it's easy. >> It's like give me a bunch of money and I'll I'll do anything. >> Yeah. >> You know, give me a billion dollars, I'll fix your infrastructure. But that's not smart. The smart way is the wave three and four. I'll build some trails and some other stuff and I'll fix your infrastructure that way. That's hard. >> Mhm. >> Here, wave 1 and two is easy. That's just money. three and four is more difficult but more long-term sustainable and and overall improvement to quality of life. Where do you see the waves three and four working? Like like where can we look to a case study of the people who ignored phase 1 and two even if they lose a business here or there because they're not throwing money at them and focused on let's look five years down the road not the next election cycle not the next quarterly metric I have to point to. Where have you seen that work that we can look to or talk to those people to say how did you make wave four work? How did you make wave three work? And how were you successful? and what did you grow from focusing on that side of it? >> That's a really good question and um to really answer that thoroughly to give you multiple examples I I will absolutely get back to on that. But as far as just right, you know, from the top of my head thinking about that more tangible incremental progress that isn't because Kathy moved to St. Pete, like that's a unicorn situation that can't happen everywhere. Thinking about Jacksonville and how they've built themselves into a financial hub compared to where it was 30 years ago. think thinking about long-term incremental painful two steps forward, one step back. Just getting the community uh uh together aligned behind that kind of vision and making progress towards that and building themselves as a hey we can be the the center of financial activity where uh we've got these regional banks and other places headquartering here as kind of that financial services uh center of of of of the part of the state. I think that is a really great great example of how they attracted a specific industry by aligning the labor pipeline, the expertise and built up a reputation and transformed their downtown from a place where quality of life frankly was a you know a a place that was driving out migration to making changes and they're still very much in the process of of of working on their city but making it a place where people want to live and not just live on the periphery commute in and then get the heck out before it gets dark. So, it's that kind of slow incremental process over time. I think we can also and on on a little bit of a bigger scale, think about the film industry and uh uh uh Dr. Hawkins and I were are we're were thinking we're talking about this on the way down in Atlanta with the film industry. Uh that's bigger scale, but uh and that required a lot of state incentives behind it as well. But you look about how the film industry has been attracted to Georgia and how they've been able to do some really really cool things with attracting that and how that's been leveraged to benefit uh communities throughout the state, not just Atlanta uh with The Walking Dead, which is a really cool show. But, you know, if that was a one-time thing, then that would have been seen as a massive failure. But there's been uh multiple movie uh major films, major uh uh uh TV series, Stranger Things filmed throughout the state of Georgia and that's had really big impact in terms of the economy of of those towns specifically where those those series are are located. Does that help answer your question? >> Sure. I just wanted to see it's more of a proof of concept like that there has to be someone who said okay let's take a step back and focus again five years from now or seven years something and let's spend this time to proactively work on our affordability our housing generating a more dynamic community for younger workers because we've got a lot of we've got new college here we've got USF here we've got SCF here we got Ringling College just to the south of us we've got a lot of young people here they just when they turn 22 and get their diploma they leave here, right? And they all end up in Atlanta or Orlando or Jacksonville or St. Pete. >> We need to keep them here. And that's a process to build up. But I feel like we keep taking our eye off the ball because everyone wants immediate gratification here like go find my next business instead of building up and instead of saying we're going to create this massive dynamic infrastructure of businesses 5 years from now, we need to come up with a smaller just cobble together whatever we can find five months from now. and then we take our eye off the ball. We start redirecting capital to the wrong places because that's the immediate instead of the long term. So, I wasn't sure if there's anyone I can point to to taxpayers or commissioners and say, "Hey, why don't we take this approach? Why don't we take the wave the fourth wave approach, the third wave approach instead of just constantly focusing on first wave?" >> And I and I'll work on getting more examples uh to you on that so that you can have a whole suite of of examples to point to specifically to Florida. Um, and we'll also, I know we'll have time at the end for a Q&A, too. Um, um, so if there's any other questions that come up after my presentation that you wish you had the opportunity to ask, don't worry. We'll have a Q&A at the end, uh, as well. So, with that, uh, Alli, >> yes. >> Hey guys, I had a couple comments. >> Why not? Is it okay if we take a couple because then the topics might veer off. >> Sure. >> I'm I'm I'm here to whatever you guys feel about. >> We have more time. I just wanted to budget in case on the lower end and give us more time at the end. Uh I did have um let me start with Commissioner Ron Ballard and then Commissioner Bearden. >> Well, well, thank you. Uh Commissioner Cruz covered a lot of it. Um, you know, unfortunately, I like the concept of three and four, focusing on that, building that up, but unfortunately one and two have to be out there because we have to tax incentivize those guys to get them here to make him get hopefully be to three and four at some point down the road. >> I mean, you know, we look at where we have a county where we have more ALFs and daycarees. That's a problem attract and attracting young families and when they get here, it's a problem because we know it is a problem. Um the red tape that we put them some daycarees through recently was, you know, a little over the top, but one daycare. Come on. Um but my my my question is is that you do can we skip a one and two and go to a three and four? Can we get to that process? like Commissioner Cruz is talking about, you know, one, we got to educate the public because yesterday somebody had made some comments yesterday that don't think economic development is important for a county um from citizens. Um but can you get to a level of a three and four without having to go through a one and two? >> So I would say a comprehensive strategy includes all of it. These are this is a toolkit of tools and just because you have a wave four technology which you could say say you've got this great power drill doesn't mean you never need to use a hammer ever again. Sometimes that hammer from wave 1 is what you need to get the job done. So you shouldn't or I I should say that it depends on what your objectives are. As an economist my answer is always going to be it depends what you're trying to do. But when you think about incentivizing economic development from a comprehensive perspective, you're going to want to think about all of the waves and how you can leverage all of the tools at your disposal and have them work together towards your common objectives. And I think that first step is what is that objective and how can we leverage all the tools at our disposable from all of these different waves to achieve that objective. um uh that wave the wave 1 and two like I said it can generate some controversy and especially those big big incentive packages that's that's kind of a state level game but that doesn't mean you know when when in the earlier presentations when I was looking at manatees manatees counties there were still wave one there but they were focused on those much more smallcale businesses which I think is a very smart approach uh for a county government to spend u you're not trying to necessarily attract HQ2 but you're trying to attract more smallcale manufacturing. Maybe it's your again because I worked in the beer industry. Maybe you're trying to attract a brewery which is light manufacturing um provides light manufacturing jobs in your community. I think that's a much more sustainable and approachable way for communities to go about it. >> Thank you. >> So, uh going off of a couple of the things that that Commissioner Cruz had had mentioned about, you know, how we've got all these great schools and people just move away. Um, I think that one of the things that is maybe kind of a maybe more of a fourthwave idea is focusing on creating an amazing, strong and safe urban core and downtown area. Um, so I I moved, you know, when I was in college and law school, I lived in walkable downtown areas and I loved it. And that was that when when I got a job and and moved here, that's what we were looking for. and um and I I wanted to live in that environment. My job was downtown, but at the time there was nothing available like that in Bradenton. Uh yeah, and there's really still not. Um, and I think, you know, we we ended up getting a more kind of suburban house and it worked out fine and, you know, we had kids and all of that, but I think that building the kind of infrastructure and lifestyle and focusing on creating that strong downtown is going to attract that younger that younger workforce and keep people in this area. because people when they're just coming out of college, number one, >> they don't they don't want to live in Lakewood Ranch necessarily. Um they they want that vibrant downtown. Um and a couple of examples of places, so I grew up in the upstate of South Carolina. Um Greenville is a fantastic example of a place that has redeveloped their downtown, made it a place that people want to be. They've heavily invested in it and I think they're seeing a lot of great results from that and you know keeping keeping their their young people where they you know where they grew up. >> Absolutely. and young people who want to stay in a place even if they don't have a someone giving them an offer. Those are the people who are say, "Well, if there's a support for entrepreneurs in this community, if there's a shared work center, if there's local real estate, if there's a downtown that I could see myself launching my business in, those are the kind of things that'll attract them. But they also need things like affordable housing. They need or they want safe, walkable, attractive cities that are great to work in and live in and go to these uh they're called third places, but places that they can go to that aren't work or the house where they can gather. um whether that's ice cream shops, whether that's a brewery, whether that's uh whatever entertainment that that they choose to do outside of the home. Um uh uh they need all these uh or they they would like to have all these things. And if a community doesn't have those, they might go seek those somewhere else. But the community has those, they can be, you know, remarkably creative and entrepreneurial and that encourages them to stay stay here. and having incentive packages that encourage that entrepreneurship uh uh provide that support for uh that entrepreneurial environment um that can really uh do that and and what exactly you're talking about with the planning I think is a great uh uh uh uh uh great in terms of quality of life and I think my other presenters are going to speak a lot more about that too. >> Commissioner Bearden to wrap us up. >> Go ahead sir. >> Thank you Mr. Chair. I will have to say this. I think we're we're looking at this linear, right? We need to be looking deeper in regards to one creating a workforce essentially for the future. And we really need to start thinking about because here's the thing I'm telling you right now. I don't think people realize what AI is doing today. So what I mean by that is we need to start looking to create a workforce that can understand how to implement AI such as leveraging USF because they they're they are creating an amazing AI program there because if we can create the opportunities in the workforce these companies have come without incentives They'll come because you're preparing for the future. We have generations that's coming up right now that they're going to be trained on these systems and then and and and when we talk about workforce and all these other jobs like this stuff is real and it's going to be cut and I don't think society is prepared for that yet. And so we really need to start thinking, okay, yeah, we need we need these trades opportunities, right, to create trade jobs, but we also need to start thinking about the other aspect of what's coming in the future and be prepared for that because I don't think we're ready for that yet. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you. >> Thank you, Commissioner. Uh I I think that's a really good point and I know as mentioned you have all these higher education institutions here in Florida and again Florida has some of the best higher education opportunities of any state with all of our universities uh across the whole state. It's it's second to none I think. Um, and maybe coordinating some of these efforts locally, getting these universities to talk to each other and talking to them about potential industry clusters and how they fit into the picture together to leverage their individual strengths in certain areas to create that pipeline uh that that commissioner is commissioner Bearden uh Commissioner Bearden's talking about so that you can uh service in particularly these emerging uh emerging needs uh uh uh that are developing uh nowadays. >> Got it. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Polardi. I'll have a question for you to follow up on the efficacy of wave three and four. We have two ideas that are I'm glad to have the terms wave three and four. So, thank you for that and a great presentation, but I'll follow up during Q&A. So, thank you very much for this. >> Thank you for having me. >> All right. Next up, we have a conversation discussion affordable housing policy from uh Professor Alli and Cudovich. Please let me know if I got that wrong. >> No worries. Hi, good morning. And uh my name is Alien Kadovich. I'm not a professor, but I am an urban planner. Um and I am with the Florida Housing Coalition. I'm the land use director. So I am not usually at an economic development meeting, but I am super pleased to be here because I think affordable housing is definitely a part of this and I think a lot of you have echoed my sentiments on the matter. Um, and so I'm gonna uh probably um try to hit some of the highlights in part of this because some of this framing I think we are we're on the same page about and some of the examples of how other communities and especially counties in Florida are kind of promoting affordable housing that can help serve the workforce. Wanted to give a thank you to Florida Housing Finance Corporation for sponsoring my attendance here today and kind of supporting my presence. If you're not familiar with the Florida Housing Coalition, who I represent, we are a nonprofit statewide. We do training and technical assistance on all things affordable housing. And I'm going to get into some kind of technical things, some changes at the state level. They've been busy uh coming up with housing legislation this past session. Um so, please do get in touch with me after the fact if there's any questions on this. Uh we do offer assistance. So the focus is affordable housing, but oftentimes there's a lot of other goals to housing that local communities are seeking, including making sure that affordability doesn't go away at the whim of the market. So long-term affordability, making sure homes are accessible to different groups in the community, available in the types and amounts and locations where it's needed, innovation of delivery. So we've already mentioned AI. I have no doubt that that's going to get in the mix in so many different ways that I haven't even conceived of yet. Uh and maybe not a lot of people in terms of home delivery. Uh and then resiliency uh with hurricanes, with storms. So making sure homes are safe and resilient. So we have a big local policy toolkit that we launched last fall and I'll link it here at the end. There's a lot of ideas in here and kind of echoing Nathan's sentiment on this. A lot of these strategies work together. It's kind of hard to just do one and just solve your problem and all the different housing needs you might have. But for today's presentation, I've tried to focus on kind of four key strategies here. And they kind of have a flow. So, first kind of talking about what can you do with your land use and zoning. And this might not necessarily come with a huge guarantee of affordability in the long term, but it's going to add some flexibility into your market. Then looking at some of the tools that are there to use zoning to get some of that guaranteed affordable housing. And then stepping into something that's a little bit bigger. um and that is how your subsidy and your land some of these bigger ticket resources that you have are being used to support deeper and longer term affordability. So luckily and I have to congratulate you because I think you're thinking about a lot of these strategies already. You're thinking about the land use and zoning. You're thinking about incentives. You're thinking about subsidy and land and CLTs community land trusts. So I think it's a question of revisiting that um and think about how to make that go further. So starter homes and I think this is a big I kind of picked this topic to focus on because we are talking about economic development um you know either retaining or attracting particularly young professionals who want that quality of life who want to become homeowners and so I think starter homes is a big topic right now and we even saw some proposed legislation this past session around it. So, this is definitely something that I think also lends itself to the land use types that and zoning that we usually see in counties that oftentimes don't have those big downtowns or um some of those nodes might be in incorporated areas. So, that's kind of the focus of this. And then we're also going to hear about how formbbased code could kind of talk speak to a lot of different land use types and kind of do this much more holistically. So, this is kind of just if you wanted to operate in your existing approach to zoning. And this really focuses on how do we just enable smaller and more efficiently built homes to meet some of those price points, especially for younger and first-time home buyers who are trying to get into that home ownership. So this is really about looking at if you have minimum unit sizes, looking at those lot size requirements, the minimum widths, the minimum size. Um this is about flexibility and the type of home that can be delivered. So looking at some smallcale options, could you allow for accessory homes? I know um you know or make those more widespread and easier to put in place. Uh, with this comes the ability to split lots to put smaller homes on a smaller lot and some flexibility in those other zoning regulations. How far back the building needs to be from the property line, how much parking are you requiring, um, how much of the lot can be covered by a home. So, all of these zoning regulations kind of work together to either facilitate more or less some of these smaller, more relatively affordable homes um that