Business Buzz
Opportunity Florida…what in the heck is that all about? by Executive Director Rick Marcum I hear that often. Our organization is just a few years old and is still in somewhat of an infant stage, so if you haven’t heard about us, I’m not surprised. But let me take a bit of your time to tell you who we are…and how we impact you. Back in 1999, the Florida State Legislature designated eight counties as “Counties of Critical Economic Concern.” The eight counties were Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Liberty and Washington counties. As a result of this first of its kind designation, the eight counties have banded together along with some of our local businesses to form…you guessed it…Opportunity Florida. If you’re reading this article, then you are most likely living in one of these counties and might be asking the question, “Is it a good thing to be living in a county with a ‘critical economic concern’ designation?” The answer is yes and no. First…no, our eight counties need more economic opportunity, but also, yes, because the designation is helping our counties’ability to compete …and let me tell you how. Whether you know it or not, it is difficult to recruit businesses to Florida…at least from a financial incentive perspective. (And in many occasions, it’s hard just keeping the ones we’ve got. But we’ll cover this subject in a later column.) We all know that Florida ranks as one of the best regarding ‘quality of life’ issues, but when it comes to having good financial incentives to recruit companies…we don’t rank so high. Unlike most of our neighboring states, we don’t write big checks to companies to induce them to locate here. Florida has what you might call a ‘performance based’ incentive program. In other words, our incentives are more like reimbursements than up-front money paid incentives. Our incentives are based on what a company does after coming to our state, not what it says it is going to do. Additionally, the incentives have minimal thresholds that must be met. And this is the point that now offers our eight counties a benefit to be designated “critical economic concern” counties…the threshold is lowered. Short and sweet, a business will more easily reach the required threshold in one of our counties, than in the other Florida counties. Yeah, team!! “So what else does Opportunity Florida do?” Much more and over the next few weeks, we’re going to begin to tell you much more about us. Not only will we tell you about Opportunity Florida’s accomplishments, we will tell you about our existing and future programs that will benefit each and every one of you. Stay tuned…there’s more to come. However, if you can’t wait, go to our website, www.opportunityflorida.com. We’re going to be asking for your help gathering the content for the site.
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