Hillsborough Economic Prosperity Stakeholder Committee

Hillsborough taxpayers paid many tens of thousands of dollars on County economic development studies to determine which specific industries should be targeted in order to create local high-paying jobs.

Those “target industries” included:

• Biotechnology & Medical Devices
• Medicine & Medical Management
  • Electronic Health Records
  • Medical Simulation & Training
• Cross-Business Functions
  • Shared Services
  • Business Analytics
  • Information Technology
  • Headquarters Enabling Functions
• Financial Services
  • Middle/Back Office Operations
• Defense & Security
  • Security and Technology
  • Security/Intelligence Consulting

Question: how many of these target industries are represented on the new Hillsborough Economic Prosperity Stakeholder Committee?

Answer: none, they all went to the land development industry.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

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Pony first; cart after

Don’t blame over-burdened, under-employed Hillsborough County residents for the lack of infrastructure in downtown Tampa.

The first to benefit would be downtown businesses and land owners; they should be the first to pony up.

They are the private part of public/private partnerships still sitting on the sidelines waiting for the taxpaying public to load the carts for them.

Once the promised high-wage, good-benefit, full-time jobs materialize, the newly employed will shop, eat, play and live downtown.

Their taxes will then also help fund teachers, police, firefighters and public works.

Pony first; cart after.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

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Seeding the Fields

Today’s St. Pete Times (Tampa Bay Times) includes an interesting article in the Business section by Robert Trigaux:
“Seeding the Fields – A regional support system for startups is blossoming”

Perhaps we all could sponsor a regional (or at least a county-wide) one-day forum bringing together all individuals and organizations interested in supporting entrepreneurialism.

Something might grow out of that.

Wouldn’t it be something for Tampa Bay to become known internationally as the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem capital of the world?

Why not? You cannot harvest what you don’t grow.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

West Central Florida Economic Development Centered on Tampa Bay

I dearly love Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, but yet another two-year, million-dollar “blueprint” study for downtown development is just a distraction from the real, regional planning that needs to take place. Instead of trying to create the best-little-block-in-Tampa, why not work to create the best quality metropolitan statistical area in Florida, or anywhere? Instead of every mayor and county commissioner fighting to win for themselves that white knight job-creating company to relocate here, why not together challenge Miami’s prominence in the state?

Eighth-ranked MSA Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach has a combined population of 5.5 million people, compared to 19th-ranked Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater with over 2.7 million people. Yet the Miami MSA has many more times the financial clout of the Tampa MSA. However, if we further expand the view of ourselves as the West Central Florida MSA, we then have the population to rival the Miami MSA. We just lack the vision and political will to become a greater region.

We only have to look at how many roads and bus routes seem to stop at county lines to understand the problem. We think local, not regional. When we do think regionally, we tend to think of the mythical Orlampa I-4 corridor as becoming a unified economic powerhouse. We don’t need The Mouse to be great. We have it all, and more, right in our own backyard.

Take for example the planning area considered by the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority (TBARTA), which includes the counties of Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee and Sarasota. Take note that this is a north-south corridor that includes numerous world-class schools, hospitals, a major military base, many square miles of pristine environment, three international airports, three deep-water ports and a network of highways and rail lines.

It is long past time for us to stop pushing around peanuts and compete on the world stage. Unless Miami figures out how to expand into the Atlantic or the Everglades, there is no place for it to grow. West Central Florida can plan now for regional commerce, transportation, agriculture, clean water and energy to attract and accommodate business, students, residents and eco-tourists for the next 100 years — if we choose to come together, do it now, and do it right.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

How do new jobs happen for Tampa?

Who "created" those jobs?

Twin tidings of good jobs is the subject of a Tribune opinion today.

I know they don’t want to hear it, but The Tribune would be doing an important service to taxpayers if they would carefully document and report how these new local jobs actually came about.

Credit for the 500 jobs with Time Warner and the 400 jobs with Adventist Health System will all be claimed by the president of the United States; the governor of Florida; the chair of the Hillsborough County BOCC; the mayor of Tampa, as well as the Tampa-Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation and the various chambers of commerce.

If everyone does not clearly understand the actual process of how new jobs were successfully created in the area, we will have little hope that that process can or will be replicated.

For the vast majority of Tampa Tribune readers, job creation isn’t about getting reelected, it is about getting reemployed.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

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The sky is NOT falling

Road to employment

Before Hillsborough County pols go all Chicken Little over Pasco County offering $10 million to Raymond James to locate there, we should all rejoice and consider how many of those hundreds of promised jobs might become filled by nearby Hillsborough residents.

This is about jobs and controlling Hillsborough tax expenditures, not look-look-what-I-did come re-election time, by now getting into a bidding war with another county.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

Supply-side economics is dead.

Last night I was astonished to hear TV commentators say that increased demand for goods and services alone would not be a sufficient factor for job-creators to hire additional workers.

Instead, job-creators first want guaranteed lower taxes; lower worker wages and benefits; lower regulations along with higher corporate profits before they start hiring.

In my opinion, this turns upside-down the old Harvard Business School mantra of  “increase the demand for goods and services; then increased supply will follow.”

Employ them fairly and they will buy

How did Henry Ford increase the demand for Ford automobiles? He hired more Ford factory workers and paid them wages sufficient for them to become Ford automobile buyers.

We are quickly reaching the precipice of a depression unless job-creators first put people back to work so that they can in turn afford to buy those goods and services they are today doing without.

Wealth does not “trickle down” from the job-creators, wealth “trickles up” from the worker-consumers.

It is a dangerous game the job-creators are playing with America’s economy. Winning at any cost will only result in the loss of our American way of life; the certainty of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all, not just for the job-creators.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

Wrong track, wrong solution

Friday’s Tampa Tribune editorial once again missed why voters rejected the Tampa Choo-Choo. They didn’t miss lamenting however that the Choo-Choo would not be running past their front door any time soon.

Perhaps we should instead call it
the Tampa TRIBUNE Choo-Choo.

Did TBARTA not attend any of the public meetings prior to the election that they needed to now pay an out-of-town consultant to do a survey to find out why the tax increase was rejected?

The pessimism and doubt that was found was only partially about the economy. It was just as much about a lack of faith that The County would spend the tax increase wisely and that it would change anyone’s life any time soon; unless you were a downtown Tampa land owner, developer, lawyer or consultant.

Not one dime has been spent from our last sales tax increase for improved bus transit.

Why is it too  that HART has 100 brand new buses sitting idle from a grant they received? It might have something to do with the $15 MILLION spend by them instead to study and promote rail transit for downtown Tampa.

Bus Rapid Transit would better serve the entire county at much less cost, but this was inexplicably rejected by HART.

Voters who needed jobs NOW, saw thorough the argument that rail would bring jobs when in fact the jobs would not be created until five years hence and would largely be low-wage, part-time, no-benefit jobs in hotels, restaurants and shops.

Voters also questioned why, if a $180 MILLION per year tax increase would be so painless to taxpayers, why couldn’t that money be used to create jobs NOW and improve bus service to get to those jobs NOW.

Think of the dark irony of The County putting up a sign in an empty downtown lot that said:

 ”Emergency job assistance,
food and shelter facility
    to be built here in 2015.”

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

Tax Myth Busted

John Ruskin 1819 - 1900

 

The U.S. Department of Commerce reported yesterday the highest increase in corporate profits in 60 years while their cost of employees remained about the same. Corporations either kept the increased profits, or paid them out to the owners. They did not hire workers.

So much for the myth that continued lower taxes are needed for the rich in order to create jobs.   

 

Over 100 years ago, British social critic John Ruskin (namesake of Ruskin, Florida) proclaimed that the greed shown by the owners of Big Business, especially during times of national hardship was at best, unpatriotic.

 While soldiers, sailors, doctors and the clergy regularly sacrifice personal comfort and safety during difficult times, only the so-called business classes are unwilling to give up their personal gain for the public good.

The worst are for-profit hospitals, defense contractors and money-changers.

Think what would happen if wealthy business owners gave up their excess profits for just one year and instead gave people jobs.

Unemployment would cease; sick people could be cured and our money would again go back into circulation to buy goods and services.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen

Imagine

Imagine Hillsborough

Imagine if we all just had faith that we can make a difference in our world.  

Imagine every small business owner hiring  just one new worker; and every big business hiring five new workers.
We wouldn’t have unemployment.

Newly employed workers would return all that money back into the economy and with their purchases, back to those who employed them.

Sales tax revenues would go up without a tax increase. Homes would be bought and property tax revenues would go up without a tax increase.

This wouldn’t happen overnight, but if we kept the faith that if everyone is in this together, it might work.

“What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do some thing about them.”
                                                                                    Henry Ford

Just imagine.

<IMHO> Fred Jacobsen