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1 <br />2 <br />3 <br />4 <br />5 <br />6 <br />7 <br />8 <br />9 <br />10 <br />11 <br />12 <br />13 <br />14 <br />15 <br />16 <br />17 <br />18 <br />19 <br />20 <br />21 <br />22 <br />23 <br />24 <br />25 <br />26 <br />27 <br />28 <br />29 <br />30 <br />31 <br />32 <br />33 <br />34 <br />35 <br />36 <br />37 <br />38 <br />39 <br />40 <br />41 <br />42 <br />43 <br />44 <br />45 <br />46 <br />47 <br />48 <br />49 <br />50 <br />51 <br />35 <br />And if we got a minor league baseball team here, he added, we could call it the Orange County <br />Values. <br />Commissioner Jacobs said that no Board member has ever opposed the extension of water and <br />sewer to the EDDs. Some of us worked hard to change the perception of Orange County from <br />being anti - business, and to a large extent I think we have succeeded, he said. <br />I would like to define a holistic view of economic development for Orange County, he added. <br />"Big game" has to fit into a context. There is a broader mosaic that we're working on that <br />includes the arts, tourism, agricultural economic development, etc. We need a conversation <br />about how all these things fit together and how we want to use our resources. <br />In addition, he said, it is no small thing for the people who are affected for us to change the land <br />use plan and have an effect on properties that people live on. We must talk with the residents <br />adjacent to the Eno EDD, and have a public component to this conversation. <br />Finally, he said, I do believe there are untouchable places here. We don't want to be like Wake <br />County or Durham County, and we sure don't want to be like Alamance County. It doesn't even <br />have zoning. We want to look like Orange County ten years from now, and fifty years from now. <br />We're way ahead of those counties in a lot of respects. We should be talking about the things <br />we have that we are proud of, not what we lack. Instead of talking about our land values being <br />so high, let's talk about how beautiful our land is. That's where tourism comes from. <br />Mr. Brantley thanked the Board for devoting time at the retreat for discussing economic <br />development. I've been here for over six years, and this is the first time we have had this level of <br />discussion. Please recall, he said, that the SWOT analysis was not intended to be a county <br />economic development review. It is specific to the EDDs and CITANs, which necessarily comes <br />with an industrial and warehousing focus. Also please recall that Article 46 was passed in 2011 <br />in order to create a funding mechanism for extending utilities to economic development districts. <br />Recall that the 2005 economic development plan set 2010 as the target for when all the EDDs <br />would have infrastructure. The County did not have the funding, or start the Phase 1 Efland- <br />Mebane sewer line until 2010 -11. It will be two years from now before the Hillsborough EDD line <br />is completed, before the Efland Phase 2 line is completed, and maybe before the Eno EDD is <br />completed. We have not been waiting 30 years for the EDDs to generate economic value, <br />because in truth they have had no zoning up until recent years, no incentives until 2011, no <br />marketing, and no utilities. Article 46 also created funding for small business. That includes <br />PFAP, Launch, the small loans and grants, and arts and tourism. We're not discussing those <br />areas. I was hired in 2011 to be the Big Game Hunter. It was specific to not only managing the <br />Department's overall functioning and budget and to include these other areas, but also for the <br />first time to try to layer in some larger businesses recruitment in which Orange County had been <br />deficient for decades. We were fortunate in 2013 to get Morinaga. Our office sees new <br />prospects knocking on the door on a daily basis. We've gone over six years from getting zero <br />inquiries to now having seventy to eighty qualified inquiries a year that could help us meet the <br />budget that would have us paying at or beyond the living wage, creating job opportunities, <br />slowing or reversing gentrification, especially among blue collar residents. We're at a point in <br />market interest now that we should have been at 25 or 30 years ago. I get impatient when I see <br />projects, like Lid[ -- $110M- $150M, 200 -300 jobs -- that should be here but go somewhere else. <br />It could have been on one of our sites. We need to have utilities in place, and land that can have <br />houses on the sewer line paid for with Article 46 funds to serve Morinaga and other companies. <br />We do have some projects that max out our sewer capacity. The irony is that many of these <br />projects represent the tax base or the salaries at high levels that we want. We need to a have a <br />