By law, a Downtown Development Authority is tasked with two primary jobs: economic development within the specified district, and historical preservation of its downtown, its buildings and landscapes. Talk a walk through Downtown Holly and it’s easy to see that Main Street Holly DDA seems to be doing something right in its charges.
Head north, up Saginaw Street, and the story changes a little bit; vacant storefronts, dilapidated blight, and empty industrial facilities create a decommercialized zone between the high-traffic North End and the historic Downtown. It falls within the DDA’s charge to shepherd this zone as well, if not historically, most certainly economically.
To this end, the Business Devleopment Committee has proposed revising and promoting the DDA’s Business Finder’s Fee (BFF) program to create an incentive for Holly residents, fellow business owners, or other parties to help bring business to Holly. The BFF program offers rewards of $1000 to a resident, business proprietor, property owner, or public or private employee within the Village of Holly or Holly Township (with the DDA board reserving discretion to awarding to non-Holly affiliates).
Only one grant can be awarded per person, per year, with requirements to ensure that the recruited business is real, viable and has reasonable longevity. The pool of incentive funds is naturally limited, and if successful, the program will sunset itself out by bringing Holly’s business capacity to near maximum.
Within the past several months alone, two local business owners, Lonnie Heward of Accurate Appraisals and John LaCroix of the Great Lakes Artisan Village, have assisted in opening two more doors within the Downtown, thus making them eligible for the grant. However, the grants have not yet been paid, nor has the revised BFF program been formally adopted, due to continuing reservations by some members of the DDA Board of Directors.
What the business community is witnessing is the “same old Holly” in the delay of adopting this program and paying the grants, delaying and foot-dragging and interjecting subjective arguments until the point where the will to continue is sapped.
Although good governance requires thoughtful and thorough deliberation, consideration of options and potential consequences, the DDA Board of Directors is over-thinking their consideration of the BFF program, focusing more on the recipients of the grant and the program itself instead of the desired outcomes of the program—new businesses.
One objection that has arisen is whether certain professions or positions, such as a realtor as Mr. Heward is, are at an unfair advantage for receiving this taxpayer funded grant. Perhaps they are, but realtors are in the best position to actively recruit businesses, as well as show off and sell our community.
If four realtors receive grants because they recruited four strong businesses, why not reward those four (and make them feel good enough to keep recruiting more)? Are their four businesses any less valuable than those that would be recruited by Joe Citizen? Of course not—four new businesses have opened in Holly, lifting the entire community further.
But by foot-dragging and over-deliberating the BFF program, it would be of little surprise to anyone if Mr. Heward developed a bitter taste in his mouth and was reluctant to make his best pitch for entrepreneurs to move into Holly (because in this case, Mr. Heward’s first concern is Mr. Heward’s business, and business to him is good regardless of whether a business is recruited to Holly, or to Fenton, or to Clarkston, or to Grand Blanc…).
And if there’s this much trouble with a simple program, then why would anyone else, be they a Realtor to a fellow merchant to a citizen, want to even bother and put up the effort?
Considering that the BFF policy was revised by a talented attorney and experienced marketing manager in Pete Deahl and Jessica Teague, respectively, if there are issues with some of the program’s stipulations, they should be able to be revised and handled in short order, so that the program can be promoted and marketed, more businesses can open their doors, and deserving recruiters can be rewarded.
But if the delay is philosophical, or even worse personal, then we have the infamous “Beer Company Rumor” redux, where if you just make something take long enough, and make the process painful and irritating enough, then everything will just go away and we can carry on as we were. We’ve made too much progress in the past year for something as small as the BFF program to derail it—the DDA Board of Directors should approve this program as expediently as possible.
5 Responses to “Institute the Business Finders Fee”
While this is an interesting idea I think it deserves proper discussion and questioning. There are obvious concerns that were mentioned when the issue was discussed and I think that it really needs to be discussed before being approved.
One of the items mentioned was that this reward could go to a number of people, including public employees. While I can see the point of trying to include as many people as possible, you can’t ignore the fact that this could create a conflict of interest.
For example, lets say the business was referred by a public employee, lets use the building inspector/code enforcer for instance (this is hypothetical only). It isn’t difficult to anticipate the claims that a CO was issued early simply so that the reward could be paid out as soon as possible. Then there will be claims of favoritism and such. And this is just one scenario.
The concept of the program is great. Being that it is taxpayer money these concerns should be addressed before the reward program is put in place.
Given a long enough timeline, a set of creative and motivated minds could conspire myriad situations where there might be problems, conflicts of interest, confusion, etc.
The real question is the lost value of the program’s outcome that results from the length of that timeline–what is a viable business worth to the taxpayers?
True, but pushing a project forward that may contain conflicts, confusion and potential legal ramifications should be avoided. I don’t think it is too much to take an in depth look at certain aspects before launching the program.
It would be a shame to see this program fail because it was rushed to production. It would be better to launch a program with few flaws than to rush something forward with disregard to the concerns mentioned. The community won’t support the program if it is shrouded in controversy. It would be better to iron out the details and give it a chance at success. If there is that many questions across the DDA board, wouldn’t you agree that there are some concerns?
“…if there are issues with some of the program’s stipulations, they should be able to be revised and handled in short order…”
Sometimes thorough examination, thumb-twiddling, and death by attrition are synonyms.
Sometimes… But based on the discussion at the meeting and nothing else, there were some legitimate reasons to make sure the program details are reviewed and discussed prior to its implementation.