By REID TUCKER
It’s official: the DeFuniak Springs municipal airport is now on the Florida First Sites list.
Congratulations were passed around the room on the night of the July 27 meeting of the DeFuniak Springs City Council as Gulf Power marketing executives Jennifer Connolly and Rick Byers gave a presentation on the completion of the two-year-long project.
Gulf Power’s Florida First Sites program aims to take care of the front-end site development legwork like environmental and demographic studies so that targeted industry prospects can accelerate their plans to set up shop in the Panhandle. Now that the airport is on the rolls, the city will have the full marketing might of Gulf Power behind it when promoting the airport as a project-ready industrial site to potential developers from around the country and around the world.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for prospects to come and locate in northwest Florida,” Connolly said. “Based on research, we know that 97 percent of site selection occurs online…that’s why it’s really important that we are in the digital space, that we have as much information as possible to these (corporate) decision-makers and that we can get in front of them with our sites as soon as possible.”
Connolly detailed Gulf Power’s combined arms-style approach to marketing its certified sites, a plan which includes cultivating and maintaining an active online presence, ads in national magazines like Fortune, event planning, printing and distributing promotional flyers and putting up real estate signs. The goal, Connolly said, is to show the world that northwest Florida is “in the game” when it comes to economic development, with the ideal situation being to land an industry leader at one of two available parcels located at the local municipal airport. The Florida First Sites website will eventually include DeFuniak Springs-centric informational videos and 3D conceptual drawings to help industry execs visualize potential construction ideas.
Walton County Economic Development Alliance Executive Director Steve Jaeger, who also worked to bring businesses to the Mossy Head Industrial Park, had high praise for the Gulf Power team and the DeFuniak Springs city staff and Council members. He said the two years of work it took to get a certified site was time well spent in securing the city’s economic prosperity.
“I simply want to extend to this Council our congratulations for the fact that you stayed the course on this and now you have a certified site,” Jaeger said. “I think this marketing plan will really arm this city. I think you’ll see some things happen with the industrial park development and I want to wish you the very best with it.”
For more information, visit http://floridafirstsites.com.
In the other big item on the agenda, the Council also heard a report from the Florida Rural Water Association’s Bob Mearns, who laid out the results of a water and wastewater rate study. According to Mearns’ report, which used revenue and expenditure data from 2012 and 2013, the combined water and wastewater systems experienced a net change in assets of negative $687,152, including depreciation. This means that the system was not only suffering a cash flow loss, but was also failing to generate reserve funds for future capital improvements and unforeseen contingencies.
The report indicates that current water rates are insufficient to cover expenses, necessitating a jump in the base rate from $13.76 to $16.23 and an adjustment in the rate charged per additional 1,000 gallons from $2.90 to $3.39 to cover expenses and generate sufficient reserves. The report gave an example showing that a 4,000-gallon user would have a bill of $23.01. Finally, to ensure that system can pay for itself and generate revenues, the base rate will need to increase $2.47 annually for five years, while the per-1,000-gallon rate needs to go up a little less than 50 cents per year.
Similarly, Mearns recommended that wastewater rates be increased if it is to generate enough money to cover its annual operating expense of approximately $409,711. However, unlike the water system, which needs an annual rate increase, the wastewater system can get by with a one-time base rate increase from $23.63 per month to $25.12, while the per-1,000-gallon rate needs to rise from $4.70 to $5.16. A user of 4,000 gallons per month would have a first-year cost of $45.76, and the base rate would remain the same for five years, though the per-1,000-gallon rate would increase by 46 cents per year to cover expenses and generate reserves.
The full Florida Rural Association report is available on the DeFuniak Springs city website, found at http://defuniaksprings.net. To find the report, navigate through the drop-down menus from “government” to “city council” to “city clerk” to “agendas and minutes” and click the link to the most recent City Council meeting agenda.
