Opposed To New Business

The City of Kissimmee's own self proclaimed Graffiti Czar has set his sights on eliminating a new blight in the City of Kissimmee since realizing he is powerless when it comes to getting graffiti removed from the new CRA mobile home community built in the downtown. His new mission seems to be stopping the creation of new businesses in the City of Kissimmee. “I think the timing right now is horrific for anybody to start a business. I’m opposed to this. This is how I feel,” stated Commissioner Gemskie according to the Osceola News-Gazette. Opposed to new business? The WayneWho staff thinks that is a very strong statement for someone whose name is being thrown about as a possible County Commission candidate in a few years. We are not sure what type of community Commissioner Gemskie would like to preside over if he were able to win a County seat, but we are sure what a community with no new jobs would look like, and it is not a pretty site.

The WayneWho staff hopes that at next week's meeting, Mayor Swan, Commissioner Gemskie, and Gemskie's new found buddy Commissioner Irizarry would explain their concepts of what economic development is because the ideas they have attempted to implement so far have failed and don't make much sense. While Commissioner Irizarry cried the loudest when taxpayer money was to be used for the successive years of All-America City awards pageant try-outs because money was going to be tight and spending money on an award made little sense, he was one of the first to proudly herald the benefits of 'Economic Development' when the award was finally won. The first year that the public began paying attention to this nonsensical pageant was the year that a group spent $80,000 in tax money to try to buy the All-America City title and failed. You may remember watching the video presentation on our tax funded TV station Access Osceola that showed Community Vision representatives, as well as representatives from the County's Economic Development Club, City of Kissimmee, Osceola County, the Chamber of Commerce, the HOME Project, and others who enjoyed a fun filled vacation at the taxpayers expense to Anaheim California in the name of Economic Development. For weeks the battle raged and commissioners told the community that we would stand a better chance of attracting new businesses into the area if we could 'win' the All-America City Award. Well, we won the award this past year and now our big plan from the commission is to oppose anyone opening a new business? How American is that? And besides, where is all the economic development we were promised? Was the All-America City pageant just a way to justify travel expenses or were we really trying to get businesses to open in our community?

Besides the obvious point of "Nobody really cares what Commissioner Gemskie says because he has little insight or knowledge when it comes to business," we would like to point out a little looked at principal of a free market. Risk is essential to the proper operation of a free market because risk helps to determine profit or loss and risk is what helps to create opportunity. If we were to listen to the commission's advice, we would stop businesses from opening that could benefit from this bad market. This commission does not even want to give the American Entrepreneurial Spirit a chance to study and discuss their opportunities with seasoned Small Business Administration Officials because it is more important to spend $30,000 on 'Sculpture Walks', downtown drinking parties, and a dwindling farmers market than it is to help create opportunities for the future business leaders of our community. There is no risk on spending $30,000 on events that have no true failure point, but it is another to spend $30,000 where judgment may come into play.

On a side note to this article; whoever is pulling the string on Mr. Horner, tell him to stay home on Tuesday night. Let the professionals speak instead of him. Economic Development is not about how good your 'Dog and Pony' show is, but instead it is about how smart your team of people is advising the business community. The Kissimmee/Osceola County Chamber of Commerce, like its Kissimmee Main Street counterpart has failed in this mission, but that does not mean that a good program, that these groups are not responsible for running, should be scuttled because of them. We would also suggest that the person who is going to represent this program be someone who does understand the difficulties governments are having with limited revenues to spend on parties and such. This would help put them on the same playground as our local elected officials. One last thing to the presenter, remember that the magic word is 'multimodal'. The commissioners just love that word.