Ostrich Economics

Like most local governments, the City of Kissimmee's unfolding strategy for dealing with current Central Florida economic crisis is to stick their collective heads in the sand and hope it goes away. While staff and elected officials alike will suggest they have met the crisis head on by making 'necessary' cuts to trim general fund spending, the WayneWho staff, and all of those e-mailing us, would argue that governments have all made hatchet wielding cuts with no planning on how to provide the services government should be providing instead of popularity based programs. In essence, governments have jammed money in the faces of the programs they think will get them re-elected, and then stuck their head in the sand to block out the foul cries from the public and the small business community.

The lack of any honest understanding of business economics became more than apparent at this week's City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting. What many would call the most blatant proof of this was the denial of $30,000 to the Small Business Development Center which is housed at the Kissimmee/Osceola County Chamber of Commerce. While we agree with the questioning that commissioners engaged in with Chamber President Mike Horner on accountability and the program's level of success, we have to disagree with the overall concepts brought fourth in the denial of the program. If the City Commission, Osceola County Commission, staff at both entities, and the useless Economic Development 'rah... rah...' group, had any idea of how to put a plan together on how to actually begin building an economy in Osceola County, the blunders that the City Commission has made during this budget cycle may not have happened. We also feel that all levels of government are to blame.

We will begin our examples of idiocy by pointing out the most basic of blunders. The City Commission denies a request for funding $30,000 to the Small Business Development Center which is backed by the Small Business Administration of the United States Federal Government and by the University of Central Florida. The commissioners made this decision based on all of the 'hard' decisions that they have had to make during this budget year and they need to hold on to as much money in their 'General Fund' as possible. While we applaud this idea, we have to argue on its execution. The commissioners turned down a Federally backed SBA program of it's $30,000 and gave the $30,000 instead to the Kissimmee Main Street Club that specializes in alcohol related drinking events, for the generic task of Business Recruitment and Retention. If any of our readers have driven downtown, or anywhere in Kissimmee, we believe they would have noticed that it is apparent the retention part is not working. While we believe that the people involved with the Main Street Club are honest good-hearted fun loving people, we would have to question their business experience and the faith, and dollars, put in them during these dark economic times. The Main Street Club has had a hard time expanding and growing the Kissimmee Farmers Marketing with backing and advertising help from the City of Kissimmee, and we should believe that they are better equipped to smartly spend $30,000 as opposed to the SBA? It doesn't make sense to us either.

What we really found interesting about the dialog on this issue between the commissioners the other night was their lack of the basic understanding of what our local government's role is. As much as the senior citizens of our community need our help, they are not the future of this community. While the senior population may continue to grow, the benefits to our community because of the growth are non-existent. While we would never suggest that we should not find ways to help senior citizens or suggest they are not wanted in our community, we would argue that dumping all or our funding into programs for seniors does not create a path for economic recovery in our area. While we understand that the 'Senior Vote' is what gets commissioners elected, they are not the group that is going to develop new industries that increase our tax base and provide jobs.

We would also have to laugh at the thoughts the commissioners shared about wanting to create more jobs by helping small businesses because they are the backbone of our community. They made these comments after just creating an ordinance to charge one segment of businesses in our community a new 'Database Tax'. They also created new red-tape for the Security Industry to navigate through. Creating more jobs and helping small business takes more than election cycle rhetoric. A plan to help actually needs to be developed to make it happen and cutting the funding to the Small Business Development Center is not a good start in this plan. Demand accountability, demand data, demand that a better plan be developed, but don't stab the small business community in the back again. Hiding behind empty wording that is spoken week after week is just another way of sticking ones head in the sand.