Over the course of this campaign, I have talked about flood control and water expansion, about roads and about commissioners keeping office hours at the courthouse. But the subject I have discussed the most with voters, about which they have the mo-st questions, is bringing opportunity to Calhoun.
They are used to, but dissatisfied with the same old refrain.
Charleston! Charleston!
How are we going to bring jobs here?
Charleston, Charleston, gee how you can shuffle!
How are we going to save the county from running out of children in four decades?
That dance called Charleston.
Politicians talking to politicians isn’t going to bring us a factory. There are only so many jobs at the school, at State Highways, and at the Hospital. We need solid, career-grade, private-sector jobs. Jobs that stand on their own, not subsidized to the gills to provide a critical service.
Where are these jobs? Not in Charleston. That is for sure.
Getting jobs in Calhoun County is a sales problem. If you’re looking for new customers, you don’t go and talk to the customers you already know. You go out and talk to new people.
Here’s how to go about getting the opportunity we need to Calhoun County.
First, what do we have to offer? To a business, the most attractive aspect of this county is inexpensive and abundant natural gas. We are also largely free from the burdensome regulation and excessive taxation that stymies business in other jurisdictions. Other fine features are the solid work ethic of the people of this county and inexpensive land. Unfortunately, where we excel in the quality in our people, we lack in quantity. Similarly, every red cent you’d save on Calhoun land would be lost in pushing the clay into something the slightest bit flat. Drawbacks? Certainly, but we can work around them.
The next thing is to identify industries that would find our offering most attractive. To do this, we would trawl through industry publications and journals and the like to find complaints about rising energy costs making businesses struggle.
After industries are identified, we’d next go to the Thomas Register and start looking up businesses in those industries. We start with a wide net, with thousands of prospects, and begin to narrow our focus for the best suited prospects.
Ideally, we are looking for energy-intensive businesses that are profitable, employ 25-75 people, and are located in expensive, high-tax areas such as the West Coast or Northeast which also often have high energy expenses, burdensome regulation, and excessive taxation. Here, hopefully, we narrow things down to hundreds of candidates.
Further research will give us organizational charts and other particulars about these companies so we can begin to adjust the presentation of our offering for particular business. Once we know what decision maker in the business we need to talk to, we call and send brochures. This cold calling is where we will lose the most potential candidates, but that is just the nature of sales.
We might get a dozen or so responses out of hundreds of calls, but from here a dialog is open. We can ask the customer questions to further tailor the offering and to teach the business just how much they would benefit from relocating here.
Finally, there would be face-to-face meetings and bringing a team from the company to visit Calhoun and look at potential locations and meet with local leaders. Workforce WV has already expressed interest in being at the table. The Independent Oil and Gas Association and the Gas and Oil Association would probably also be there, as would be various community leaders, associations, and even businesses that would service the new factory.
We might only get one from a thousand, but we have to start with that thousand to have a hope of getting that one. All we need is one to three, and we will be alright.
Voters have asked me a lot of questions about this process, so I will try to highlight some of the most frequently asked questions.
Why are we looking for one to three businesses employing 25-75 employees each? The county population and the population of surrounding counties is unlikely to support more than 500 new jobs. Every job at a large business results in additional jobs in the community and the influx of funds diffuses through the area. A single employer of 500 would not only create a struggle for services in an area, as was seen in the Bakken Shale region during their oil boom, but would represent a single point of failure where the county would be very dependent upon that business, creating a disparity of power that would not be to the long-term benefit of the county. If such an opportunity arrived, I would probably seize upon it as a man drowning, but I would not seek it out before trying to find businesses that would be a better fit.
How are businesses going to come here without good roads? The county line is just 4-1/8 miles from the I-79 interchange at Big Otter. Businesses try to locate within 5 miles of an interstate. The increased traffic should result in road improvements to WV-16 in Clay County that will see more of the interior of Calhoun County become accessible to business.
If all this is public knowledge, why aren’t businesses coming here already? Public knowledge isn’t necessarily common knowledge. Just as Houners are often surprised when my wife talks about how well behaved the students are here compared to other parts of the country, just as people here are surprised to find out how low their taxes actually are, people in the Northeast and West will be surprised at how much we have to offer compared to their current locale. As the Declaration of Independence says, “…[A]ll experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” A large part of salesmanship is circumventing the human tendency to suffer the known rather than risk the unknown. Salesmen do this by making the unknowns known. “For the child that does not know to ask, you must teach him to question.”
What is the role of a commissioner in this? The inventory tax in West Virginia is a barrier to business, but the County Commissions have the power to exempt some forms of property from that tax. If a business comes in, it would be good to tax their land and building at the going rate, but to exempt their production equipment, inventory, and raw materials from property taxes. Aside from that power, the Commission is best placed to exercise the soft power of bringing the various stakeholders together to make and present a coherent and cohesive offer for the county.
What will this do to taxes? At the worst, it will do nothing to your taxes. At the best, it will lower them. The added revenue from factories being taxed at the going rate will improve the county budget. The improvements to the homes of the employed and the new small businesses that will spring up around the new big business will bring still further revenues. With an increase in revenues, there may well be enough to lower the taxes across the board.
In my decade of doing electric motor repair, I’ve been in all sorts of factories. I’ve learned a lot about what makes them tick, what they need to survive and to thrive. I’ve sold a lot of things to factories over the years. A county or, at least, the idea of a county would be the biggest thing I’ve ever sold to a factory, but I am sure I can make that sale.
