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Show Economic development plans showing promise By SCOTT SUMMERILL FARM INGTON The Davis County department of Planning and Economic Development is taking an active approach to Utah Gov. Norm Bangerter's "Blueprint for Utah's Economic Future ' through economic support of small business and increased recruitment of new business. Davis County Planning and Economic Development Assistant Director Wilf Sommerkom said one aspect of the county's plan to assist businesses trying to expand or locate in the county is the Revolving Revolv-ing Loan Fund program. The program is geared primarily to small production type businesses that may have as many as 50 employees. If qualified, business owners can get one-third the cost of their project up -to $100,000. Presently, there are about 20 loans out under the program for a total of nearly $3 million. ' About 80 percent of the jobs are in small business," Sommerkom said. "We try to do whatever we can to help them. ' The fund is operated through Metro Utah, an 1 1 -county entity aimed at coordinating the efforts of each to best achieve "Blueprint goals. The money for the fund comes largely from the counties' block grants with some subsidy from the state, and is mostly granted to manufacturing enterprises. "The loans are granted pretty much for high-tech businesses," Sommerkom said. "We have businesses busi-nesses in the county involved with satellites, bio-technical goods, computer equipment and building parts for the air force. The focus is on manufacturing.' Utah's Department of Community Communi-ty and Economic Development Director Di-rector of Communications Russell Behrmann said the governor's plan has a three-pronged attack to ensuring ensur-ing economic growth in the state. The first step is to assist existing enterprises expand and keep them in the state. "One of the greatest challenges is to keep businesses here," Behrmann said. "They get to a certain cer-tain size arid feel they have to leave the state. The capital just isn't here. We need to keep businesses in the state, and we need to keep them healthy." The second prong of the plan focuses of business creation and expansion by helping entrepreneurs develop their ideas into marketable products. According to Behrmann, Utah is in the same ball field as the M.LT.'s of the nation as far as technological development is concerned. The trick is get the businesses that build the technology we create to locate in Utah, he said. "Utah is an incredibly entrepreneurial en-trepreneurial state," he said. "We need to provide information and training to these people to help them stay in business and grow." Behrmann also pointed out there is more than 20,000 basement businesses busi-nesses in the state, most owned and operated by a one-woman staff. "It's such a vast, unexplored resource," he said. If we could get half of these basement businesses to hire just one employee the effect would be incredible.' The third area of the plan targets the recruitment of industry into the state. Some of the industry receiving the most concentration include businesses in aerospace technology, computer software and hardware companies and bio-medical companies. com-panies. "We feel we already have an incredible in-credible foothold here with these types of businesses,' Behrmann said. "Now, we want to expand it. These are the kinds of jobs that pay good money. We're also looking at how to add more value to our natural resource products." The measure of success of the program will be rated by monitoring monitor-ing the household income of the state rather than the personal income in-come levels. Utah has shown a growth rate in personal income of 8.4 percent as compared with the national rate of 6.9 percent However, officials point out the average family size in Utah is 3.17 persons. The national average is 2.62 persons per family. The difference translates to a lower than national average household income in-come throughout Utah. "Household income is a much truer indicator of growth in the state than personal income," Behrmann said. "Utah also has the youngest population in the nation. ' ' According to Behrmann, Utah's underage dependent population tends to lower the amount of disposable income per household, making personal income a poorer measure of Utahns' economic situations. |
