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Solon, Twinsburg to ease up on competition
(by Sue Reid - May 20, 2010)
Solon, Twinsburg to ease up on competition
By SUE REID
Solon City Council approved an ordinance Monday authorizing the mayor to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the City of Twinsburg for economic development.
Peggy Weil-Dorfman, economic development director for the city, said the memo also was approved last week by Twinsburg City Council. She was in attendance at the meeting, where a presentation was made, she said.
Councilman Edward H. Kraus commended Ms. Weil-Dorfman on developing the memo. "It's the future," he said of the agreement.
"It's a great first step in partnering with like-minded communities," Mr. Kraus said. "This will be the future of how we do business."
The memo, which applies to both communities' industrial districts, deals primarily with incentive limits. The memo removes the incentives as a reason to leave one community for another, Ms. Weil-Dorfman said. She said poaching of industries by communities is very rare, though.
For companies considering incentives alone, the memo allows for a more level playing field, she said. "By giving the advantage to the original community in the use of incentives, it diminishes incentives as an issue of competition."
Ms. Weil-Dorfman said hopes are that the memo will serve as a model for other communities.
"Our next step would be to try to get other communities to adopt something similar or to join us," Ms. Weil-Dorfman said. She said she will be working with Larry Finch, the director of planning and developing in Twinsburg, to find out who makes the most sense to contact and in what order. "We've had preliminary discussions on that already," she said.
Ms. Weil-Dorfman told City Council that, in trying to obtain background data to support the memo, she looked at the comings and goings of businesses from 2000 to 2009.
"We looked at those to see where are businesses coming from and where are businesses going and also how much were incentives influenced those moves," Ms. Weil-Dorfman said. The numbers showed that Solon had approximately 320 businesses new to the city during that time period. That includes relocation, start-up companies and companies that might have moved from home-based to commercial office space.
The number of businesses that left Solon was approximately 260, she said, which also includes relocations to other communities, business failures and some that might have moved from commercial space back into home-based offices.
"Of the 320, give or take, only 5 percent involved the use of incentives, which points out that incentives are not the driving force in relocations."
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