City to lure lucrative jobs

Businesses may have more of a reason to come to Winter Park: free money.

The City Commission on Monday passed the first reading of an ordinance that would create an incentive program to pay high-wage businesses to relocate to the city and to stay there for at least five years.

“This is not going to be the single issue that brings somebody into Winter Park, but it’s going to be an issue,” Mayor Ken Bradley said. “The word on the street is we’re not as business-friendly to other cities. We need to address that.”

The program would give businesses a maximum of $200,000, paid in installments of a maximum of $40,000 per year for five years.

“A lot of cities are already doing this, and even expanding upon it,” said Peter Moore, Winter Park’s assistant director of community redevelopment.

The so-called Targeted Industry Enhancement program was originally planned to both entice existing businesses to stay in the city and provide incentives to businesses to relocate to the city.

It would pay so-called high-paying businesses that had at least 50 employees based upon how much higher the employees were paid compared to the county average. The county average is about $43,000-46,000 per year, Moore said. At 115 percent of the county average, the business would receive $1,000 per employee. At 150 percent, it would receive $1,250. At 200 percent, it would jump to $1,500.

A major provision that would incentivize businesses to not leave the city was removed from the proposal during Monday’s City Commission meeting.

Commissioner Beth Dillaha said that allowing the plan to include incentives to keep businesses in town could create a dangerous precedent that businesses could then exploit.

“Any company in the city at the end of their lease could say ‘We’re thinking of moving to Orlando or a neighboring city, so give us some money or we’ll leave,’” Dillaha said.

After a round of amendments, the plan passed by a 3-2 vote. Dissenting Commissioner Carolyn Cooper said that the city doesn’t need to spend any more money to entice businesses to relocate; the city has already made itself more desirable to businesses compared with other local cities.

“Winter Park is a place where companies want to be,” Cooper said. “This is a great community. Why do we have to offer money for a company to come here?”

Dillaha said she’d spoken with local business leaders who said the amount the city would pay was too much for the city to afford and too little to help businesses.

Based off an employer earning $1,000 per employee, for a total max of $20,000 per year, she said some business leaders called it “a drop in a bucket.”

“One told me that won’t even pay for a secretary,” Dillaha said. “So what’s the point?”

Dillaha said it’d take more money to truly lure businesses to the city, and that’d be too expensive for Winter Park.

“Maybe if you’re Orlando or Tampa or Miami and you’ve got millions of dollars, that might make sense,” Dillaha said. “For a town of 20,000, I don’t think it’s right.”

Bradley said that the city will actively monitor the program to see if it’s working and what should be changed.

“I think it was a great place to start,” Bradley said. “Long-term, we’ll look at that program to see if it should have more or less money.”