Clark helps fund regional industry plan

Clark County is con­tribut­ing $37,000 to help fund an effort to recruit indus­try to the greater Lexington region.

How it came up with part of the mon­ey, how­ev­er, has been a mat­ter of dispute.

On Nov. 26, the Clark Fiscal Court approved $115,000 from the Clark County Community Foundation for 14 dona­tions, includ­ing $10,000 for some­thing called “Greater LEX Inc.”

Cora Heffner, a for­mer mem­ber of the foun­da­tion board, asked in a Facebook post on Dec. 16, “[W]hy on earth are we giv­ing $10,000 of the community’s mon­ey to Lexington?”

She said that if oth­ers were angry about it, they should call their mag­is­trate or County Judge-Executive Les Yates and ask for an explanation.

After first vot­ing with Magistrate Robert Blanton to table the line item for Greater LEX but approve the oth­er donations—which didn’t pass—Yates joined Magistrates Chris Davis, Ernest Pasley, Daniel Konstantopoulos, and Stephen Craycraft in vot­ing for the expen­di­tures. Blanton, who had tried to remove the Greater LEX line item, was the only one who vot­ed against it. Magistrate Mark Miller was absent.

Blanton told WinCity Voices he opposed the Greater LEX expen­di­ture for three reasons.

“My beef is, one, it was nev­er dis­cussed in the February meet­ing; num­ber two, it was done with­out an appli­ca­tion; and num­ber three, we don’t know what it is,” Blanton said.

“I like to go by the rules,” he added.

Blanton said the Community Foundation fund is sup­posed to be used for char­i­ty and education.

“It’s cer­tain­ly not char­i­ta­ble or edu­ca­tion­al,” he said.

But Davis, who served with Pasley and Konstantopoulos on the com­mit­tee that stud­ied and select­ed the appli­cants, said that, accord­ing to the Internal Revenue Service’s def­i­n­i­tion, a char­i­ta­ble dona­tion is a con­tri­bu­tion to a 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, for which one can get a tax deduction.

Davis also said that, although there wasn’t an appli­ca­tion, only an invoice sub­mit­ted, Andi Johnson, chief pol­i­cy offi­cer and direc­tor of region­al devel­op­ment for Commerce Lexington, emailed the com­mit­tee infor­ma­tion about the Greater LEX “region­al com­pet­i­tive­ness plan.”

“They didn’t fill out a for­mal appli­ca­tion, but we’ve known about this for months and were very well informed about it,” Davis said. “I don’t think there was any­thing inap­pro­pri­ate about that.”

Davis said the mon­ey was orig­i­nal­ly includ­ed in the first draft of the county’s bud­get rather than the foundation’s fund, but the mag­is­trates had to make cuts to the bud­get due to “fis­cal challenges.”

“We had a full dis­cus­sion about it in Fiscal Court, and I know Magistrate Blanton was vehe­ment­ly against it,” Davis said.

That isn’t so, said Blanton.

“If the coun­ty wants to do it, that’s great with me, but they just need to pay for it out of the right pool of mon­ey,” he said.

Davis said the coun­ty has used the Community Foundation fund to pay for items that may not be con­sid­ered edu­ca­tion­al or char­i­ta­ble, such as body cam­eras for sheriff’s deputies and a con­ces­sion stand at the coun­ty fairgrounds.

“It isn’t just char­i­ties that get the mon­ey,” he said.

Yates said he vot­ed for the list because he didn’t want the oth­er recip­i­ents to be delayed in get­ting their funding.

“My vote wouldn’t have mat­tered, and I didn’t want to hold up the mon­ey for the rest of the peo­ple,” he said.

Like Blanton, how­ev­er, Yates ques­tioned get­ting the fund­ing from the Community Foundation.

“I’m not sure that’s what that mon­ey is sup­posed to be used for,” he said, although he said he isn’t against the mar­ket­ing plan.

“I don’t have a prob­lem with it,” he remarked.

As for Heffner’s sug­ges­tion that peo­ple com­plain to the judge-exec­u­tive, Yates said late Thursday after­noon, “I haven’t got­ten a sin­gle call.”

Some background

The Clark County Community Foundation is fund­ed by inter­est on pro­ceeds from the sale of the for­mer Rockwell International truck axle plant in the 1990s. An agree­ment and ordi­nance on Dec. 30, 1998 cre­at­ed the foun­da­tion and the fund and estab­lished rules for distribution.

Most of the foundation’s annu­al con­tri­bu­tions sup­port ongo­ing fund­ing for pro­grams such as the city and coun­ty parks program’s indoor swim­ming pool at College Park and the Kentucky River Foothills Development Council’s mass tran­sit bus program.

This is the first time the coun­ty has used funds from its foun­da­tion to sup­port the region­al indus­tri­al mar­ket­ing plan.

The $10,000 from the foun­da­tion is only a small part of the $37,000 Clark County is con­tribut­ing to that plan. On Dec. 17, the board of the Winchester-Clark County Industrial Development Authority vot­ed to allo­cate $27,000 to cov­er the remain­ing por­tion of the sug­gest­ed amount. 

The $37,000 fig­ure is based on Commerce Lexington’s rec­om­men­da­tion that each of the nine coun­ties sur­round­ing Lexington con­tribute $1 per per­son. Based on the 2020 Census, Clark County’s pop­u­la­tion is esti­mat­ed at 36,972.

Wider approach

Brad Sowden, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Winchester-Clark County Industrial Development Authority, said the region­al com­pet­i­tive­ness plan is “a con­cert­ed effort to mar­ket as a whole” the coun­ties of Bourbon, Clark, Fayette, Franklin, Jessamine, Madison, Montgomery, Scott, and Woodford for attract­ing indus­tries and workers.

“We strug­gle as a state and as a region just to get the word out that we’re open for busi­ness,” he said.

Asked how the plan would ben­e­fit Clark County, Sowden answered: That’s still to be determined.”

Although the region­al com­pet­i­tive plan has been “in the works” for about three years, but “it’s new to Winchester,” he explained.

However, he cit­ed an exam­ple of Commerce Lexington fea­tur­ing the Winchester-based busi­ness Wilde Brands in one of its pro­mo­tion­al videos.

Sowden said the effort will pro­mote Winchester for indus­tri­al site selec­tion, giv­en Lexington’s lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of sites. In an effort to pre­serve its icon­ic horse farm land­scape, Fayette County has pro­tect­ed a large part of its farm­land through the pur­chase of devel­op­ment rights, leav­ing only a few acres left of its Coldstream Farm indus­tri­al park.

It will also pro­mote the community’s work­force, he said.

How Clark County benefits

Robert Quick, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Commerce Lexington, said in an email on Dec. 19 that near­ly all com­mu­ni­ties in the nine-coun­ty region are par­tic­i­pat­ing so far, and busi­ness con­tri­bu­tions out­pace gov­ern­ment con­tri­bu­tions by two to one.

“This effort is increas­ing aware­ness of the unique assets for Winchester and Clark County as a place to live and work,” and “by work­ing togeth­er as a region, we are able to tout a big­ger work­force, which large cor­po­ra­tions need as they con­sid­er where to locate,” Quick said.

“The com­mu­ni­ty is also being pro­filed to nation­al site selec­tors and busi­ness­es for job attrac­tion through the region­al devel­op­ment web­site locateinlexington.com,” he said.

Quick said Commerce Lexington already works close­ly with Clark County’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment professionals.

“When we receive a busi­ness project lead, and the cri­te­ria fit Winchester/Clark County, our team includes your com­mu­ni­ty in the response,” Quick said in a state­ment. “In this year alone, it has occurred a hand­ful of times. Often, these projects are con­fi­den­tial, but it is impor­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty to know that we are part­ners and we are pro­mot­ing your com­mu­ni­ty to busi­ness­es and site selec­tors when they are con­sid­er­ing the Greater Lex region. If a project locates in Winchester/Clark County, it ben­e­fits the entire region… We are more com­pet­i­tive against larg­er met­ros for busi­ness projects in our key sec­tors, like advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, bio-tech, and logis­tics, when we mar­ket our­selves as a region.”

Davis agrees with Quick and Sowden that the region­al approach is nec­es­sary, and he sup­ports the plan that’s cen­tered on Lexington.

“It’s the sec­ond-biggest city in the state, and it’s grow­ing in this direc­tion,” Davis said.

“I think the idea is that we need to start think­ing about eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in our area in a region­al sense. Companies and busi­ness­es real­ly don’t pay atten­tion to invis­i­ble coun­ty lines.”

Davis said Lexington-Fayette County was con­tribut­ing $322,000 based on its population.

“I see it as an invest­ment,” he said.