Officials look at retaining local jobs

By BEcky Brooks

Man­ag­ing Editor

news@gazettepublishingco.com

Carol Knapp, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Huron County Devel­op­ment Coun­cil, told the Belle­vue City Coun­cil that her orga­ni­za­tion has been work­ing on a new job reten­tion and expan­sion program.

She explained that reten­tion of jobs was cru­cial because 80 per­cent of job growth comes from exist­ing businesses.

Dur­ing council’s Mon­day night meet­ing, Knapp told offi­cials she will be work­ing with Steve Fuhr, direc­tor of the Belle­vue Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, on the reten­tion pro­gram in the Huron County por­tion of the city.

Knapp pre­sented coun­cil with a sta­tis­ti­cal report as well as infor­ma­tion the devel­op­ment coun­cil plans to post on its website.

Knapp explained that through the new Ohio Means Jobs eco­nomic devel­op­ment pro­gram, her office is work­ing with a regional office to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to the state on loca­tions and com­mu­ni­ties which could be viable options for site devel­op­ments and job growth.

Fuhr explained later that Belle­vue — because it is located in four coun­ties — par­tic­i­pates with two dif­fer­ent regional eco­nomic devel­op­ment offices. The local BDC inter­acts with the San­dusky County Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the one in Tif­fin for Seneca County. Both of those are part of the Regional Growth Part­ner­ship, based in Toledo.

Belle­vue EDC also inter­acts with Huron and Erie Coun­ties’ eco­nomic devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions, which, in turn, are linked to the Team North­east Ohio.

Knapp reported in a demo­graphic break­down, that Bellevue’s Huron half has 3,673 peo­ple of the county’s 59,626 pop­u­la­tion. The city ranks third in pop­u­la­tion in the county because only a por­tion is in that county.

Under busi­nesses, how­ever, Belle­vue is sec­ond in the county with 406 busi­nesses (19.1 per­cent of Huron County busi­nesses). Nor­walk has 882 busi­nesses (41.5 percent).

Fuhr said that num­ber does not include busi­nesses in the San­dusky County sec­tion of the city.

Knapp also told coun­cil that the HCDC also will be cre­at­ing a pilot pro­gram to match work­ers to fill vacant jobs in Bellevue.

“We have a lot of jobs out there that employ­ers can­not get employ­ees for,” she said about a major com­plaint from area plants.

A report she pre­sented showed that within 10 miles of Belle­vue there were 174 avail­able jobs on Dec. 27, 2011. Of those jobs, 56 per­cent were per­ma­nent and 121 were eight hours a day. Of those jobs, a third were also listed as mid­dle class posi­tions, she added.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.