ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
1.
FOSTERING A POSITIVE ECONOMIC
CLIMATE
Upon being selected as Port St. Lucie City Manager in November 2016, Russ Blackburn initiated efforts to move the organization toward recognition as a highperforming organization. High among the City Manager’ s goals is for the City to be proactive in improving its business climate. Mr. Blackburn implemented key organizational changes in 2017 to further that goal.
LAND DEVELOPMENT FUNCTIONAL GROUP
ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER / CITY ENGINEER
UTILITY SYSTEMS & SPECIAL PROJECTS
A cross-functional team of department directors whose departments have a role in the development, review and approval process meets bi-weekly to collaborate, trouble-shoot and identify process improvements and bottlenecks. The Land Development Functional Group – or“ The Cloud” as staff refers to it-- has significantly broken down silos and increased collaboration and group ownership of the development process and outcomes.
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PLANNING & ZONING
CRA
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PUBLIC WORKS |
BUILDING
BUSINESS NAVIGATOR
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Mr. Blackburn also gained City Council approval and retained a Business Navigator in 2017. The Business Navigator reports directly to the City Manager and helps facilitate economic development and priority development projects through approved economic incentives, land development entitlement and building permit processes.
As the City works to make it easier and more streamlined to do business here, the City Manager’ s Office is working to add a personal touch with an open-door policy and strives to be personally accessible to the business community.
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IMPACT FEE CHANGES FOR TARGETED INDUSTRIES
In making the City more attractive for economic development, City staff recommended the Council in 2017 establish an impact fee mitigation program. An impact fee is imposed by a government on new or proposed development to help pay for the costs of providing public services to that development. Staff determined that the imposition of impact fees may place PSL in a non-competitive position with other communities that have chosen not to require growth to pay its fair share of needed capital facilities. The charging of impact fees could hinder the City’ s efforts to encourage economic development opportunities. In November 2017, City Council adopted revisions to its impact fee ordinances that created an economic development impact fee mitigation program for Qualified Targeted Industries as determined by the state of Florida’ s Department of Economic Opportunity. To qualify for the impact fee waiver, an applicant must create at least 10 or more new jobs paying at or above the average wage or invest at least $ 10 million in capital improvements. To read more about the specifics, visit wwww. cityofpsl. com.
CITY OF PORT ST. LUCIE A N N U A L R E P O R T 2017