A lot of local quality of life depends on services paid for by sales taxes, La Plata County Economic Development Alliance Director Roger Zalneraitis told around 300 participants at the annual Economic Summit on Oct. 28 at Sky Ute Casino.
He showed what he called "the most interesting chart in the world: a flat line." The line represents sales tax revenue from people who live in the county - $1,400 a year, unchanged from 1980 to 2013.
"That's the quality of life that we love," he said. "There's an absolute relationship. When jobs go up here, sales tax goes up."
He showed another flat line, the amount of property taxes paid by those other than oil and gas as a share of total earnings. It's been about 2.5 percent of earnings created in the county for the past 23 years. Those pay for schools, fire districts, and various other services that are part of quality of life, Zalneraitis said.
"The next part is yet another flat line, national earnings as a share of GDP (Gross Domestic Project) - 61 percent for 35 years," he said. La Plata County used to be a lot lower but has caught up. "Earnings are a fixed share of the economy. Tax base is a fixed share of our earnings. Those jobs are dependent on the success of your business. We have growing population, so we have to grow our business to keep the tax base and quality of life up."
The county will need 17,000 new jobs, and businesses will need 2.5 million square feet of new space to do that, and to keep the tax base from shrinking. "This is the fence we have to jump," he said, referring to the summit theme of jumping fences and overcoming business barriers.
"This is what powers our quality of life," he said.
Lunch speaker Fiona Arnold, executive director of the State Office of Economic Development and International Trade, said, "We are hearing how the Colorado economy is booming. Why is that? It's really not that the Colorado economy is booming. It's booming in certain cities and communities, such as Denver. But it's not state-wide. It's really uneven."
She asked, "Why are some communities doing really well and some aren't? ... The communities that are doing well have strong leadership aligned around what their community wants to be and doesn't want to be. No community can be all things to all people."
It's important for a community to be "completely aligned around what it wants" in terms of business development, Arnold said. "We tell communities to figure this out first. What are you? What is the business proposition for a business moving here? Some small towns don't want to grow, and that's fine. Economic development is messy. ... With growth comes demands - on roads, cost of housing. Ideally you are working toward a healthy diversified economy that's not too dependent on one sector like oil and gas."
She continued, "Especially in small towns, the biggest barrier is broadband access. If you don't have high speed internet, your economy won't get off the ground. Every business needs that. A business won't come where there isn't that."
Arnold said Denver "was a ghost town" when she first visited in the late 1980s, but the city invested in its infrastructure. The state hasn't done that, she said. Denver is getting expensive enough that businesses there might think of going somewhere cheaper, like Grand Junction, "but how can they move to Grand Junction if there aren't good roads?" And 145,000 out of 165,000 residents in Mesa County don't have access to high speed internet. "It's no longer good enough for Denver to invest in itself," she said.
The TABOR Amendment approved by voters in 1992 has some "things that shouldn't be in there," she said. "There's no money for roads, broadband. The legislature has given my office money to recruit people to Colorado, but without the infrastructure to support them."
Arnold lamented that the largest share of funding for her office is to lure companies away from other states, rather than to grow businesses that are already here. "It's time to start investing in our smaller companies," she said.
