10/09/2019- It’s back to the drawing board to some degree for Bay Lakes Regional Planning and their economic development report for Marinette County. The company had been working for several months to examine the economic development needs of the county and delivered those results and corresponding recommendation from an outside consultant to contract with inVenture North for economic development services to the Board of Supervisors in September. However, Cindy Wotczak with Bay Lakes spoke to the Development Committee Tuesday saying she feels the final report fell short of the county’s expectations and she wants that work to be redone to offer more accurate data and better insight into all potential options for a future approach to economic development.
“What I would like to do is to really spiff this thing up and give it to you so that you can really compare things. Then I’m going to go back to the private consultant out of Madison, give her that same information and ask her again what her recommendation would be.”
However, County Board Chairman Mark Anderson says he’d like to see the County Board’s input bear a little more weight in the final recommendation this time around.
“I still thinks there needs to be some discussion with the County Board in regards to some very important things. The first one is: does the County Board want it to be a county department or does the county want it be an outside agency? Otherwise, if we’re going to get a recommendation that says we’re going to contract with inVenture North and the Board says “we want our own department,” we’re wasting our time. We’re going to spin our wheels and start all over again.”
The updated economic development report is expected to be presented to the Development Committee by their November meeting. The Committee did agree to have the discussion of whether they’d prefer in-house or contracted development and marketing services placed on the full Board’s October meeting agenda.