Chamber Forecast Breakfast shines an optimistic light

By ALBERTA STOJKOVIC –

Sixty five Mor­row County Cham­ber of Com­merce mem­bers attended the Annual Busi­ness and Indus­try Fore­cast Break­fast March 27 at Fly­ing Horse Farms. The mem­bers heard reports from twelve area busi­nesses and agen­cies after a hearty break­fast served by the FHF staff.

“What a great thing to look out these din­ing hall win­dows and see the sun com­ing up over Fly­ing Horse Farms and Mor­row County,” said Cham­ber Board Pres­i­dent, Dan Boy­sel as he wel­comed mem­bers and intro­duced Fore­cast Com­mit­tee Chair­per­son, Patti Jackson.

Andrea Bayles, Account Offi­cer for Ag Credit was the first speaker on the panel. She reported that there has been an 8.6 % increase in farm val­ues from 1999 to 2011 in Ohio. One in seven peo­ple are employed in agri­cul­ture in Ohio. The large increase in the farm­land val­ues reflects the increase in crops and growth in crop val­ues in the state and in Mor­row County.

The Con­sol­i­dated Elec­tric Com­pany fore­cast was given by its Direc­tor of Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment for Mor­row and Delaware Coun­ties, Dan Boy­sel. He remarked that it should be no sur­prise that the cost of elec­tric will increase since it is tied to oil and gas prices. Boy­sel pre­dicted that there will be con­tin­ued growth in renew­able energy of wind and solar, which are highly subsidized.

“The ques­tions we will have to answer in the future will be “Do we want to pay more for energy and be green?” and also “Do we want to pay more for clean air and water?” Boy­sel said.

Boy­sel pre­dicted that fiber optic net­works will con­tinue to increase broad­band avail­abil­ity in Mor­row County. Busi­nesses are look­ing at broad­band as an area to increase growth. Boy­sel said that an eco­nomic dri­ver for the county will be hav­ing fiber optics avail­able at the I 71 interchanges.

Don Wig­gins said that Fly­ing Horse Farms is now offi­cially included in the world wide asso­ci­a­tion of Hole in the Wall Camps that were founded by Paul New­man. The camp served 400 seri­ously ill chil­dren and their fam­i­lies last year. It is the FHF goal to serve 600–750 chil­dren even­tu­ally. He noted that FHF is the only place in the Mid-west to have a Hole in the Wall Camp. He said there are 16,000 chil­dren who could ben­e­fit from their services.

Lona Hel­frich spoke of the many changes in Job and Fam­ily ser­vices over the past year. She spoke about a grant, which is avail­able for busi­nesses to hire new employ­ees. The busi­ness can be reim­bursed 50% for new hires that have been out of work at least 150 days. The amount of reim­burse­ment goes up to $8,000. Hel­frich said that Ohio is the only state with direct access to online job list­ings in Monster.com. It means that clients can use the Monster.com data base with­out charge.

The Mor­row County Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee was rep­re­sented by Tom Slay­ton who brought a mockup to pre­view the “Mor­row County Vis­i­tors Guide”. Its pur­pose is to pro­mote busi­ness and indus­try in Mor­row County. There will be 5,000 to 7,500 dis­trib­uted around the county and state.

Patti Jack­son of RE/Max Gen­e­sis gave an overview of the county’s real estate mar­ket. She said 207 homes were sold in Mor­row County in 2011. 218 were sold in 2010. The aver­age sale price on a home in 2011 was $101,300. The 2010 aver­age price was $105,800 and in 2005 the aver­age home sold for $136,000. Year to date homes have sold at an aver­age of $95,000.

Jack­son said the higher priced homes are the ones tak­ing the biggest hit because first time home buy­ers are buy­ing homes under $110,000 so there is more demand for them.

The aver­age list­ing price in Mor­row County is $160,000 right now in the 2012 mar­ket. There are presently 143 active list­ings in the county. In 2005 there were over 400 active list­ings. Jack­son sees it as a pos­i­tive indi­ca­tion to have the num­ber of homes for sale down. She said that means there is more demand and also more sales.

Kathy Goon of the Small Busi­ness Cen­ter in Ash­land spoke with enthu­si­asm about Mor­row County busi­ness hav­ing a strong “entre­pre­neur­ial” spirit.

Charles Speel­man, Tri-Rivers Career Center’s Super­in­ten­dent, described the new robot­ics and weld­ing pro­grams at Tri-Rivers. He spoke with pride of the Career Center’s LPN to RN nurs­ing pro­gram, which is the only one of its kind in the state.

Becky Barker, Dana Brown and Lee Ann Leon­hard talked about Mor­row County Coop­er­a­tive Exten­sion pro­grams. They described grants they received for sev­eral pro­grams. Barker is the county exten­sion direc­tor and works with the 4-H pro­gram. Brown’s field is fam­ily and con­sumer sci­ence and Leon­hard is Fam­ily Nutri­tion pro­gram assistant.

Tom Whis­ton con­cluded the panel’s pre­sen­ta­tions. He reported on the expanded busi­ness of Whis­ton Phar­macy that includes Radio Shack and Kim­mel Clean­ers. He noted that Whiston’s opens at 8 a.m. before other stores in the vil­lage are open and they are a full ser­vice pharmacy.

Note: Four color pho­tos accom­pany this arti­cle in the April 11 print edi­tion of the Sentinel.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.