SEE ABOVE...If you read the story above, you know that this piece is about Steve Hermann. Steve would be the first to ask PCDA not to slobber all over ourselves thanking him for his three years as the City Commission liaison to the PCDA board. Lucky for us, we don't have to listen to him anymore. City Commissioners have a lot on their plate but its absolutely critical that the PCDA board connects to the City Commission by having a full voting, participating member of the PCDA board. That's a lot of work and Steve brought his strong sense of business, not to mention good humor, to the PCDA board.  If you see him out somewhere showing a house, tell him PCDA said "thanks."

IN LIKE A LION...so March came in like a lion so it should go out like a lamb. We got that going for us. Most everybody just put their head down this week and did what needed to be done. Kids went to school, business operated, industries turned out product, etc. etc. etc. PCDA did not, however, pick up any new leads this week and it wasn't for lack of trying. We contacted site consultants, bumped people we had talked to but it seems that the weather, which was far worse elsewhere and just had people focus on status quo rather than the future. Nevertheless, we did visit with six different local industries this week. We did have a brainstorming session with our partners at Pioneer Tech yesterday about wonderful, marvelous things. We did push PoncaWorks into new frontiers, boldly going where no PoncaWorks program has gone before (editor's note: we had a bet we could work in a Leonard Nimoy reference so bear with us). We also did a lot of behind the scenes research on companies that we would like to have here. Any fisherman knows that you not only use the right bait, you fish in the right place for the right fish. This requires research to figure out hooks, spots, etc. Finally, we did send out one proposal this week on an expansion project (the lead was received a couple of weeks ago).

ADD BENEFIT...in the guvment world, you will hear wonkie types talk about Ad Valorem as if we all talk that way. Per chance they simply want to pretend they are doctors or lawyers who use a lot of Latin words to feel, uh, elevated. Nevertheless, Ad Valorem is property tax. Why they can't just say "property tax" is another matter. The point of this is that there is a lot of talking, one hopes in English, at the Capitol right now about economic development incentives. One of those incentives is the state backfilling the property taxes for  the first five years of a new manufacturer who comes to town. This incentive exists for the simple reason that most other states have it. It doesn't get more Latin than that. The State Chamber released a report last week about Oklahoma's property Tax incentive. It listed the top three counties in the state (there are 77 in case you were taking Latin instead of Oklahoma history) by who has received the most benefit from this incentive. The top three counties, those that have been most successful in attracting new manufacturing in the state is headed by a familiar name, Kay County. What this means is those generous folks elsewhere in the state are sending their money to us for this incentive. Darn nice of them don't you think. Color PCDA a special interest but that sounds like a good thing to us...something that should continue in our most humble and obviously unbiased opinion.