Despite praise for Kings EDC, council votes down continued support for agency

Since last summer, when the city’s self-appointed budget committee of City Manager Jeff Laws, Mayor Lois Wynn and former mayor, Billy Siegel furtively removed the EDC from the city’s annual budget, councilmembers, old and new, have been debating the future of the EDC in Lemoore.

The EDC’s removal from the budget was a surprise to many, including the EDC, which had no opportunity during budget deliberations to promote itself. When The Leader questioned Laws as to which budget committee member requested the EDC’s removal, he said he couldn’t remember.

A brief 15-second mention of the EDC was uttered during the initial budget hearing.

Despite the budget committee’s faulty memory regarding the EDC, Froberg’s memory was flawless. Froberg served in the city manager’s capacity for seven years and was on the ground floor of many projects that created thousands of jobs, and nearly all of those projects were done with the cooperation and assistance, he said, of the Kings EDC.

“The only thing I can do is tell you what happened when I was city manager,” he told councilmembers.  “I can tell you that every project that I worked on … it usually involved city staff, often times West Hills College, and many other times it also included NAS Lemoore - and it always included the Kings Economic Development Corporation. They always dropped whatever they were doing, came over here, and met with whatever business, whatever enterprise.”

Froberg said the Kings EDC was always a part of the action. “I can tell you unequivocally that the successes we had from when I was here, Kings EDC was an integral part. John Lehn and Jay Salyer bring a whole lot of experience and knowledge, and more importantly to us, connections.”

He said that the expansion of the original Leprino factory - Leprino West, SK Foods, Agusa, Budget Call Center - were all done with the assistance of the Kings EDC. “I can stand here and tell you, their focus is on industrial and manufacturing, but they also helped us out in some commercial enterprises.” The Lemoore Stadium Cinemas was one such project, he said. The Kings EDC provided an important loan to the developer.

“I would encourage you to reconsider, if you would, the Kings EDC. These folks are going to work always, always for all the community, the cities and county. They’ve done an awful lot for Lemoore.”

Laws, on the other hand, repeated the common refrain that industrial and manufacturing development fails to generate adequate tax revenue to fund city projects and programs. “It typically does not generate sales tax revenue,” he said.

EDC President John Lehn was once again on hand to defend his organization and offer solutions. “The heath of any city is really based on having the resources to pay for the desired services,” he said.  “There will never be a lack of a list of what people want to do regardless of what the city has for resources. The challenge is generating the revenue to provide as many of those serves as is entirely possible.”

Lehn presented councilmembers with a memorandum of understanding that helped to spell out what the Kings EDC could do for Lemoore. Among the points Lehn covered were business attraction and retention services, financing opportunities for existing and start-up businesses, expanding its ability to market Lemoore, and provide regular activity updates to council members.

Newly-elected councilmember Ray Madrigal, who voted to support the Kings EDC, said that after seeing the memorandum and hearing from Froberg, he is more convinced as to the importance of the Kings EDC to Lemoore’s economic vitality, and he continued to take issue with the way the Kings EDC was handled in the budget process. ”I don’t think we can afford not to do this,” he said.  

“I disagreed with the process of how they were eliminated from the budget. It didn’t demonstrate a good-faith effort on our part as far as how we (interact) with our partners and I thought that would be a detriment to us if other entities, whoever they might be … if they see that we just summarily cut someone out of the budget – a 37-year partner - and not even give them an opportunity to respond to whatever concerns.”

Jeff Chedester, the council’s other newly-elected member, cited a lack of communication, the demise of the Redevelopment Agency, a lack of infrastructure and the EDC’s failure to create a viable website as the reasons for his no vote.

Lehn reminded Chedester that council members and staff regularly met with, attended meetings, and conferred with EDC representatives throughout the long-term relationship it had with the City of Lemoore.

Over the years Lemoore has always appointed a council member to regularly attend EDC meetings. Often time staff members attended meetings as well.

Wynne, who apparently supports the work of the EDC, was worried about the effect another $37,000 payment to the EDC would have on the existing city budget. Recently, city officials awarded large pay raises to the Lemoore Police Department, and still have to figure out how they’re going to pay for them.