Investment needed if Fayette County to grow, official says
Fay-Penn Economic Development Council has completed 191 projects since its 1991 inception that have created or retained nearly 6,000 jobs. But the success rate could be much higher if there were more money available to beef up the county’s water, sewage, roads and available development sites, according to Mike Krajovic, Fay-Penn president.
Krajovic offered comments and his annual report at Fay-Penn’s yearly dinner meeting on Thursday night.
In it, he pointed out that the economic development organization has helped foster more than $785 million in new investment; $461 million in new construction; $95 million in payroll; and $4 million in new taxes.
During 2003, Fay-Penn, Krajovic said, completed 12 projects that created or retained 383 jobs and accounted for more than $3.5 million in increased payroll; $5.8 million in new investment; and $139,000 in new taxes. But Krajovic, who made it clear he was speaking for himself and not in behalf of the Fay-Penn board or its members, talked again about the need for more investment dollars. Raising taxes, he said, is the way to find those funds.
“I can’t think of any person who has not in some way benefited positively from the work Fay-Penn does,’ he said.
More investment in education, developing ready-to-occupy business sites and infrastructure, must be made if the county is to grow economically, he said.
Emphasizing the importance of education, Krajovic said studies show that today the average blue-collar worker has a higher reading requirement than a white-collar worker.
“Educationally, we are in pretty poor shape,’ he said. “Students in 14 of our 30 elementary schools are not proficient in reading. Almost 60 percent are not proficient in math. Seventy-five percent of the residents of Pennsylvania contribute more in tax dollars to educate their children than do the people of Fayette County,’ he said.
Krajovic offered another statistic showing that the total tax revenue per capita in Fayette County is $59 while in neighboring Greene County it is $206. “The average in counties around us is $160.
“The only option we have to address investment is the property tax system. I don’t mean to sound harsh but people in surrounding counties are paying a lot more than we do.
“School districts can’t expand their tax base unless there is investment here,’ he said.
Fay-Penn several years ago began sponsoring the REACH business/education initiative. This has nothing to do with raising teacher salaries, he said. In terms of salaries, Krajovic said local districts are near others in the state, but in terms of education, Fayette is down.
Citing local control by school boards over teacher salary levels, Krajovic said elected officials must be held accountable for how they spend any additional funding.
“I’m not just saying that we should raise taxes but also that we have to make sure government spends it the right way, on the right things.’
Krajovic said Fayette residents are going to have to make a “mental shift. We are going to have to ask ourselves ‘How do we feel about ourselves and our children?’
“We are the most distressed county in the state. We have kept our poor people poor in the name of helping the poor.’
Poverty statistics can be misleading, he said. “There are about 100,000 people living below the federal poverty level in Allegheny County, about 32,000 in Westmoreland County and 27,000 in Fayette.
“Fayette County also has far fewer government employees to provide services to county residents. I’m not advocating bigger government, but we have a planning and zoning office that has four people in it responsible for 33 communities.
“Our county debt service is $5 per person while in Somerset County it’s $25.
“How did we get to this point? Our economy after the heyday of coal and coke shrunk and people got into a survival mode. We are still thinking that way. We need to shift the perception we have of ourselves. We can’t continue to look at it as being someone else’s problem,’ he said.
“We need to believe in ourselves. If we don’t who will?’ he said.
Guest speaker at the annual banquet was Pennsylvania Secretary of Community and Economic Development Dennis Yablonsky. Fay-Penn also presented its annual Eberly Economic Development Award to Laurel Business Institute in Uniontown. Frazier School District, for the second year in a row, won Fay-Penn’s Eberly Education Award.