ROGER BERLINER CHAIRMAN COUNCILMEMBER TRANSPORTATION,
INFRASTRUCTURE DISTRICT 1 ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
June 16, 2015
MEMORANDUM To: Chairwoman Nancy Floreen Council President George
Leventhal Councilmember Hans Riemer From: Councilmember Roger
Berliner Re: Proposal to Create an Office of Business Services
Over recent months, we have discussed in great detail the need
to streamline our countys workforce development programs and
improve our economic development strategy. And we have had success
in galvanizing the appropriate public and private stakeholders to
agree that the best approach to achieve these goals is to create a
new independent entity which would implement and oversee our
collective efforts.
Currently, we have legislation (Bill 25-15) before us to create
that new entity which I believe, at its core, will focus on
attracting, recruiting, and retaining business here in Montgomery
County. And I agree with that core mission wholeheartedly. However,
we need to do what we can to ensure that essential services for our
existing business community are also strengthened.
As drafted, some business services that do not fall into that
core mission are assigned to go to various places within county
government. That would leave substantial services without a unified
place to call home. In a practical sense, this could impose an
undue burden on our business community who rely on timely, easily
accessible information and services as they go about their daily
work. Our goal should be to not only strengthen our capacity to
attract and retain businesses, but to strengthen our capacity to
provide high quality services to our existing businesses.
I have met with representatives of many of our chambers of
commerce to discuss this issue, and
there was unanimous agreement that our business climate would be
enhanced through creating an Office of Business Services. We see
this simply as a service-providing entity whose mission would
neither compete nor overlap with the new economic development
entity. We agreed that six core functions should be included in
this new Office, which would create a one stop location for
businesses to turn to when they interface with county
government:
The six functions that are proposed for including within the
scope of this new Office of Business
Services would be:
1) Development Ombudsman 2) Small Business Navigator 3) Business
Training Services, including our Minority Business Empowerment
Initiative 4) Small Business Revolving Loans Program 5) Special
Business Projects 6) Regulatory Compliance/Implementation Along
with several of my colleagues, I have been pushing for years for a
significant shift to our
countys economic development approach to make government more
responsive, nimble, and adaptive to the ever changing regional and
global economic landscape. We only get one chance to do this right
and making sure we do right by our small to mid-sized businesses
ought to be a priority.
I ask for your support of this approach and thank you in advance
for your consideration.
