Brownwood Economic Development Corporation Director Emily Crawford presented the annual BEDC report to the Brownwood City Council Tuesday morning which outlined 2011 as marking a positive year in regard to the local economic recovery.
Crawford stated that sales tax for Brownwood was up 5% for the year and up 11.9% in January of 2012 as compared to that of January 2011. She sighted reasons of increased consumer spending, decreased unemployment, and growth of new business locally for this increase.
In 2011, the City of Brownwood issued 59 Commercial Certificates of Occupancy, which were twice as many as were issued for the prior year according to Crawford who stated that this indicated new business growth and current business improvement or expansion.
“Of those 59 COs issued in 2011, 23 of those were new businesses, there were only 4 businesses that entered the city limits of Brownwood from other surrounding communities from Brown County,” Crawford said. “So out of those, we saw the bulk of them come from new businesses starting in Brownwood, Texas.”
113 entities registered for a sales tax permit in 2011 according to Crawford. She explained that hard times have caused some of our citizens to become creative.
“This shows that people are becoming more creative and you can see that trend over the last several years when people lose their jobs, they are looking to start a business and doing something they have always wanted to do,” explained Crawford. “Hard times have caused some of our local people to become more creative.”
In 2011 there were 48 more sales tax certificates activated than in 2010, stated Crawford. She pointed out that the exact opposite happened the year before when there were 48 sales tax certificates deactivated.
Residential sales were still slow in Brownwood. According to information from the Brownwood Board of Realtors®, there were only 169 home sales within Brownwood. At Lake Brownwood, there were only eight sales.
Residential Certificates of Occupancy issued for 2011 indicated that 15 new homes were built in 2011, up one from 2010.
Crawford explained that the housing market, which is a part of the economy that has not rebounded, in a broad scope affects the local economy and will play a great part of the complete recovery of the local economy.
“This is a national trend across the United States. What we see here is that our housing market impacts our construction firms, our skilled tradesmen, our financing, our lenders,” said Crawford. “Once this housing market rebounds, we will see a dramatic increase in our economic factors within our community and across our nation.”
Hotel Occupancy Tax Revenue was 13% higher than in 2011, which was remarkable according to Crawford.
“This is truly remarkable, and coming from a tourism background I cannot stress to you how remarkable this is with the lake not being our primary destination for the summer,” said Crawford. “What we have seen is that other areas have picked up the slack, such as the Bert Massey Sports Complex as well as increased business travel and kudos to our local businesses who are doing such a great job with their local events in attracting people to come to their local events.”
Crawford spoke of the different activities the BEDC is involved with to help business expansion, including marketing studies such as the Retail Coach for the City of Brownwood and a coming study through Avalanche Consulting who will create a more industrial strategy for the city to market to larger industrial type businesses, which is slated for completion by August.
In other matters on Tuesday’s city council agenda:
*Council approved an ordinance on second and third/final readings amending Ordinance No 07-11, renewing and extending the current franchise agreement with Oncor Electric Delivery Company, LLC.
*Council approved on second and third/final readings an ordinance establishing a loading zone along the north side of South Broadway, east of Pecan Street.
*Council approved an ordinance on second and third/final readings to change the zoning classification for a portion of the Porter Addition, Lots 9 and 10, Block 2, known as Dublin Street, from R-3 Multi-Family District, to MH Manufactured Home/Mobile Home District.
*Council approved an order on first reading amending the Utility Rate Ordinance No. 11-20 setting charges, fees, rates, and deposits for customers on the Brownwood water, sewer and sanitation system to include a fuel surcharge for hauling solid waste.
*City Manager Bobby Rountree reminded the audience to register for the DeltAlert system a free automated weather warning system which will call citizens’ phones, land or cellular, to warn of emergencies such as severe weather.
