Council ends GCED contract

City officials have terminated the current contract with Gage County Economic Development, but hope to open lines for a new contract.

The Beatrice City Council voted 6-1, with councilman Phil Cook voting against, to give notice to end a three-year contract with Gage County Economic Development at a special meeting Tuesday afternoon. The city’s contract with GCED will now expire in two years.

Over the last few months, members of Beatrice City Council and GCED have attempted to address concerns the city had with the GCED Board over issues not being met in best interest of the city, Mayor Dennis Schuster said.

“We’ve had some movement, we think in our direction with GCED,” Schuster said. “However, we are concerned we haven’t had near enough movement in our direction quick enough. The best course of action at this time is to terminate the agreement.”

Schuster said the termination will allow the city and GCED to re-negotiate a new contract.

The city, which currently gives $180,000 annually to GCED, had asked the organization address a number of issues, including:

n Develop and adopt a code of ethics.

n Allow the city to have a voting member on the board.

n Establish that all GCED board members reside within or be employed at a business or company in Gage County.

n Establish term limits for GCED board members.

n Reorganize the personnel structure.

Through past negotiations, GCED did establish a code of ethics, allow for the city voting member and require all GCED board members reside within Gage County, Schuster said.

Negotiations stalled at the remaining items on the list.

The city would like to see more turnover on the GCED board because there are concerns with members who have served on the board for a number of years.

The second issue is with the number of people employed by GCED. When the contract was negotiated, the money provided by the city was predicated that there was to be three employees. There is currently only two.

If there is to be only two employees, the city believes money provided to GCED should be reevaluated.

Councilman Ted Fairbanks was in agreement with terminating the contract, saying there needs to be more oversight and transparencies to GCED operations and projects.

“I want to know what direction they are pursuing and I simply don’t,” Fairbanks said. “I understand it’s there money once it’s given to them, but there should essentially be strings attached.”

GCED Director of Business & Industry Terri Dageford said the board did discuss hiring of a third individual, but in a community the size of Gage County and Beatrice, a three person staff was “not the best bang for your dollar.”

Dageford said the additional money that would have been used to pay a third staff member has been used for development.

As far as operations, Dageford said GCED has always been open with the information it is able to share.

The city and GCED have had a good partnership over the years, Dageford said.

“We all need to work together, we can disagree, but we can also agree and come together,” Dageford said. “I feel that’s important for the community.”

In other city business, the council approved the ordinance to supplement the 2007-2008 fiscal year budget. The total supplement is $1.2 million. The large majority of the budget supplement will be paid for through grant funding or other reimbursements provided to the city. The actual out-of-pocket expenses to the city will be $300,000 to $400,000.