From the Greater Pensacola Chamber candidate survey:
Alan McMillan
Q1 Rate the regulatory climate for business in Escambia County. Is it Good/Fair/Bad? Explain your answer.
Fair, we can be better especially at assisting business, both existing and new, at navigating the maze of requirements. And I continually hear that our approval process takes too long.
Q2 Please provide any examples of how regulations have affected the life of county residents in a positive or negative way.
Certainly there are positive impact in the area of the environment, but there are also negatives in slowness of approvals and the apparent lack of advocacy in navigating the process.
Q3 Name the top 3 specific county ordinances/regulations you would like to see eliminated. Explain why they should be eliminated.
I will take a broader answer, rather than naming three. I believe a regulatory review is called for, where input from both new and existing businesses identify regulations that are overly burdensome. It might make sense to benchmark midsize governments that have a known positive business environment and learn what we can use from that review.
Scott Trotter
Q1 Rate the regulatory climate for business in Escambia County. Is it Good/Fair/Bad? Explain your answer.
I believe it’s pretty good but I don’t own a business so I don’t have first hand knowledge. I’d be happy to talk to anyone who believes there are unnecessary regulations that are restricting their business.
Q2 Please provide any examples of how regulations have affected the life of county residents in a positive or negative way.
As a general rule, regulations were put in place to solve a problem and have helped to create the modern civilization that we all enjoy. The way code enforcement is applied to property owners is often arbitrary and serves no purpose.
Q3 Name the top 3 specific county ordinances/regulations you would like to see eliminated. Explain why they should be eliminated.
I’m not running on a platform of eliminating ordinances. If there’s ordinance that needs amending or eliminating I’ll consider the facts of each as they come up.
Doug Underhill
Q1 Rate the regulatory climate for business in Escambia County. Is it Good/Fair/Bad? Explain your answer.
I would call it fair, but I think that “a mixed bag” is the better answer. There is a path to yes for most things that a business might want to do, but that path is hard to identify unless you understand the system. The “user’s manual” of government regulation should be clear, short, and applicable to everyone equally.
Q2 Please provide any examples of how regulations have affected the life of county residents in a positive or negative way.
The effective application on the land use code and the Perdido Key Master Plan has protected residential neighborhoods from encroachment (Holiday Harbor, Oyster Bar, Dollar General) while promoting growth and expansion where appropriate (Perdido Town Center, Lost Key Community Development).
Q3 Name the top 3 specific county ordinances/regulations you would like to see eliminated. Explain why they should be eliminated.
The regulations themselves are not the problem. Most businesses will tell you, “I don’t care what the rules are, as long as they are clear, consistent, and you don’t move the goal posts on me. Deregulation is the easy political answer, but the solution is better governance, and better governance means streamlining the processes so our business people can back to the business of earning profits.
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