Lakeland Economic Development Council Inc

“The board of directors reviews the form 990 before it is filed and designates one of its members to discuss any questions with the cpa who prepared the return.”

“We monitor any interests with our board of directors and key employees that could result in a conflict. We have an executive board that monitors compensation with outside consultants, as well as reviewing and monitoring what other economic development councils compensate staff.”

“An annual evaluation conducted by the ledc chairman and president that is reviewed by the ledc executive board, led by todd baylis, ledc chairman at the november board meeting.”

“The organization makes it governing documents, conflict of interest policy and financial statements available to the public by having them available in the corporate office and by mail/ email upon request.”

“The ledc's mission is attracting new companies as well as facilitating the expansion of existing companies in the lakeland, fl area. The goals of the organization are to retain and grow existing businesses; create jobs and investment; grow targeted industry sectors; high-skill/high-wage employment growth; support entrepreneurialism and new business creation; promote infrastructure and development, market lakeland, fl as a premier location for business and facilitate partnerships to enhance growth. The ledc's primary role is to help create jobs and capital investment by attracting new companies, as well as facilitating the expansion of existing companies in the lakeland, florida area. Day-to-day operations at the ledc are staffed by five full-time employees, and one to two paid interns at any given time. The ledc's board of directors are made of volunteer community leaders.”

“1. Briefly describe the organization's mission: the lakeland economic development council (ledc) is a private, non-profit organization with approximately 140+ member companies. The ledc's primary role is to help create jobs and capital investment by attracting new companies as well as facilitating the expansion of existing companies in the lakeland area.”

“Ledc staff in december 2022, prior to 2023, the ledc brought on sarah falcetti as an intern for the 2023 summer leadership program. Over the 9 months she served in that capacity, she proved an invaluable asset to the ledc. We hired her full-time after the program ended in august in the capacity of communications and program manager. She is assisting in business development administration, office administration, communications and social media management, collateral development, etc. Ledc meetings during 2023 for the general membership included: introductions of five new members overview of 2023 summer leadership program presentations from eleven existing members on updates of their ongoing growth efforts numerous updates on projects that impact the greater lakeland area site visits at publix corporate office and lakeland regional health presentation on promoting downtown -- catalyst lakeland”

“Ongoing communications with members and stakeholders outside of monthly meetings to include: newsletters - ledc continued to provide a high-quality online monthly member newsletter that highlights growth and development projects, ledc meetings, etc. Also, an additional publication introduced this year was the broker newsletter, focused on keeping our brokers, one of our most effective lead sources, up to date on relevant activity in lakeland. Blog - in 2023, the ledc blog was primarily used for our summer leadership program interns who wrote 10 weekly recaps of the participants' experiences to share with their managers and sponsors. Media - throughout the year, the ledc was featured in multiple media articles which included articles on publix's investment in the downtown lakeland technology campus, several tampa bay business journal articles on the lakeland business environment, florida trend, laltoday features, the polk news sun and guest hosting the ldda's downtown dish radio show. Speaking engagements - the ledc team continued to be sought-after speakers at community and industry events. These include local rotary and kiwanis clubs, fpra, berkshire hathaway's ceo meeting, leadership tampa bay, central florida score, the chamber of commerce, the republican club of polk county, the democratic women's club, and emceeing polk vision's mayor's roundtable.”

“Existing industry visits in october 2023, the vice president of development and the senior vice president kicked off what will be a two-year effort to meet with the remaining ledc members that weren't visited through our large employer 2022 existing industry visits. A recap of the visit themes will be reported upon at the 2024 board retreat and annual meeting. Companies visited included - act environmental & infrastructure, bank of central florida, bernie little distributors, tiger concrete, rita staffing, rwis, aspyre properties, agamerica, rodda, adventhealth, port tampa bay, and zootampa. Talent recruitment & retention the challenges with the labor market calmed in 2023 for our members in comparison to 2021-2022, with the tides turning to an employer driven market. Despite that, employee retention and recruitment were still our members' top concern. The following efforts continued in 2023 to support our members' efforts in talent recruitment and retention: summer leadership program - two sessions were held from june through august that hosted over 88 participants from 29 companies. This year's program was led by two interns, sarah falcetti (fsc) and james simpson (fsc). The program included 16 leadership trainers, 13 community panelists, and 13 industry and community tours, the class consisted of 51 females and 37 males, with 22 people of color. The average age for the class was 25. Future leaders - the future leaders met in early 2023 to serve as a focus group for the city manager who was seeking community input for his munn park plan. The future leaders board has met several times this year to receive reports like that of the ledc board. At the conclusion of 2022, it was decided that the full future leaders group would focus on attending ledc meetings and be pulled together as needed. Lal partnership - new to lakeland website - the launch of newtolakeland.com in late 2022 was a success and the journalists at laltoday have continued to update the site with new articles each week. Pageviews for the site in total have been 67,290 with the largest spikes in participation aligned with the 4 newsletter blasts and social shares on the main laltoday platforms. The highest traffic articles include new businesses to lakeland, top industries & employers, and find your ideal neighborhood. Lakeland regional health gme reception - one of the most fulfilling recruitment support efforts this year was hosting the community welcome reception for lakeland regional health's inaugural graduate medical education residents. We had each of the 70 residents, their families, program directors, and hospital staff in attendance, in addition to ledc members, and representatives of the chamber, ldda, catapult, city and county governments. Incentives "project harvest", an expansion of publix's produce facility was approved for avte and edifm (impact fee mitigation) from the county and edifm from the city of lakeland. This project is estimated to have a 218m capital investment across 486,000 sf. Member to member visits the ledc hosted several manufacturer focused member-to-member visits to share best practices. Publix to jbt publix and amazon air publix dairy and 12 other manufacturing members catalyst plan the team at the apiary has been working to improve the performance of catalystlakeland.com and expand into the three cra areas of east main, downtown west, and dixieland. They are finished with the dixieland buildout and will roll out an update in november 2023 that will include improved ground level navigation, new visualization optimization, and more consistent load times. The ledc has been in discussion with the city of lakeland staff on ways to create more developer certainty surrounding catalyst sites. This process has been delayed as cra staffing was brought up to optimum levels, but the city has given every indication they will be willing partners as these efforts continue. High skill high wage ledc high skill high wage representatives & staff”