McNamara has worked on the county’s land bank since its inception about three years ago, but he does not have development experience. County officials say his role, although he holds the title of executive director for the port and will be paid $76,500, will be more behind the scenes.
Economic Development Director David Fehr, McNamara’s new boss, has been serving as the executive director for the port authority since Mike Campbell left last year. The port was in the red by about $10,000 when Campbell left in April and had borrowed $55,000 from the county commissioners.
Fehr said he will need to get McNamara up to speed on port matters, but he and Warren County port director Martin Russell — the two counties have a cooperative agreement now — will still handle getting deals done.
Under Ohio law, port authorities can own, finance, construct and lease real estate including land, building and equipment. A port authority that buys or owns property for an expanding business, construction materials and other construction costs are tax-exempt. Also, ports can issue taxable and tax-exempt bonds, offering borrowers longer-term, fixed-rate financing than the terms of a commercial loan.
Commissioner Don Dixon said the county’s port authority has moved into more of a support role for the other jurisdictions, that have successful economic developments departments of their own, rather than beating the bushes for new deals. He said the development department has been “running lean” in recent years and McNamara can assist with coordination between the building department and new companies coming in, to solve the inevitable problems that crop up, as well as other development functions.
He is unconcerned McNamara has no development background.
“This is a new position, that has new job duties, that will have to be modified as we go. Some of it will work, some of it will work well, and some of it probably won’t work as well, so we’ll have to change that as we go,” Dixon said. “But I think it’s an opportunity where we don’t have to hire two or three other people to do five jobs or six jobs that are kind of combined, that don’t require full time people. And he can learn from the people that we already have in place because they are tops in the field.”
McNamara described his new gig succinctly.
“I’m really here to make sure the trains run on time,” he said.
County Administrator Charlie Young had high praise for McNamara’s talents and said he expects him to be in a support role to begin with, but believes he’ll turn out to be much more.
“Frankly I think he will hopefully develop into a top notch economic development person,” Young said. “That would be for the future and I think Mike McNamara has a great deal of potential and a bright future.”
Nix said McNamara performed administrative duties for her office as well, handling purchasing, payroll, benefits and other duties. She and Young were scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss how McNamara will be paid, there may be a three-way split between the county, the land bank and the port.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said having McNamara over both the land bank and the port is a good fit because both play a part in economic development continuum. The whole goal of erasing blighted buildings is to hopefully get the property back into use and on the tax rolls.
“Having him do this will provide us with some coordination of those entities which ultimately lead to economic development,” Rogers said.
Dixon said obviously if the port board, which is an independent entity, doesn’t want to go along with McNamara as their executive director, the county will abide by their wishes. Denise Quinn, president of the port board, said they were apprised of the commissioners plan up front and they are looking forward to meeting and getting to know McNamara.
“We are certainly very excited about the fact they recognized the importance of having someone in that role,” she said.
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