VERNON — Laying groundwork for eventual job creation is hopeful speculation: “If we build it, they will come.”
Creating jobs is entrepreneurial innovation: They are here; we are building it.
The Windham County Revolving Loan Fund proposed by the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development should utilize the entire $10 million ($2 million remitted annually during five years) made available through the memorandum of understanding between the state of Vermont and Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, since administrative infrastructure and staff would be provided and their costs absorbed by the Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA).
A revolving loan fund is ideal, because repayments are loaned repeatedly in perpetuity, fostering perpetual prosperity.
While the $10 million is “to promote economic development in Windham County,” the initial intent is to mitigate direct economic impacts of losses of hundreds of highly skilled, well-paid jobs at a closing nuclear-power plant.
The Windham County Revolving Loan Fund, therefore, should focus for now on economic development directly benefiting Windham County towns facing these direct economic impacts by helping to finance creation of replacement private-sector jobs, then parlaying these successes countywide.
We should train and foster Windham County Vermonters as private-sector innovators reinventing the Windham County economy. VEDA, acting impartially, should solicit, facilitate, evaluate, and select these innovative business plans as a service to Windham County and as an example for the rest of Vermont coordinating existing local revolving loan funds, the Windham County Revolving Loan Fund, and grassroots venture capital raised via the Vermont Small Business Offering Exemption.
The loan fund should charge interest sufficient to offset inflation and defaults so that perpetual funding remains sustainable. Requiring repayment from cash flows encourages and selects realistic business plans. Deferred repayment is a panacea. Royalty financing is an equity investment, not a loan.
What sort of loss appetite should we be targeting? Nil, so that we plan for successes, not failures. Instead, we should advance financing at planned financial milestones so that innovative business plans, if necessary, fail faster and cheaper.
Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS) has requested that the group be represented in official decisions regarding this Vermont Yankee financial windfall.
Proposed by some established business, nonprofit, and government organizations having vested interests in the status quo and in benefiting from this financial windfall, SeVEDS' “Vital Projects” would lay more groundwork so that job creation may happen, but this group does not make it happen, except for those who are laying more groundwork.
SeVEDS inherently lacks necessary vision and independence to solicit, facilitate, evaluate, and select innovative business plans reinventing the Windham County economy.
Instead of speculative “if we build it, they will come,” let's support innovative “they are here, we are building it.”