George W. Kruse

Q. What will be the top issue impacting businesses in the coming year? What role should the County play in addressing it?

The top issue will be affordability. With insurance, interest rates and utilities rising, businesses will have their expenses continuously stressed. The County can do its part by making sure controllable expenses are contained to avoid further exacerbating the problem. This starts with keeping property taxes in check by properly managing our government expenses to pass the savings onto taxpayers.

Q. Manatee County continues to lack a sufficient supply of affordable, workforce housing to support the local workforce. This impacts businesses in terms of attracting and retaining talent as well as the community’s quality of life. What role should the County play in addressing this issue?

I have made workforce housing a top priority. The county can play an important role in addressing our shortfall for the workforce but further encouraging supply of this needed housing. We can continue removing costly regulations, continue focusing incentives on those units providing the most benefit and working with our local businesses to assist in promoting housing in locations most beneficial to employees.

Q. Adequate infrastructure is critical to our County’s economic development and quality of life. What are your top two infrastructure priorities and how would you prioritize funding for them?

Manatee County has a critical infrastructure shortfall. Considering the likelihood of resolving it in the short term is unlikely, we need to focus on our primary bottleneck and alternatives. Working with FDOT to move traffic around Downtown Bradenton, rather than through downtown is key to easing the rush hour congestion plaguing employees. Additionally, while building more is helpful, albeit expensive, the other way is to use less. Focusing more on multimodal transportation will help traffic. Finding ways to get workers to areas presently not on transit, like Lakewood Ranch and Parrish, is key to taking the demand off infrastructure. The most straightforward path to funding these needs is with impact fees. Alternatively, working with State and Federal sources by targeting funds from unique buckets of capital for multimodal will pass along some of the costs we cannot bear.

Q. The Manatee Chamber serves as the voice of business. What challenges or opportunities would you like to see greater business involvement in to move our County forward?

The community has many needs that can benefit from insights from the business sector. Manatee County needs to focus on the obvious issues of housing and transportation, both of which would benefit from business involvement. Knowing where transit lines, housing and infrastructure would benefit employers and employees will allow for more strategic uses of funds. We also need to expand our young workforce to have skilled workers for new and existing companies. Mentoring our young residents and providing them with a permanent sense of community is key to retaining this talent pool.