Tal Siddique

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

Within the county the top issue impacting businesses will be the important county-led effort to revise the Manatee County Comprehensive Plan. The Comprehensive Plan is our local government’s blueprint for how we will address a wide range of issues and what our priorities will be for the next 7-10 years. These issues include public safety, land development codes and standards, environmental regulations, future land use plans, development priorities, tax incentives, and more. Many issues businesses have with existing infrastructure, housing, taxation, and regulations will be set, nearly in stone, as the review and updates to our plan are applied over the next year. Our chamber represents a diverse array of businesses each with a mix of challenges unique to their industry but many with common issues with traffic, housing, cost of living, public health and safety, and our plan to address growth. The Comprehensive Plan review and update will provide a guide for how we will address these issues over the next decade.

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?

The county plays a meaningful role in addressing the issue. In 2017 the County passed Livable Manatee, a program designed to offer financial incentives for housing. In the years since Manatee County has seen close to 3,500 affordable housing units approved across the county. I believe we are offering sufficient incentives to attract affordable housing. The challenge for the next 5 years will be amending our Land Development Code to enhance definitions for mixed-use development to speed up the process for attracting that type of development, which often brings with it affordable housing. Beyond that we will need to fund infrastructure improvements in our urban corridor to prepare for developments in existence today in the City of Bradenton, which will outpace our ability to move traffic and supply water and sewer services.

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?

My top two infrastructure priorities include working with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to redesign state roads to improve traffic flow and public safety along Manatee Ave and Cortez Road and funding underground infrastructure improvements for District 3. To fund these initiatives we will need to evaluate the utilities rate residents and businesses are paying to see if projections will allow us to fund underground improvements with the funds available. For major projects on state roads, I believe we will need to reprioritize existing infrastructure projects, such as the parking garage on Anna Maria Island and widening 59th Street West, to free up bond capacity in order to assist FDOT to build complete streets from Anna Maria Island to Downtown Bradenton & DeSoto Square Mall. Beyond that, we will need to work with our state delegation to fund the Bradenton-Palmetto connector, two new bridges to Anna Maria Island, and replacing the DeSoto Bridge to Palmetto.

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?

Manatee County needs to diversify its economy and take advantage of our unique education system available which heavily favors career and technical education. Thanks to programs at Manatee Technical College (MTC), the State College of Florida (SCF), USF Sarasota-Manatee, and our high schools, we have the ability to train the next generation of skilled workers and keep them local if the jobs are available. I believe there is an opportunity for the county to take advantage of wide swaths of industrial-zoned land to attract manufacturing firms and hire from our local community with skilled workers in the appropriate fields.