William “Bill” Conerly

Q. Considering the rapid population increase and projected business growth in the greater Manatee County region, what specific policies would you support to increase the talent pipeline in our area?

First thing I think we need do is develop policies that reintroduce technical and vocational programs into high schools. Current graduates have a very limited and narrow understanding of these types of career options. Second, we need to create/revise the policies to expand the post high school programs and technical schools. I have worked with industry groups that have struggled to set up training and apprentice programs using grants. A more streamlined process for parting with private industry to train workers would be very beneficial. For my company, my partners and I worked to set up an apprentice program to train AutoCAD students the real world application of their learned skills. This has been tremendously successful, for our needs.

Q. Infrastructure continues to be a challenge both in terms of existing, aging systems and additional capacity needed for Florida’s significant growth. What are your top infrastructure solutions for our region?

As a civil engineer, this is something I deal with daily. One of the things we need to prioritize is the development of master plans for water, sewer and roadway infrastructure. And these plans should be updated annually (continuously). Another beneficial step would be to provide an expedited review, by local and state agencies, of designs and plans for critical infrastructure. The current time lines, just to get to the commencement of construction is extremely protracted. One additional concern of mine related to the ability’s of the business communities to thieve is inadequate state of Florida’s electrical grid. There is a current trend for the development of Data Centers, which house networked computers that store, process, and share data. These are becoming critical component for many technology based companies, which are extremely important for Florida’s economy to grow and diversify.

Q. In Florida, and especially in our area, water quality is an essential part of our economy and quality of life; what can the Legislature do to continue to address water quality?

Locally, there was a lot of discussion related to the County’s reduction of wetland buffers. This is not exactly what occurred. What happened was the County adopted the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s (SWFWMD) rules related to wetlands, which included the criteria for buffers. The intent is to eliminate duplicative and redundant rules. What was not mentioned in the local narratives was that a result of SB 712, The Clean Waterways Act, requiring FDEP and the WMDs to initiate rulemaking to update the statewide storm water design criteria program, which will reduce the Total Phosphorus (TP) and Total Nitrogen (TN). The new rules includes the monitoring and reporting. Overall, these new rules are expected to provide a significant benefit to water quality, but may take time for the collection and reporting of the data.

Q. What do you consider to be the state policy issues impacting our region and how do you plan to legislatively address them?

The most significant issue facing our region, in my opinion, is the cost of housing for the working middle class and retired seniors. While I don’t think it is related to a single state policy, I do think there are opportunities to have a beneficial impact. I would propose legislation, modeled after the Live Local, but modified to focus on lands zoned or intended to be zone multifamily (instead of commercial or industrial zoned lands). It would include a density bonus for projects proposing 40% of the total housing units to meet the 50% to 80% Annual Mean Income (AMI) and execute a restriction for 30 years.