September 12, 2023 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the September 12, 2023 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was Announcement – August 2023 Tax Sale Results.

Camden County made $521,904.21 in its recent tax sale. Presiding Commissioner Skelton observed that the county paid $35,000 in advertising costs for publishing the tax sale in the newspaper, but the County Collector assured the Commission that they recouped those costs from the sale. (I assumed the cost was recouped through late tax penalties.)

The second agenda item was Lake of the Ozarks Economic Alliance Presentation – The new LOREDC.

I’m going to be honest with you. I can almost always focus enough to record the details, but when agencies with long acronym names start talking about economic development, hospitality studies, building figurative bridges, and forming alliances, my mind starts to wander. I end up looking out the window at the green grass and wondering how much longer it is until recess starts.

It was a reasonably long presentation and I’ll do my best to sum it up. You get what you pay for, folks.

K.C. Cloke and Steve Dust spoke to the Commission.

LOREDC seems to have changed its name and perhaps lost a few acronym letters in the process. Their intent is to market the tri-county area (Miller, Morgan, and Camden counties) to businesses for possible business development opportunities.

They are currently a 100% volunteer operation, but they would like to eventually increase their budget so they could hire one or more full staff members in the future. They described a variety of techniques they could use to attract businesses to this area.

Commissioner Williams asked what businesses they would seek to expand? Dust responded that some of the industries that might be suitable for expansion would be hospitality, medical services, and the boating industry.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton observed that there seem to be a lot of different organizations in the Lake area that are working toward the same goals.

The question finally came around to the issue of how much money they wanted? The Commission really didn’t seem to be in the mood to give any money out at all. The LOREDC representatives stated they had not received any money yet, but the Camden County Commission was their first stop.

After the recent funding of the Lake Area Community Development Corporation, the Commission appeared to be growing weary of “multi-county” organizations that receive money from Camden County and nobody else.

To refresh readers’ memories, the Camden County Commission voted 2-1 (Hasty/Williams vs Gohagan) to give LACDC $250,000 in ARPA funds to set up a USDA mortgage qualification program to service Laclede, Miller, Morgan, and Camden County applicants. Guess which county was the only one to give any money to them? Yep. You guessed it.

In the end, the Commission listened politely to the presentation, but they entertained no discussion about granting any funds to the endeavor. Perhaps if the LOREDC or LOEAP or LotOEAP can convince some other cities and counties to provide some funding, that will convince a Commission that has already been burned too many times to throw a few ingredients into the pot.

And that was that.