AirBnBs Could Increase Tourism Economy for Elizabethton

We all have heard a lot of talk about crafting a Tourism based economy and there are some initiatives to help move that idea forward. The City Planning Office has developed day-trip itineraries with three different activity categories making it easy for anyone to find something of interest in Elizabethton. We are also working with the County Mayor’s Office to gather support for a hotel analysis study to determine the feasibility to a new hotel here. But until a hotel is possible, there is another tool that some rural communities are using to increase tourism – AirBnB.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, AirBnB is an online intermediary (like Uber) that matches property owners who are looking to do short-term rentals with interested travelers who need a place to stay. It has become a wildly popular way to travel for college students and other leisure travelers to find places to stay that are interesting and near their destination. A host home provides a room or an entire apartment or home for a short period of time to the traveler with the transaction occurring via the AirBnB website. The traveler gets a place to stay and the host gets a little extra cash in their wallet.

For Elizabethton, AirBnB offers an opportunity for us, as a community, to open up our homes and apartments to visitors who will bring money to spend in our local community. Since we do not yet have a hotel, AirBnB has the power to give Elizabethton a tourism based economy without actually having a hotel. Additionally, if short-term rentals increase more visitors will be tracked visiting our city and county making it more attractive for a hotel to locate here. It would be similar to a tourist driving to Gatlinburg and renting a cabin for a week, except that the cabin would be YOUR cabin here in Carter County and it would be found through AirBnB rather than some regional or national rental agency.

Now, AirBnB is certainly not a one solution fix; there are some concerns with AirBnB rentals. One most people living in a quiet, single-family, residential neighborhood in Elizabethton don’t want a houseful of six to eight people moving in and out every week. Additionally, capturing the appropriate taxes, such as the Occupancy Tax that pays for our Tourism activities and the Sales Tax that helps fund our school systems is difficult to identify and collect when people are renting out a room for the night or their house for a week. These are taxes potentially lost which might otherwise be captured if a hotel or other formal lodging facility was present.

Various cities see the benefits of encouraging AirBnB and provide regulations to allow them. Other cities ban them outright because of some of the problems. What are your thoughts? Is this something we should take a serious look at in our community? Let’s talk about it!

Take Time to Shop Local this Christmas Season

Every year the Saturday after Thanksgiving is reserved as Small Business Saturday -- a way to remind Christmas shoppers that small businesses would like a piece of your Christmas budget as well. But for many small businesses, this day and this season is much more important to them than you. Many small businesses balance their books during the Christmas season and Small Business Saturday helps them do this. Additionally, for many smaller cities, such as Elizabethton, small businesses are the community's largest employer and are a big driver of the local economy.

This year, I would like to challenge everyone to spend 10 to 20 percent of their Christmas budget with local, small businesses. In 2015, the average American Household spent on average $830 on Christmas gifts. 10 percent of that is $83 and 20 percent is only $166. If you take that $83 and spend it at small, local businesses you will contribute approximately $61.56 to the Elizabethton local economy versus only $13.03 if you were to spend it at Walgreens, Walmart, or Dollar General.

If every household in the Elizabethton area would shop small and local on Small Business Saturday spending just $83 of their Christmas budget, it would generate over $1.2 million of economic activity in our community! If those same households spend $166 it would generate over $2.4 million of economic activity! These numbers don’t include the number of new full-time or part-time jobs created as a result of businesses expanding to handle more business. What an amazing impact spending so little can have on our local economy when we all participate.

In addition to creating economic impact to our community, spending money locally helps our local schools. The Elizabethton City Council has set aside 0.5 percent of the sale you make to go directly to our school system in the form of sales tax. This earmarked portion of sales tax has paid for projects such as the addition to West Side Elementary school, construction of the gymnasium at East Side Elementary school, the elevator installation at Harold McCormick Elementary school, and the construction of the new stadium and band room at the High School. If you have children or grandchildren in school, shopping locally is an easy way to provide better facilities for your child to learn and grow in. And for County school attendees, a portion of every capital project city schools borrow money for, County schools must also get a portion of the money borrowed.

I recognized that you may not be able to find everything you’re looking for in Elizabethton, but I would encourage you to follow this formula for finding what you’re looking for: shop small businesses in Elizabethton first, then chain businesses in Elizabethton or Carter County, then local or chain businesses in Johnson City, then local or chain businesses in Kingsport or Bristol, then elsewhere in Tennessee or online. So this Saturday, wake up early, get together with some of your family or friends, and head out for a day of shopping in some of our local, small businesses. This not only helps you, but our local small businesses, and our community! Let’s talk about it!

The Economy has Changed, We Must Prepare - Part 2

As we talked about last week, the national, state, and local economy has changed and is not going back to what it used to be. Advances in technology have drastically changed the way base-export businesses function and have changed the demands on the workforce to become more trained and educated.

The State of Tennessee now offers great programs for traditional and non-traditional (adult) students interested in going to college or receiving vocational training. For traditional students, TN Promise, TN Achieves, the Hope Scholarship, and various federal grants can make college debt free for those with financial need. For non-traditional or adult students, TN Reconnect, TN Promise, the Hope Scholarship, TN Student Assistance Award, and various federal grants can also make getting a certificate or degree almost debt free as well!

The best part of all of this is Elizabethton is in the best location to take advantage of these programs. We have a local Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT), Northeast State Community College, and Milligan College right in our backyard! In addition, online programs and ETSU being a short drive away make certificates and degrees at these institutions hard to pass up.

With a few certifications or some training, people with a high school diploma can take advantage of top jobs in the Tri-Cities and make over $30,000 per year. Some of these include heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, bill and account collectors, office and administrative supervisors, bookkeeping/accounting/auditing clerks, automotive service technicians and mechanics, sales representatives, and billing and posting clerks. If you want to pursue a degree and make over $40,000 per year, hot jobs in the Tri-Cities include school teachers, clergy/pastors, accountants and auditors, pharmacists, and medical doctors. All of these jobs are in demand, show positive job growth, and have at least 20 job openings per year in the area.

The point here is that all of these types of jobs require some form of post-high school training or degree. With educational resources like we have locally, you could get your administrative assistant or automotive technician diploma from TCAT here in Elizabethton in less than 2 years, your EMT or Accounting certification around your schedule with nights, weekends, and online classes at Northeast State in Elizabethton, a degree to be a pastor or accountant at Milligan College, or even a degree to be a teacher or pharmacist at ETSU. We have rich educational resources here that other communities covet.

If you’re interested, talk with your employer about working with you on flexible hours to attend classes or talk with representatives at Northeast State, TCAT, or Milligan about the different grant programs. A better trained workforce creates an attraction for new businesses and industry. We must work together to improve our community; after all, no one else is going to do it for us. Let’s talk about it!

The Economy has Changed, We Must Prepare - Part 1

Base export businesses, such as manufacturing, assembly, or mining businesses, continue to be one of the most important elements to a local economy. They export product to other areas of the country and import cash back into our economy to pay employees and purchase local products and services. These types of businesses help form the foundation of Elizabethton’s local economy as well.

We are, however, seeing a shift in what these base export industries look like. While they were once large behemoths employing hundreds of people, today, they employ only 100 of the 500 employees they once did and often can locate in facilities a third of the size they once needed. Despite this, many are still increasing production.

This shift is best attributed to technology. We have one local industry who is down over 10 employees than they were this time last year. Why? Not because their production has slowed (as a matter of fact they have increase production) or they are looking at shutting down, but because they have just replaced two production lines of people with two machines. One former line now only requires 1 person and the other requires no additional persons. Many times, industries are hiring less people with little or no training for those who have mechanical or robotics training or who may have a Master’s degree in engineering.

Our local, state, national, and even world economy has shifted with the addition of technology and robotics to manufacturing. Even if these types of industries began to on-shore (come back to the United States) most of these businesses will hire only a fraction of the employees they did when the left.

Of all of the job openings at this very moment in East Tennessee, 80 percent of them require a high school diploma, 3 percent of them require some type of vocational or post-high school training, and 17 percent require a degree of some kind. In Carter County, approximately 20 percent of the population doesn’t have a high school diploma or equivalent and 38 percent have only a high school diploma. We must work to ensure that students today stay in school through high school at a minimum and those who do not have a high school diploma go on to receive their GED.

In Carter County, the salary difference between having a high school diploma and not having it is over $6,500 per year. Even in today’s world a High School diploma is still worth something. What could your family do with an additional $6,500 a year?

Next week, I'll talk about some of the programs out there to help ensure our workforce is able to meet the demands of this changing economy. Until then, let's talk about it!