Benton City has a reputation of being hard to work with and is known for causing potential new businesses difficulties. What would you do to change this reputation?

Benton City is understaffed at City Hall for business development and presents an impression of a  lack of skills for serving new business owners. Benton City’s City Hall leaves no lasting impression either in appearance, or in purpose that we will serve our businesses and support them as they work hard building a strong business. Their success is our success. So this is a serious deficiency we face that needs commitment from the citizens to make effective changes in staff and a new building.

And I strongly feel it is not the authority of a nonprofit corporation such as the Benton City Economic Development Council to represent the City on official business. Encouraging membership to the BCEDC where business owners can discuss questions and present solutions to council is the better approach.