Economic Forecasting With Jared Parker, Regional Economic Consulting Group

Consulting and developing reports about the economic impact of a variety of developments or projects on local governmental bodies is a precise type of investigating, studing, and forecasting outcomes.

Consultant Jared Parker, co-founder of the Regional Economic Consulting Group, compares the process to a rock making impact in a pond. The rock is the development or project and the waves created in the pond are the various impacts caused by the project.

It's a good comparison of a complex topic that can have a dynamic impact on communities all over Florida.

Jared Parker  sits down with the Florida Business Forum anchorman and business information guru Sam Yates with an inside look at the Regional Economic Consulting Group. 

Transcript

Sam Yates: 0:06

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another informative episode of the Florida Business Forum Podcast. Let's open the Florida Business Forum floodgates and let the information begin to flow. Here's your Florida Business Forum information guru and Anchorman Sam Yates. And yes, the information is flowing here on the Florida Business Forum Podcast. Today we're talking economic development. And I'm lucky to have an economic development guru join me, Jared Parker. Jared, welcome to the program.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 0:39

Hi, Sam. Thank you for having me.

Sam Yates: 0:42

Jared, tell us about your company. It is an economic development consulting group. What do you do for the interest in Florida in particular,

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 0:51

so we build impact studies that are tied to economic development, what that more or less means, we go in there, and we look at any large project that's going to impact an area, we try to break it down into terms that cities and developers can understand. So for example, we just did a project over in Bradenton, Florida that looked at moving their city hall to another location and in that place, what would be the best mixed use development? So on the economic development side, what we produce was direct impact as to how much this new development is going to be spending? What type of spending was going to be? Is it going to be towards apartments? Is it going to be towards condos, retail, non retail, commercial, that sort of thing. And then once we had those pieces, we could use it to sort of build out ripple effects. So we want to know if we're spending $200 million in the area. And what does that mean, in terms of jobs? What does that mean, in terms of paychecks? What does that mean in terms of local GDP and aggregate economic output in the area? And then once they have those pieces, we can kind of build out, okay, what, what our tax collection is going to look like to the local government, which is always incredibly important. And from there, the city can make a more educated determination as to as to which direction they want to go with specific developers? Do they want to focus more on retail versus non retail? Or do they want to focus on apartments or they even want to consider apartments, that sort of thing.

Sam Yates: 2:18

When you engage in these types of studies, these type of programs, they're not flash in the pan, we're gonna get this done in two weeks, these are really in depth looks at snapshots of the particular area that you're under study, yes,

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 2:35

they'll normally will do a short term project for us might be two months. This what we did with the Bradenton was about a three month deal. And then from that, it's it's so fluid, because IE they might have certain developers coming to them that you want to want to kind of deviate slightly from the original plan. And then we can step in and say, Okay, well, this is how this economic impact is going to change.

Sam Yates: 3:02

When we talk about economic impact, I think there is probably a question mark in some people's minds economic impact versus impact fees for development. But the two are separate.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 3:16

Yes, yes. In a way, the impact fees kind of flow out of the economic impact. It's it's you know, how much a city is going to be charging the developers to for things like parks, recreation, spanning roadways, police, firefighter protection, that sort of thing, the that that all flows out of the tax collections that we project and the actual economic impact. So the impact itself that's like, you know, you pick up a pond, your investment, this rock, you throw it in the pond, all those ripples, we capture those in our in our studies, to really give a really well balanced outlook.

Sam Yates: 3:53

What is the atmosphere right now we're post eon and we've had a lot of devastation, a lot of destruction, a lot of even infrastructure that's going to need to be replaced in the southwest Central and all the areas that were hit by Hurricane II and what's your sense of how things are right now?

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 4:15

Well, I it's, it's a hot topic, because just off the bat for Ian, we had almost 1000 residents a day moving into this state and depending who you ask anywhere from 900 to 1000. And certain areas like my area, Tampa Bay, we had almost over 200 people, every two every 2.7 peoples in new home, you know that that's a no more cars, that's bigger roadways, sewer, power, utilities, everything that goes comes along with that, that growth and population. Then you have a situation like Hurricane Ian that just came through and it kind of cleared it created so much devastation, that not only do we have to still deal with the migration now we have to deal with replacement and It just makes this sort of service that much more important to these local governments to know, you know, where's the best place to put my dollars going forward?

Sam Yates: 5:09

Now, your background, if I recall correctly, is with the state of Florida taxation and those particular areas that are in need of the information that you are compiling. So it's a natural fit.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 5:23

Yeah, yeah, my I'm originally started out up until assay about around 2008 2009, and I began tax policy, I used to work for the Department of Revenue. And I worked inside of this little Think Tank, they had looked at the impacts of tax policy on revenue. And couple years after doing that 2011 2012, I moved into the economic arm of the legislature called office of economic and demographic research. So I had, you know, I have a little over a decade of experience kind of running impacts on a wide variety of topics, whether it's a corporate income tax cut to sales, tax exemptions to local taxes, things like permit fees, impact fees, all over the board. But, you know, the important thing to consider is to get there, you have to have the ripple effect and the impact on the front end to then be able to calculate the tax impact on the back end.

Sam Yates: 6:23

What's the biggest challenge that are municipalities, local governments, whether they be towns or whether they're counties or taxing districts? What are some of the biggest challenges that they are facing today?

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 6:40

It's kind of twofold one areas, just infrastructure tied to the migration. The other areas housing, we're seeing, you know, typically, when you track housing in an economy, you're looking at vacancy rates. And normally when that vacancy, a good vacancy rate in a healthy economy is about seven years. And in Florida, that rates dropped to about 5%. And when you have that you create such pressure, upward pressure on things like rents, housing, housing construction itself, because you know, if I'm paying more money for my rent, I can't save up for a downpayment, to go put on a house that I might want. And that might even be cheaper in the long run. And it's it's it's just, it's a huge issue right now. And it's is there's there's no solution in sight. But yeah, those are, those are the biggest challenges I've seen.

Sam Yates: 7:32

One that I run into frequently as I wear many different hats. One is, of course, public relations, marketing. I also work in the health care communities, but I also have work in the builders, communities, and certainly affordable housing, does that fit in with what you were just talking about of making homes more affordable or finding ways that we can have more affordable homes?

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 8:00

Well, I think the most important solution to the housing crisis is is to increase the supply. So to do that, you know, the working with the builders, working with communities to sit there and figure out how can we create ways to invest and incentivize the production to higher levels of production and construction rates of homes, you know, homes and multifamily apartments, really?

Sam Yates: 8:25

So it's a matter of sometimes it's a matter of intensity versus density? If you look at it from that standpoint.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 8:32

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so some of the density issues, South Florida, for instance, is full. So you're not going to be building a whole lot of single family homes, that's going to be something that's going to look more into the multifamily world, but that might be a split between condos and apartments. Whereas you in my area in Tampa, I'm actually just north of Tampa, in this little area called New Tampa, that we have lots of land, we have lots of places to build new single family homes. So it comes down to population, population density, but across the board, you kind of need that intensity in construction, and solve this crisis. eights, it kind of ties in to everything right now. It's a housing crisis. And it's not one single segment across. Again, when I was just pointing out that the the crisis is the people that are trying to move out of an apartment into a single family home, they can't say about money. That's a unit. That's a unique demographic that you don't normally hear about, you know, you hear about low income you hear about the wealthy, you don't necessarily hear about the burgeoning crisis, as in terms of community, it's it's the population is growing. The migration is growing. The Boomer generation is retiring, and that's one of the largest that is the largest generation right now. And the generation kind of on the backfill is the Gen answers. And you don't necessarily have that one for one replacement because Generation X was one of the smaller generations. And yes, yeah, to begin with. So they when you get to the senior side, you just don't it's it's the dynamic of like a good way to explain this. The shift from people that had regular homes regular lives to now that they are aging, and they need care. It is a stressor going forward.

Sam Yates: 10:30

I know that transportation. Yes. impacts everyone. What are our current from your vantage point? Current transportation? I guess the question is, challenges. And I hate to overuse that word. But what is the current challenge for transportation in Florida?

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 10:52

Well, part of it is with the transportation. So the way the transportation is structured in the state is that there's this thing called the state transportation trust fund based up in Tallahassee, run by the Florida Department of Transportation, and they build these work plans. And it's normally it's a current year budget plus the next five years, and they roll it into a single fund. And then that's what they're contracting every single year. Those contracts are based on projects that are going to happen 20 years from now. And they're using assumptions on population growth 20 years ago for projects that are going into place today. So I mean, the biggest issue is a lack of flexibility, the deal with a changing environment, in my opinion, and we it's hard to get the public funds to go in there and repair things like bridges, expand highways, deal with, again, unexpected population growth that we just didn't see back then.

Sam Yates: 11:53

A few years back, when I say a few 1015 years back, it's few it's in relative terms, there seem to be a big push for inter modal transportation, connecting different hubs, whether it'd be an air hub, a rail hub, or a commerce center, that, from what I am seeing now, that's not so much happening anymore.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 12:18

No, now he kind of gets back to that budget that was put together years ago, is that we just didn't consider rail. And I'm a big fan of rail. I know it's kind of a mixed mixed reputation. And part of that is the idea that, you know, moving people and goods is always cheaper by rail. But when you go to build a rail, everybody wants to stop it because everybody wants to stop at a train station and makes it exponentially more expensive than building a highway. And

Sam Yates: 12:47

we're seeing that here on the East Coast with bright line right now.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 12:51

Yes, exactly. So it's kind of it's kind of a bureaucratic nightmare to build, build a rail, even.

Sam Yates: 12:58

I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 13:00

was disturbed even though building a rail is economically makes more sense. I have

Sam Yates: 13:07

been negligent and starting the interview that I haven't asked you how people may go about contacting you. And I guess that needs some differentiation as to who your end customer, how can they best contact you.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 13:23

Easiest way to contact us is to go through our website, we have a kind of like a Call to Action section, contact us. And you can send us an email, and we'll happily get back to you. And the web address is regional economic consulting.com. And

Sam Yates: 13:41

I'm watching the clock too, because I promised that we tried to keep this around 15 minutes as we cover a lot of different topics on the Florida Business Forum Podcast forecasting for 2023. Are we too early to make any forecast for what you have seen going on?

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 13:57

Oh, you too. It's such a mixed bag right now. The national economy is sending signals every which way and everything we do when it comes to forecasting. Florida depends on the national the National Economics and and in Florida is an outlier compared to the rest of the country right now. We we do not have the traditional mix of businesses, given the fact that we are service based economy and it's so is it too early? Yeah, it's specially in this in this world this day and age and supply chain issues to demand issues to then affect increasing the rates.

Sam Yates: 14:41

Jared Parker regional economic group, I want to leave the door open to have you come back at some point in the future our our guests, we try to make sure that we have people that are expert in their fields. So that door is going to be open for you to come back at some point in the future.

Jared Parker, Co-Founder Regoinal Economic Consulting Group: 14:57

Excellent. Thank you very much. I'd love to

Sam Yates: 15:00

And for our listeners right now, I want to say thank you for joining us for another episode of the Florida Business Forum Podcast. The Florida Business Forum is dedicated to showcasing Florida businesses and CEOs of all sorts to promote their business or not for profit in the only business forum of its type in Florida. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, the Florida Business Forum is now accepting guest applications. Have a great day everyone and stay tuned for more business