Seneca Development Committee gets started

The newly formed Seneca Development Committee held their first meeting Tuesday night. The committee is comprised of council members Herman Smith, who serves as chairperson, Dana Moore and Denise Rozman. In addition, Seneca Mayor Dan Alexander, City Administrator Greg Dietterick, Utilities Director Bob Faires, Planning and Community Development Director Ed Halbig, Finance Director Josh Riches and Destination Oconee Manager Janet Hartman serve on the committee as ex officio members. They discussed the downtown reinvestment area, business development incentive program and the commercial building improvement program. Smith said the first meeting went well and that they are just getting started. “Well, it went very good yesterday. We’ve got a great group of people together just brain storming. Bob Faires, Ed Halbig and Josh Riches along with Janet Hartman have put together a draft of an ordinance that allows for new companies coming into the immediate downtown of Main Street and North 1st Street, it gives us a chance to get buildings upgraded. There are different ways that you can get grant money through the incentives and it is for business developers and business owners, there are two separate ways. It was a draft 100% and we are still working on it. We are planning on meeting again, everybody is going to digest everything we went through yesterday and we still need to add some stuff and some needs to be taken out just to try to make it as fair as we can across the board for everybody because we all want the city to prosper and do well. We want to be a destination, there has to be a reason for you to come downtown, not to just show up, not to just drive through, we want you to have a reason to come here. The mayor is behind it 100%, Mr. Dietterick and the entire council, so it is first step and a big step and we are going to make sure we do it right.” A document handed out during the committee meeting states, “The downtown lags behind in terms of business activity due to decreased traffic and decreased private investment.”