(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to The Journal, I'm Steve Kendall.

With this blend of agriculture, industrial and service industries at its central location, Henry County is well-positioned to be set up for increasing economic development.

Currently very successful, more's in store.

Joining us for this first segment here on The Journal, will be the Executive Director of the Henry County Community Improvement Corporation, April Welch, Henry County Commissioner, Bob Hadstedt and also Sean Rupp of Rupp Enterprises.

So welcome to The Journal today and thank you for taking the time to be with us, appreciate you being here today.

- Thank you so much for having us we appreciate the invitation.

- Yeah, yeah and April, if you could talk just a little bit about, explain what the, Henry County Community Improvement Corporation does, what its purpose is and then we'll talk about some of the initiatives you have going on there.

- So the Henry County Community Improvement Corporation, is charged with the economic development of the entire County.

So we focus on business attraction, business expansion and then a lot of workforce development issues that we're working on.

- Yeah, yeah.

Now and Commissioner Hadstedt, talk a little about the counties involved because obviously County commissioners, have a lot on their plate running the County but economics is what drives, you know, the budgets for the County.

So talk a little about your role and the county's role in economic development, at Henry County.

- Oh, okay, you know?

Yeah, that's one of the things when you become a County commissioner and you get in there and you read the things that you're supposed to do and it's on the list, economic development is is right at the top of the list, actually.

So that's why we always have a commissioner, on the CIC Board here at Henry County and to kinda get our edge in there.

This is primarily an agricultural county.

- [Steve] Right.

- But like all we always have room for expansion and we just had a new factory open up, in the last couple of years.

When they came on they said, how are we gonna, I asked, how are we gonna fill this many jobs, 403 to 400 jobs?

They're there, the people are there so we have room and it is important.

- Yeah, it's.

- With the tax rates and everything that's how we pay our bills.

- Yeah and that's one of the things that, and when we talk with county officials and economic development officials from around Northwest Ohio, one of the key elements is the workforce and we're blessed with that Midwest work ethic here and of course, even the Northwest Ohio work ethic, especially in our more rural county.

So that's the thing people say where are the employees gonna come from?

They're here and they're well-educated and they're well-trained, and they're well motivated, so you've touched on a really important point.

Yeah.

- And we've noticed as we continue to get projects coming through our pipeline that more and more businesses, new businesses are concerned about where the workforce is coming from and they wanna know what the commutes are like and, you know, your proximity to larger cities.

So we've seen a focus on that as well as for our expansion projects, you know, when there's looking to expand and add new employees they wanna make sure that there's talented people that are ready to fill all those positions.

So that's a huge initiative that we're working on, that we've been working on and continue to focus on for 2021.

- Yeah, and Mr. Rupp your, talk a little about your business, what Rupp Enterprises does with regard to the economic development in Henry County.

- We are a spec building company, mostly industrial development company and the project that Bob was talking about there with JAC Products we did a couple of years ago, started as a spec building and became a doubling the size of the entire project and taking on 375 employees there as a result of the building being there for the company to move into.

Part of the problem with development stuff is when people are ready to go they're ready to go now they aren't ready to go a year from now when the building gets built.

So we kinda start on the front end and pick the locations and do a lot of that groundwork and then the companies come to us and look for a place to be and that's very much what happened with JAC Products.

We enjoy working in Henry County and that area they're very helpful to our needs and to what we need to get started, the location close to the bigger metropolises and that, help out when they're trying to find people, that was a big concern with JAC Products.

They moved down from Saline, Michigan, they still have an operation there, I don't mean they moved out but they moved down here, 'cause they couldn't get any more people in Saline.

Yeah.

- Oh.

- This was a big boost to them to be able to come in and actually have people respond when they put out for applications and to give people, they were very excited about that.

- Yeah and you mentioned too, the kind of location which gives you access to larger population basis and this is for all three of you, will have everyone talk about it, how important has the upgrade of US-24 been to Henry County?

Like talk a little bit about that.

- You know, at first when we talked about, or when it was talked about 30 years ago, probably when it started I thought that's gonna eat up a lot of farm ground and it did, but, and I'm a farmer at heart I'll tell you that right now, but putting it out there now you get on that road and you can be in Fort Wayne, or you can be in Toledo and in very short order, it makes a big difference and it does even help our agriculture industry here, in Henry County and not only our ag industry but all of our industry to have a a four-lane highway right out your back door, that'll get you connected to everything that you need, that's a big item, that is a big item.

- Yeah I know 'cause.

- Most of, you can go ahead, go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Most of our customers are automotive related, in a bigger industrial stuff to find stamping there and the Bowling and JAC Products and others and they liked that location 'cause you're just down the road from the Fort Wayne Truck and bus plant, you're just up the road the other way to the Jeep plant and North to Detroit, to the place there.

So it's kind of a central area for them, even the Japanese operations, Honda, Toyota or down in Southern Ohio and Mid-Ohio and Indiana as well.

So it makes it a nice spot for them to branch out into 24 hours, certainly helps them get to 69, 75, Salina, Fort Wayne, all the places they need to be.

That was a good project.

It was a worrisome project when it was going on it.

- Sure.

- Right down the front of one of our properties as well but it certainly has proved to be an asset to the community there.

- Yeah and I guess too, you also have access to the, well, the 109, 108, 300 Delta and places like that, which also then give North-South access to the Ohio Turnpike as well.

So you have connections with that also, so that, that works out too.

Yeah.

- Yes, and I'd like to just add one thing in there about workforce and then we can talk about that a little bit later but the one thing about, you know, having farm people, agriculture people there, a lot of them don't farm enough ground, they have to have a job on the site, that's your number one thing.

The number two thing and a big asset that we're really losing in Henry County is our young people that don't wanna stay here because there aren't enough jobs available and in my opinion if we're gonna do anything we need to build some some industry here to keep those young people here and keep them interested in our area because Henry County is a great place to live and work.

- Yeah, yeah, and those are very good points, there is that migration to larger cities.

It seems, especially with younger people they wanna see a big city but then in some cases that's where their job happens to be and so, yeah, it's a very good point that in order to keep them in Ohio and use all of those skills that we've been able to give them it'd be nice to have them stay here and enjoy, you know, the nice lifestyle that we have here, so that's a very good point.

- And that's certainly gonna be a neat tie into what Jim and Jim Hoops are gonna talk about too with a Four County program out there in Northwest Tech and I guess Northwest Community College now, I'm sorry I'm old school.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- But I'm just in love with the programs they're doing out there to help train maintenance people, train electricians, my son's taking a welding classes out there right now, all skills that we need to have to give people a little better wages and make them more useful for the jobs that we have out here.

- Yeah, great.

Okay, well, we appreciate you being on for this segment and thank you again for taking the time to join us here.

We'll be back in just a moment with more about economic development in Henry County.

You're on The Journal on WBGU-PBS.

Thanks for staying with us here on The Journal.

We're talking about economic development in Henry County and we're joined in this segment by April Welch again, the Executive Director of the Henry County Community Improvement Corporation, County Commissioner Bob Hadstedt and also this time, by Jim Drewes who is involved in workforce development and he'll be more specific about that a little later in the segment, at Northwest State Community College.

So April, let's talk a little bit about, we mentioned this in the first segment briefly but talk about the importance of workforce development when it comes to what you do in terms of economic development.

So we wanna make sure that we are building a talented pipeline of workforce for any expansion projects or any attraction projects and right now we're really looking, at getting into the schools, you know, even as young as elementary schools to educate them on the importance of, you know, (clears throat) exposing them to different careers and those careers that we have right here in Henry County.

So hopefully they know of those careers so that they can, we can retain those young people or if they do go off to college out of the city or out of the state, that we can bring them back to jobs that we have right here.

So we're really taking a hard focus in that and making sure that they know everything that's available that, right here in the County.

- Yeah and I know Commissioner Hadstedt, you mentioned the fact that one of the the important things is keeping people who grew up around here in the area.

So, and obviously information and training are extremely important and the County is working with all of those different partners in that to make that happen.

- Yes I, you know, as I mentioned earlier in the segment, we're losing our biggest asset and that's our young people and we wanna keep them here and the other asset that we have to help do that is Northwest State Community College and it's a great job there and I won't speak anything about that because Jim's the boss on that one.

- Okay, all right.

Yeah and Jim Drewes, talk about your role, I know that, I looked at your title and hopefully we've got it right but it says, Executive Director Community and Workforce Development, Custom Training Solutions, Northwest State.

So talk a little bit about what's behind all of that a little bit, what your role is.

- Well, that's very good question too because Custom Training Solutions, is the workforce development arm of Northwest State Community College.

So if you can understand that we've been here for 50 years and then what we is take curriculum and I typically go to companies and do incumbent worker trainings.

So I'm more connected to presses and companies and sometimes companies will not prefer to have the students sit out here for 64 hours for college class, they might want me on site for a 32 hours, 24 hours, one day, whatever the class has to be.

So I have a lot of traveling equipment, 90% of the custom training solutions businesses onsite, at customer locations and I would say my biggest change, I just completed my 10th year here and I would say the work from incumbent and apprentice training to workforce solutions is more of our goal right now and you know, working with April at the CIC is part of that now, I'll say 10 years ago with Rob McColley and Jim Hoops we started to really work with companies and the drain of workforce and outreach, the youth is what we're really after now.

Rob started the route six group and that kinda blossomed into a training center at the Automatic Feed Company right in Napoleon.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- So that company hosts pre-engineering students.

Last year we just added up industrial skilled, in the morning session.

Now with COVID we had a delay with getting some kids scheduled there, but what we have for that is hydraulics, pneumatics, industrial electricity, more hands-on, a different pathway as compared to the afternoon engineering classes.

April and I have a great time with a high schools in Henry County and it's Patrick Henry, it's Holgate, Liberty Center and Napoleon Schools.

Then we work with Four County Career Center, then from Northwest State perspective, we kinda bring the skill and the workforce up a little bit more with more in-depth training.

Our biggest issue is probably finding, these undecided students and I love the Henry County kids that have worked hard with the 3.5 GPA, they're going to a four-year college but there's a big group of kids that haven't quite found their way.

We'd like to get them to four kinda career school for career pathway but if they don't we go to high school and offer shorter term training, maybe more of a career outlook and try to get to those kids.

We have some high schools graduating anywhere from 20 to 35% of their high school seniors with no pathway and that means no military, no a college plan and those are the kids we're looking after.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Maybe the kids serving in a service industry that just haven't found their way and to us it's more of an education factor than anything else.

It's bringing knowledge to these kids, what's in Henry County like?

Like Mr. Hadstedt said before, we're losing these kids that are going away and getting jobs whether it's in Columbus, Lucas County, wherever and they have jobs right here in Henry County which are very similar.

So that's the kinda things we do and I'm also tied with Job and Family Services which has been a real, I will say, improvement too.

April, I work with the Job and Family Service office and that's an age group of 14-24.

So we look at the 18-24 that are under employed and we can give them job skills to walk into a factory to begin an entry-level position and hopefully walk into an apprentice program for a higher livable wage.

Then that 14-17 year-old we work really hard to give them the career pathways, something as simple showing them a virtual welder, at Northwest State.

We have a virtual welder which is not the real thing but it's kinda similar to an arcade game and the kids just love it and it shows them what welding could be.

So those are the things we look at from a youth outreach to high school graduates, Job and Family Services, Incumbent Worker Training.

- Now, have you found that, 'cause this has been talked about a long time, the fact that, you know, there was a large push for, everybody should go to college for four years and obviously, you know, the television station is affiliated with Bowling Green State University, were a four-year university, so we have some vested interest in that.

But at the same time as you mentioned, there's a significant portion of high school students, junior high students who that may not be the pathway for them, have you found that the acceptance now is better for an alternative path besides just go to a four-year university?

Has that been more positive than maybe it was 10, 15, 20 years ago?

- I think that our local high schools, are doing a really good job of presenting the options equally so that there is still a push, you know, to go into, you know, whatever career path that you choose but I think that it's not putting on them that that's the only way to go to be successful.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause there is a lot of other exposures or technical training that they can do that doesn't necessarily mean they have to go to a four-year college if they're not ready for that outta high school.

- Yeah, and Jim real quick is it, will give you the last word in this segment, if someone's interested in what you do there, what's the easiest way for them to contact you and talk about what you can provide for them and how you can partner with companies and organizations in Henry County and in the area.

- No, our direct line is (419) 267-5511, I believe and that's, you just call and ask for Custom Training Solutions.

My office number is (419) 267-1390 and you can call it or my email's first initial, last name jdrewes@northweststate.edu.

- Okay, great, good.

Well, thank you again for taking the time to be with us.

We'll be back in just a second, we'll be talking with some of the elected officials from Henry County and the state's role in economic development in the State of Ohio and in Henry County specifically.

Back in just a moment you're on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

In this segment we're joined once again, by April Welsh, Executive Director, Henry County Community Improvement Corporation, also District 1 State, Senator Rob McColley and a state representative from District 81, Jim Hoops and of course they represent Henry County both of them.

Let's talk a little bit about the state's role and I know that as we've gone through the other discussions that we've had today, the state in economic development with the government involvement, in an economic development obviously is a key part.

So, you know, Jim or Rob, one of you wanna jump in and talk about the state's role and how you see that with economic development in your district, the areas you represent.

- [Jim] Go ahead, Rob.

- Yeah.

- Well I think that the state does play a big role in that some of it is in a macro sense and some of it is in a micro sense.

So from a macro point of view we have to make sure Ohio is a great place to live, work and raise a family.

We have to make sure that Ohio, especially relative to other States, has a good business environment, isn't over-regulating, isn't overtaxing and many of those things and then on top of that from a more micro point of view, there are programs that we've put in place regarding the Tech credit Program that will allow employers to seek reimbursement for training their employees.

There are some other programs we've put in place through tax abatements and things of that nature, allow our locals to be a little bit more competitive with what's going on and some other grant programs for infrastructure expansion and whatnot and then one thing that's coming on the horizon, this is actually a bill that I'm working on directly, deals with broadband expansion in the rural areas.

You know certainly we've seen this need become, even more prevalent over the past year where it's kind of created a haves and have-nots among people who do or don't have internet and so we need to make sure going into the coming years as that need becomes even more pressing that we do what we can to ensure the expansion of broadband throughout all these underserved areas.

- Yeah, that's a really good point because if you, especially with the situation we've dealt with with regard to COVID-19, for people who are working from home which a lot of people are at the moment, still are, if you can't do that it is a downward pull on being able to do your job and rural areas have been traditionally kind of underserved just simply because of the lack of density of population.

So yeah, broadband, adequate broadband, better than adequate broadband, a real important thing and I guess as both of you look at how the state can deal with that, what is the atmosphere in Columbus right now?

With regard to looking at things that would make Ohio a better place to do business and to work and raise a family, that sort of thing, what is the climate right now for that in the legislature?

- Well, for me, I think in the house I think the climate is, you know, you look at the things that Senator McColley talked about, you know, to keep the tax rates low and by doing that, you expand the base and then also keeping the regulations, you know, continue to eliminate regulations which Senator McColley was very instrumental, in a bill he got through last year and then also keeping the electrical rates low and those are some of the things that we're looking at.

I know (laughs) there's this House Bill 6 that's out there and there were some good things in there that, but there were also some things we find out later on how they came about, we're gonna have to look at that and I think those are three things that we'll look at but then also looking at the workforce and how do we bring people here to the state of Ohio?

One of the things I felt that really helped, you know, a few years back when a individual went to like a community college and then they ended up going to a four-year a lot of those credits then move with that person and so we did some things that, to make sure that those credits moved on because you went from, you know, an associates degree and then if you wanted to get a bachelor's degree all those credits, we wanted to make sure moved on and I feel that that's very important as people look at what they wanna do in the future.

- Right.

Yeah and because that there is an economic, there is a cost to providing whether it's an associate's degree or a bachelor's, so you don't want somebody to have to start completely over, when they already have two years of quality education in hand.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

- And I think too, I was reading an article, you know, the millenniums, you know, one thing they're looking at is they're, you know, they wanna get a good job but they also wanna be able to do some other things, you know, outside their job and what the article talked about was bike trails, walking trails, you know, those types of things and here up in here in Northwest Ohio, we have a trail called the Buckeye Trail, that's a circular trail around the State of Ohio and it also connects to a trail from South Dakota all the way to New York.

So it's just things like that I think young people are also looking at, you know, that they have other things outside of just work.

- Yeah that balance of work and quality of life, whatever and yeah, you don't have to sell me, I'm a huge user of the Cannonball Trail and all of that.

- Sure.

- So that it's an advantage, it's a valuable tool that makes it attractive to live here and that's what, as you said, millennials especially, they're looking for more than just, well, and as we know, more than just one job, they are going to have four or five, six, maybe different positions if not more than that over the course of their lifetime versus previous generations who did one thing for 30 years or whatever.

So it's a more.

- Right.

- Of a challenge with them, you're right.

You're right.

- Yep.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

I mean, I also think with this budget that we put in or the governor has put in, where and the budget was just introduced to, in the house last week and so we're looking at some of the pride dissecting, it is a good word for it and then once we get done the Senate will dissect it and I don't know, Rob, you'll probably just agree to everything (laughs) that the house does and we'll just move on and, but if not, but some of the things, you know, that we're looking at is and one thing we found with, especially with this pandemic is people having to up-skill in their jobs, you know, and I think that's where community, Northwest State and Jim Drewes and April, they do a good job of finding now, what exactly do we need out there?

And I've always seen a community college like a speedboat, you know, they can change on a dime where sometimes a four-year college and nothing against four years, but they're like a tanker or it's tough for them to change a curriculum but a community college can change something.

So like Jim goes to a community or a business and they say, we need this and this and this, they can change it, you know, very quickly and I think that's very important too for some of these people 'cause there's a lot of jobs out there but the key is, are people qualified to do those jobs?

- Yeah, okay.

I think we'll have to leave it there because we're right on the right edge of time here.

I wanna thank, you know, Rob McColley, Jim Hoops and of course, April, thank you so much for being on the talk with us about those issues and we welcome you all back, at any time you're interested in coming on to talk about those issues that affect Henry County and the state with our representatives and our senators.

So thank you again for being here.

You can check us out at WBGU.org and of course you can join us every Thursday night, at eight o'clock on the journal on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again, next time.

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