Starting in June and going through October 2013, I had the privilege to work on the Business Incentives and Economic Development in Lane County project with the Community Service Center. I was overjoyed when our project assignments were given because I am passionate about economic development. I decided to get a Master of Community and Regional Planning because it combines my economic background with my love for helping the community; and to me, economic development is the perfect marriage of the two.

As you can imagine, I was excited and ready to hit the ground running; and hit the ground running we did. The purpose of our project was to assist Lane County in understanding how their business incentive program compares to others in the State of Oregon and nationwide. For the next four months, our team interviewed Oregon counties along the I-5 corridor to identify their incentive programs; researched best practices of business incentives programs across the nation; and identified elements of good incentive policies including application criteria, evaluation mechanisms, and management strategies.

All of our hard work culminated in a report outlining our findings from the interviews and research of best practices. Not only did we provide Lane County with useful information regarding the use of business incentives in Oregon and nationwide, we also identified four guiding principles and four implementation strategies Lane County can consider for their own business incentives.

The “icing on top of the cake” for this project was when I was given the opportunity to present our research to the Lane County Board of Commissioners. The presentation went very well and the Board of Commissioners was genuinely interested in our findings and recommendations. The Board of Commissioners conclusion at the end of the presentation was to take our research and continue discussions regarding a policy for business incentives in Lane County. It was extremely exciting as a student to see how our work through the Community Service Center and Community Planning Workshop has the potential to impact decisions at the local level!

About the Author: Leigh Anne Michael is a project coordinator for the Community Planning Workshop (CPW) and is in her second year of the Master of Community and Regional Planning Program at the University of Oregon, focusing on economic development. Leigh Anne moved from Tennessee to Oregon in 2012 to pursue her graduate studies. She now considers Oregon her home and plans to stay in the Pacific Northwest upon graduation in June 2014.