EDC board postpones selecting legal counsel, approves invoices

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

On Wednesday, Marc Farmer, the Copperas Cove Economic Development Corporation’s new executive director, sat in on his first monthly meeting with the board and EDC employees. He briefly told the board his approach as he gets to work at the helm of the corporation. 

“We do need to get our business park looking like a business park instead of just a field with trees. We’ll get that taken care of. I know the infrastructure is there,” Farmer said of The Narrows Business & Technology Park. 

“This stuff isn’t rocket science, but it’s meet ‘n greet, common ground, wearing out shoe leather,” Farmer said. “You’ve got to knock on doors, you’ve got to call. If you think you can sit in that office and wait for that phone to ring, you’re wrong. A lot of people think that way. It’s going to be hard work, it’s true.”

The EDC board, down two board members of five on Wednesday with one vacancy and with board chair Marc Payne absent, decided unanimously to postpone making a decision about selecting legal representation from three Requests For Qualifications received by the EDC. They also wanted to wait to give Farmer a chance to settle into the job and review the RFQs as well. The EDC has been without a designated legal counsel after the resignation of attorney Robert Gredel effective Sept. 30, 2016. 

It has received proposals from three firms to include The Knight Law Firm, LLP; Denton, Navarro, Rocha, Bernal, Hyde & Zech; and Nichols, Jackson, Dillard. The responses had been opened and read aloud at the EDC’s April 26 meeting but a decision was not made at that time.

The board did approve the release of funds to the City of Copperas Cove for payroll charges for work performed by city employees for the EDC, as well as payroll for EDC employees. The amounts are $11,055.90 for February 2017, $10,777.23 for March 2017 and $10,113.83 for April 2017, with a total of $31,946.96 for the three months.

Board members also approved the EDC’s financial report for March 2017. For the month of March, the EDC received its share of the city’s sales tax revenue, amounting to $106,198, bumping the sales tax revenue to $729,041 for the year. Operating expenditures for the month totaled $18,956, which included expenses for personnel, general administration expenses such as office supplies and utilities, business retention, the Entrepreneur Center, business attraction and building services.