George Mindling Column 03-15-2002 - More Than Just Numbers

More Than Just Numbers

Note: The following article was published in the Charlotte Sun Herald, but has been omitted from their on-line archives Sarasota, Lee and Collier counties are having economic expansion that Charlotte County does not share. What do they have to attract business? How are they doing it? Take a look at Lee County's Web site at http://www.leecountybusiness.com/. With 15 full time members on it's staff, the Lee County Economic Development Office takes full advantage of everything from the International Airport to the sunshine and water. Cape Coral advertises itself with the phrase, "You'll like the attitude in Paradise," with a half page ad in the Florida Small Business magazine. Simply stated, as a community, we have to have the desire for economic growth, the attitude that says you'll love it here and we'll do our best to prove it, and that is the critical first step. According to the Economic Development Office, the average salary in Charlotte County last year was $23,845, up from the previous $22,554. That is salary per wage earner, not the family median income, which according to the latest HUD figures, is around $43,000. According to those figures, every wage earning family in Charlotte County has to have two wage earners. Either both husband and wife work, or as is the case with many families, the single parent has to hold down two, sometimes three jobs. There are many such families in Charlotte County. The average income in the United States was $35,305, and the average income for the State of Florida was $30,038! The average income in Charlotte County is over $6000 less than the state average! It was discouraging to listen to the Economic Development Office's annual presentation to the County Commissioners on February 26. The presentation, done in the standard Microsoft PowerPoint format, was available on line at as an agenda item on the updated County Commission Web Page. The Economic Development Office only presented the first five slides before handing the podium over to the President of the Chamber of Commerce, only four minutes into the presentation. The information was presented in single slides of Business Environment, Enterprise Charlotte, Representatives, and one of "Visioning." There were four more slides on S.W.O.T., or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and then the show was turned over to Janet Watermeier, executive director of the Economic Development Office of Lee County. Janet did the bulk of the presentation, finishing with slides that were not included in the on-line agenda. There was no warm, fuzzy feeling realizing Charlotte County couldn't give its own report. After the presentation, Commissioners thanked the EDO office for all the wonderful work, but only Matt DeBoer added any substance to the presentation. DeBoer, as a member of Enterprise Charlotte, had attended the subcommittee workshops, and even commented on impact fees and utility connect fees. The current practice of not disclosing impact fees until the time the Certificate of Occupancy is awarded is but one of many problems. More than one commissioner responded with blank stares. If only one Commissioner does their homework, Charlotte County is in deep economic trouble in the future. It will take more than one Commissioner to make that critical first step. George Mindling Port Charlotte, Florida

George Mindling Column 12-20-2002 - Killing The Goose

Killing The Goose

Note: The following article was published in the Charlotte Sun Herald, but has been omitted from their on-line archives

We slowed and turned off US-41 at Monroe Station onto Loop road, the fifteen mile dirt road that years ago had been a logging road back into what is now part of the Big Cypress Preserve. We thought we would help the South Florida economy by taking a Thanksgiving weekend vacation in Key West, and we were going to show our friends who had accompanied us a different view of the glades by taking a short detour off of the beaten track. We had only gone a few, slow, dusty miles when our friend Joanie jokingly asked if we really "saw wildlife back here." No sooner had she asked when a bear blustered onto the dirt road not thirty feet in front of us. The bear looked up, than scampered across the road into the hammock leaving only ripples in the shallow water next to the road. It took several seconds before everyone yelled, "A Bear!!!" It was gone before anyone could open a camera bag.

You might as well tell people you saw a skunk ape as tell them you saw a bear, no one is going to believe you. I didn't want to tell anyone anyway, especially the Park Service. They might pass a rule requiring 37 per cent fewer driveways as a means of reducing automobile traffic that endangers wildlife.

Our daughter and her husband-to-be flew in from Atlanta on the newly inaugurated daily non stop flight to meet us Thanksgiving evening and helped us celebrate my coincidental birthday. I couldn't help but tell of my marvelous birthday present of seeing the bear. My daughter has spent time out there with me in the past, seeing alligators and otters, tree snails and pigs, a multitude of wading birds, but never a bear. We began to discuss the future of our beloved Florida and the wonder of ecological recovery. We had made trips years ago to see the wood stork, then endangered and remembered not too long ago when even alligators were endangered. The discussion turned to the organizations that supposedly exist to protect and enrich our environment when the subject of phosphate mining came up.

All of the so called "environment friendly" 501C3 tax free organizations are conspicuous by their absence from the fight against phosphate mining, yet oddly enough, these tax exempt organizations are beginning to dictate how the average citizen will live on a daily basis.

Florida's precious future is more important than a few ill conceived laws designed to restrict rights of individual property owners and taxpayers. There is room here for people and the creatures that make our state so unique. Every boater I know has gone out of his or her way to avoid porpoises and manatees. What is more thrilling than watching wildlife that can be seen in your own backyard or from your own boat. Hopefully, Florida will respond with the intelligence required to balance growth and our environment. But that has to be now, not in the future.

George Mindling 

George Mindling Column 6-10-2005- Again, Caveat Emptor

Caveat Emptor

Note: The following article was published in the Charlotte Sun Herald, but has been omitted from their on-line archives An upset customer was in front of me, perplexed and mad that she had been sold an empty box. The box should have contained an electronic device of some kind, I couldn’t tell what. Perhaps a cell phone or a personal digital assistant of some sort, but when she got home and opened the box she found it was empty. The young salesman was apologetic, and almost as confused as the customer. After watching from the back of the sales counter for several minutes, the manager finally walked over and without saying a word, replaced the empty box with one from under the counter. After opening the box to prove this one contained the product, the customer, still upset, placed her receipt and the new box back in the shopping bag and left. The young clerk began telling the manager he had no idea he had sold the box from a store display unit and that it wouldn’t happen again. The manager said dryly, “Too bad she opened it!” He was quite serious as he carefully replaced the empty box back under the counter. He turned and walked away, leaving the salesman with his mouth open. Caveat Emptor was definitely the business model for this retailer. Latin for "Let the buyer beware", Caveat Emptor is the idea that buyers take responsibility for the condition of the items they purchase and should examine them before purchase. If you don’t have a written warranty or guarantee when you buy a product or service, you expose yourself to this type of problem. With today’s consumers spending more time doing Internet research before entering a store, retailers find some customers are well informed of prices and features before they ever enter the store. On line buying is slowly becoming more popular, especially when free shipping is offered. Even with the traditional retail outlets, consumers are arming themselves with competitive quotes and comparisons before talking with salespeople. The more expensive the product, the more likely on line research is used prior to actually making a purchase. According to an article in the April 2nd-8th 2005 issue of “The Economist”, even Ford Motor Company is finding that eight of ten customers have already used the internet to decide what car they want to buy and what they are willing to pay before they arrive at the showroom floor. No amount of planning or research, however, can take the place of caution or prudence when making the actual purchase. Knowing what recourse you have with the retailer should you be dissatisfied with your purchase should be a major part of your decision to do business with any store or seller. Dealing with an individual seller is a matter of personal risk. From goats to go karts, bargaining has always been part of dealing with individual owners and sellers. When it comes to a nationally known retailer though, customers tend to not be as skeptical with a purchase. Caveat Emptor indeed. George Mindling © 2005

George Mindling Column 01-14-2005 - Retirement Cruise Ships

Are Retirement Cruise Ships a Good Idea?

As a realist, the idealistic argument by Drs. Lee A. Lindquist and Robert M. Golub for permanent retirement cruising immediately draws my interest. Particularly since my wife and I love to cruise.

The Northwestern University doctors have proposed permanent retirement cruising as an alternative to assisted-living facilities on land. I have already written about several issues I see as problem areas in their plan, but have since re-evaluated parts of my position. Even realists can be flexible.

However, my new opinion is based on one, very basic change to their proposal. That change is the retirement cruise ship never leave port. Kind of like the battleships USS North Carolina in Wilmington or the USS Alabama permanently anchored in Mobile Bay. An almost floating, permanent structure that serves as a retirement home without actually running the engines. We now have a use for the S/S Norway, rotting away in Bremerhaven with a blown boiler.

No longer interfering with paying passengers who are actually enjoying cruising, the “semi-floating” retirement cruise ship could be operated for considerably less money than a real cruise ship and offer a whole new experience to it’s occupants.

One offside is now we would have to pay scale for the hired help instead of the $1.10 a day the average room steward makes at sea. Paying for trained personnel to take care of elderly residents would now be on par with land-based establishments, and would run the operating costs up drastically, but, hey, the inland establishments won’t have as much fresh air!

Also on the positive side, no one will get seasick! No more worries about “Cruiser’s Flu!” And you can always abandon ship without getting wet. Well, if you get off on the right side, anyway. No more life boat drills, or as I call them, the “Parade of New Shoes!” A Captain would no longer be needed! The formal dinner can now be replaced with a super-sized meal from McDonalds! In fact, you could save money by taking out the radar and ships computers. They won’t be needed.

The foreign port shopping centers such as St. Thomas will be only a distant memory. The ship can always show videos of old, prior trips! Most customers won’t care anyway, just put on QVC or the HSN. The home shopping networks are clobbering the traditional tax-free shopping centers as it is.

Now the issue of visitors is solved! Since Homeland Security won’t be concerned about leaving the country, visitors will be allowed on and off without being screened! And the kids can leave whenever they want. No more waiting to return to homeport to end a reunion gone wrong!

If the ship were docked in Mississippi or Louisiana, the old casino could be put to good use. That in itself would give some developers the taste for a case study. Plus, the prestige address of living on a cruise ship must be worth some marketing up-lift. The good doctors from Northwestern may be on to something after all!

George Mindling 

George Mindling Column 9-24-2004 - Dealing With Damaged PCs

Dealing With Damaged PCs

As Internet cable and telephone services are slowly restored to our hurricane damaged area, people once again turn on their PCs and attempt to log onto the Internet. E-mails are backed up beyond capacity for many users as some people haven’t checked their messages since August 13th.

Some Personal Computers were waterlogged and many were covered with debris from collapsing ceilings. A few people actually covered their systems with garbage bags before the storm, a simple but effective way to protect personal computers and printers from contamination. Most PCs, however, were not protected from Hurricane Charley.

While many people simply brush off the unit and plug it in, PCs that were subjected to the elements should be checked by someone qualified to say whether or not a unit is safe to power on. Powering up a PC subjected to obvious water contamination is a good way to fry a power supply or a system board. A hard drive is usually pretty safe, although I had one fail yesterday. Connectors and cables may show signs of rust or corrosion that will lead to premature failure. In the case of a hard drive that comes back to life after being subjected to the elements, don’t be surprised if the life expectancy is shortened considerably. If you are lucky enough to get your machine to cooperate, copy the hard drive’s data to a back up source as soon as possible. The best bet is new hard drive at worst, a new PC at best. Saving your data to CDs or DVDs is almost mandatory. A PC that has been sitting idle for an extended time may not power up without groans of protestation as the hard drive tries to attain operating speed. Sometimes the noise is a bad fan, but that is another problem that will lead to overheating the processor chip or the memory chips.

There are many ways to back up your systems, from the older tape drives to RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) disk arrays. I use a mirror hard drive to back up my programs and data. In other words, I have two identical hard drives in my PC. One used normally, the other is an exact duplicate of the main drive. I use a commercially available disk copy program to copy the data from one to the other.

I hadn’t backed up the complete system since April, and yesterday my C, or main drive, failed completely. The drive motor died and nothing will make it spin again. Effectively, the drive is useless. I had backed up my financial data on CD the day before the hurricane, so reloading current data was no problem. I had to load several program updates that weren’t on the back up drive, but that only took a couple of hours and I am again writing on my PC. Now I need to backup the new drive. I know it will fail eventually, I just don’t know when.

George Mindling ©  2004

George Mindling Column 10-8-2004 - Groups Must Step Up

Groups Must Step Up

The first thing to catch my eye was a stack of bumper stickers stacked neatly on the corner of the reception desk. “I’m Pro-Business and I Vote!” the red, white and blue message proudly proclaimed at the office of the Oconee County Chamber of Commerce office in Watkinsville, Georgia.

I had stopped by for a local map, and ended up intrigued by this small, unassuming county just south of Athens, Georgia. I wanted to find their quaint old-fashioned covered bridge featured in their local brochures, and instead found an active, involved Chamber of Commerce (http://www.occoc.org). What a pleasant surprise to talk to the woman who put her purse back on her desk and chatted with me even though I had walked in to the office right at the closing hour.

The attitudes of the local merchants and Chamber members seem to reflect the commitment found in most Chambers of Commerce. What I saw as a major difference was the involvement of their economic development committee in the highway planning of a major artery in their area. They are actively engaged in the highway planning process, especially whether to adapt a policy encouraging a toll on the major four-lane divided highway between Atlanta and Athens. Its development is an important piece of future economic growth. Four different government agencies and committees attended a recent highway development forum held by the Committee. That kind of involvement will result in the community reaping benefits that might otherwise be lost.

The economic and business profile of Charlotte County will get a face lift following Hurricane Charley, but whether it gets a major overhaul is doubtful. The dependency on small, service-oriented businesses will not change. Our current workforce is generally stressed to make the financial obligations incurred as a result of Hurricane Charley. Many are on unemployment and will not find work in their old locations for months to come. Many cannot even afford the deductibles on their homeowners insurance.

The simple truths about home ownership here will dictate some changes. Not all retirees on fixed incomes will be able to afford the expected increases in home and hurricane insurance. The assessed values on homes will continue to increase, and many may find the cost of home ownership here beginning to feel like the rest of Florida. The areas devastated by Hurricane Charley will have more than a few homes subjected to the 50% rule, where the current structure must be demolished and rebuilt from scratch in accordance with current building laws. The new homes will reflect newer styles and facades and may entice new builders to the damaged neighborhoods. Unfortunately, many home sites will sit abandoned for extended periods while insurance and mortgage companies resolve issues with bankrupt owners who simply move away.

Hurricane Charley will be the catalyst that pries our community, like it or not, out of the past and into the current state of Florida. Now is the time for all business organizations, from the business alliances and the Chamber of Commerce to take real leadership roles in our rebuilding process. 

George Mindling

George Mindling Column 12-31-2004 - No Permanent Retirement Cruising

Permanent Retirement Cruising not Feasible

An “outside the box” idea about cruising is getting a lot of press these days. Permanent retirement cruising, a concept that would put retirees on cruise ships instead of assisted living facilities, is currently being touted by two Northwestern University professors. While there is a fanciful, Pollyanna air to the idea, no one seems to want to discuss the actual mechanics of living on a cruise ship.

Drs. Lee A. Lindquist and Robert M. Golub make their financial case for cruise ship living without mentioning the one item the U.S. government doesn’t cover outside the United States: Medicare. A retiree can have Social Security payments deposited anywhere, but Medicare requires additional insurance, called Medigap to cover medical services outside the U.S. Perhaps the doctors feel if you can afford to cruise, you should be able to afford your own medical coverage. Although the concept supposedly shows the financial advantage to being constantly at sea, it doesn’t mention the fact that most ships at sea have only dispensaries, not full medical facilities or staff. Ships doctors are not specialists in geriatrics, nor are they surgeons. They are the first line of medical care. Being at the mercy of some of the third world ports for emergency medical care is enough to scare a person back to health!

While we’re looking at costs, the thought of having visitors on a cruise ship that stays in any port less than 12 hours is interesting to say the least. The cost of visiting would be the cost of passage on the ship. Remember, no visitors in port! At a thousand or so bucks a pop, that’s not a great way to entice the kids to visit. They would have to stay a week at a time, too. Grandkids have a way of being cute from 9 to 5, then its time to give them back to Mom and Dad. Not on a cruise ship. Not many places to hide, and the kiddie areas tend to be stark, at best. Maybe they could play in the engine room.

Since the average stateroom is smaller than the proverbial breadbox, maybe guests could sleep in the closet with the life jackets. Since the mandatory cabin gratuity, not mentioned by the good doctors, is ten dollars a day per person, the kiddies would generate another cost left out of the concept.

The main cost the good doctors overlook is the constant need for new clothes. The average passenger gains between five and ten pounds each cruise. Clothes would have to be replaced at least twice a month! Even with the informal attire one wears while cruising, the cost of new formal wear for the weekly Captain’s dinners would offset any financial gain.

There is one advantage I like that the good doctors didn’t mention. If I die on a cruise, they can just toss me overboard with a flower or two and head for the next port. That is the only thing I see cheaper than on land.

George Mindling © 2004