Business View Magazine | September 2019

301 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 Fork has in its package of incentives to help lure businesses to relocate in the community. Another is its municipally-owned internet operation, the Spanish Fork Community Network. “Spanish Fork is unique in Utah in that we own and operate our own internet service providing company,” Anderson explains. “So, we can deliver fiber throughout the community – 100 Megabytes up and down kinds of speeds. And oftentimes, for a company, we can design a system to meet their specific needs in an affordable fashion – more affordable than other service providers that exist in the community, and with a higher level of service. And that’s something that a number of companies have found very appealing over the years. So, we have utility capacity that some other communities in our part of the world simply don’t have – whether it’s power or water, or our ability to treat wastewater effluent. Part of our ability to be open for business is our ability to provide those basic utility services that companies need. That’s the result of good planning and some great decisions that my predecessors and others made here to help put us in a very competitive situation, now, in terms of being able to provide a very high level of service while having some of the more affordable utility rates in the State of Utah.” In addition, Spanish Fork, like many communities in the State of Utah, utilizes Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as yet another tool to support new and existing businesses. “We have seven or eight projects that are operating, right now, where the city and other taxing entities have agreed to utilize TIF to incentivize companies either to locate here or to expand here in the community. We’ve used Tax Increment Financing as robustly as any community of our size in the State of Utah. As we continue to talk to businesses about locating here, that’s the thing that always comes up, first. We also rely on the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, which is a quasi-public/private entity that, for a number of years, has served as the State of Utah’s economic development arm. They are charged with managing the recruitment of new companies SPANI SH FORK , UTAH What can LEI do for you? RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING LAND SURVEYING 3 3 0 2 N . MA I N , S P AN I SH FOR K , UT AH 8 0 1 - 7 9 8 - 0 5 5 5 / www . l e i - e n g . c om