small business tours with Office of Economic Growth

1:47:20Thank you. Let's have uh a couple of I'm glad David came back to the meeting 'cause coming forward David I won't I want you to go over what we did yesterday. So

1:47:33uh meet yesterday with some small businesses in the area, one in Dade City and one in Zephyrhills and I think we both learned something by going out and talking to 'em and what maybe we can do for a small business, especially when they even they we found out one really needs to grow. So Um if you will um I'll let you handle it. Tell 'em who we met with and Well, thank you.

1:47:57Very much, Mr. Chairman, David Engel, Office of Economic Growth. Um kicking off our proactive uh tours with the commissioners in each district, I'll be calling upon the other commissioners, if they're available, to tour their districts and look for opportunity for us to help and assist the small business community. So uh in one instance where we met with a uh restaurant tour. who is taking a building and actually restoring the entire facade of the building. taking three of the shops on

1:48:27a main commercial carter and establishing an extended seating Italian restaurant. Oh, I think that's a good thing. And we met out there with community development last week. And we're working with them to give them a community development block grant. For approximately a hundred thousand dollars. And it's a it's a n it's a loan, it's not a grant. So they're gonna return the money to us and allow them to open up and generate some cash flow. The second stop was down in the Zephyrhills area. We met with Uh a uh a woman who's

1:48:58a um Uh.

1:49:04Hyperbaric practitioner, And there are a lot of off-label treatments that hyperbaric medicine provides, from diabetes to uh Lyme's disease, COVID, autism, ADHD. It also provides an ability to actually um generate uh white blood cells to kill infection. In fact the benefits were so numerous uh Commissioner Oakley and I were gonna dive into the hyperbaric chambers, but we couldn't get in both of us. She also says

1:49:34it res it it helps you uh fight aging. Is that is

1:49:38that one of those tank things? My husband did that for forty days from COVID. He got a clot. He got a clot in his optic nerve and lost some of his eyesight.

1:49:49From the hyperbarics?

1:49:51No, from COVID.

1:49:51Oh did it did it reverse?

1:49:53It did. It helped it a lot. Oh good. A lot.

1:49:57So the the entrepreneur's brother makes um portable types of uh scalable hyperbarracks uh uh machines over in India. So we had an idea of uh of working on establishing a holistic medicine destination in Pasco County for these types of um popular holistic m medical practices. So we're working on that. And we also have another prospect who wasn't available uh

1:50:27to meet with us yesterday. But uh the CEO of this company is um Very enthusiastic about speaking to us. So we'll have a follow-up meeting and it may be a major industrial facility here in Pasco. That's awesome.

1:50:41So a lot of things you know, I've been telling uh a lot of things I've I felt like I'm busier than I ever have been before, but when you really sit down and relax enough to think about it, East Pasco's growing a lot more and a lot more things coming toward East Pasco than it were a year or two ago.

1:51:02Oh yeah. And so we have a lot of opportunities from the Lakuchi area. uh throughout East Pasco to uh expand on and And actually plan out things the right way so So when they get finished they look good and And we actually have the right kind of businesses growing and flourishing in our county. So and home sites too. So All these things are very important. So With that that's all I have. I I have two things. Wait a minute. You had twenty things. They're really good.