LIVE OAK, Fla. — Designed to lure in new businesses or entice existing businesses to expand, Suwannee County’s business incentive program caught national recognition last week.

Suwannee County’s performance-based point system was recognized Friday with an Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties (NACo). The awards are designed to honor innovative, effective county government programs that strengthen services for residents.

“I’m excited about this,” said Alvin Jackson, Suwannee County’s economic development director. “When you start being benchmarked by the world, that’s where you want to be. The customers and the clients that you’re trying to reach will recognize that.

“Basically Suwannee County is on the map once again.”

Added County Chairman Ricky Gamble: “This is exciting news for both Live Oak and Suwannee County. This honor says to the nation’s business community that Suwannee County is open for business.”

The recognition comes for the program that Jackson and the Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners put into place in 2015.

That program was devised in part on an incentive program used by Jackson’s colleague Melissa Glascow in St. Johns County.

Jackson used the point system from that program and tweaked it with parts of a program he wrote in Lake County in the early 1990s, one he said also won a NACo.

“I loved it,” Jackson said of the point system, which he said takes the politics out of deciding who qualifies for the rebates. “Stole that. And then began to modify and add those other pieces in place.”

Those other pieces include potential points for the amount of capital investment in addition to facility size, the number of new jobs created and the wages to be paid, proximity to existing utilities, locating the business within the CRA or other business zone and for new business, if the applicant is already a Suwannee County resident.

Based on those criteria, the businesses can earn rebates of 75 percent on its ad valorem taxes and 50 percent of the tangible business personal property tax from two years up to four years. Those rebates are paid out over a seven-year span to allow the county to invest some of that tax revenue into infrastructure improvements toward future economic development.

“I think the reason we won the award, it’s not just Suwannee,” Jackson said about the program. “Those are excellent components (that would work anywhere).”

According to Jackson, it has worked here. The county has awarded four grants to businesses in the past six weeks. Since the program went into effect, close to 15 businesses have been awarded grants through the program.

“But what makes this so exciting, when I first came I said we needed to start putting in economic development policy infrastructure,” Jackson said. “So this is one of the Board of County Commissioners’ economic development policies.

“Basically what they have done is put policy where their mouth was.”

The award-winning counties will be recognized at NACo’s annual conference and expo in Nashville, Tenn., from July 13-16. Nationally, awards were given out in 18 different categories ranging from children and youth to criminal justice, from county administration to information technology and more.

“Counties seize opportunities to deliver services more efficiently and build stronger communities every day,” NACo President Roy Charles Brooks said in a release. “Achievement Award-winning programs are examples for counties that are determine to enhance services for our residents.”