Hoping to fill current and expected jobs coming to southcentral Kentucky with the influx of new manufacturers, Warren County and the city of Bowling Green are continuing to invest in a marketing campaign that started nearly two years ago.

Meeting last Thursday, Warren Fiscal Court approved a new workforce outreach campaign contract with CrowdSouth, a Bowling Green-based marketing agency, that will cost the county and city nearly $180,000 over the next 18 months.

The contract calls for CrowdSouth to be paid a management fee of $10,000 per month, with approximately $90,000 of that total going for outreach and advertising expenses. The city and county will split the cost evenly.

Prompted by the location in the Kentucky Transpark of such employers as Tyson Foods (expected to employ 450 people) and the Envision AESC electric-vehicle battery plant (projected to employ as many as 2,000 workers), the marketing campaign started in January 2022 with a one-year contract paying CrowdSouth $243,000.

That 2022 contract was later bumped to $293,000, and CrowdSouth is being paid $400,000 for the workforce campaign this year.

Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman said doing an 18-month contract allows the city and county to align the contract with their fiscal-year budgets. The reduced cost of the new contract is a reflection of CrowdSouth’s startup costs, Gorman said.

“We knew all along that the bulk of the expense would be for creating the website, and CrowdSouth has done a fantastic job with that,” Gorman said Tuesday. “The next phase is just the marketing and advertising needed to direct people to the website.” 

Like Gorman, Bowling Green Mayor Todd Alcott believes the campaign built around the bowlinggreenworks.com website is worth the investment.

“CrowdSouth has created a one-stop shop to market to a wide array of demographics by providing diverse opportunities available within Bowling Green,” Alcott said Monday in a text message. “We have received positive feedback that this effort is paying huge dividends.”

In a June 2022 presentation to fiscal court, CrowdSouth co-founder Jason Heflin told the magistrates that the website and related strategies such as billboards, videos and social media campaigns were getting results.

Heflin said at the time that 93 local employers were signed up with the Bowling Green Works program. He said a “quick apply” feature on the website resulted in 142 job applications and 52 filled positions in only three weeks.

In his proposal presented to fiscal court last week, Heflin said the workforce campaign over the next 18 months will “have an exclusive digital advertising focus” that includes social media advertising as well as ads on the Google internet search engine.

Heflin said in his proposal that CrowdSouth will work with city and county officials and the South Central Workforce Development Board to ensure that the campaign is getting results.

“We want to make sure this project continues to be fruitful for our employers and our citizens,” Heflin wrote. “We will continue to have a project manager attend all meetings, provide reporting, and have regular meetings with individual stakeholders as needed to ensure we are on target and the campaign is producing as expected.”

That accountability is important, Gorman said.

“With everything we do, we always want to ensure that we’re getting the best possible results,” he said. “CrowdSouth has been able to accomplish that.”

Gorman said the growth that created the need for the CrowdSouth contract is also the driving force behind another approval made at last week’s meeting.

The magistrates approved the request of Public Works Director Josh Moore to create a Public Works Inspector position and advertise for it.

Moore included a job description that listed a salary range of $45,000 to $55,000 for a job that will “manage capital improvement projects and certain public infrastructure for the county.”

Creation of a Public Works Inspector position comes just five months after Moore was approved for creating a county engineer position at a salary of $80,000 to $90,000 per year. Moore said the two positions are needed to accommodate the county’s growth and eliminate the need to contract for engineering and inspection work.

“I see this as the best model to set Public Works up for the future,” Moore said.

Among other items approved by fiscal court last week:

•$72,539.84 to Barren County Business Supply for new office furniture for the judge-executive and treasurer’s offices as renovations of the county courthouse continue.

•$49,996.05 to Bluegrass Recreation for the purchase of new playground equipment for Ephram White Park and removal of old equipment.

•A lease agreement of $771.98 per month for 60 months with Enterprise Fleet for a 2023 Chrysler Voyager for the county stormwater department.

The next Warren Fiscal Court meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 21 at 9 a.m.