Meeting convened and called to order by the Chairman at 4:00 at Chamber of Commerce Conference Room. All task force members were present (except Ryan Nievus who was attending the USC graduation) with additional staff from Richland County, the City of Columbia, and the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce. A quorum was declared.

A motion was made by Sam Davis and seconded by Anthony Lawrence to approve the minutes from the November 21, 2011 and the vote was unanimous.

The group was presented with a CD including peer communities and results from other communities that have recently completed similar business friendly tasks.

The revised business survey and staff surveys were discussed. Additional comments removing some questions were made. Further discussion on who is the target audience. It was suggested that the target might be new and existing businesses, developers, and those who work with development like lawyers, engineers, etc.

A no opinion response was added, the licensed business question Q02 was modified taking out office and exchanging for general commercial, adding medical and corporate. The developer questions included a no opinion selection, revised tenant to landlord. Adam Fogle will secure the survey monkey access and report next meeting.

A SWOT analysis was begun by the group. The draft of the first two sections will be sent separately.

Peer communities were discussed, at the next meeting, follow ups will be assigned to each member to take a community that has completed a similar evaluation and see what they learned.

The next meeting was set for 1-09-12 at 4:00 pm at the Chamber.