Will ‘halo’ of Trump pay offff for the county?

Kelly Smallridge, president and CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, was flflipping through a PowerPoint at a Chamber of Commerce event earlier this year. She got to a slide headlined by a photo of President Donald Trump that was accompanied by photos of other Palm Beach County-connected members of his administration — and stopped.

“I’m not sure where I am going with this,” she said. “But there’s something here.”

By that, she meant, the prevalence of well- known Palm Beach County residents and part-time residents in the Trump administration surely has to have a payoffff for our county. But how? And, more importantly, how much?

It was a question frequently posed last week by the battalion of national and international media descending on our county for the high-stakes, high-profifile meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

A crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. came to The Post to ask that very question: What’s the benefifit of having the president as a neighbor? Or, more pointedly, they asked whether it was Trump who was benefifiting by bringing his presidency to the Mar-aLago Southern White House.

If the only barometer for payoffff was international attention, we reached that goal last week.

I get it. There’s a value to the media attention. It’s free advertising for our tourism and business recruitment efffffffffffforts.

But it’s a difffffffffffferent story from the standpoint of Palm Beach County taxpayers worried they are going to have to eat the millions of dollars in non-budgeted public safety costs associated with crowd control and presidential security. It’s a different story for those businesses disrupted by the meetings, talks and occasional rounds of golf in presidential weekends. And it’s a difffffffffffferent story for those affffffffffffected by traffific snarls.

So, will there be a payoffff ? I circled back to Smallridge.

She insists there is a “halo effffffffffffect” from Trump’s stays at the winter White House.

“His visits here have created a signifificant buzz for the entire county,” she said. “Three fifinancial service fifirms have come in this week looking at defifinitely expanding to the area. ... Businesses will expand or relocate to this area for many reasons. Florida is a state that is business- and taxfriendly. All of this attention is opening the eyes up and many feel they can’t afffffffffffford not to be in Florida.”

But until the returns materialize, it won’t be just the media asking that question. It will be local taxpaying businesses and residents wondering: Where is the money?