Earlier this year, I was at a chamber of commerce event where Kelly Smallridge was the featured speaker.

Smallridge, president and CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County, flipped through a PowerPoint worth of slides highlighting the latest in economic development. Then 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.

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There was, for example, a photo Ben Carson of Palm Beach Gardens, who is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And Wilbur Ross of Palm Beach, the Secretary of Commerce.

At that point, though, the fairly sure-footed Smallridge, who I rarely puts up a slide or data that she can’t explain or that doesn’t make a clear point, stopped in her tracks.

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

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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 pay-off 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-profile meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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

If the only barometer for payout was international attention, we reached that goal last week. Media from Germany, China, Taiwan and Canada were among the numerous news organizations that sent crews here to cover the Trump-Xi summit.

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

But it’s a different 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 different story for those impacted by traffic snarls.

So, will there be a payoff? I circled back to Smallridge this week.

She insists there is a "halo effect" from President Trump’s stays at the Winter White House in Palm Beach.

"His visits here have created a significant buzz for the entire county," she said. "Three financial service firms have come in this week looking at definitely expanding to the area … Businesses will expand or relocate to this area for many reasons. Florida is a state that is business and tax friendly. All of this attention is opening the eyes up and many feel they can’t afford 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.