As a leader in your community, one of the biggest challenges you may face is prioritizing the many activities to be undertaken to improve the environment for your citizens. How do you grow the tax base? How do you create jobs? Should you focus on retention? Should you choose a strategy of entrepreneurial development? Should the concentration be on downtown revitalization and filling vacant storefronts? With limited resources, choosing the most fruitful priorities becomes even more important.
Best practices of other communities may be helpful in generating ideas, but your community will need to match the activities you undertake with those your stakeholders believe important to future success. The comprehensive plan your community invested in several years ago may be full of activities which haven’t been undertaken because the list is too long and daunting. Pare it down and start somewhere….break it into bite sized pieces and spend some serious energy on those activities that will bring measurable results first.
The role traditionally played by local government in economic development is to support those activities that would create more tax base and jobs, to the point of filling the gap with technical and financial support. Elected officials and staff together should develop expected outcomes of the role played by all in economic development. They should be dedicated to the long term success of these outcomes, and measure incrementally so as to celebrate small successes and continue to work together toward bigger picture goals.
Non-traditional activities which achieve economic success for communities are increasingly employed in communities of all sizes. Outsourcing specific tasks to experienced professionals is one way to achieve results for your community in a shorter amount of time, and without the addition of an entire staff position. Collaborating with neighboring communities to achieve specific goals also works to build regionalism on a smaller scale. Developing new grant funds for business assistance, and the marketing those opportunities will position your community as one which has opened the door to new business, not closed it. Start a network of businesses in your community who can share resources amongst themselves. Be the facilitator. The ideas area endless, the possibilities are too!
