I need an Article Review. the assignment is in th attachment Read: Leigh & Blakely: Chapters 1 — 4 Read: McDonald: Chapter 1
What is Economic Development
Hi, I'm Tracy. Bleed out and I'm the Director of economic development. I'm located here in bed for county. And behind me you'll see the D-Day Memorial. And the D-Day Memorial is in Bedford because we lost the most soldiers during the D-Day invasion of Normandy and 940 for than any other locality per capita in the US. And it's things like this, the D-Day Memorial and other things that we have in bed for county. The other localities also have special things like that. Not necessarily the D-Day, but other things. And that kinda ties in with economic development, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Way that you use what you have, you use what you have in your locality to, to kind of invite others into, to do jobs and to, um, to have businesses in your locality and also to attract workers and employer employment to your region. Here in bed for County, which is where I'm located. We have a diverse set of industries. We are in pharmaceuticals, the nuclear power industry, wireless industry, and we have like many different, diverse industries, even forestry and other things. Also, agriculture is one of our top industries here. So a lot of what I do is I focus on how to bring in new companies that will work well with those that are already here. And also work with entrepreneurs to, to start new companies and startups. And, and also work with the existing companies that we have. A lot of economic developers forget to work with those existing industries that they have. And that's very important in today's society, people are very competitive. We live in a competitive nature of a world and the end that can competition. We'll even come into your existing business in the way of if they're not happy where they are, they will look elsewhere or they might even have other regions coming and other states coming to, to, to see if they can woo them into their area. So it's very important to pay attention to your existing industry as much or more than you do attracting new companies. When we talk about what is economic development, if you look up the definition in a dictionary or you Google it, you will probably see something in there about growth. It's about growth of employment. It's about growth of the economy, the local economy. Or if you're talking about the state or nation or, or even an organization such as a university will have sometimes an economic development office. It's always about growth. And it's about those things that you are doing in your locality to get that company interested in being there in the first place. It's about everything from Workforce Development, which is about getting people ready for jobs in the future. And that starts actually at a very young age. So we're talking about from elementary school, middle school, high school, and up and even to professional scientists and engineers at the graduate level. And it's also about, so it's about things like workforce development. It's also about finding incentives for new companies such as that special company that you want to attract. If it's, if it's part of a business cluster that you have and you're trying to go after them. What incentives do you have in your locality? And what we mean by that is what types of benefits they get from being there. So is it a low tax base? Is it low crime? Is it housing is lower there so they can attract more workers. Do they have a great community college system where they can find well-trained workers, things like that. Economic development. Development is it is a lot of different things. It can be even working with retail industry to drive tourism because tourism is, is economic development. Such as here in Bedford. We're at the Bedford Welcome Center right now. This was an economic development project to drive tourism because we had the D-Day here, the memorial here, and Bedford offer so many other things like put on Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest, which is a summer home. And Smith mountain lake, not too far away, which is a 500 mile shoreline, beautiful lake, man-made like that, that boaters and fishermen and so many enjoy. So, so economic development is not only what you think of when you think of the ribbon cuttings, the new businesses. While that is very important and something that all economic developers strive for because it drives the tax base for that locality. Much more than that. It's a great many things actually. In Bedford County, which is where I am again, we have a board of supervisors. It's a seven person team on their elected officials. And economic development works closely with those board members because economic development is not just one person, even though one person such as myself has that title. It's really about many different players, elected officials, government leaders and business leaders, kind of ink and even educators joining together looking at what is the strategy for that locality or that region. And in our case, and in many, hopefully other, other localities are thinking about this too. I know, I know many, many R is about regionalism. It's about not only promoting what you're trying to do locally, but working together with the entire region. In our case, that for county as part of region 2 thousand, which is a four counties surrounding areas. Region 2 thousand is the 2 thousand square mile surrounding Lynchburg, Virginia, and Bedford is one of those counties, one of those four counties. And then there's two cities, the city of Bedford and City of Lynchburg. And then there's four towns also involved in there that are part of the counties. And they, as you go and you work as a region with economic development is much easier to bring in new companies because you're pulling your dollars together. And we also meet the economic development directors will beat on a monthly basis and strategize about the best ways to approach new companies and also with existing companies. If there's a challenge, we can pull from resources in the region to say, you know, this company is having this challenge, we need to come up with some solutions that might work for them. Just recently in mathematics, they had a closure of a big furniture company. And that was an example of how that economic developer there sag, we have this big facility. We have all these employees who are getting laid off and they need to be retrained. Many of them have never used a computer before. They've been building furniture, for example. What can we do as a region to help them? And we pulled our minds together and made some, some suggestions and looked at what we had available in the region. There's a career center. They're located in Lynchburg that serves the entire regional area. And those employees were able to come in, they were able to apply for jobs. They were able to learn how to apply for jobs, to learn how to use computers, even in an offer, those kinda, kinda classes for them. But also to see what kind of state resources and even federal funding might be available for retraining them. Maybe they needed to get until to the health care industry, for example. That's one of the growing areas that, that are there right now. So, so that's the type of activity that the regional group of economic developers did together.