Is there really no one who knows how to plan our economic development?

George Rebane

Today Russ Steele highlights the latest wallowing in the process to come up with a plan for economic development in our county (here).  There can be no sane plan to get from here to there if we don’t first define ‘there’.  I have written about this straightforward process and spoken about it in a number of public forums on economic development over the last year (see here).

It is amazing that there is no one visible in our county’s leadership who either understands and can implement the steps required to do such planning, or has the cojones to say that such steps don’t work for Nevada County and we are going to go down another road.  Were I king, I would not allocate one red cent of county monies for any economic development effort that first doesn’t spell out our goal in a way that allows us to measure our success in achieving it.  Without an explicit statement of that, we will continue blathering platitudes about 'expanding the tax base' and ‘smart growth’ and ‘balanced community’ and ‘traffic congestion’ while busily molding ourselves into a backwater bedroom community to serve economic growth that’s happening elsewhere.  Let’s get on with the program!

Stay tuned as we continue to monitor this muddle.

Comments

[jeffpelline]

It's getting pretty late in the game George. The retiree economy will soon require eldery services, and the youngins are nowhere to be seen. Even when it comes to vacations, they go to Mexico, Hawaii, Orlando — not the Gold Country. In the meantime, the costs from PERS, etc., continue.

[George Rebane]

Jeff, you're probably right. But since we're still putting forth the effort, I thought it might be useful to do it right. Something good may pop out of the community dialogue to come up with a metric for our local economy that would guide local government support and overall planning.