To some in local government, the economic downturn and reduced tax revenues may raise the question of whether it’s worthwhile to fund local economic development initiatives.  The best answer is that providing for local economic development is an important way of ensuring that your community is friendly to businesses and can quickly respond on a local company’s behalf at critical times.

For example, Building Place recently read about a high technology company that experienced catastrophic damage to one of its clean rooms when the town’s water line burst.  The flood damage threatened the company’s ability to stay in operation, and therefore threatened job losses and reduced tax revenues for the town.  Fortunately, the local economic development office responded quickly and…

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Too often local elected and appointed officials feel overrun by the fast-moving flames of budgeting, personnel issues, and other public management challenges – to the point that they can do little more than react to the most urgent crisis confronting them.

Action on the “worthy” but not necessarily urgent things that need doing in a community (those that contribute most to achieving their community’s goals and priorities) get set aside or postponed for “another day.”

Economic development was one of those worthy but not urgent things a community needs to do, at least until Michigan’s current recession took hold.  For more officials, economic development has now also been added to “urgent” list, with good reason.

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