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All politicians promise more of it, Chambers of Commerce can't get enough of it and professionals are supposed to be practitioners of it. But what is it? The practice of attracting industry and commerce to your town that's what it is. We do know one thing it is very expensive and the results are not apparent to all
One problem: every town is doing the same thing. Hiring some hotshot advocates to push glossy pamphlets extoling the virtues of your community and laying out the fact that the average house is the cheapest in the region. That the ambience of your town is world class and the workforce hates unions and will work for nothing whilst possessing all the skills any industrialist will need. Sad thing is that after a while these pushers of progress aren't getting the job done and then the critics emerge. Economic development is a funny idea: nobody knows what it is but everybody wants it
It's a pity that economic development is such a big target for the critics but the topic doesn't help itself by not developing a model that works. Should it be a department of the town, should it be a private subcontract working on behalf of the town? None of the models really work well because all ED offices are chasing the same thing; one of the few new factory starts or relocations that come everybody's way and there are only so many of these to go around. Personally I have never been a fan of spending so much money telling others what we already know, that Cobourg is a great place to live and work. We should be spending money on improving the quality of life for ourselves and it will be apparent to all what we have to offer
The current disagreement over the style of economic development comes about because of two festering decisions made in the last three years. The first was to bring the operation of the economic office into the town bureaucracy and the second was to fragment the participants of the "meet 'em, greet 'em" industry by removing the tourism contract from the Chamber of Commerce. Is there any connection between the current sniping from the Chamber's President about the lack of economic development and that decision?
As is usual I have a different slant on things. Economic development or industrial sales or just good old boosterism should be the function of the Mayor. Modern mayors may pride themselves on being good managers but excuse me we pay the CAO of the town LOTS OF MONEY to be a manager. We elect a Mayor to be a leader and booster not a bureaucrat! The role of an office of economic development is to provide the paperwork and support to the Mayor in their efforts to sell the town. If it is decided (by the powers that be) that the Mayor is not professional enough, doesn't have the time or just doesn't fit into the organizational matrix, and a professional should be hired to sell the town then that job should not be a part of the town staff. The person I want to sell my town and to attract new industry should be, first of all, paid on results. Performance based compensation only for this position and they would serve at the pleasure of the Council. I want to be able to fire duds and non-performers
The questions about economic development should be "How do we make Cobourg better for the residents. How do we maintain lower taxes for the residents (not necessarily business). How do we build enough serviced land to offer the industrialists?" because if we answer these questions economic development will flow. But the answers to these questions also lead us into the community discussion that has yet to take place amongst the residents, the developers have already given us their answer (build anything that can sell, despite community aspirations for an integrated approach)
"What kind of community do you want?" A retirement community, a bedroom community for commuters, a well educated industrial and commercial community, a shopping community or a good mixture of all?
For if we do not conclude this debate the image of "economic development" being the panacea for our ills will loom large for all of those not willing to look deeper. When that happens we will be allowing those people who have their own visions of our society building, in their own images, our community. And that image is based on how much money they can make by building what they want and we (the Cobourg community) will be stuck with the results
You get what you pay for!