I was part of a discussion of people involved in some way with “Economic Development”… the name usually given to the work of attracting new businesses to town. It’s different from the trend towards Economic Gardening which is about taking care of existing businesses, usually small, and helping them grow because they’re more likely to be long term contributors to the community.
A great book on this is A Stake in the Outcome: Building a Culture of Ownership for the Long-Term Success of Your Business
But back to this discussion.
In my experience in workforce development watching Economic Development from the outside (and the reason why Economic Gardening interests me) is that it seems that once a company is big enough to play with the ED people they just try to use ED dollars to finance their wanderlust and derive short term benefits for themselves.
It’s “how to get free government money” on a large scale. They promise long term benefits to the community but usually are not too concerned about delivering them if a better deal comes along in 5 years. They want free rent, free utilities, tax breaks, moving expenses, free employee training promises, etc. for jobs that sometimes aren’t that good.
I believe any job is better than none, but they’re not the high tech wonder jobs. Some are just low skilled manufacturing jobs. But not any job is better at “any price”.
Communities (and taxpayers) are ending up “buying jobs” but there’s no “Consumer Reports” to tell you if you’re getting a good deal.
Keep working to build your small business… we’re here to try and help!
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