"The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go." - J.P. Morgan

Back in early May, I, along with a few members of my Executive Committee, traveled down to Augusta for a public hearing and a work session for LD 1007, "An Act To Promote County-Based Economic Development Efforts." This bill would allow other counties to do what we do, to have organizations like the PCEDC do economic development. What stuck out in my mind from that experience (apart from being nervous, as I was testifying for the first time) was a negative phrase that was repeated several times from a small number of legislators on the committee, who felt that the organizations that could be created would duplicate other organizations’ efforts and be a waste of limited resources. They referred to it as a "shotgun" or "scattershot" approach to economic development. I inferred that they might have also felt this way about the organizations that were already in existence, such as the PCEDC.

But I know we do not do "shotgun" or "scattershot" economic development. And I know this because we have a plan for what we do. I wasn’t around when this plan was developed, but I do know that a lot of time and effort went into it, and a lot of input was gathered from both the general public as well as various stakeholder groups. This input was incorporated into the final plan, which was accepted by the County Commissioners on May 18th, 2004. (I invite you to take a look at the plan for yourself – it can be downloaded as a pdf from our website, www.pcedc.org.)

So what does this plan say? First, it lays out what type of economy the people of Piscataquis County want: "Piscataquis County will have a strong, diverse, and vibrant economy that offers higher quality jobs to support strong, diverse, and vibrant families and communities."

It then goes into the 9 specific goals of the plan:

1. to have a diverse economy
2. to support start-up entrepreneurs
3. to retain and strengthen its existing businesses
4. to attract new businesses
5. to have business-friendly "hard" infrastructure (roads, industrial parks, broadband)
6. to have business-friendly "soft" infrastructure (education, training)
7. to encourage collaborative economic development activities and policies by local, state, and federal governments
8. to expand and support the creative economy
9. to offer residents, visitors, artists, businesses and communities across the country an interesting and attractive base of sustainable tourism opportunities connected to nature and ecotourism, outdoor recreation, cultural and forest heritage, rural community life and the creative economy

Now over the past couple months, I’ve wondered, "why do we have this plan?" I wonder this because I’m finding there is always enough work for me to do on a given day that isn’t listed as an objective on the plan. (Pretty much anything can be put into the category of economic development.) Even if I spent all of my time working only on things in the plan, I probably still wouldn’t be able to do it all. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest the time and effort in crafting a plan. Being as busy as we are makes having a plan that much more important, because it requires us to define our priorities, to decide where to allocate our limited resources. By having our priorities written out, it allows us to choose a path, and continue on that same path, even when the participants change (people move away, new officials elected, etc.).

Furthermore, the plan gives us a goal, a target, and even if we don’t hit it dead-on, by at least aiming for it we will undoubtedly achieve more than if didn’t have a plan to begin with. But we also understand that things do eventually change, and our plan has to change with it, to reflect new priorities and conditions. Helping to update our county economic development plan is a project that I am looking forward to, and is one that I hope you will also be an active participant in, because this is a plan for the entire county.