Staff Reports
JEDCO is moving forward again, after a little over two years, with the Texas Target Communities program at Texas A&M to produce a strategic plan for the City of Jefferson following the Board’s issuing of a Letter of Intent at Tuesday night’s regular meeting.
When asked if the letter had already been sent by Board Member Lynn Daughrity, Board President Bubba Haggard said, “It had to be there by the fourth, and that’s when it was there.”
The Board, and City Council had previously approved participating in the program, at a cost of around $50,000 to be paid by JEDCO.
The program, initially spearheaded by then JEDCO member, and current Alderman, Robin Moore, can take more than a year to complete and has dedicated TAMU students interviewing and discussing goals and plans for future growth, development, and other needs of the City. Students will be developing a plan as part of an academic credit program.
Haggard said TAMU should let the Board know in the next month or so if they are willing to accept the project and work on it for JEDCO. The program was delayed due to COVID.
The Board also agreed to participate in the Texas Rural Leadership Program by dedicating up to $5,000 of their funds to the program.
“I don’t think it’ll cost that much,” said Haggard. “There’s two face-to-face and three zoom meetings, in the program.“
“We’re proposing entering into a relationship with Texas Rural Leadership to get people trained to assist the Target Communities in creating our strategic plan?” asked Daughrity. “Who’s selecting the task force and getting people involved? Who on that task force is dependent on what direction the Task Force takes? Are we going Industrial, Commercial, Tourism? What do we want this city to look like 15-20 years on down the road? I’m real concerned about who’s on that task force. How do we develop the community into wanting to be a part of this project? We need to draw from a wide base here.”
“The two groups, Cooper and Roberts, are going to lead the group down the path to engage citizens,” said Jefferson Mayor Rob Baker. “The task force is going to lead us down the path to getting the input to best create a system to allow for the diversity of businesses and interest groups.”
“We need to have a lot more people in here that are south of 60, instead of north of 70,” said Daughrity. “Most of us here on this board will not be here in 20 years. I’m not talking against it. This is a massive project.”
“[Roberts and Cooper’s groups] do this for a living so let’s let them lead us down the path,” said Baker.
The next steps, according to board treasurer Doug Thompson, is to get the word out on the meetings to develop the training and knowledge.
Chuck Vanderbilt, ETCOG’s Community and Economic Development Manager, spoke to the Board about offerings available from ETCOG and the office of Economic Development.
Vanderbilt started with highlighting the multiple loan programs available for businesses and generally offers lower rates than may be commercially available. He said one program they offer is a payroll loan program to help employees get funds they need and have the repayment payroll deducted. That program can be sponsored via the city or any employer as a benefit to their employees.
Vanderbilt said ETCOG also offers grant writing support as well as the administrative support for larger grants.
Through EDA, ETCOG has started offering a tool which allows EDC’s and Cities to not only upload listings of available for development, but also allows users to do building construction mock-ups, etc., to see how their development would look at the location. The site also has demographic data, education levels, and other development information. The tool is available at https://www.etedd.org/
This tool, I believe, will make it easier for communities to find you,” said Vanderbilt. “It costs you nothing to participate and I think it will make your life easier to highlight in the region.”
“Is there the option to talk with you about grant opportunities?” asked Board member Doug Thompson.
“Yes, there’s a tool we have called GrantFinder.com. I have a volunteer who runs the searches to find grants that match the scope you provide us with,” said Vanderbilt. “If we don’t know, we know who to ask to get you answers really quickly.”
I’d like us to be a little bit more proactive instead of re-active. It’s one of my favorite phrases, but ‘I know what I don’t know,’ so we need to find resources and people that can lead us to what we need to do here,” said JEDCO president Bubba Haggard.
“If you come to us and say ‘Here’s what we’re trying to do.’ We can tell you how we can help,” said Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt can be reached at chuck.vanderbilt@etcog.org or 903-218-6400.
Haggard broached the subject of possibly contracting with an Economic Development Consultant to “overlook everything we’ve got and make recommendations,” he said.
“I think it would be very advantageous to get someone in here to see what they could do and what it would cost,” said Raymond Sanders.
JEDCO held an executive session to discuss possible new business opportunities brought up by Daughrity, according to Haggard. No action was taken after the session.
The next meeting will be April 12.