Awhile back, I started looking at what sort of plans the City has to help us move forward. The strategic plan is somewhat limited but I did think we had a good economic development plan. Big parts of the Economic Development plan were never implemented in the recent past as none of that stuff had been necessary. The area was building as fast as it could. Now that things are slow, we needed a more coordinated effort to attract good development.
I drafted up a very rough resolution and, working with fellow council members and staff, refined it into a workable product. This was passed some time ago but I never mentioned it here as most folks wouldn’t find it all that exciting. Nevertheless, here is the resolution in all of it’s glory. The Economic Development/Land Use committee is working its way through this and we should come up with some very exciting plans shortly.
October 24, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Bravo, Andy. I hope I haven’t lost all credibility here, because it is certainly true I’ve let my anger at where we now find our town express itself unproductively. That being said, I think the missing piece is an objective assessment of where Manassas really stands as a competitor to attract quality economic investment. Some folks think Manassas is nirvana. Some folks think its a dump. But, we all come to our understanding from a subjective view, based upon our education, our cultural and social exposure, and our personal values. Let’s get a clear picture of how the rest of the World views us, so we can enhance the positives and diminish the negatives… just the way any business would do, or any politician would do (haha). But, seriously, the best money Manassas could spend would be monet spent on one or more corporate relocation specialists, of global calibre, who would assess or strengths and weaknesses on a myriad of objective measures, as well as meaningful metrics based on perceptions of the City. Such a study, or series of studies, would tell us, most objectively, where to channel our resources in order to get the most bang for the buck. In an advanced, knowlege-based, economy, the infrastructure and amenities in most demand are likely not those that were in demand twenty years ago, and they might not be those that are most in demand in Manassas today. But prudent leadership, whether in government or in business, must be forward looking, it must be proactive, and it must be agile and responsive. A marketing professor once told me that the greatest mistake in marketing is to believe that your own values, judgments and preferences reflect those of the public at large. When I listen to the members of the Manassas City Council express their views about economic development and what constitutes the infrastructure required to attract it, I routinely hear them substititing their personal values, judgments and preferences, based on what I believe to be a rather limited perspective, for the judgments of the “real” and incredibly competive World. The only way we’ll really understand where Manassas stands and what it will take for us to meet our economic (and, therefor, our quality of life) objectives, is for us to get an objective assessment from a firm, or a series of firms, that represent the most competitive firms in the World in their corporate location/relocation decisions. If it cost of a couple of million dollars it would be money very, very well spent.
October 17, 2011 at 5:15 am
Terrific article.