South Shelby Chamber speaker shares tools for economic development

Before a city can attract and grow its businesses, first it has to take an honest look at its strengths and weaknesses.

That was one of the core messages the speaker Joe Sumners shared at the May 5 South Shelby Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Sumners is the executive director of the Government and Economic Development Institute at Auburn University and a Harpersville native. His work centers around helping communities find ways to grow their economies and improve quality of life through recruiting new businesses, retaining and expanding existing ones, encouraging entrepreneurs and seeking other forms of development, such as boosting tourism.

“Strong local economies are built on strong communities,” Sumners said, noting that economic growth translates to more jobs and tax dollars to spend on roads, education and other community necessities.

When businesses are considering moving or expanding to a new city, Sumners said they are looking primarily at three things: workforce, infrastructure and incentives. If a city can’t provide these things in the right way, a company will look elsewhere. But not every business is looking for the same things.

“Every community cannot compete for every project,” Sumners said.

To compete for the right businesses, Sumners said Alabama communities need to know where they excel in filling these needs and where they fall short. This can help them create a strategic plan to capitalize on the high points and take steps to improve on the low points.

“You’ve got to have a good product to sell,” Sumners said.

One example he highlighted was for local educators and business owners to communicate and create job training programs that serve both their needs. As low-skill jobs are increasingly outsourced or replaced by machinery, Sumners said education is needed so people can compete for high-skill jobs.

 “The places that ignore that are places that are going to be in big trouble,” Sumners said.

“The jobs that are growing do require you to have education,” Sumners added. “The talent bar is going up and up and up.”

Having a strategic plan for economic development requires partnership from local government and private businesses. It also needs involvement from citizens in leadership and community outreach. Sumners said this need is most notable in communities where that involvement is not present.

“Where it’s absent, you have an absence of any kind of economic hope,” Sumners said.

While Sumners said that creating a plan for economic development is undoubtedly hard work, he said relationships between government, business owners and individual citizens make it more likely to be successful.

“You’ve got to have people who are working together, on the same page,” Sumners said.