Page County Job Losses

Last week in the Page News & Courier, several articles had caught my attention, but especially the one that discussed an economic task force that recently met in the region. As far as a charter or more specific identification of what this task force is, I didn't find anything on a web search. The article identified a couple of state legislature points of contact, but didn't report on plans or goals with any specificity, so it is hard to understand what the objective is beyond hearings and public meetings.

One of the most striking facts in that article was the report that in the region that includes Page, Shenandoah, Rappahannock, and part of Rockingham County, 4,000 jobs had been identified as "lost" since September 2008. Beyond the statement that in essence said that people affected by the economy should work on education and gaining skills for future work, the article reported that there is no plan for a meeting in Page County - with a double-digit unemployment rate, among the highest in the state.

I decided to do a bit more research on the question and did some preliminary searching, finding a 2004 document called "Page County Strategic Economic Development Plan" - I'll report some of the findings over a couple of ensuing blog posts, keeping in mind that this document is more than five years old, and the data is likely to be older than that.

The Plan was developed by MarshWitt Associates, based in Roanoke, and funded by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. It starts with a section called "An Economic Vision for Page County" as follows:

"Page County's sustainable high quality of life is the result of a diversified economy based on tourism, industrial development, agriculture, and retail and service industries. Existing jobs are being retained, and new high quality jobs are being created in the County. Job growth is the result of the County's educational system and workforce training partnerships that ensure the available of a trained labor force and the County's investment in water, sewer, and transportation infrastructure that has been planned to accommodate existing and future economic development needs."

Leaving aside for a moment that fact that much of this vision statement appears to be obselete, the report is organized around two key elements in addition to the vision statement: guiding principles and an action plan. I'll write more in tomorrow's post, but before I list the guiding principles, I note that the executive summary recommends that the County be proactive in these matters, reviewing the plan and updating it based on changing conditions and priorities.

The report lists six economic development "levers" or economic system components:

• Business attraction
• Existing business retention/growth
• Community infrastructure
• Education and workforce development
• Government economic development programs and services
• Transportation

Tomorrow's post will take a quick look the guiding principles, again circa 2004, followed by a post that summarizes the strategy and goals for each of these components. Next steps will be to research the execution of these plans and see if there are conclusions about what should and can be done at this point.