Consortium

Cass County’s Consortium is an idea put forth by the Linden Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) to bring together county economic leaders to meet monthly to share strategies.

“Our idea is to cooperate not compete,” said LEDC Director Lee Elliott who, along with LEDC assistant director Megan Kirkland, proposed the association in December of 2023 “We reached out to the county, towns and other organizations which had economic development as a goal. This started with the towns of Linden, Atlanta, Hughes Springs and Queen City. We would meet at noon, an hour and a half luncheon at each town’s location to share common goals and strategies.”

After several months, the consortium idea became a good practices activity recognized by the Texas Municipal League which is alert for good activities especially by small towns. Elliott submitted the consortium idea to the TML and then was asked to write an article about its workings which appeared in the March issue of the TML’s Texas Town & City magazine Then, the TML asked Elliott to serve on its Small Cities Advisory Council, a service that will brainstorm the creating of strong cities through effective leadership. For his part, Elliott said he is happy to represent Northeast Texas -- especially its small cities.

“Communication among the cities in the county is most important,” he continued. “Our consortium is growing. We have the county judge meeting with us, Avinger has joined with us and we are looking to have mayors. We partnered recently with the county’s job fair put on by schools and will look to partner with other agencies such as the Ark-Tex Council of Government.

“One of the most important things we do is to have a dynamic speaker at each of our meetings. It is incredible how much we learn about our community and how similar we all are in the problems and goals we face.

“We need to keep citizens aware of what we are doing. In our meetings, each member gets to have the floor to talk about what’s going on in their towns. We’ve also heard from TxDOT, AT-COG, Texas Work-force Commission and the two local newspapers. Then, recently, we had a really excellent SWEPCO presentation that impressed all of us.

“We just need to keep on cooperating. We have an excellent place to live. We just need to improve it.”