SWEPCO presentation for Consortium

Civic leaders with the Cass County Consortium met with SWEPCO recently in Queen City and came away with a unified opinion.

“We didn’t realize all the amount of options SWEPCO has to help with economic development,” said member Lee Elliott SWEPCO had an immediate response.

“As soon as you have a proposal for economic development, get us in the loop,” said Jennifer Harland, SWEPCO External Affairs Manager, speaking for the company’s economic development services.

Harland was addressing the ninth meeting of Cass County’s Consortium. Representatives from Hughes Springs, Queen City, Atlanta, Avinger and Linden were sitting around the noon table Thursday at QC City Hall to hear from the SWEPCO representative.

Harland presented a list of SWEPCO economic development opportunities both for organizations and individuals. She spoke of energy audits, site studies, workforce analysis and individual and organization leadership training opportunities.

“One of our big services can be in helping you determine what makes you attractive for economic development,” she said.

At the end of the meeting, two reactions to the SWEPCO presentation were as follows: -- Queen City’a Amanda Wiley said, “My board members are here. We are all city administrators, learning from each other. The more Cass County grows helps us all. We’re going to look in on SWEPCO’s planning services. I’m secretary, too, for economic development. I’m going to ask SWEPCO where do I start? I want to do more.”

— Avinger’s Rea Donna Jones: “I’m going to suggest our economic development leaders Jason Spencer and mayor Jeff Patterson look in on coming both to these consortium meetings and SWEPCO’s economic development training programs,” said Jones who is director of the Texarkana Metropolitan Planning Organization and now assisting Avinger with its newly formed economic development corporation.

Emphasizing her personal commitment for her work, Harland ended her presentation to the city leaders with the encouragement, “If you do not have a plan for economic development and have a need for one, several of our experts will be glad to sit down down with you. If you need someone to go with you, I’ll go.

“You don’t want to wake up one morning as they did in Nashville, Arkansas, recently and find that the Husquvarna plant is closing with the loss of 600 jobs.

“Eighty percent of jobs are already in your community The number one thing you can do with economic planning is to protect them.”