Economic awareness

Thursday evening the City of Liberal was treated with an exceptional amount of knowledge concerning economic growth.

The seminar, hosted by the Liberal Chamber of Commerce and Seward County Community College and Technical School, took place at 6 p.m. The guest speaker of the evening was Roy Williams, president of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Williams has held quite a few positions in various cities and is sought after because of his success.

Last week, I wrote about the Franchise/Entrepreneur Discussion sponsored by the City of Liberal, which focused on how one of our citizens could go about owning a franchise.

President of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, Roy Williams, spoke to community leaders, business leaders and students on economic development Thursday night at SCCC/ATS. Williams' shared the secrets of how a community can pull together to become a viable force in local economical development. Photo by Laura Eastes

Williams' discussion, however, took on a whole different note. Williams gave his audience tips on how the citizens and our elected government can grow our community by addressing its needs in the correct perspective.

Firstly, there are four institutional environments that make up a healthy community. These environments are: the social environment, the political environment, the physical environment, and lastly, the economic environment. The economic environment is most important, because all others will crumble without economics sustaining it.

The social institutions basically consist of your churches, charities, Boy Scouts and similar things citizens require from a city in order to feel comfortable. Good political institutions involve a quality civil service, school system, police department and the like. In all three environments require cash which comes from “quality economic environments.”

The economic institutions, Williams explained, are broken up into primary jobs and secondary jobs.

Secondary jobs are businesses such as hamburger joints and retail stores which circulate money. We can already find these in our town. Primary jobs, however, are businesses that bring new money which can then be circulated by the secondary jobs and make a community wealthier.

While your primary jobs are usually thought of as being manufacturing firms, distributors or plants, he said a retail store that brought people from outside the community would also be labeled as primary. The point being, primary jobs are of the utmost importance in a successful community.

After that had been said, the question in my mind was, “ok then how do we get more primary jobs to come to town?”

The odds of Liberal getting one of the large primary jobs to come to town such as Liberal are slim if there are not proactive citizens with an aggressive economic agenda.

He pointed out that companies do not look for places to build there businesses. They eliminate places that they do not want to build there businesses. So for us to be attractive, we need to eliminate the unattractive things we have the ability to manipulate.

What we can change; however, is community attitude, attractive sites and buildings, and financing options.

The community attitude Williams explained is that feeling you get when you enter a town, wheather it be good or bad. It’s the impression the town leaves in the mind of an onlooker. The sites and buildings available for potential “primary jobs” are also something we can work to remain un-"eliminated" when and if there are shoppers.

How we as a community choose to approach economic growth is the major item Williams addressed. There are many good things that can happen in any community as long as you have a focus. Once again, we as a SIFE team enjoyed the knowledge and we look forward to more.

The Southwest Times will be publishing regular columns by SIFE members and students in SCCC/ATS. Any questions to the authors can be sent to news@swdtimes.com. Questions will be forwarded to SIFE.

For full story please see Sunday's Times

© Copyright 2008 Southwest Times