The national dialogue about stimulus funding, tax freezes, and 9/9/9 Plans is missing half the story.

Federal taxes and spending does have a big impact on our nation’s economic condition.  But all of this debate is only half the story. 

We all know that politicians do not create jobs, businesses do—and businesses need local communities to support their efforts.

For their part, communities need to be objective about how they advance their economies.  There are 85 key success factors that cities and counties must pay attention to in order to devise their strategic approach to creating jobs.

Either communities will take an objective approach to economic development and succeed or they will listen to the loudest voices, not make strategic decisions, and contribute to our continued national recession.

Federal tax policy needs to be efficient and local communities need to be effective in order to create jobs—and to lower the federal deficit.

See Part Two...

How often have you heard a solid analysis about the specific effect of raising or lowering tax rates on overall revenue to the federal government?   Probably never.  

If the goal is balancing the federal budget, then the tax policy should be efficient.  Efficiency means that it is not too low to miss revenue opportunities, and not too high to restrict growth.

But the real missed opportunity in America is that communities are not effective.  Economic development effectiveness means that communities should advance economic development strategic plans that are specifically tailored to their strengths, opportunities, and capacity levels.

Building Communities advances an entirely new approach to economic development strategic planning.

The 85 key success factors are all weighed and then factored into the potential selection of 25 strategies that communities can select to support economic development.

Economic development is not one size fits all.  Every community must take this objective approach, or risk putting their eggs in the wrong basket--and lengthening the national recession as well.

Building Communities had a wonderful opportunity recently to address the International City/County Managerment Association Annual Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with a presentation on the fundamentals of economic development strategic planning.

The presentation can be viewed at: http://ow.ly/6Vfus

A small group of well informed community leaders get together and logically determine the most viable strategies for community and economic development.  The same group then meets and considers its limitations relative to implementing the strategies given existing and potential resources (people, technical know-how, funding, etc.) available.  A final set of strategies are then selected based on what the community should do and what the community can do.

What is missing?

What the community wants to do.  This is why Plan Week includes a well-publicized Community Meeting, according to Brian Cole.  Gaining interest and input from a broad cross section of the community will help in the implementation phase.

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