As a result of the Business Retention and Expansion program, the Coordinator, local Extension Educator, and Task Force will be trained on how to conduct a detailed business survey program. The ongoing business survey effort will continue to enhance the local community’s BR&E efforts, as expressed in the Annual Action Plan, and will enable the Task Force to keep informed about individual and community-wide business concerns. Most importantly, it lays the groundwork for developing a profile and understanding of the local economy.
To create local economic change, the local economy must be understood and its story must be told. When asked to explain the local economy, the average community resident may be at a loss to describe the full range of goods, services, labor, information, and dollars that flow into, circulate through, and flow out of the local economy. As consumers of mass media, we have fallen into the trap of believing that national and international economic forces and events are somehow more important than local economic circumstances, and we often lose sight of the local economy. Our mental images of the economy have become global and standardized. While it is important to understand the influence of the global and national economies, it is just as important to understand that most of us live and work in a local economy. The fellow workers we interact with daily, the amount of time it takes us to get to work, the opportunities we have for shopping, the quality of education available to our children, the quality of primary healthcare available to us, leisure opportunities, and many other aspects of our daily lives are influenced by decisions made by community leaders and residents who live and work in close geographic proximity to us.
Since the story of the local economy does not exist in ready-to-tell form in most communities, it must be written and narrated by members of the community. Preparing the story involves gathering data about local businesses, population, the labor force, local governments, educational and health care providers, and other economic aspects of life and work in the community. Effective local economic narration is based on two kinds of data: local, primary data and secondary data from statistical agencies. Through secondary data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census and other government sources is useful in community planning, it is often outdated and too general to "bear the plot" of a compelling story. The "gap in plot" can be filled by gathering local data through interviews with local economic actors, including businesses and residents. Business Retention and Expansion surveys are a good way to gather information from businesses, which represent one of the most important economic assets of a community. The profile of the local economy can be started from the BR&E information. In addition, residents could be surveyed to find out more about their skills, their goals for the community, and their preferences for shopping and leisure-time activities. While the survey instruments deal with a number of issues, in essence, they address two main questions: how do you view this community as a place to do business (in the case of firms) and to live (in the case of residents), and what can our community do to make this a more attractive place for your business or your family?
Effective narrating of the local economy is a group activity carried out by a local Task Force with the assistance of an Extension Educator to ensure that the story has a broad base of credibility in the community and, at the same time, is complete and checked for reasonableness. The Task Force gathers available secondary data on population, employment, unemployment, income, poverty, levels of education, and other variables. The group observes how these variables have changed over time and compares current levels in the community to those at the national and state. The results of interviews with local businesses and residents are presented as tables and graphs, and text is written to describe how existing businesses and residents perceive the community as a place to do business and to live and work. The report also interprets patterns in the survey responses. "Warning flags" -- problems that businesses and residents point out are prioritized based on their magnitude, need for immediate attention, and probability of a change being made. Local public service issues can often be addressed immediately. Problems that cannot be fixed immediately and that are mentioned by a number of businesses or residents are identified as policy problems -- that is, issues that require a change in the way things are done within the community. For the variables on which the community has gathered secondary data, gaps between the community's level (of, say, average level of education or poverty) and the national or state level can also be used to identify targets of community policy. If discrepancies are found from the interviews or primary data sources and the secondary data sources, they should be explored, since correcting those discrepancies may have financial impacts as the community works with other government agencies. Through a series of meetings, the Task Force eventually develops an action plan identifying what will be done, who will do it, and when it will be done.
Narrating the local economy is an on-going process. The plot continues to evolve because the future continues to unfold. Along the way, there must be planning sessions in which the Task Force develops the story about what is happening in the local economy and decides what actions to undertake. There must also be ceremonies in which the story is told publicly so residents and businesses understand the opportunities and threats that the community faces. An effective narration ceremony is one in which the Task Force accurately describes changes that are occurring in the community, convinces community members that these changes are important, and proposes actions that are based upon the values and goals of the majority of community members.
