About
Us - Strategic Plan
Mission
and Vision | Strategic
Plan | Board
of Directors | Partners
The following represents a summary of a
five month strategic planning process that involved input
from 91 community leaders, 23 key private sector employers
and the Otsego County Economic Alliance Board of Directors.
Primary Program Goals
The Alliance has identified its primary program goals are
to retain, expand and attract base industries. These base
industries are currently identified as manufacturing, wholesale,
distribution, energy, information technology and high value
destination tourism.
Barriers to Development
As identified by our business and community leaders:
- Lack of or inconsistent planning and construction
of appropriate infrastructure
- Employment base with low skill level
and reliance on low paying retail and seasonal jobs
- Uncontrolled growth impacting an accepted
and desired quality of life
- Attitudes that are resistant to higher
wage industries and desiring that growth and development
happen elsewhere
Strategic Goals and
Objectives
The Alliance Board recognizes that its primary role in managing
economic development in Otsego County is to impact the number
and quality of jobs by retaining, expanding and attracting
quality industry to the county. In doing so, the Alliance
has agreed that it can only be effective in this role, if
all aspects of the community - its leadership, infrastructure,
land use, public services and overall quality of life - are
conducive to these goals.
The Alliance recognizes that the barriers
identified and listed above will directly affect its work.
The Alliance also recognizes that it has a limited ability
to directly affect several of these barriers. It does, however,
have a role in seeing that they are addressed.
The following are the strategic goals and
objectives proposed to implement the Alliance's Mission, Vision
and Primary Program Goals:
Strategic Goal: Retain
and expand existing base industry
- Identify and develop profiles on all base
industries, conduct visits to at least 50% at least once
a year, identify issues affecting continued operations or
expansion plans, provide appropriate follow-up and support.
- Develop a communication strategy for maintaining
contact with base industries and updating them on issues
and information of relevance to them.
Strategic Goal: Attract
new base industry to county
- Develop and provide location information
including vacant site and building data base, current wage
rate data, demographics, location costs, municipal service
availability, etc.
- Develop a cost effective, location appropriate
marketing plan designed to define and target base industries
to locate or expand their operations to Otsego County
- Develop a consistent tax abatement policy
for use throughout the county
- Capitalize a fund that can be used to
finance speculative building construction, finance the purchase
of industrial sites and make other investments necessary
to facilitate the location of new base industry
- Identify and develop additional industrial
or business parks in Vanderbilt, Waters, Elmira (rail access)
and Johannesburg
Strategic Goal: Build
infrastructure to support base industry
- Access state and federal infrastructure
grant funding to construct municipal water, sewer, storm
water, roads and telecommunications to serve existing and
new base industry.
- Develop a plan that assesses the existing
and future demand, supply and gaps in Otsego County's broadband
telecommunications infrastructure and identifies projects
and options to improve the cost and accessibility to broadband
telecommunications infrastructure by business, residents
and government
- Identify and move forward process to
plan, finance and build local road access across I-75 to
serve the Gaylord industrial parks
- Implement community-based effort to develop
affordable housing.
Strategic Goal: Plan
and implement general community development projects and services
- Develop and implement a community and
economic development plan for Vanderbilt to address municipal
infrastructure, community facilities, downtown redevelopment
and industrial park development.
- Develop and implement community and economic
development plans for the Elmira, Waters and Johannesburg
Town Centers including revitalization projects for corridors
and town centers that will improve the look, feel and commercial
viability of those districts.
- Provide access to small business assistance
including business planning and financial packaging.
- Capitalize a $200,000 revolving loan
fund to provide start-up and gap financing to small businesses.
- Develop, promote and provide assistance
targeted towards fostering entrepreneurs.
Strategic Goal: Champion
managed growth
- Establish a Task Force of City, County,
Township and Village officials designed to open up communication
on county-wide development planning. Focus of effort would
be to change planning orientation from municipal boundaries
to growth boundaries, irrespective of municipalities, develop
infrastructure planning in support, and develop consensus
on the role of quality of life plays in our community.
- Educate and promote a holistic approach
to economic development to community leaders and community
at large.
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 For
More Information Contact:
Jeff Ratcliffe, Executive
Director
Otsego County Economic Alliance
1062 Cross Street | Gaylord, MI 49735
(989) 731-0288 | (989) 731-0289 FAX
© 2005 Gaylord - Otsego
County Economic Alliance
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