The Vance County Board of Commissioners adopted a strategic plan for economic development at its July 10 meeting that creates a roadmap for future growth over the next few years.
Crystal Morphis, with Creative Economic Development Consulting, walked commissioners through the basic framework of the strategic plan, which she and her team developed over the course of the last year.
Following the presentation, Commissioner Archie Taylor expressed appreciation for the work that went into the plan’s development.
“The easy part is planning – the hard part is doing,” Morphis replied.
As part of the development process, Morphis shared results of a SWOT analysis – the acronym stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – derived from information from almost 100 respondents from across the county.
The plan lists “ordinance enforcement” as a weakness, and, when asked by Commissioner Taylor to explain in greater detail, Morphis said it dealt with appearance and first impressions when a newcomer or prospective business owner visits.
“Code enforcement is so important,” Morphis said, for a community’s beautification and appearance.
Morphis used information and data from the respondents to create a plan tailored to take into account the area’s strengths – interstate access and proximity to urban centers like Raleigh and Durham – while working to address some of the challenges – an unskilled workforce and a lack of available housing, just to name two.
The plan lists five goals and has a three-year implementation timeline that details specific items that need to be achieved over that period:
Goal 1 – Attract, retain and foster start-up businesses
Goal 2 – Make Vance County a choice location
Goal 3 – Attract, develop and retain talent to ensure a strong pipeline for the future
Goal 4 – Strengthen local and regional connections
Goal 5 – Strengthen the Henderson-Vance Economic Development Commission
During her presentation to the commissioners, Morphis provided information from the respondents on topics such as challenges to growing their business. Some of those challenges include workforce availability, wage growth pressure, workforce training, financing, housing for workforce and finding affordable space to operate a business.
Some of the areas that the respondents wanted to see the county invest more resources in were in attracting new business and retaining existing businesses, and developing amenities like retail, dining and recreation.
Almost half of the respondents – 49 percent – cited personal or hometown connections – to the county as the reason their company is located within Vance County, Morphis noted.
The Kerr-Tar region and the state are seeing a growth in population, but Vance County and its three municipalities all have seen a drop in their overall populations, according to data from the 2010 and 2020 Census. This can also affect the available work force, which also has shrunk in Vance County since 2017, when there was a workforce pool of 17,237 to a November 2022 level of 16,639.
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