Friday, July 31, 2009

Sustain Blaine has cooperative goals

The writers are on the steering committee of Sustain Blaine, a group formed to promote business in Blaine County.

By JULIE CORD, VANESSA CROSSGROVE FRY, LINDA HAAVIK, REBEKAH HELZEL AND GEORGE KIRK

Last week, an editorial referred to a "tug of war for funding economic development in the Wood River Valley." As the steering committee of Sustain Blaine, the group that initiated the GoBlaine strategy for economic vitality, we'd like to go on record saying that our objective is to bring all parties together to work cooperatively. Together we can accomplish the common goals set forth in GoBlaine; if we tug against each other, we'll fail.

The GoBlaine strategy proposes a means to create a thriving, diversified and year-round economy for all of Blaine County—not just the Wood River Valley. Continued support for tourism, which accounted for approximately 14 percent of countywide gross domestic product in 2006, is a key element of the GoBlaine strategy. In fact, the strategy calls for expanded marketing of our area—leveraging the Sun Valley brand to market all of our region's attributes, including hiking, biking, birding, horseback riding, etc., from the Sawtooth National Recreation Area to the Craters of the Moon. GoBlaine proposes partnering with the chambers in the county to do so.

But that is only part of the solution.

The GoBlaine strategy recommends employing start-up, retention and expansion activities to foster growth in three additional sectors: clean technology, health and wellness, and agriculture. Together with diversified tourism, these four targets will enable us to achieve short-term gains by maximizing our existing local business sectors and natural attributes—and they also provide a pathway to sustained economic vitality over the long term.

Development of the GoBlaine strategy first started with an assessment of Blaine County's current and future economic challenges, as well as our unique attributes as a region. It is the result of a two-year effort involving hundreds of citizens from all segments of our community and has broad-based support from people representing government, education, business, nonprofit groups and agriculture.

Implementation of the GoBlaine strategy, including the formation of a Blaine Development Corp. (BDC), will require significant funding. We expect to raise these funds from a combination of public and private sources. However, these funding requests will not continue in perpetuity—we believe that the BDC can be formed with a revenue model that will ultimately make it self-sustaining as the strategy is implemented. What is required is start-up funding for the first few years of operation.

We are gratified that local governments recognize the wisdom and value of investing in the implementation of the GoBlaine strategy. To date, Bellevue, Carey and Hailey have each budgeted funding for this purpose. The county's proposed budget includes a line item for it and the mayor of Sun Valley has proposed that his city also provide funding. A presentation to Ketchum is scheduled for Monday, Aug 3.

The research has been done and a strong strategy formulated. All we need now is to implement it.