Eckville Echo

by Steve Dills
Eckville Echo

Lacombe County is planning to host a workshop to look at strengths and weaknesses for economic development.
Councillors approved the recommended course of action, at their meeting last Thursday. It came from their April workshop to identify the county’s economic development objectives and what actions are needed to create a strategy.
They endorsed a recommendation from that meeting which states:
“Lacombe County actively supports new commercial and industrial development in collaboration with our neighbouring communities by providing information and support to interested parties.
“And further that Lacombe County will conduct studies on the degree and type of targeting of commercial and industrial enterprises which might be the best fit within the different regions of our county and how to encourage their establishment.”
Based on the recommendation, councillors authorized county staff to plan a “SWOT” (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis workshop in June which would include “selected representatives from local business and industry, neighbouring municipalities, other government agencies and the community in general” as well as council and senior administration.
“I see strong merit in doing this. We don’t want to give the impression that we want to go out and aggressively market,” said councillor Linda Landmark.
“What we’re endeavouring to do is get a representative cross section from the county,” said Allan Williams, the county’s manager of planning services. “We want to get their ideas and thoughts and then shape the strategy and what we do next. At the end of the day this council has to shape the strategy and action.”
Besides conducting the “SWOT” analysis, the recommendation suggested the county “identify what business readiness means to the county” and “assess where we are with business readiness”.