By Stephen Smoot
Every year, Region 8 Planning and Economic Development Council holds meetings in Moorefield and Keyser to get input from local government and other officials. That is then compiled and used to help update the Region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, or CEDS.
The CEDS process provides an annual update to the region’s five-year plan. As Region 8 executive director Melissa Earle explained, the process was established by legislation under the authority of the United States Economic Development Administration.
Earle called CEDS “an essential development tool for our region” and added that “we want development to be efficient, not haphazard.”
After a lunch served by Mullins 1847, Ralph Goolsby took over the meeting to facilitate community input. The process asks the assembled group to name area strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, also referred to as SWOT. He urged that those present consider “what the region should look like and how we should get there” as well as “what you think we should be doing.”
Attendees included elected officials, county economic development directors, county and municipal administrators and planners, Region 8 staff, and others engaged in the economic development process in Pendleton, Grant, Hardy, and Mineral counties.
Goolsby then shared that Region Eight has approximately $100 million in water and about $39 million in sewer projects currently underway. He asked local governments to continue to update their lists of projects.
Before going into the SWOT discussion, Goolsby shared the latest Potomac Highlands Economic Outlook produced by the West Virginia University College of Business and Economics. He added that recent cutbacks at the university had depleted the staff dedicated to producing the report, making it less thorough than in recent years.
Goolsby started off by asking for examples of area strengths. The first submission to the category was natural resources and water. Mallie Combs, Hardy County development director, noted that a number of “water and sewer systems have been upgraded.”
Others noted that the region has a strong education component, including good high schools, respected trade education centers, and also Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College and Potomac State College of West Virginia University. Others focused on recreation, scenery, and tourism.
When asked for examples of weaknesses, attendees mentioned that collaboration and communication within stakeholders and officials in the area was lacking. A theme touched on last year returned as many mentioned a lack of available housing. This includes both affordable housing and also residential stock that would appeal to upwardly mobile professionals as well.
Others cited transportation issues, such as the lack of a regional airport and Corridor H remaining unfinished for at least several more years.
Under opportunities, the potential impact of a completed Corridor H made this list as well. The growth of both the tourism economy and broadband access was cited. Some mentioned the expanding opportunities offered in the field of agribusiness.
Finally, the group turned to threats to the region meeting its goals. First and foremost, many agreed that federal regulation represented the most dangerous threat to the regional economy. Greer, for example, faces a nightmare scenario with proposed federal rules concerning lime production.
Derek Barr from Hardy Telecommunications explained that federal regulations attached to the Broadband Equity Access and Delivery program, or BEAD, broadband initiative provided substantial advantages to large corporations, such as Frontier. The plethora of rules and the structure of the program, Barr added, could prevent smaller companies, such as Hardy Telecommunications and Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone from competing.
Additionally, agriculture could suffer from future attempts from the United States Environmental Protection Agency to regulate farms and the waters that supply them.
Other threats come from the underfunded and understaffed volunteer emergency response organizations straining to take care of emergencies and disasters.
