Carlo Robustelli
For the past several years, the public discourse around growing our economy in Orange County has been focused on having the appropriate “tools.†Such tools include regulatory and financial incentives, a proposed sales-tax referendum, a stronger marketing and branding effort, new economic-development professionals, etc. We have heard economic-development leaders ask, “What types of businesses do we, the Orange County community, want? Green and sustainable industry, nonprofit headquarter locations, locally owned small businesses?â€
Over the past year, I have spent a significant amount of time talking with folks about economic development and workforce development. In fact, I have attended economic-development meetings in municipalities throughout the county, hosted meetings with economic-development professionals on various topics, carefully tracked local economic-development efforts and strategies and met with numerous students looking for a livable wage-paying job. What I have observed is that we have more in common than we are willing to admit. I have also found that we are often quick to talk about what we stand against and slow to speak up about what we stand for. This, understandably, can make it difficult to collaborate and cooperate.
I believe it is time for our community to come together and develop a collective common good for our economic-development interests that is people centered. Here are a few questions that I think are important to answer: Who are we trying to support – local entrepreneurs, students graduating from UNC/Durham Tech, current residents, future residents, recent high school graduates – by growing our local economy and promoting economic development? How, if applicable, are our current economic-development strategies working toward supporting the groups identified in our above answer? Why is it important that we focus our efforts on this/these groups? Moving forward, what will the groups we have identified need to grow, expand and thrive? How can local economic-development interest groups (e.g., the chambers of commerce, Empowerment, Carrboro Merchants Association, Hillsborough Merchants Association), local community-development/activist groups (e.g., the Sierra Club, Justice United, NAACP) and our educational institutions help support these efforts?
Our college’s vision in Orange County is to build new programs and maintain existing services in a thematic and strategic way that upholds our commitment to be the community college of Orange County. We stand ready to support the strategic economic-development interests throughout our service area. In fact, we believe that building the new Orange County Campus is one of many successes that we should all point to when reflecting on economic/workforce development over the past 10 years. Our new community college campus could not have been better timed as we, faced with the worst economic recession in over 100 years, provide free “how-to†small-business seminars to local entrepreneurs (existing and new), provide affordable university transfer instruction, start new and innovative sustainable technology programs, provide short-term high-demand job skills training and more to local residents and businesses.
Carlo Robustelli is director of Orange County Operations for Durham Technical Community College.
These are such profound observations from one of Durham Technical Community College’s leaders in education. We all stand to benefit immensely from his foresight and perspectives. Please support this young man in his mission to make our area more prosperous for every citizen.