
{"id":15634,"date":"2011-02-03T10:19:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T15:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=15634"},"modified":"2011-02-03T10:19:23","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T15:19:23","slug":"board-reiterates-focus-on-local-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/02\/03\/board-reiterates-focus-on-local-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Board reiterates focus on local businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Kirk Ross<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<\/em><br \/>\n CARRBORO  \u00e2\u20ac\u201d As Carrboro leaders ponder the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s participation in a new Orange County economic-development collaboration, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re underlining support for a focus on growing local businesses.<br \/>\nAt their retreat last weekend at the Orange Water and Sewer Authority headquarters, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen reviewed its own economic-development efforts, including an update on the replacement for the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic and community development director James Harris, who retired at the first of this month.<br \/>\nTown Manager Steve Stewart told the board he had narrowed down a pool of about 70 applicants and would begin face-to-face interviews with a small group of candidates next week.<br \/>\nStewart said he was looking for an individual to take on the priorities of the board, particularly the focus on supporting and growing locally owned businesses.<br \/>\nBoard member Dan Coleman said while the hiring process continues, the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s elected leaders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 commitment to local ought to be clear to whomever Stewart names to the job.<br \/>\nColeman said that at the retreat, the board reached a consensus on the need to follow through on three priorities: building on the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s revolving loan program, the launch of a Think Local First campaign and attracting more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153green jobs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Carrboro.<br \/>\nHe said the town will try to bolster the funds in its loan program by pursuing state and federal grants, including Community Development Block Grants. Right now, Coleman said, the town has enough in the revolving loan fund to assist in the start-up or expansion of two or three businesses. One strategy to expand that number would be to try to target a grant proposal.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the belief that if we had a project attached to a grant, there might be federal support available,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Coleman said.<br \/>\nThe Think Local First campaign, a top priority of the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent Local Living Economy Task Force, aims to build more business-to-business ties and encourage greater use of local products and services by consumers and businesses.<br \/>\nMayor Mark Chilton said that though there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been disagreement over specifics, thinking local is a long-running policy in Carrboro.<br \/>\nHe said the retreat provided a contrast to a recent meeting he attended of county, business and municipal leaders on a proposed economic-development collaboration.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As a board, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still fundamentally committed to focus on local business and promote local ownership as a strategy for recycling the most dollars into the community,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<br \/>\nChilton said it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been apparent from the outset that the county and other members of the group looking at a new strategy want to focus on recruiting from outside the county.<br \/>\nThe recent hiring of Gary Shope, a former vice president at the Research Triangle Foundation with international recruiting credentials, as the county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interim economic-development director shows the distinction, Chilton said.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153In talks with our neighbors, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that they would really like for us to join forces and cooperate in pursuing some strategies. But fundamentally it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a group of strategies that run contrary to what we want to do in Carrboro.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Carrboro leaders ponder the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s participation in a new Orange County economic-development collaboration, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re underlining support for a focus on growing local businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15635,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15634\/revisions\/15635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}