Has John Sechrest’s work touched your business or you professionally in any way? Does he create value for the money the City/County has invested in his salary? Would Corvallis be better off without his position, his work, and his personal enthusiasm?
Its all about jobs, employment and the economy. Time is of the essence.
The economy is down. Unemployment is up.
Corvallis and Benton County need new business and new living wage jobs. John Sechrest and Aaron Edwards, working under the banner of the Corvallis-Benton Chamber Coalition, have been working hard, with good results, to help create and bring those jobs to our community *. But their own jobs- and the funding that supports economic development in Corvallis and Benton County- are in Jeopardy. The consequences will be serious.
No Economic Development, No New Jobs.
Benton County and the City of Corvallis allocate funding for economic development. In the past, a small part of those funds have paid for John’s and part of Aaron’s salary via a contract for Economic Development with the Chamber Coalition. Now the City and County are facing tough budget situations, and the economic development budgets may be cut, and with it, they will cut the funding that pays for John and Aaron to create and recruit new jobs to Corvallis and Benton County.
These decisions will be made soon. The City Council Budget commission will meet May 4th to hear the proposed city budget. May 11 is a public hearing (come give testimony). The County Commissioners are finalizing budgets this month. They need to hear from you now.
If we lose the funding for Econ Dev, and with it, John and Aaron, we are at high risk of losing both of their jobs (barring an amazing private fundraising effort, which we have begun). The effects of these losses could be devastating to our efforts to start, grow and expand local businesses like yours. This would be a real blow at a time when we should be focusing on creating jobs, and reaping the harvests of the new business seeds that John has sown for 4 years.
Please contact your Corvallis city councilor, contact your Benton County commissioner, and let them know we need to invest in growing jobs when the economy is down. It only makes sense. Also let them know what John, Aaron and The Chamber’s economic development team have done for you, someone you know, and the greater business community. Encourage them to support some level of funding for the continuation of those positions.
Katherine Cleland
Board Member, Economic Development Committee, Corvallis-Benton Chamber Coalition
Attachment: List of city councilors, List of County Commissioners
List of city councilors and their emails see www.corvallis.or.us and search city council. Hyperlinks will open up an email form from the city.
- Mayor - Charles C. Tomlinson
Ward 1 - Mark O'Brien
Ward 2 - Patricia Daniels
Ward 3 - Richard Hervey
Ward 4 - Dan Brown
Ward 5 - Mike Beilstein
Ward 6 - Joel Hirsch
Ward 7 - Jeanne Raymond
Ward 8 - David Hamby
Ward 9 - Hal Brauner
For a list of County Commissioners and their contact information see www http://www.co.benton.or.us/boc/index.php
To send and email to the entire board: bocinfo@co.benton.or.us
Annabelle.E.JARAMILLO@Co.Benton.OR.US
jay.dixon@co.benton.or.us
Linda.L.MODRELL@Co.Benton.OR.US
*For details on jobs created, businesses supported, please see our past economic development report go to
http://www.corvallischamber.com/index.php/econdev/edreport.html
from an email I received back after this letter:
ReplyDelete"your email does not address the fact that the Corvallis Chamber's lack of leadership and the ability to lead in creating jobs."
Here's my point of view...as a board member who has tried to keep an Economic Development program viable for the past 6 years with very minimal funding, and bound by the Prescriptions of the Prosperity that Fits plan to focus on home grown, traded sector business.
For the amount the city pays the chamber, we can barely hire one FTE. For that one FTE, our goal over the past 4 years has been to start, grow and expand traded sector businesses. John Sechrest has been very effective in fulfilling that mission. He has effectively help create hundreds of jobs through recruiting and nurturing technology startups, including Perpetua. He created the Willamette Angel Conference, which alone brought more than $160,000 of new capital into business, $125,000 of which went to a local corvallis business, which has subsequently hired 8 more employees. Add to that Food Biz Boot Camp, Biz boot camp, and the work he did on WIN and thats a lot of value added. He has connected hundreds of entrepreneurs, start ups and small businesses with talent, service providers, peer support groups and resources to launch or expand their ventures. He is in constant motion connecting Corvallis economy and businesses to the entire willamette valley, and to key Portland resources, including venture capital. (More info can be found on the Chamber Coalition Website in the economic development section where you will see the monthly report of the ED work.)
I have hard time seeing that as a lack of leadership. -- but it is very focused on economic gardening, because with limited resources you look for the largest ROI.
" A drop in manufacturing by 67 percent in Corvallis (compared to 28% for the state and 33% nationally) shows that the Chamber is basically an ineffective organization that has failed in its mission to create and retain jobs"
The failure that Dan Brown writes about in economic development in his white paper is a systemic failure that is caused by the chronic lack of funding and attention to ED, not a referendum on what we have accomplished with the small amount of money we have been given. I cannot think of a more highly leveraged way to use $72,000 than the work that John has done and completed with the Chamber board's and volunteers help. Given limited resources, we looked for the highest leverage potential .
What I see in your thoughts below is that you think the mission for ED ought to be different. If that is the case than the fault lies with the funding body and the directions that they used to guide the chamber. We were given a mission to grow local businesses as the first priority within the prosperity that fits model. We have done that remarkably successfully.
Regarding HP, Do you honestly believe that the chamber coalition could have had any impact on a major corporations outsourcing and siting strategy? I don't think there is anything that could have been done there, and to hang the chamber coalition with that is truly to scape -goat the organization. That hurts.
The chamber coalition did successfully convince Trimble/Tripod to keep their facility here when they were looking to leave corvallis a few years ago, retaining a large number of jobs, and there are many stories like that.
http://www.corvallischamber.com/index.php/econdev/edreport.html This link does not work. Did you mean to post this link instead? http://www.chamberorganizer.com/corvallisbenton/docs/03EDreport.pdf
ReplyDeletethanks, you're correct.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link Monique. Is there anything that can provide us with a summary view for the past four years? And/or give us insight into any germinating seeds in the ground?
ReplyDeleteBoth links now work, since all 9 months of reports are up.
ReplyDelete