I’m Rick Doherty and today the hat I’m wearing and I’ve been asked to talk you a little bit about the Citizens for Economic Development here in Albany, Georgia. I’m the Co-Chair of that. Glenn Tennyson is also the Chair of the Citizen’s Group. And this is a informal group that’s become formal here of late.

Our first initiative -- we wanted to get involved, its individuals and businesses throughout the Albany area that wanted to help our EDC and our Chamber and just our town to kick back in gear from an economic development standpoint and to try to be proactive in helping.

So we have identified several projects to go after and the very first was Darton in achieving a four-year status and I’m very proud to say that that did happen along with the help of so many others, but our group in a small way hope we had a part in pushing that agenda with the Board of Regions and in other places and we’re very proud of that. And know actually that it will make a big impact for Albany going forward.

Next things on our radar screen are both big and small. We have the big one being interstate system. The infrastructure’s just got to happen down here and we are working on that and I know that that will not -- we’re well aware that will not have an immediate impact but we’ve had folks say well you know that’s 15 or 20 years down the road and our group is of the mindset to say, alright, we should have started yesterday then. And that’s what we’re trying to do is rally folks around that.

We have other initiatives for downtown that we’re trying to bring in a market. You’ll hear more about that soon. We’re working with Adika [International] and others to try to make that happen and with the Chamber and EDC. We also have a water park on the radar screen that is in the initial phases of discussion. And then some projects we want to help Albany State with down the line.

So if you want to become involved, we also have Facebook that you can go and sign up. I think we have over 300 members now. It started with a small core of group of men and women having lunch, having pizza in my office, and it has really mushroomed now. And it’s really encouraging to see all the folks wanting to get behind Albany and get us moving again.

So I encourage you to go out and look for the Citizen’s for Economic Development in Southwest Georgia and become a part.