Transcript:

Hi, I’m Ted Clem the president of the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission.  Just want to give a little short report about some of our activities of late.  

We just finished our last fiscal year and 2012 was a good year, 2011-2012.  We reported job creation of almost 500 new jobs over the 12-month period, which was our fiscal year.  And in a down economy and in trying circumstances we feel like that was a very successful year.

With new companies like Outdoor Network and Dominion Chemical and also a very visible new restaurant in town, the Olive Garden, a lot of people are excited about that.  We feel like it was a pretty good year.

Also, we’ve recently begun the process of doing a new five-year strategic plan which will kind of set the direction of our organization over the next five years.  Well over 45 people on average participated in our strategic planning process.  And the end result of that is kind of a back-to-basics approach with how we do economic development.

We’re gonna focus on three areas, recruitment, retention and renewal, what we’re calling the three R’s of economic development.  And we’re already beginning to work in trying to enlarge the pool of talent that we use to engage with the EDC.

Instead of it just being a focus on our staff and our board members, we’re really trying to rally the community around these three areas and are organizing task forces to help us with recruitment, to help us with retention, retaining those important jobs with our local manufacturers.  

And then a new area I’m very excited about is renewal.  How do we focus on marketing and branding Albany?  We have such a poor perception of ourselves.  As a result of that, outsiders have a very poor attitude or perception about this community.

We really can’t sell this community until we really believe as a community we have something to sell.  So one of the things we’re going to focus on in this area of renewal is how to rebuild that community spirit and get some engaged volunteers pulling in the same direction, and working on our challenges while we also look ahead to the future.

I’m very excited about it.  We’re already having our first task force meetings.  And the volunteers are excited and engaged and I think this next year is gonna be a really big step ahead for the EDC.

For more information you can check out our website.  It’s the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission’s website, choosealbany.com.  We have a very prolific website.  And if the community would like to become involved with us, email us, give us a call.  We’d love to hear from you.