Summit Meeting Scheduled
A “Stakeholder Summit” Saturday offers Spokane area citizens a chance to have a say in shaping Spokane’s economic development strategy for the next five years.
The New Century Plan is designed to build a broad-based community consensus as to what the region’s economic development priorities will be.
Saturday, from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. at Spokane Community College’s student center, the public is invited to attend a session designed to come up with a list of the 10 most important issues facing the region.
The meeting will also produce the New Century Task Force - 150 area residents who are stakeholders in the region’s economic future - who will continue in the process of developing the New Century plan.
The New Century group is an alliance of several Spokane area organizations - like Momentum 96, The Spokane Area Economic Development Council, and the Spokane and Spokane Valley chambers of commerce - that in the past have each formulated their own economic development strategies.
The groups decided to join together in the planning process, and to broaden that process to include individuals and organizations who have not been involved in the past.
Neighborhood groups and social services groups have been included, for example, because of the need to address growing poverty and the economically disenfranchised, New Century officials explained.
Groups and individuals from the Valley and North Idaho also will participate because of the perceived need to coordinate economic planning geographically, and to help all areas of the region understand a common interest.
The New Century Task Force will meet later in four two-hour sessions to draft the New Century Plan. The plan will be published in The Spokesman-Review on April 21, and offered to the public for comment in a town hall meeting April 23.
The public is encouraged to attend all sessions.
Henry Luke, a Jacksonville, Fla., consultant who has helped more than 40 communities in the South and Midwest create economic plans, will oversee Saturday’s summit.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PUBLIC INVITED A list of the most important issues facing the region will be produced during a public session from 8:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Spokane Community College’s student center.