The 14th, and final, stop on Governor Hickenlooper’s Bottom Up Eco Devo Planning tour landed at the Arvada Center earlier today. About 200 citizens and business leaders from the metro counties convened to provide input. The bottom up information gathering process is scheduled to be wrapped up at the end of April.
Attendees were grouped by their county of residence and asked to discuss a common set of questions and issues. The following paragraphs provide some of the topics discussed by fellow Broomfielders.
Topic: What can government do better to support business?
• Make it easier for businesses to find out about local assistance.
• Become more aware of how to support the unique needs of specific industries and clusters such as photonics, aerospace, nanotechnology, and the biosciences. To this point, a brief discussion focused on how elected officials can become more “military-friendly”, which includes support of the defense, homeland security, aerospace industries and their supply chain.
• Continue to further strengthen relationships between education, government, economic developers, workforce training, and the private sector.
• Improvement of the 36 corridor, including completion of FasTracks.
• Establish a visionary group that provides a long-term economic vision for Colorado – that covers all aspects of economic development from research to recruitment to retention. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute (CATI), helped develop many of the clusters and industries that are critical to the state’s present economy.
Topic: What are areas that are important to the success of Broomfield?
• Maintain a designated level of primary jobs (jobs that create other jobs).
• Support innovation.
• Strength of neighboring communities (higher education, research facilities, distribution services) and realization that it is not necessary to duplicate their competencies.
Topic: What are Broomfield success stories?
• The foresight of city and county leaders that provided Broomfield with a diverse tax base derived from a strong mix of retail and industry.
• Development of the 1st Bank Center.
• 36 Commuting Solutions has developed partnerships between local municipalities to secure funds for improvements of the 36 corridor.
Colorado is blessed with an intelligent and creative populaton who have an abundance of enthusiasm and good ideas. It will be easy to organize and prioritize their thoughts and opinions. The challenge will come in finding funds to implement the plan.
A more complete summary of this event and previous meetings will be available on the Bottom Up website.
©Copyright 2011 by CBER.