It’s been 24 years since the City of Madison has had an economic development plan for the City. This, despite the splashy announcements and press releases by the Mayor’s Office about appointing Mark Bugher (now resigned) and Ald. Zach Brandon to the Economic Development Commission and trying to heighten that committee’s profile. So far, I’m not impressed, at all, by what the committee has done. And, in fact, it took two years of efforts during budget time by myself and others to make this happen. The first year it failed, the second year it passed and now in November two years later we’re finally getting around to creating an economic development plan. There are several ways to give input into this process:
Session #1 – Targeted toward any business, non-profit, and the general public, Wednesday, November 28, 2007, 6:00-8:00 pm, Alliant Energy Center, Exhibition Hall, Monona Room, 1919 Alliant Energy Center Way
Session #2 – Targeted toward small businesses, Thursday, November 29, 2007, 8:00-10:00 am, Overture Center, 201 State Street
Session #3 – Targeted toward medium and large businesses, Thursday, November 29, 2007, 2:00-4:00 pm, Warner Park Community Recreation Center, 1625 Northport Drive
Session #4 – Targeted toward “high tech” businesses of all sizes, Thursday, December 6, 2007, 1:30-3:30 pm, MGE Innovation Center, Conf. Room 50, 510 Charmany Dr.
You also may email comments (if you cannot testify in person) to:
Peggy Yessa, City of Madison Office of Business Resources
PO Box 2983
Madison, WI 53701-2983
pyessa@cityofmadison.com
www.businessmadison.com
What struck me as odd is after all this time and planning and efforts to make Economic and Business Development the number one issue in the City of Madison, we’re still tripping over ourselves. I was going through stacks of mail this weekend and I found the flyer for the County’s 2007 Dane County Business Opportunity Forum and I laughed when I noticed that it is scheduled at the same time as session #3 above. I laughed even harder when I googled it the first information I found about it was on the City of Madison website – of course, it was on the Department of Civil Rights webpage, not the Economic Development webpage. You’d think that after 5 years of tripping over ourselves to talk about economic development, we could get some basics right and not schedule our listening sessions during other similar events.
