Porter County Jobs Cabinet Moves Forward

duneland-chamberThe recently formed Porter County Jobs Cabinet has completed a productive first quarter and is preparing to move forward with the next stage of its work. Since receiving its charge in January of this year the Cabinet has performed an in-depth analysis of Porter County’s current state of job creation and economic development.

“Having a thorough understanding of the strengths, opportunities, and challenges that affect our ability to attract new job providers as well as our ability to assist existing employers was a critical first step in this process. We started by assessing our current conditions, but our ultimate goal is to identify what types of business we’re looking for and hand a plan to the County that contains specific recommendations on how and where to bring them in over the next several years,” stated Bill Hanna.

The Cabinet’s next step in identifying Porter’s County’s best route to facilitate the development of new jobs and investment will be to reach out and seek important input from key stakeholders within the county. The Cabinet will be contacting local elected officials at the county and municipalities, private industry, Chambers of Commerce, economic development groups, site selectors and others. A comprehensive list of questions has been developed that will be posed to stakeholders during a series of community input sessions. These sessions will be conducted by Desila Rosetti of Organizational Development Solutions.

“In order to successfully attract jobs and put ourselves ahead of the competition, we all have to be pulling in the same direction—partnerships are key. The Cabinet is here to facilitate the creation of the overall plan. We need to understand where the communities and business leaders want to go in order to give the County a roadmap everyone can get behind,” stated Hanna.

The Cabinet will develop a long-range strategic plan that will focus on implementation, and which will serve as a roadmap for County officials to take action and create new jobs. “At the end of the process we want to be in a position to ensure that investments made by the County produce new jobs and yield the highest return for tax payers,” explained Hanna.

Residents and business leaders of Porter County are encouraged to participate in the upcoming Jobs Cabinet community input sessions. For more information, please contact the Cabinet via email information@successwithods.com or tel. (219) 395-9564.

Cabinet Members are Community and Business Leaders from Porter County participating on a voluntary basis. Staff support has been provided by Porter County, Porter County Tourism, The City of Valparaiso and the City of Portage. Cabinet members include Ron Belin, Heather Ennis, Tom Golab, Jeff Good, Tim Healy, Chris Hernandez, Larry Hitz, Stewart McMillan, Kent Meihofer, Doug Olson, and Harley Snyder.