Bill Gibson Executive Director Southwestern Economic Development Commission

Question 1:

Andrea Sumer:
How does the Southwestern Commission work with the municipalities on things like solid waste and also things like getting employers to come into the area?

Bill Gibson:
Technically, the Southwestern Commission, as its sister organizations across the state and nation, is owned by the membership, that being the cities and counties. Therefore, the elected commissioners, the elected mayors, the elected city council people. So since we are in effect owned by them, we work for them. And to that extent, the policies they set, the wishes that they express on behalf of the citizens they serve are the very sorts of objectives that we seek to address also, but altogether on a regional basis, a multi-county basis.

Question 2:

Andrea Sumner:
How does a regional commission, how do they effect policy in these counties that they serve? How do they work to do that? How do you go about setting a goal for the region?

Bill Gibson:
It's a symbiotic process. Obviously, a regional commission such as ours, and such as those across the nation, it doesn't have the power to make ordinances, to make laws in effect, to enact taxes or collect taxes, must do its work through what we call relationship capital. Through understanding the needs of the local units, through understand those needs vis a vis the local officials that are sent to our board and to help them understand how things can be done on a collective basis, and how things can be done and are being done perhaps in other places of the state or nation in a more economically friendly way, a more environmentally friendly way, perhaps a more business friendly way.

Question 3:

Andrea Sumner:
What are some of the goals of the Southwestern Commission for this area?

Bill Gibson:
In the broadest sense, the Southwestern Commission can essentially do anything that its local membership wants it to do. So, a county commissioner or a town mayor asks the staff of the Southwestern Commission to help that town or that county work on something; we essentially have the authority to do it. What would restrain us is good sense, or the lack of good sense, that lack of monetary resources, and whether it would make good public policy for what we feel would be the needs of the majority of citizens.

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