Let’s try some counter-intuitive thinking today.
Last week, a group of business leaders from Lynchburg to Blacksburg met in Roanoke to try to chart a new economic direction for the region. Their newly-formed council is part of a state initiative called GO Virginia, the goal of which is to spur economic growth by giving the business community a pot of money to spend on “transformational” initiatives.
Behind that lies a specific thought — that business leaders will be able to look past political boundaries that government officials can’t. That isn’t particularly a problem in this part of the state, but apparently is elsewhere. To some extent, that aspect of GO Virginia is a Hampton Roads problem in search of a statewide solution.
The big question hanging over GO Virginia is whether it will amount to anything. After all, how transformational can you really be if you only have $1.01 million to spend? That’s the amount allotted for our particular region. For context: That’s just one-third of what it will cost Roanoke to extend Blue Hills Drive to the new Deschutes Brewery.
People are also reading…
Maybe, though, that’s the wrong question. Let’s try this one instead: What if GO Virginia didn’t have any money to spend? What would the mere act of assembling business leaders from Lynchburg to Roanoke to Blacksburg into a single entity to talk about the region’s economy accomplish? That strikes us as a potentially more interesting question. The $1.01 million is a pittance; there may be a lot more potential in what this business council might be able to accomplish through its own advocacy.
Here’s a starting point for thinking about this: This may be the first time that the Lynchburg business community and the Roanoke business community have had to work with one another. The Roanoke and New River Valleys have been working together for several decades now, both in the business world and the government world. The Roanoke Valley and the Alleghany Highlands share the same planning district and the same economic development organization.
But Roanoke and Lynchburg? This is a new thing and feels as awkward as a blind date. Yet there is one big economic argument that ties Roanoke and Lynchburg together: Commuting patterns. Almost as many people commute from Roanoke to Lynchburg as commute to New River. And more people from Lynchburg commute to Roanoke than people from New River do. As with many things, the people are ahead of the politicians.
There was a lot of talk at the initial meeting about how the council unites the business communities of three regions that have certain things in common — how Lynchburg, Roanoke and the New River Valley each have a community college, a minor league baseball team, a distinct identity.
Here’s the first of two suggestions we’ll make today. Maybe this is really four regions, with the Alleghany Highlands being the fourth. The Alleghany Highlands has its own community college (Dabney S. Lancaster). And while it doesn’t have a minor league team, it does have the Covington Lumberjacks of the Valley Baseball League — a summer collegiate league whose players likely would be in the minors if they didn’t happen to be in college instead. What the Alleghany Highlands doesn’t have is any representation on the Region 2 council, a point that peeves community leaders there.
That lack of representation may not be fixed anytime soon — although with 28 members already, what’s a few more? The council could at least win some public relations points by scheduling its next meeting in the Alleghany Highlands. That would be a useful fact-finding visit for business leaders who plainly seem unfamiliar with even the region’s best-known assets.
Recognizing the Alleghany Highlands sets up a second, and more substantive, suggestion for the council. The basic problem the council faces is how can any single project it endorses have an impact in such a big region? An economic project in Appomattox County isn’t going to mean a thing in Giles County, or vice versa.
Here’s something that would, though: Focus on the four community colleges. One of the council’s many charges is to raise the skill level of the local workforce workers – on the premise that better-trained workers will help attract more employers. Conveniently, each of the four regions covered by the GO Virginia council already has a community college working on just that.
The problem they face is getting students into those programs. That’s not just a local problem, of course. The State Council of Higher Education in Virginia projects that by 2030, some 70 percent of the jobs in Virginia will require more than a high school education. Not necessarily a four-year degree, but at least some kind of credentials program. Right now, only 51 percent of Virginia’s high school students continue their education. What can this newly-formed council of business leaders do to change that, at least in this part of Virginia?
Well, they could organize fundraising campaigns for the scholarship programs at each of those four community colleges. In 2008, business and political leaders in the Roanoke Valley worked with Virginia Western to create the Community College Access Program – which provides free tuition for certain qualifying students. Since then, that’s meant 1,912 students have received an education they otherwise might not have. New River Community College now has the Access to Community College Education program, aimed at students from Floyd County, Giles County and Radford. (Montgomery County doesn’t participate.) Dabney S. Lancaster has a similar program called the Dabney Promise Program. Central Virginia in Lynchburg, though, does not.
This seems a good opportunity to fix that — and strengthen the scholarship programs elsewhere. The Virginia Western students from Franklin County and the New River students from Floyd County are funded through the state’s tobacco commission. However, that funding is coming to an end, which means somebody will need to pony up if those localities want their students covered. Making it financially possible for more students to continue their education isn’t as sexy as some other programs might be. But if this new regional council of business leaders could accomplish that, they’d put this part of Virginia ahead of lots of other places. That sounds pretty transformational.