URGED looks at three-year plan

DEL NORTE— The Upper Rio Grande Economic Development group discussed their draft three-year plan during their monthly meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 14, stating that they will be passing the investment plan by the beginning of the year. The group relies heavily on local investors to ensure the group’s ability to enhance economic development within the Valley and the past three years has proven to be very successful.

Co-founder Marty Asplin explained that he and wife Bonnie have been working with other members of the group to reach out to local investors to gain their interest and hopefully their continued support for the next three years. The plan states that the group will continue to reach out to local businesses to offer resources, marketing strategies and training resources to help small businesses thrive in the current economy, while working to bring new businesses to the area and help support outdoor recreational needs.

The plan is broken down into strategic steps that will help enhance the environment, business infrastructure, workforce development and business responsibilities. These steps are taken to help boost economic growth within the region and to sustain existing businesses while bringing in new opportunities.

Goals for enhancing the physical environment where businesses and communities thrive include: creating a welcoming place where families can work and grow within the Valley, to help shift municipalities within the Valley from being internally focused to externally focused by aiding local officials to look at the Valley as a whole, encouraging public infrastructure improvements within communities and increasing technological advancements, like the fiber optic cables that are being installed throughout the region.

The group works closely with businesses in order to help increase the chances of survival by supplying resources for training, gathering information that show trends and working to create a close-knit relationship between the local schools as well as Adams State University, who can supply interns to learn at entry level positions.

By developing the workforce, businesses can identify hard-to-fill positions, apply training and education to their employees to enhance the skills needed for those positions and aid in creating a road map for local students to get into positions within the Valley.

The three-year plan also includes helping businesses to be able to identify problems within the business and steps to take to ensure growth and success. The plan emphasizes businesses need to develop a strategy to bring in positive change, to work with local governments and education outreach programs to help identify motivated employees that help the business succeed.

The plan continues to state that the group will move forward with reaching out to other organizations, attending seminars that will enhance their knowledge of business infrastructure and networking while continuing to follow up with businesses and to “Collaboratively represent, communicate and maintain working relations with all local, regional and state business representatives, government official and general public concerning economic development related activities.”

The draft three-year plan will be reviewed during the December meeting and efforts to increase investors will continue throughout the remainder of the year. During the last few meetings, the group has highlighted success stories from the past three years that were created by using the previous plan and will continue to highlight others as they move forward.