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Understanding the
competitive nature of today's site selection process,
Mississippi County will make available to qualified
companies local incentive monies that can be used to
purchase land, buildings and provide needed
infrastructure. All incentives will be based on
the number of jobs and the level of wages being created.
The workings behind the
incentives..
Creation of Wealth
In
2002, the citizens of Mississippi County chose to make a
hard decision that they felt would increase the chances
for the economic success of our community. We needed to
make our county more competitive with more populated,
wealthier areas that competed with us for industry and
jobs. The citizens voted to tax themselves and
additional 1/2 cent to create a fund that would be
dedicated to economic development through the provision
of incentives to current industry to expand and
potential industries to locate in the area. Not only
could we make direct offers to existing industry to grow
and potential industry to locate here, but we could also
use our monies to match state and federal funds in order
to purchase equipment, make infrastructure improvements,
and support building costs in return for that industry's
creation of jobs at an average wage attractive to
workers.
This plan met with almost immediate success improving
our rate of business expansion or new industry location
from once every four or five years to more than one per
year. This resulted in nine new industries, the
expansion of ten more, and the creation of close to
3,000 new full time high paying jobs. Northeastern
Arkansas College, the industries and the county teamed
up to establish training to prepare students to enter
these new industries. This collaboration allowed the
industry to use industrial input to design the
curriculum. When is comes to economic development,
Mississippi County has become an example for other
counties in Arkansas.
Mississippi County has able to broaden the job base
through helping a wide variety of industries locate in
our communities from aviation to utility providers. Not
only did the job base begin to diversity but women saw a
new field of work to enter and begin enrolling in
courses to prepare them for work. Soon Mississippi
County will no longer be reliant on a single industrial
type for economic sustainability. We will have a
diversity of industries providing good jobs for our
youth to move into, rather than having a county to move
out of.
Mississippi
County Economic Development
4701 Memorial Dr or PO Box 166
Blytheville, AR 72316-0166
Phone: (870) 532-6084
Fax: (870) 532-2146
Email: clifchitwood@yahoo.com
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