Eastern Carolina Council seeking input for five-year plan
By From staff reports
Published in News on August 29, 2012 1:46 PM
The Eastern Carolina Council is seeking input from residents of the region's nine counties into what will be its next five-year development plan.
The quasi-governmental entity, one of sixteen multi-county planning and development regions in the state, is comprised of Wayne, Duplin, Greene, Lenoir, Carteret, Craven, Jones, Onslow and Pamlico counties.
Because the ECC receives funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, it is required to draft a new Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for the region every five years.
A CEDS is designed to bring together the public and private sectors in the creation of an economic roadmap to diversify and strengthen regional economies.
It analyzes the regional economy and serve as a guide for establishing regional goals and objectives, developing and implementing a regional plan of action, and identifying investment priorities and funding sources. It also integrates a region's human and physical capital planning in the service of economic development.
Integrated economic development planning provides the flexibility to adapt to global economic conditions and fully utilize the region's unique advantages to maximize economic opportunity for its residents by attracting the private investment that creates jobs for the region's residents.
The CEDS is a continuing economic development planning process developed with broad-based and diverse public and private sector participation, which sets forth the goals and objectives necessary to solve the economic development problems of the region and clearly define the metrics of success.
A CEDS provides a useful benchmark by which a regional economy can evaluate opportunities with other regions in the national economy.
The Easter Carolina Council CEDS is available for public comment beginning this week. It is posted on the ECC website at http://www.eccog.org.
Anyone wishing to comment on the document may do so via a link on the website. Comments must be received by Sept. 27.