Kevin Carter, Executive Director of the High Ground of Texas, shared advice from his experience at a regional economic development organization for rural communities. In the following excerpt, Kevin shares how to get rural communities connected with state agencies that can assist them:
We have a program to help our small communities meet [state agencies]. We do what we call our Austin Ally trip every December. So the first week of December we go down and host all the agencies that help us do economic development and also our representative staff. Since we cover a large area, we have 10 state representatives and three state senators. We’ll usually have about 60 for lunch that we host at the capital every year and so that’s a good way to get everybody introduced to those agencies. We’ll usually get three or four of those agencies to talk at lunch and then we go visit the other agencies to get our folks acclimated to those folks and hopefully they can build a relationship there. The most important part for those small communities is just getting a name with the face and being able to get in front of those people to talk about their concerns.
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