Howard County Leadership Summit
Want to know what the leaders of Howard County have planned for the future? If so, most of those leaders will be on hand for the Howard County Leadership Summit at the Howard College Dorothy Garrett Coliseum Sonic Floor at 6:30, December 6th to discuss their vision for their particular governmental entity and potential opportunities to work together with other governmental entities to realize those visions.
The start of 2022 will be challenging for all of Howard County and those in a positions of leadership. With the loss of approximately 600 jobs associated with the private prison facilities in Big Spring, the first quarter of the coming year will require cooperation of all the governmental agencies to address the resulting hardships many will face.
Fortunately, the energy sector is in recovery mode and the City is working with partners to potentially secure a contract with U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) that might allow the facilities to reopen as detention centers. However, this is far from certain and additional action will be required regardless of the success of this effort. It is doubtful an ICE contract would result in reestablishing all 600 jobs and there would likely be a substantial gap period to reconfigure the facilities for the new use.
On December 12th Howard College hosted a job fair largely targeted to the employees effected by the closure and there will probably need to be more such events in the future. Beyond that, these events highlight the need for Howard County to further diversify its economic base and some of the steps proposed to do that will be included in the program.
The program will provide each entity with up to 15 minutes to layout their plans and strategies for the coming year and beyond, followed by responses to questions from citizens at the event.
Largely because of the Covid pandemic, communications within and between government entities in Howard County have suffered. Coming out of the pandemic there will be more opportunities for economic growth in our region, but to be successful it will require everyone to work together. Howard County and the City of Big Spring will be competing with the larger and often better resourced communities in the surrounding region.
Big Spring does have certain location and logistical advantages, but to successfully compete will demand cooperation and coordination between everyone. The goal of the summit is to facilitate reestablishment of the lines of communication strained by recent history and promote better partnerships throughout the county, as well as ensuring that citizens are kept in the loop.