The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

Over the past few years, Clarenville has budgeted quite a few dollars for what has been dubbed as Economic Development activities.  The focused goal has been to spur business development in the town and generate money.  This has been met with varying degrees of success (depending on who you talk to)  (see my previous post on this  http://ourtownclarenville.blogspot.ca/2013/04/economic-development-or-community.html  ) I would like to propose a radical rethink of this approach. First and foremost, the term Economic Development is much too narrow and too focused on money rather than the people it is supposed to benefit.  What we really need to talk about is Community Development .  The goal of community development is to take efforts to improve the “livability” of our town by making it a better place to live for its citizens and by creating a positive experience for its visitors.   This is known as “Placemaking” and has been the subj...

Have you ever tried to measure something without any form of measuring scale?   It’s hard, and if you are the person who's being measured it’s even harder.   That is the challenge that the Clarenville Town Council is facing as it contemplates hiring yet another Economic Development (ED) Officer.     (Clarenville has now had three ED officers in as many years) This  issue was contemplated at this past Tuesday evening’s Council meeting.  The question came up – What exactly have these Economic Development Officers done?      Rightfully, this provocative question prompted considerable debate around the Council table – unfortunately that question was never really answered (the fact that the was no articulate answer to this question with three years of experience for the position indicates that there is almost certainly a management issue at play here).  That said, I would argue that Council is looking for the an...