 Welcome to the backstory on Longmont's Economic Development Partnership, or LEDP. I'm Tim Waters, and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I host the backstory, which is an opportunity for you, Longmoners, to learn a bit more about what goes on in the city, stories that you might read about in the newspaper or see something on social media, but might have more questions or would benefit from more information on what is the backstory on whatever it is you're reading about. And today, there's an opportunity to go deeper, to learn more about Longmont's Economic Development Partnership, what that means, who's involved, why does it exist, what does it produce, and we're going to have a chance to learn on that from Jessica Erickson, who is the president and CEO, right title, Jessica? Of Longmont's Economic Development Partnership. So Jessica is, for those of you who might watch the backstory, you know, Jessica is not a newcomer to the backstory. She's been featured on a number of these. Most recently and probably the most significant is the decision by Costco to expand their operations to locate in Longmont. That is still in process for those who care about this. And I get those questions, I'm guessing you do from time to time, Jessica. What's the status of Costco? It's still underway and we're anticipating that it will keep moving forward. Maybe by December of 2023, we'll do Christmas shopping in Costco. We'll see. So Jessica, you have a rich deep background in Economic Development. You may want to talk about that and I'll give you a chance to talk about just what kind of you bring to the job and then like move right into why do we do it this way? Why do we have a group like LADP in Longmont that does Economic Development work while in some other cities it might be done by the city or, you know, city staff members, but start with a little bit about you and then the why and the background on this. Sure. And you froze a little bit on me there for a second. So I didn't hear all of what you said. So I'm going to give it a shot and if I missed anything, let me know. Whoever views this, they won't mind me freezing. They might mind it if you freeze. Sounds good. So as you said, Jessica Erickson, President and CEO of Longmont Economic Development Partnership. I've been with this organization for going on seven years. It'll be seven years in February of next year. So I started here in early 2015. Most recently before that, I had done Economic Development at the state level in the State Office of Economic Development and International Trade for a couple of years and I've also done Economic Development locally both with a public-private partnership organization in Broomfield and then within the halls of city government in the city of Thornton. So I have the full rate of experience both from local all the way up to state level economic development as well as public-private and public-private partnership economic development. So I bring that full range of perspective to how we approach economic development in Longmont and at Longmont Economic Development Partnership. I think the other question was why do we do it this way here in Longmont? And so the Longmont Economic Development Partnership has been around for over 40 years now or exactly 40 years now as an organization in some form or fashion. Some of your viewers might recall the Economic Development Association of Longmont that then became the Longmont Area Economic Council and then in 2016 we became the Longmont Economic Development Partnership which is a very intentional transition and part of how I ended up here was that in 2014-ish the city of Longmont and then Longmont Area Economic Council took on a citywide market assessment for opportunity related to economic development and really kind of where we sat as a community in terms of the strength of the community and our competitiveness to pursue and when economic development deals business development investment for our community. And one of the things they looked at was the structure of how we did economic development here in Longmont. The end result of that was the original advanced Longmont strategy that really called for a whole new level of collaboration related to economic development that hadn't existed here in Longmont before and certainly didn't really exist in a lot of other places either. It was part of the appeal for me in fact to come here and lead this organization. And so that new level of collaboration really required public sector, private sector, nonprofit, education and just a variety of perspectives to bring to and contribution of a variety of expertise to bring to our approach to economic development and that really lended itself to more of a public-private partnership model as opposed to economic development from inside the halls of city government model. Previous to that the Economic Council did exist. There was also an internal economic development department at the city. Each had different roles and responsibilities. My understanding not totally clear though there was definitely some gray area in terms of who did what when which really resulted in some loss of opportunity for the city of Longmont. So that's part of it. But then you know more pragmatically it's just a much more cost-effective approach for the city to economic development. So we have a contract with the city of Longmont that we seek to renew on an annual basis to provide that economic development service to the city. It's about $350,000 per year that we're funded by the city to do economic development work and we raised the rest of our funding from the private sector as well as the couple of other public sector sources which really results in for the city's you know $350,000 annual investment in economic development. They get a $750,000 to $800,000 a year economic development program. So there's cost effectiveness. There's also an accountability piece to it too. So we really look to those who are going to benefit most from the work of economic development to underwrite the work of economic development and certainly there's case to be made for that direct fiscal impact to the city if we're successful. So benefit to the city which is why we really look to the city to be one of the larger investors in economic development. But then the private sector is absolutely going to benefit from a successful economic development program and so we think they're also accountable to help fund that program or as I said underwrite that program and then just general efficiency of communication when we talk to site selection consultants, corporate real estate executives, corporate decision makers, having that one stop shop, one place to go that's outside of the halls of city government which can be bogged down sometimes in red tape and bureaucracy. Having that place to go when they're considering a location for expansion or investment or relocation is a benefit and keeps us on more lists longer from the perspective of kind of that traditional economic development deal-making piece. So I want to circle back before we're finished. I want to come back to kind of summarizing this interview. Some of the ideas that underlie that public-private partnership but I'll leave that to a kind of a closing question. Just how typical it sounds like leverage is a big part of this, right? You're using a city investment and you're leveraging that into a multiple of what the city puts into this because of the shared interests. How typical or atypical is long months approach compared to other municipalities like ours, 100,000 people? Sure. So I will answer that but I think you brought up a really good point that I don't want to lose about leverage. So when we go out to raise private sector dollars for economic development generally the first question that we're asked is are you supported by the local government because private sector wants to put their dollars where they know they're going to be able to have an impact and they know that they can't have an impact in a community if what they're investing in isn't aligned with the goals and the vision of the city itself and doesn't have a collaborative cooperative partnership with the city itself. So we're absolutely leveraging that private sector investment to pursue or public sector investment to pursue private sector investment. And so how typical is this model for economic development? The International Economic Development Council does a salary survey every two years and one of the questions they ask us is the nature of our organization. Is it public? Is it private? Is it public private? And the most recent one of those says that about a third of all economic development organizations across the state whether they be regional or state regional or local have that public private nonprofit model add about 100,000 population and then as you get larger and get more regional and larger than that is where you start to see it be even more common than that although the data was a little hard to parse through so I'm not going to give exact numbers but it does become more common as you get into larger communities and especially as you're looking at taking a more regional approach to economic development. Although I will say so along what EDP in a lot of places especially across Colorado is kind of seen as a model for how that works and so we get a lot of folks from across the state and sometimes across the country reaching out to us to kind of ask how we do it and how to create an organization and we're starting to get that outreach from smaller and smaller communities so in our own backyard the city of Erie has established a public private economic development organization. We're talking to Steamboat Springs providing resource to them to get technical assistance to them in terms of how to create a public private partnership organization I think just more and more communities are seeing the benefit of bringing all parties to the table to achieve our economic development goals and objectives so relatively common becoming more common I would say and then I mentioned that it's very common when you're looking at a more regional approach to economic development so regional organizations like countywide organizations or northern Colorado region, Metro Denver regional kind of economic development organizations oftentimes are public private or solely private sector funded organizations and the reality is is that as of right now Boulder County does not have a Boulder County regional organization so it's really us and the Boulder Economic Council also a public private model for economic development that kind of sit at the top of that and are providing most of the resource and most of the kind of expertise towards economic development across the region so in the absence of a larger regional economic development presence makes this model for us as a community that much more valuable. So it so clearly skin the game on the part of your partners is important in it both both in terms of what it means to potential corporations or decisions by by entities to relocate or to locate or to expand a long month and that the model itself isn't so much of a break the mold but but execution of the model and I want to come back to execution as a differentiator before we're finished with this as well because I do think I think we're in an era where differentiation is going to matter and and what it takes to differentiate between one and another can you capture just in a sentence or two ledp's mission. Sure so our stated mission is is leading a collaborative approach to economic development our vision for that is this collective impact model that we've taken which really is about aligning organizations and individuals across the community across around a shared agenda to achieve our economic development goals and visions which are really today much less growth oriented and more prosperity and inclusion oriented so we look at how does the growth that we pursue as an economic development organization become shared across our entire community or benefit our entire community from a prosperity and inclusion perspective and so we're really looking to achieve and I'm sorry I know you said one or two sentences but does it equal access for everyone in our community to be able to participate in the economy that we're developing our building as a community you gotta be careful you're gonna start to be accused of answering questions like I do with way more words so so just in a word or in a in a phrase your mission isn't growth for growth sake it is not no I mean that's that's a very short-sighted vision and I get where that comes from because I think there was a day in age and I worked for some of those folks that really took that kind of approach to economic development but really I don't know of an economic development organization or practitioner that takes that approach nor do any of our partners or investors see that as a good business model for themselves or for this community as a whole it would be a really short-sighted like I said approach to how we ensure long term again prosperity and resiliency for our local economy so let's unpack just a little bit the if the end the part of the end game is prosperity for the community you get there through goals and objectives and strategies right so just unpack a little bit about goals objective strategies take however you want to emphasize each of those strategies is the means to get to the end obviously of goals and what that what's different here than than others might see and you can kind of unpack some of those ideas of prosperity and collective impact as you do that sure so I think when we talk about an economy that works for all and is accessible to all and creates opportunity to build wealth and progress in in whatever way somebody would want to economically we really look at a few key focus areas within our advance on what 2.0 strategy so tech certainly talent is a big piece of what we're looking at how do we attract and retain the talent that's needed to support the industry base that we have as well as to encourage additional industry investment in our community and so that's both attracting new talent into our community from across the country but it's also working with our partners at St. Rain Valley School District Front Range Community College some of the sector partnerships regionally and our workforce development system to create what we call talent pipeline so how do we get our kids here locally from cave 312 into whatever the next step looks like for them to be able to again achieve a career pathway and wealth building opportunity within our community so that they don't have to go elsewhere to achieve that so that's our focus on talent industry is kind of the core of economic development so the outcome which is creating more jobs and generate or increasing the tax base through business investment and sales tax and so that's the going out and finding new opportunities but really a lot of our work is right here locally supporting our existing industry base's ability to stay here be successful here and continue to expand and grow here and create new jobs here embracing place making as an economic development strategy which really ties into I mean they all tie together right so that really ties into talent and where do people want to be to live and work and play and spend their dollars connectivity transportation connectivity again ties into everything else so how do people get from where they live to where they work whether it be here locally or regionally and then and then just really impact so how are we approaching how is the city approaching and how can we contribute to the city's approach to policy making that has that same outcome and result that we've all determined through the development of advance on what 2.0 and our collective impact work is our vision for the future of our community so how how different the the goals that you just described and the strategy how different are those from what goals the city would adopt they are the city's goals quite frankly so we the very first step that we took when we updated our strategic for plan from advance long want to advance on what 2.0 is we painstakingly assessed every single plan documented plan that we could find in the city from the original advance on what plan from envision long want the city council work plan all of the sub area plans the downtown master plan the transportation plan the main street corridor plan we literally created a table of all of those and put all of the goals and objectives of all of those plans side by side and identified where they aligned which meant we were most likely to have the greatest amount of success from a collective impact framework perspective so bringing variety of perspectives and expertise together to pursue those objectives so the objectives and goals of advance on what 2.0 therefore our goals and objectives as an organization don't they align with not only do they align with not only do they complement but they are the goals of the city of long want the stated goals of the city of long want which then transfers into our contract for the city of long want to so the goals and objectives in our contract with the city of long want are the same as those in advance on what 2.0 are the same as those where there was alignment in all of those other plans and strategies awesome so when all that comes together you've got a prospect a lead if you will what's the kind of inside baseball that you know that most people don't get a chance to see as it unfold you go into an executive session with city council you know that's kind of a black box for folks as it should be because those are all you know confidential meetings but what happens when you've got a lead when all that rolls up into a potential success what is it like right what do you what do you bring and what's the potential outcome yeah so it's not one size fits all so I'll encapsulate it into that as much as possible we're receiving opportunities leads for opportunities from a variety of different sources whether it's you know a response to something that we've put out into the world from marketing campaign perspective or a lead from that we're participating on with the state office of economic development the regional economic development corporation or somebody's contacted us directly or a lot of times it's a business that's already here that's looking at where they can continue to expand and grow so all of those different paths have their own nuances but generally speaking when we connect with a leader somebody that's interested in expanding or relocating their business here to long wants the first question that we have for them is what are their key drivers in terms of how they're going to decide on the best location from them I think not surprisingly in a lot of cases it's talent it's operating costs it's in some cases transportation access utilities utility infrastructure education all of the things that we think we do really well here in Longmont and so that's the first thing is that we're taking whatever that their individual key decision drivers are and putting together for them a customized package of we heard you said that you're looking for this and this is why we think Longmont is the best place for you relative to those things and so that looks like just a package of information that anything from you know we get down to what are your what are the actual occupation codes of hiring that you're trying to do wherever you locate so that we can do some labor force analysis so we can show the strength of the labor infrastructure here in Longmont to again those operating costs and those utilities costs if possible in comparison to communities we might be competing with oh I'm sorry I thought you're cutting me off no I just said something show up on my computer screen and I was going to the goal there is to end up on a list of communities that that company is seriously considering for that expansion of relocation project in some cases we find out back from them that yes they think Longmont is a great place for them they also think city b is a great place for them and city b may be offering incentives or may have some other competitive advantage over us from a cost perspective at which point in time we'll start the conversation about incentives that may be available to them here in the city of Longmont potentially with the state of Colorado with the city of Longmont incentives we have our incentives are codified in terms of what we can offer so we have a fee rebate and a business personal property tax rebate program we also have you know some locations within the enterprise zone which creates an incentive for for folks but with those Longmont incentives local Longmont incentives before we're offering those incentives to a company we meet with city council in executive session give them the scope of the project the potential fiscal and economic benefits of the project to the community and then get direction from city council as to whether or not and to what extent to negotiate those incentives and then we'll go and make that proposal to the company as part of their one part of their consideration of Longmont as the places they want to grow into I will say that we on average work with 50 or so prospect leads throughout the year I think you know if we do two to four executive sessions throughout the year for projects so in most cases we're competing on the the value proposition of the community and not the addition of incentives on a rare occasion where we don't have a competitive advantage over a community that we're competing with or another community has offered incentives and we're trying to compete with that and the scope and scale of the project in terms of economic and fiscal impact makes it a good investment with a significant ROI for our city and that's when we're leveraging those incentive programs that again are codified with within city code so so you don't go into an executive session and walk out with a big check no to hand your corporation that's not how it works absolutely not and in fact Colorado and all of the municipalities therein are notoriously not incentive driven states when it comes to economic development and all incentives both at the state and the local level in Colorado and in every municipality in Colorado are performance based and so no check gets written until an investment is made in some cases in the case of a fee rebate a check can be written before the jobs are created but if the jobs aren't then later created there's a clawback provision that says that we get those dollars back that the company is agreeing to if they don't achieve that those job creation metrics thanks yeah i'm guessing you don't do all this by yourself absolutely you have some other people with you both staff and board yeah so who who makes up ledp what should people know they still see your face they'll hear your name who's on your board who works with you to put all this together yeah so first of all say staff i have an incredible small but mighty team here there are four of us doing the work of long want economic development partnership so i'm really focused on of course a ceo the high level strategy and finances of the organization as well as based on my experience kind of that primary industry prospect development and some of the advocacy work that we do as an organization and then i have somebody else that's really focused on our existing industry base all the way from our very early stage startup businesses to our larger corporations and ensuring their ability to succeed and grow here and then i have somebody who is specifically focused on advancement what 2.0 serving as the backbone to that collective impact framework that we use to implement that strategy and then my board of directors is representative of we have about a hundred private sector contributors to the organization on an annual basis and my board of directors is elected from those investors and so it's a really good cross section of industry and so therefore expertise looking at how we approach economic development and bringing those that kind of wisdom and expertise that they bring from the private sector into what we do so we have both of the hospitals here in long want are represented represented on my board of directors long walk united hospital and uc health and we have financiers from adams bank and trust and now high plains bank as well as cornerstone homelending on the homelending side and have builders some construction and we have primary industry representatives from left hand brewing company um um i'm missing one uh from enter sys from h2 manufacturing solution so again a really diverse perspective of those who will benefit from the work of our organization certainly but also have um a diverse skill set to contribute to the work that we're doing because there are just four of us here on staff that sounds like a group of people who are seriously and deeply invested in long month absolutely so how do you want both the city staff the city council and the residents but in particular the city to view you and your board and how do you view the city both council members and staff members um sure so we view the city as a partner um certainly we are uh we do have a contractual relationship with the city in terms of the service that we provide but we really view the city as a partner um in the work that we do there are a lot of analogies i'm super guilty of using a ton of different analogies around this so i was deciding which one i would use today um and one of my favorites is um that a former boss of mine kind of taught me is um really when you think about economic development and then um kind of city government um the difference between business development and product development right so if you consider your economic development practitioner or organization as your business development representative the person that's going out there and generating business and and and revenue for the organization and then your city government is product development so i as business development have most contact with the customer right so i have the best sense of what they need um and what would sell them on our product which is our community um so we take the approach of taking that information that we're gaining from listening to our customer to um providing um information and suggestions and recommendations to the city whether it be city staff or city council for how we can improve the product so we can do a better job of selling it so um it really is about um bringing a voice to the table to improve the product of our city strengthen our competitive position relative to economic development uh so let me just um ask you if you could just frame this real quickly the difference between what you and your board does and what city council does absolutely so my my board and i like i said were um we're kind of in in the weeds um we're in the community we're listening to engaging with having constant conversation with our primary industry base with our partner organizations with those who are charged with developing talent within our community um and and a lot of what we're hearing is how this community could do better um to make them more successful and more likely to continue to invest in our community and so we take that to make recommendations to or suggestions to city staff for you know this is what we're hearing this is how we can improve as a community to improve our ability to um achieve our goals and visions and then and then from there you know it's the city council makes policy um city staff executes that policy um what we really want to be is a source for um uh for information and again recommendations and suggestions that we're hearing from the streets on on on some of the policies processes and programs that could improve our ability to be successful as economic developers the city council makes policy you make recommendations or you and your board make recommendations when you say when you see your partner the city headed in a direction that you're not certain is going to be productive in terms of what we're trying to do or what the city or you're trying to do with the city in terms of economic development what what's your approach to say to your partner uh wait a minute we think this is not going to be helpful yeah so we try to be as proactive and productive as possible like i said it's not me it's not jessica at long line edp that's saying hey um that might not be in the best interest of achieving our economic development objectives it's i've said to our you know the prospects that we're working with or our existing industry base or our partners the city is looking at doing this um and get feedback that says you know if the city does this then i might not do the thing that the city wants me to do whether it's grow my business build houses whatever it might be um and so sharing that information with the city but not just saying you know we've heard that that may not be the best idea in terms of achieving our goals and objectives or economic development goals and objectives but also here were some suggestions that we received um for what might work better um for benefit of both the public sector and the private sector in achieving those goals and objectives so it's not a caution without a recommendation or a proposal or some ideas absolutely not and yeah and i mean i think very rarely um if ever have we gone um whether it be to city council or to city staff and just obstinately said we oppose this um usually um in every case that i can think of it's been um either that's a good idea but we also think that this would contribute to achieving our goals and objectives as an add-on to that or um we've heard that that might not uh be conducive to what we're trying to achieve but maybe a little tweak here or there and we could really make it work for everybody all right um the all of it rolls up into both successes and disappointments i'm guessing you don't win every time but you win enough to mark some successes what do you what what are the big learnings what do you what do you learn from both your successes and the disappointments in this whole process and then i'm gonna the next question is going to be about anticipating the future but just looking backwards um what have you learned from both the wins and the losses sure so i think we've been um from a traditional economic development perspective certainly incredibly successful in recent years here in long want um whether it be smugglers or costco or recent announcement about light deck in their manufacturing facility um as you said before long want edp i jessica erickson didn't do those things by myself um there's always um collaboration and i always get you know quick response and all hands on deck response from the city when we're pursuing those opportunities and i think that has absolutely been what's made us successful um i think you know we've seen and i've been a part of a situation where the economic development organization and the city staffing council were almost adversarial um which doesn't work for anyone right so the fact that we have been anything but that um to almost an extreme and part of why other organizations kind of look to us to how do you do that um is that we've done a really good job just working together um with the end in mind and um bringing all of our resources to the table from staff and from my organization uh to to get those wins um in some cases where we weren't maybe even on the list um at the start of a um projects uh search for a location and then even taking that to um achieving things for our community like the north metro enterprise zone designation opportunities zone designation um and some of the other new programs and tools and resources that we've been able to bring to our community in the last few years again not things that i did or that long want edp did but that we did collectively and i think um as a result made our kind of application our pursuit for those programs and resources that much more um compelling um because we weren't competing with each other we weren't um making things more difficult for the decision makers for those programs by kind of coming from all over the place or not having all the resources available um so i think disappointments um i think um for me what's been disappointment and i think just an ongoing learning process for everyone is that um that our approach to as we've talked about bringing some of those suggestions and recommendations as an organization um to the city council um we feel like we're um making those suggestions in the best interest of the community and while there are um individual organizations or private sector entities that may ultimately long term benefit from some of those things um we don't take the approach of um you know we're going to support this because it's going to put more money in somebody's pocket um in fact if anybody even suggests that's a reason why they want to be a part of our organization we just don't engage um and so really everybody um that's part of my board part of my leadership council been participating on the advance on what 2.0 working groups our new prosper long lock coalition is really coming at um their investment and engagement in the organization with the best interest of the community in line and i think sometimes we don't agree on the how even internally much less between kind of some of our city leadership and um some members of our organization um but everybody has bought into and that's part of the model of collective impact everybody has bought into um the idea of a shared vision and a common agenda for what we want to see our community be um now and in the future and again if they haven't we just don't engage with them and so i think it's disappointing um when i hear that there's a perception um that it's anything but that coming from our organization and so certainly something that you know we've talked about internally we have to do a better job of telling our story and telling that to people so thank you for this opportunity to do that um but then we also hope that our city leaders are listening and um and taking that at face value and that's what what we say well this is all about storytelling so hopefully hopefully the story uh will be heard by folks so i've got two more questions and i want to kind of wrap this all up kind of going back to where we started with a couple of questions here at the end and and one is that the model itself is not a break the mold model as you said there are a third of the you know municipalities our size who take this public private ship public private partnership approach um and that execution likely matters so we we're all anticipating a post-pandemic era we hope it gets here soon we we would hope we would be there now but we're not quite there what will be the differentiator for us for longmont as a municipality that that is in the interest of this community to continue to prosper not just grow right but prosper in ways that serve broadly the community what differentiates longmont from other communities going forward in in your mind um yes that's a good question i mean i think there's an element of it that's you know post-pandemic world and some of the changes that we've seen or transformations that we've seen generally globally as a result of the pandemic i think some of those things being an acceleration of things that were inevitable anyway but then we're also facing in longmont finite opportunity to get it right from a capacity perspective whether that be from real estate capacity or population capacity utility capacities so i think related to both and in the interest of kind of the idea of equitable economic development ensuring that our future growth benefits everyone in our community that we need to become even more strategic about how we're making investments as a community in in projects so not even not just looking at how many jobs is this company going to create and how much is their investment but what are their opportunities for workers at all skill levels and what are their on the job training and work-based learning opportunities what kind of wages are they paying from the bottom production level wages all the way up and what is the disparity between the top and the bottom and so really ensuring that companies that we're investing in through incentives are aligned with our values and align with our long-term vision as an equitable community that creates prosperity for everyone i think all of our businesses are going to have to adapt to innovative new business practices technology and a very different labor market i think there are some things that about today's labor market that aren't going to change and so how do we bring resource to businesses that are especially our small locally owned businesses to be able to effectively adapt to those public private partnerships i know in some places it's kind of a not a lot of people like to think of the private sector you know as contributing meaningfully to things like equity and prosperity within a community but our experience has been the exact opposite and the idea behind collective impact is addressing challenges that no individual organization can address on their own but bringing a collective to them and there are a lot of resources human financial and otherwise within the private sector that can be brought to bear for those things and then I think prioritizing people just I think we've learned that lesson in a really really hard way as a result of the pandemic but I think that was one of those accelerating inevitable kind of situations so how are we incorporating investing in people in our community in terms of skills development career pathway development all the way from you know K through 12 early childhood and early childhood education and care how are we investing in the residents of long want from the day they're born all the way up through their kind of cradle to grave lifetime here within our community so some of what I just heard I know is a reflection of and this will be my last question and then you may have last comments there's an underlying construct or organizing framework I'm not certain the way you would think about this the right language of a concept the construct called new localism so public private partnerships some of what you've referred to a reference in terms of the private sector caring about equity and prosperity broadly in the community as kind of fundamental to how to what makes this work any little highlights you want to share or some of the organizing principles that underlie in the construct of new localism that would help people understand there's a deeper theoretical philosophical and evidence-based framework that supports this work and yeah so new localism is a really and again I don't know the right terminology either philosophy or ideology behind how we approach economic development from the lens through the lenses of prosperity inclusion and equity and really a recognition that responsibility for addressing some of those challenges is being pushed down to cities and to regions because there's not resource for or there are structure structural limitations to the federal or state governments being able to address those challenges on our behalf and so new localism is really about solving those problems kind of from the bottom up so from our local community rather than top down and engaging networks of institutions and leaders and and thought leaders and the brightest minds where we can find them to addressing those challenges rather than just looking to the public sector alone to address those challenges and I think the biggest example of that today is workforce housing attainable housing and there are a variety of different terms being used relative to that issue and we hear oftentimes you know we're not going to build our way out of this issue but we're not going to policy our way out of this issue either it's going to take public policy it's going to take building it's going to take creative and innovative approaches there's no amount of policy that you can create that's going to address the systemic inequities in home lending as agreed by our financial institutions here in Longmont so if there's not an opportunity for those financial institutions to engage in the conversation and be a part of the solution again there's no number of homes that you can build or policies that you can create that are going to address that challenge and that challenge is a piece of the bigger issue at hand in terms of ensuring that everyone in Longmont has access to equity building home ownership equitable access to equity building home ownership within our community so we've been hearing for decades about thinking globally and acting locally and what I think I heard you just say is that there were at a time and new localism is a way to operationalize that whole idea of thinking globally acting locally in the interest of prosperity equity social justice you know what we need to create together as a community so listen I very much appreciate your availability for this episode of the back story any final thoughts you want to share I think I've said enough thank you well hopefully hopefully we haven't gone on so long that no one will listen but I think it's an important story so thank you for this time thank you more importantly for the great work you do on behalf of the community you could be doing this a lot of places I know the fact that you do it in Longmont on behalf of Longmont I appreciate I don't know there are many many others in Longmont who do as well so Longmonters this is the backstory on Longmont's economic development partnership stay tuned we will we'll come back at you with more stories more backstories on things you'd like to learn about Longmont that you're not going to read in the headlines of the Times call or a Longmont leader or other social media thanks we'll see you next time thanks to