1994-09-27-PEDC - Laserfiche WebLink

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61 Chairman Cecil asked Mr. Vest to make his report. Mr. Vest said he had a couple of magazines that are typically known as economic development type magazines he would like to pass around to the board members for information purposes. Mr. Vest said he had received a request from the Department of Commerce to participate in their trade shows. He said he thinks the board should work very closely with our allies, particularly the utilities. He said in working with the Department of Commerce they require a maximum $2,000.00 investment every time a trade show is attended and the utility allies will allow us to go for free. He said he wanted to make theboard aware of the request from the Department of Commerce. Chairman Cecil said he felt the Board agreed with Mr. Vest's judgment in working with the utility allies. Mr. Vest advised the Texas International Reception is a program that is put together by the Texas Department of Commerce and the Texas Industrial Development Council and will be coming up next week in Houston. He will be attending this as a representative of Paris. He said he had talked with Mr. Ernie Harris, one of Paris' allies at T.U. Electric and they have seventy trade representatives planning to attend the reception. He said the cost was $150.00 to participate, and hopefully Paris will get some exposure to international contacts. He said that T.U. Electric had requested that Paris participate in this particular program. Mr. Vest asked for questions concerning his industrial activities report. Chairman Cecil asked Mr. Vest to explain the Annual Plan of Work he had. Chairman Cecil stated that all the board members had received a copy of the Annual Program of Work. He said Mr. Vest had done some good work on this Annual Program of Work and the board needed to consider amending or adopting. Chairman Cecil asked Mr. Vest to go through the report section at a time. Mr. Vest said he based the goals and actions in this report on the visioning exercise that was conducted by the Pace Group and also the Mission Statement has already been identified by the Corporation. He said he had identified four major goals primarily from the Pace Group visioning exercise. He said he would like to go into those individually with some objectives and action statements. He said goal number one is to develop a public relations program to solicit local support of projects and programs of the P.E.D.C. He said the Chamber conducted a County-wide visioning exercise last year and the Public Affairs Committee has established this visioning exercise in an expanded form as one of their projects for this year with a November, December time-frame. He said he felt it was very important for the labor organizations to understand the goals and objectives of this organization. He also said there is a very great need to involve the leadership of our minority community. Chairman Cecil stated he felt it was very important that we sell ourselves to this community because we are spending their money. Mr. Vest stated goal number two deals with development of a marketing campaign that specifically addresses the locational advantages and positive aspects of Paris as a site for manufacturing, distribution, and service type facilities. He said the objective is to gain regional, state and national recognition of the positive aspects of doing business in Paris. He said he has placed under this goal coordination with the Chamber of Commerce Marketing Committee to publish brochures promoting Paris. He said the action step here would be for P.E.D.C. to see that those things are accomplished and to pay