Agenda - 06-03-2008-5b5e - Laserfiche WebLink

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c2 ECONOMIC VITALITY AND THE BUCKHORN PROJECT Comments to the Orange County Commissioners Dr. Sally J. Goernerl Director of the Integral Science Institute, www.integralscienceinstitute.or~ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.• Current economic theory places a huge emphasis on GDP growth and the large corporations that most increase it. About 30 years ago, this emphasis spawned an economic development strategy that has been irreverently nicknamed, "big-game hunting," that is, using incentives to lure in big manufacturers, retailers, mall developers, and other large corporations, which officials hope will bring in jobs and tax revenues. Unfortunately, while this strategy may increase tax revenues in the short-term, research shows that it erodes the surrounding economic networks, siphons away local dollars, and costs more in local tax dollars, infrastructure overhead, increased pollution, and lost jobs than the local businesses that it destroys. Repeated at all levels for three decades, this process has led to increasing economic instability and human dissatisfaction, locally, regionally, nationally and globally. Many of the troubling signs seen in both Wa11 Street and Main Street today can be laid at its feet, and the problems it creates will only become more perilous as the price of oil rises and the dangers of global warming increase. A growing body of research, however, also shows that investing in local enterprise networks reverses all of these trends. It reduces costs of infrastructure, social services, and pollution, while increasing local wages, property values, community health and general well-being. Out of concern for Orange County's long-term economic vitality, I urge you to reject the Buckhorn project'and replace it with a more systemic local development strategy, such as that now being considered by officials in Carrboro and Chatham County. The rest of this paper lists some of the research that shows: 1. The damage the big-game hunting strategy has done 2. The benefits of investing in local enterprise networks ' Dr. Goemer has advanced degrees in engineering, non-linear dynamics, and psychology, and now lectures, writes and provides consultancy advice to international organizations. Her new book, The New Science of Sustainability (June, 2008) uses new measures of economic vitality to explain why "Going Local," as economist Michael Shuman says, creates the kind of long-term economic vitality that current development strategies do not. Her current work with the New Economics Foundation in London, and with Belgian financier and co-architect of the Euro Bernard Lietaer, seeks to extend these findings to address the needed revisions to monetary systems and policy decisions in local, national and global jurisdictions.