July Chair's Column: Happy Birthday America & GEDA, too!

Trust that all of you had a nice day off to celebrate Independence Day, our 242^nd birthday as a free country!  We are so very blessed to live in such a great land that allows us the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness.  In Georgia we are fortunate for many reasons, not the least of which is that we have been ranked as the best business climate in the nation for five years straight!  We’ve got a great quality of place and strong leadership that has brought us to where we are today. 

The Georgia Economic Developers Association (GEDA) is celebrating a significant birthday this year, too.  We have reached the year of “double nickels;” our 55^th anniversary.  This is a significant milestone, and we appreciate all of you and your membership to make us the great organization that we are.  Thank you for all that you do to make your communities, organizations, regions and our state the great place that it is.  In order to keep Georgia strong and growing, we need to continue to be vigilant.  We will have significant turnover in the political leadership of Georgia this year, and many of our legislators will change, due to retirements and others running for higher office.  By the way, be sure to go out and vote in the primary runoff elections on July 24th.  Also, we’d like to get your input, and we’ll be sending out a Public Policy Survey in the next week in order to gauge your thoughts. 

As you probably know, GEDA does not have a monthly meeting during the month of July.  We’ll get back together next month on August 20^th to hear about Rural Development issues in Georgia.  The Rural Development Council will meet in Elberton on August 14-15 to discuss incentives and regionalism.  In the meantime, there are several regional meetings throughout Georgia this month.  There are ones in the Northeast, Northwest, Region 4, Region 9 and next month in Region 12.  Here are details of these regional events:

• Region 4 Social, Cabin on Flint River, Upson County, Monday, July 16, 10:00am – 2:00pm, contact: Kyle Fletcher, Executive Director, Thomaston-Upson County IDA
• 11th Annual Good News Gathering, Chateau Elan, Wednesday, July 18, 9:00am – Noon, RSVP required by July 11, 2018, contact: Rope Roberts, Northeast Georgia Community Development Manager, Georgia Power Company
• 4th Annual Northwest Good News Event, Northwest Georgia Technical College, Wednesday, July 25, 9:00am – 1:00pm, contact: Elyse Davis, Northwest Georgia Community Development Manager, Georgia Power. To register, click HERE
• Region 9 Event at the Big House in Hazelhurst-Jeff Davis County at 11:30 am for lunch.  Contact Andrea Taylor, CEO, Hazelhurst-Jeff Davis Chamber & JDA for details.  Try and make time to attend one of these events.
• Coastal Region, # 12, Good News Event, Coastal Regional Commission in Darien at 11:00 on Wednesday, August 20^th, contact: Jason Coley, Coastal Region Community Development Manager, Georgia Power Company 

Wishing you all a Happy Birthday, both for America and GEDA.  I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Missy