Wednesday, February 6, 2013

We'll See If That Was Wise


I spoke to a group of 40 farmers yesterday with the Agrarian Club of Licking County.  I was invited to give remarks about the Port Authority and the Aerospace Center.  My remarks were about the importance of using the power of our community leaders as a positive force in economic development. There were a lot of great questions.

One person asked what the Port Authority was doing to preserve open land.  It was a loaded question, and I knew it.

I answered what was on my mind, throwing caution to the wind about the audience.  Time will tell, though, if that was wise.

I told him that I think it's as important that we have manufacturing land preservation as we have farmland preservation.  Manufacturing grows our economy and needs land to grow too.  If we make it harder to build manufacturing plants at a time when manufacturing is coming back to the U.S., we do so at our own peril.

That may have been like telling a room of natural gas producers of the value of solar panels.

I actually didn't get booted out of the room and I, even, noticed a few head nods.  We'll see.

No comments:

Post a Comment