County asked to prioritize

Citizens had to prioritize issues they see all around Rockingham County into three categories at Thursday night’s Golden LEAF Community Assistance Initiative meeting. This was the third meeting in a series of six designed to create proposals on how to spend $2 million.

From the second meeting, issues in the county were lumped into five categories: community development, health, education and workforce training, economic development and infrastructure. After receiving three red dots, the crowd was asked to put one dot on their top three categories. Education and workforce training came in first with 69 dots, economic development was next with 53 dots and health came in third with 35 dots. Bringing up the rear were infrastructure with 10 dots and community development with eight. Some crowd members were displeased with results, but they were reminded many of these categories are closely associated and may overlap when proposals are developed.

Calvin Allen, a consultant facilitating the meetings, said many of these issues are prevalent across counties receiving the grant opportunity.

“We find that these results are pretty typical – we usually see two or three of the same themes,” he said. “Tier 1 counties have many of the same issues when it comes (to) industry and unemployment. Education comes up a lot.”

After discussing results, the audience divided into three groups to develop success measures based on the topic. Many of those in attendance went with groups they were most familiar with, or ones they were interested in. Graham Pervier, president of the Rockingham County Partnership for Economic and Tourism Development, headed up the economic development group with members that included Commissioner Bobby Stanley and County Manager Tom Robinson.

The economic development group had goals to increase small businesses in the county, increase affordable housing and make unemployment and the average family income on par with state averages.

The health group included members like Glenn Martin, director of the county’s public health department, and Victor Armstrong, community operations coordinator for CenterPoint Human Services. They had ideas to increase access to health care, increase awareness of health programs in the county and decrease the smoking rate.

The third group focused on education and workforce training, which had the strongest showing during the vote. This group focused on an increase in math proficiency for students, increasing the numbers of college graduates in the county, and making sure students have adequate opportunities for career advice. Some members included Commissioner Amelia Dallas and Board of Education Chair Nell Rose.

The fourth meeting will focus on narrowing down success measures and getting an accurate projection of what goal groups want to reach and for what purpose. The next session is scheduled for September 29, from 6 until 8 p.m. The location is to be determined, but Allen said it will most likely be in the auditorium of Rockingham County High School.