Camille Lavon spent her first six months as economic development director for Iola and Allen County doing a lot of listening and learning.
Her goal: to become as intimately familiar as possible with what the local business climate had to offer, and what needed help.
Some of the challenges were hardly a mystery, reflective of southeast Kansas as a whole: businesses are struggling in an area with aging infrastructure, affordable housing shortages and declining population.
Mostly, companies have found it difficult to find quality employees.
Tack in news that Gates Corporation was closing a production line, and cutting more than 80 jobs in the process, and it’s safe to say Lavon’s getting-to-know-you stage was a whirlwind.
“It may not have been what I expected,” she said. But it told her exactly what she needed to be doing.
LAVON SPOKE with the Register in a wide-ranging conversation detailing many of her goals for the near and long terms, including efforts to develop a local workforce coalition, and potential projects that could be coming down the pike (and why it’s important to discern which would be the best fit).
The workforce coalition took shape in December, and consists of business and industrial representatives, city leaders, groups such as KansasWorks and Southeast Kansas, Inc., area school districts and colleges and others in the community.
Their mission: to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to economic growth.
The group will meet quarterly, with the first such meeting in January at Peerless Products in Iola. The next will be at Monarch Cement in Humboldt.
There’s plenty of good. Employers agree that their long-time workers are the backbone of the county’s economic engine. They’re hard-working and reliable.
The bad? There’s not enough of them.
And the ugly? There are growing gaps when it comes to filling workforce needs. Worse still, one of Lavon’s first realizations from the meeting is there remains a disconnect between existing businesses and potential assistance they could be receiving from the state for such things as workforce training.
For example, the Gates news meant 81 jobs were being removed, which in turn meant businesses who hired those displaced workers could have received KansasWorks training grants, to the tune of $4,000 to $6,000 per worker for training.
Few, if any, companies have taken advantage.
To a lesser extent, Lavon notes other companies investing in infrastructure also could be eligible for tax incentives from the state, but have declined to do so.
