FORT DAVIS – More than 50 local residents attended a community-building meeting Tuesday evening hosted by Jeff Davis County Judge Curtis Evans at Mobile Comunidad’ s Mountain View Café to share ideas based on the book 13 Ways to Kill Your Community.
The event was a localized version of the recent Alpine Community Projects summit held in Alpine with the book’s author, Doug Griffiths. Evans and about a dozen other Fort Davis residents attended that January event, which drew more than 200 from throughout the tri-county region.
During the Fort Davis repeat of the program, attendees from businesses, organizations, governmental entities, and nonprofits joined retirees and citizens from varied backgrounds to view a video of the author’s talk and had the opportunity to generate suggestions that could be potentially implemented in Jeff Davis County.
Ideas submitted included promoting the area as a good location for remote jobs, creating a podcast featuring Fort Davis businesses, connecting students and senior citizens for entrepreneurial mentorships, encouraging new businesses to locate in vacant buildings, and offering more fiber internet, as well as community wifi.
Other topics discussed covered awareness of the area’s water supply, the need for affordable workforce housing, and expanded healthcare access, a focus for Evans. One of the suggestions touted by the author involves neighboring communities working collaboratively on big-picture needs, as well as businesses within communities cooperating to attract new and even competing businesses.
As both the author and Evans mentioned, communities need to find “boomerang” solutions to encourage youth to go to college or gain experience outside of the area and then bring those skills back to their hometowns. Griffiths began and ended his presentation by stating that those who do not want to kill their communities need to find their community’s unique identity and use that in marketing strategies to attract visitors, new residents, and businesses.
Localized versions of the January summit will be hosted in other communities in the tri-county area by mid-February. Feedback from all of the sessions will be gathered, curated, and disseminated by Alpine Community Projects to those who have attended and will be made available online. Additional related meetings and forums will be planned to build on the ideas generated including addressing poverty and managing transportation concerns.
One idea benefiting from the momentum of the community-building discussions in the area is a regional Chamber of Commerce to help local businesses already here, as well as those considering locating here. Those interested in that project can be connected to it by contacting Alpine Community Projects through their website, alpinecommunityprojects.org.
Those interested in becoming involved in future projects in Jeff Davis County can be connected through the office of the county judge or by contacting admin@mobilecomunidad.org.
