Town leaders discuss economic development

WINSTED — Both Town Manager Dale Martin and Mayor Maryann Welcome discussed planned business stimulation programs at the regular meeting of the Economic Development Commission on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at Town Hall.Welcome, who was elected as mayor on Nov. 8, has decided to remain on the commission while serving as mayor.Martin discussed with the commission the upcoming business round table that he has scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 8.“I had the first business round table in September with businesses in industrial parks,” Martin said. “For the next meeting, the intent is to engage and develop relationships that are typically under-represented by the Friends of Main Street or the Downtown Merchants Association. So I’m inviting non-retail businesses that people tend to overlook and neglect.”Martin said he is still in the process of inviting businesses, and that he has received many suggestions on who to invite. “The problem is in towns and cities you get industries in, but sometimes towns forget about them,” Martin said. “They’re all significant taxpayers, and we need to treat them warmly.”Commission Chairman Bill Pratt said he is very supportive of Martin’s round table idea.“Ten years ago when I was in East Granby, the first selectman there did the same thing,” Pratt said. “There were two businesses right next to each other — both employed up to 400 people, both were in the engine building industry, but in the 10 years that they were next door neighbors, neither of the top executives of those two companies met each other. By getting them together in a round table session, they came to agreements on how to use properties that both of them owned.”Pratt said that at the next commission meeting in December, the commission will be talking about reviving its business visitation program.“We previously established this program where members of the commission would go into businesses and sit with them for an hour or so,” he said. “For various reasons, that program has fallen by the wayside. I think both programs provide excellent opportunities to get businesses to open up on topics that are not usually talked about.”Meanwhile, Mayor Welcome said that a Business Development Seminar is still tentatively scheduled at The Gilbert School on Friday, Feb. 17.The seminar was originally scheduled at a special committee meeting in late October, right before the snowstorm that caused local schools to be closed for a week.According to Welcome, Gilbert was originally scheduled to be closed on Feb. 17, but because of missing days due to the storm, school might be held on that day.“We have to make sure that it remains a day off because it needs to remain a building without the kids,” Welcome said. “We also need a lot of staff and volunteers for the event. We can’t just have two people coordinating it.”Welcome added that the commission needs to develop a theme for the event.

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