CAUTION: B R & E MUST BE DONE PROPERLY

BUSINESS RETENTION  and  EXPANSION (B R & E)

THIS IS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM WHICH, WHEN CARRIED OUT PROPERLY, CAN MAKE A DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENT IN THE ECONOMIC CLIMATE OF A COMMUNITY. WE HAVE LEARNED RECENTLY THAT THERE IS A NEED FOR OVERSIGHT TO ENSURE THAT THE PROJECT IS CARRIED OUT PROPERLY. A BADLY CONDUCTED PROJECT CAN HAVE POWERFUL NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON THE COMMUNITY.

   

BR & E  is a process which has been in use for many years and was adopted in Ontario in the late 1990s by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). It is an important economic development strategy, an important adjunct to the popular strategy of attempting to recruit businesses and industries from other places. The argument behind B R & E is that "we need to build on what we have, by doing whatever we can to keep the businesses we have and help them to succeed and grow. Businesses that we can lure from other communities may be just as likely to slip away somewhere else, whereas our existing businesses already have an allegiance to us. Why not do our best for them?

I was involved with the introduction of BR & E in Ontario in the late 1990s by OMAFRA. Along with four or five others, I was on the committee chaired by Harold Flaming which developed the original questionnaire as well as the procedures that would be used throughout the process. The program was tested in several communities throughout southern Ontario. I worked with the pilot program for Seaforth and along met periodically with all of the pilot teams around the province to compare notes and fine tune the program.

We were all very proud of what was achieved by these pilot projects, and now, many years later, we can still see the benefits of the things we learned and the relationships that were formed by that entire process.

In recent months many more B R & E projects have been launched across Huron County. In most cases we see similar kinds of success due to the identification of challenges and the discovery of new visions all of which lead to positive plans and renewal. I have noted that the questionnaire has undergone some updating and refinement, but a surprising number of the questions remain the same as those of the original survey document.

Unfortunately, some of the projects completed recently have failed to measure up to the potential of B R & E quality results. In my view this has come about because along the way some groups have made changes that they feel will improve the process in certain ways, but in so doing, they have eliminated some of the very qualities that made the BR & E process so successful. Chief among these changes have been measures to make the process more efficient. In many cases these efficiencies have eliminated some of the activities that contributed enormously to the success of the program. This is a program in which the steps in the process of doing it are all important and part of the original design. Somewhere along the line newcomers have seen this as a simple completion of a questionnaire. They have missed many of the essential points that have had as great an effect on the community as the survey itself. In other word the process of the project is of as great an importance as the final report itself.

I will indicate some of the original features that have been altered by some groups:

Direct involvement by municipal council.

The B R & E process has been so successful in large part because it put together the elected officials, municipal staff, business representatives, and other community members. All the members see that the whole community is working together determined to make the community better for present and future business to serve the community more effectively. Thus it was not just a matter of the work that these people did, but a matter of how they perceived other people and other segments of their community.

Later groups have felt that that arrangement was very inefficient, and have a “lean and mean” committee with perhaps a staff representative from the municipality and a committee of mostly business people. In some cases they hire one or more “experts” to do the interviewing, complete the forms, and submit these to OMAFRA for processing. This is certainly more efficient if seen as nothing more than a form filling exercise, but completely lost is the community impact which was derived from the joint participation of members of the total community. It's a cheap way of doing the job that misses the rich results that should be available. 

Volunteer Interviewers

The original design called for a large number of volunteers from the community to do the interviewing. Most of these people are very busy and cannot afford a huge amount of time to devote to this task. Thus the aim was to have a large number of interviewers each performing from two to four interviews. In that way the interviews could be completed in a very short period of time – probably within two weeks or three.

The other feature was that each interview would be conducted by two volunteers: one to ask the questions, the other to record the responses on the questionnaire form.

There were two evenings of preparation to familiarize the interviewers with the questions in the questionnaire and to prepare them for responding to questions that the interviewees might ask. Some role playing exercises were held which added to the comfort level of the interview teams both on interviewing and recording.

Not surprisingly, this demand for dozens of volunteers appeared to some as a huge waste of volunteers. For several years now I have not heard of any groups that have taken this route. The loss, however, is enormous. In the Seaforth pilot, great care was taken to impress on everyone that these interviews were given in confidence. The questionnaire form would be sealed and sent to Guelph for processing unseen by any other individuals. The exception to this would be a “red flag” item: some issue that came up in the interview that required immediate attention by someone or some body. In this case, the interviewee would give permission for the team to present this information to the individual who was designated as the red flag coordinator who would then take the issue to the appropriate authority for resolution. That might be the Mayor, the Director of Public Works, the telephone company, the landlord, the neighbour, or whoever had the authority to deal immediately with the matter.

This approach had a huge effect on the entire community. It involved a huge number of regular community members who saw first hand the genuine concern and effort being put forth by their community and business leaders to make substantive improvements in the community. It increased the amount of civic involvement. The effect showed up in the crowd that showed up to hear about the results of the BR & E project.

The BR&E is a whole community event

The BR&E program is intended as a community-wide process – not just a council or a business project. When it is taken over by one or two segments of the community, it can be turned into a very divisive process with finger-pointing, blame-laying, community fragmentation, and the very kind of dysfunctional behaviour which might be one of the major obstacles to retaining and attracting businesses.

The ideal is to get all groups together, ensure that all are in agreement to the goals of  B R & E, and go forward to determine what “we” need to do to retain and attract business in our community. Otherwise it can become a witch hunt whose only purpose its show up the inadequacies of “those other people”.

The Municipal council must be involved in the planning and organizing of the project because it will have a major role in dealing with obstacles or issues that arise in terms of public works, water, sewer, storm water, traffic, roads, etc. Also, it is essential that the councils members have a complete understanding of the B R & E purpose and goals and their responsibility in working with the community to address these issues. Furthermore, as the project is dealing with the issues arising, the council can advise the participants of the opportunities available through the municipality as well as to constraints under which they operate.

It is important as well to have a representation of regular citizens working on the project. Some could be on the central committee but a large groups could serve as interviewers. Besides those functional roles, they will serve as ambassadors to the community at large spreading the word about the goals of the project and building anticipation for the outcome and encourage participation and support for the remediation that takes place to implement to changes recommended.

RECENT TRENDS

A common trend is to minimize the involvement of large groups of volunteers to assist with the interviewing. The mythology is that those early projects were bogged down with volunteers, were very inefficient, and the projects dragged on for 6 or 8 months. I am aware of some projects that took an inordinately long time, but they were always ones that involved only overworked staff who had difficulty finding time to do the interviewing. My recollection of the Seaforth pilot is that the interviews took place over a period of no more than three weeks. (that is just my recollection. I was on a team of two. We had about three interviews that took place in a span of two weeks.) The results were sent quickly to Guelph for processing. They were a little slow coming back because they were still adjusting to the process, but were in reasonable time. The process was not only more efficient than the consultant route being used now; it was much more productive as a result of the other benefits of community involvement.

We have witnessed a few B R & E projects which have failed to achieve the optimum results that are generally reached by the original process.

LONG TERM EFFECT OF B R & E

I attended a meeting last week in Seaforth at which the Gateway Rural Health Research Institute was signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Western Ontario faculty of Medicine and Dentistry as an agreement to work together to enhance the education of medical and dentistry students as well as to contribute to our rural health across Canada and our understanding of the special health issues in this rural area. Attending that meeting and directly involved in that institute were several people who began working together on that B R & E program almost 12 years ago and are still working together today.

Brock Vodden