Jim Gibson is Rockdale MDD’s new Economic Development Director and he has hit the ground running since he was hired two months a g o . H e ’ s been helping out with Project Saratoga. He started working with Alcoa helping to secure a 313 application, which is like a tax-abatement except it’s for schools.
He’s also been working on a workforce analysis, which is a talent pipeline for the available skills in this region. He has been fielding lots of calls from crypto currency outfits in China who are interested in our town.
Gibson grew up in Dangerfield, a city with a huge steel operation that employed most of the city until it closed down. Sound familiar?
Some of the things he’d like to see for Rockdale are a parks master plan for the city, and to get all the documentation for the industrial park on FM 487 so he can start marketing it to lure businesses here. Even though it still looks like a cow pasture at the moment, he is very impressed by the city and previous MDD employees having gotten it as far as it has come now, like getting water and electricity put in.
One of the things he is most proud of is a downtown project, similar to our own, in Center, TX. As Assistant city manager/economic development director, he oversaw the implementation and financing of a $4 million street scape which the whole city loved—once it was finished. You can see the finished product at centertexas.org.
According to Gibson, “In 2018 I published an article in the IEDC Economic Development Journal titled ‘Accelerating Rural Economic Development’ as a pushback against all of the articles at the time which said the only economic development will be in the big cities. I knew that wasn’t true so I gave 11 low-cost approaches in the article to combat that sort of thinking.”
You can read the article at www.iedconline.org/clientuploads/Economic%20Development%20Journal/EDJ_1….
One of the things he’d like to see in the future is a comprehensive incentive policy for businesses who want to come to Rockdale. “Tax-abatement is the only thing we have to offer right now. We need to be more competitive by offering other incentives, which will bring more money to the city and a bigger tax base,” Gibson said.
Gibson has a lot of experience with budgeting and that was one of the reasons the city hired him. The City of Rockdale wanted someone with budgeting experience to help them with the city’s budget.
According to Gibson there are four important areas of economic development, “You’ve got to grow the population, diversify the economy so Rockdale doesn’t ever again have to suffer another major employer closure, improve demographics so more retail development will come to Rockdale and, lastly, make the city more money.”
One day soon we may be calling him “Dr. Gibson” because he is currently in progress on a PhD in economic development with the University of Southern Mississippi.
Gibson and his wife of 21 years, Janelle, recently moved to Rockdale. Janelle is a dyslexia therapist who works for the Thrall ISD. They have a 20-year-old daughter who is a junior at the University of Houston, and an 18-year-old daughter, who is a freshman at The University of Texas.
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