Regional economic alliance progresses

A new five-parish alliance responsible for regional economic development could be in place as soon as this fall, after a task force crafts recommendations for the new agency's board structure within 60 days.

About 40 officials and business people from Lincoln, Morehouse, Ouachita, Richland and Union parishes reached a consensus to move forward after attending a daylong meeting at Louisiana Tech University on Wednesday.

"Strong progress was made more than I even expected," said Charlie Simpson, volunteer chairman of the West Monroe-West Ouachita Chamber of Commerce.

The 10-person task force charged with designing the board's structure will be led by CenturyTel Inc.'s Stacey Goff and a person from Lincoln Parish to be named this week, who will be co-chairmen. Each parish will have two representatives on the task force.

Though both the city of West Monroe and the Northeast Louisiana Economic Alliance pulled out of the effort last week, representatives for each of the five parishes recommended for the regional alliance were in attendance Wednesday.

"I really believe the regional concept is the only way to move our region forward," said Stewart Ewing, CenturyTel Inc.'s chief financial officer.

"Hopefully we're participating in the birth of a vision," said Lamar Prichard, dean of the University of Louisiana at Monroe's College of Pharmacy. "It takes unity to bring it to fruition."

The effort to form a regional agency began after the presentation in March of an economic development study commissioned by the cities of Monroe and West Monroe, the Ouachita Economic Development Corp., the Ouachita Parish Police Jury, the Louisiana Department of Economic Development and NELA.

It recommended that the OEDC facilitate the creation of a regional entity and then be disbanded.

Though all five original partners agreed to abide by the study's recommendations, the city of West Monroe and NELA pulled out of the effort last week, both citing the OEDC's weakness as their reason.

OEDC volunteer chairman John Schween and others at Tuesday's meeting said the door will remain open for West Monroe and NELA to return.

"We welcome their participation," Schween said. "Is the OEDC here to control the process? No. We want to be part of the process of designing something that will move our region forward."

Tana Trichel, executive director of NELA, which conducts economic development for 13 Delta parishes excluding Ouachita and Lincoln, said her board "was fairly firm in its decision, but we never say never. We'll cooperate with anybody in our region on economic development."

West Monroe Mayor Dave Norris could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

John Emory, chairman of Community Trust Bank, which has operations in three of the five parishes, said a new strategy must be developed to stop the flow of out-migration.

"In order to keep my kids here, I had to give two of them jobs," Emory said. "No longer can we be in our own shell. No parish can make it on its own.

"Unfortunately, we've had some fallout, but that's all the more reason for us to move forward."

Mayors from the two largest municipalities in the region, Monroe's Jamie Mayo and Ruston's Dan Hollingsworth, said they believe regionalism is critical.

"I'm here to reach out, and I hope that everyone will be open to doing something better than we've done before," Mayo said.

"We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities we have," Hollingsworth said. "We can't do that if we're divided."