Cass County's fledgling Economic Development Consortium (EDC) will make its first communitywide effort by joining with the county's six school districts to promote a major countywide job fair February 8.
"All six school districts are participating in the job fair, and so will all four economic development corporations," said Lee Elliott, Linden city administrator and Economic Development Corporation director for Linden. "All are cost sharing and providing tote bags for the students at the event."
Economic Development Corporations are established in Linden, Atlanta, Queen City, Hughes Springs and include the county as a whole. Currently, the consortium is comprised of county judge, EDC directors, staff and presidents.
The consortium met for its second time last week at a gathering in Hughes Springs.
"Our goal is to meet monthly and partner to improve Cass County. Our next partnership will be to have a class. It will be taught by Jeff Moore, who is our EDC attorney. He will present a forum on basic training, sales tax and other economic development agreements for working together.
"Employees need to have continuing education for best practices as well as basic training," Elliott continued. "It will be cheaper for us to have the training here rather than send our employees and travel to those conferences."
Elliott also said the consortium will continue to hear of local projects in the various communities, will ask to be informed by the Texas Department of Transportation and investigate work force training opportunities. The consortium will also develop a contact list to place county officials and citizens in contact with each other.
Elliott also noted the new Cass County consortium is to be featured in a March edition of "Town and City," the Texas Municipal League magazine.
"The magazine reached out for economic development ideas, and I sent them a description of our consortium partnership. So they want to publish it," Elliott said.