Chamber survey seeks input on industries

The Wahkiakum Chamber of Commerce is inviting the community to participate in a survey which will help an organization match Wahkiakum County with industries that might like to bring their business to the area, in hopes of creating jobs and improving the local economy.

The Community Goals Survey is being conducted by the Areas Sector Analysis Process project created by the Western Rural Development Center in collaboration with several universities throughout the west.

They have implemented their process in about 50 counties in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, and have won several awards for their work, according to Director of the WRDC, Dan Albrecht.

The survey helps the organization determine what is important to the residents of Wahkiakum county in order to match them with industries and businesses.

“Our ASAP team has interviewed over 2,500 industries and businesses from a wide range of sectors throughout the country,” Albrecht said in a Zoom meeting with members of a local steering committee formed by the Chamber. “We ask them basically the inverse of questions that we are going to find from you.”

They have asked those businesses and industries what benefits and costs they might bring to a community, including wages, whether they would hire locally or bring their own work force, and what kind of skills are needed to work for them. They also want to know if the industry needs an interstate highway or airport nearby, or if they need internet to conduct their business.

“We’ll get your results and take this info along with other data, and crunch numbers and do a matching process,” Albrect said.

The inforomation their project provides will help in the short term and the long term, Albrecht said. In the short term, they will match communities with some specific industries that would be a good fit for the county, and in the long term, they will provide information that will help target long term planning.

Any Wahkiakum residents who would like to participate can pick up a survey in paper form at the Wahkiakum Chamber of Commerce office or find them online at https://bit.ly/ASAPWahkiakum.