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Show Economic Development Is Committee's Prime Focus Garfield County's Economic Development Committee continues to meet as a small group after a year of hard work and struggles to learn the ropes of improving the economic status of an area, with most of the determination and action ac-tion taking place among Panguitch residents dedicated to the economic betterment of their community. Most exciting is the potential for additional machine shop work in the Panguitch area for McDonnell-Douglas, McDonnell-Douglas, as a spinoff of the $10 million loan by Utah to the upstate facility and that facility's return commitment to use small Utah firms to supply parts. Local businessmen busi-nessmen recently toured the Mc Donnell-Douglas plant to ascertain requirements the company has for parts that could possibly be supplied sup-plied from local industry, existing and new. A five-week retraining course can be made available at Southern Utah University if needed. A prospectus is being prepared for mailing to machine shops in Southern California urging them to relocate to the area. Creative ideas for generating new economic development for Garfield County and ways in which to obtain funding to underwrite it See Economics Page 3A Economic Development Is Committee's Prime Focus From Page 1 were the focus of the most recent meeting of the Garfield County Economic development committee. Jim Grossman, economic development specialist for Utah Power & Light in Washington stat, referred often to UP&L's Target Indusrtry Study as he discussed targeting specific industries or businesses "matched" to the local area for compatibility. He stressed the importance of proper research on potential site location, availability availa-bility of utilities, land values, construction con-struction materials, and contracting costs. Lynn Stewart, operations manager man-ager for UP&L in Lava Hot Springs, Ida., and his wife Margie told the group about his community's commu-nity's effort to resurrect their dying town. With only 450 residents, Lava Hot Springs was on the edge of extinction, having lost its single largest employer to parent-company bankruptcy. The Stewarts related how, with residents banded together, they sought expert advice and obtained outside monies by using county funds made available to them to generate matching fund grants. After five years, the community is well on its way to a better life for its people, having developed a thriving tourist industry around its hot springs and salvaged its old top industrial employer by demonstrating demonstrat-ing to the new buyer that it was really re-ally a profit-making investment Elaine Baldwin serves as coordinator coordi-nator of the Garfield County Economic Eco-nomic Development Committee, Bruce Fullmer as the county's representative, rep-resentative, Cindy Stewart as political polit-ical action committee head, John Houston as public relationscommunity rela-tionscommunity image chairman, Dennis Moser heads economic development de-velopment issues committee, Jake Albrecht as infrastructure chairman, and Philip Blais as education-cultural-recreation chairman. The group will hold its next meeting July 31 at 7 p.m. in the upstairs courtroom of the courthouse. court-house. It is open to anyone in the county who is interested. |