The Deputy Premier of New South Wales, Australia was in Plattsburgh today meeting with local officials and touring facilities that have benefitted from Regional Economic Development Council funding.
A delegation of officials from New South Wales is visiting New York to assess how the state does economic development through the regional council system. They met with the co-chairs of the North Country Regional Economic Development Council, business, education and community officials Thursday morning to discuss similarities and differences in approaches towards economic development.
New South Wales includes the metropolitan area of Sydney but also has some large rural regions. Deputy Premier John Barilaro explained they chose to examine New York because of its similarities to the Australian state. “This journey’s a research journey just to meet those communities that we think we’ve got something in common with and making sure that we’re investing in a way that gives us the economic outcome but we don’t forget that this is all about people and communities and making sure regional areas have an opportunity to grow. And there are a lot of programs that are similar. Issues seem to be the same right across the globe. And that is workforce development, keeping young people in the regions, and creating the workforce not just for today but for the future, what role government has, what role the private sector has. We’re focused on smaller communities and smaller centers it’s where we believe there’s greater synergy with the communities that we represent.”
He adds that New York’s regional councils are similar to what is being done in Australia. “We’re really focused on bringing industry along with government to unlock economic potential to build the infrastructure, that enabling infrastructure that grows the opportunity. The programs are very similar. I think the governor’s approach to how the funding from the ground up and the decisions being made by a body that is closer to the investment that needs to be made I think it’s something that we’re doing very very similar. But the difference here is we have funding all year round available for infrastructure compared to a round-based approach here. What I learned I think this morning is that we have the same challenges and what a regional development body does is address that through the lens of industry not always through government. Government doesn’t always have the answers.”
Plattsburgh North Country Chamber of Commerce CEO and North Country Regional Economic Development Council co-chair Garry Douglas says some of their best conversations focused on how they deal with workforce skills. “Certainly in the roundtable discussion that dominated the discussion. Very similar challenges but some different approaches in terms of how they proactively encourage a tracking of development of training skills that is very tightly aligned to what the demand is in the market. And I think it’s something we’ll have some further discussions about because I think it’s very instructive as to how to really align what you’re producing through our training and educational systems with jobs.”
The delegation took a walking tour of Plattsburgh to highlight Downtown Revitalization Initiative progress and then stopped by the Strand Theatre, which was renovated using some funding from the REDC.
The New South Wales delegation will be in New York for 10 days and have already visited Corning and the Southern Tier Economic Development Council.
