We need more than chance

Economic development is something I have heard for years in Rainy River.
As a young editor I met Dan Wright. He was so enthusiastic about the potential here in Rainy River that it was hard to contain him at times.
He worked on so many projects that I thought for sure the day would come very soon for Rainy River's ship to come in. But that never happened. That was 20 years ago.
Then funding ran out for his job and we were then left with economic development officers based in Fort Frances. Needless to say, not for the lack of trying, very little has happened that has changed Rainy River's slow economic downward spiral in the past decade.
The current town council of Rainy River saw a need to have a full time effort to try and reverse that trend. They struck a visioning committee to plan for our future.
They then received two grants to hire an economic development officer in each of the last two years. Those two men worked tirelessly to get things going here and if what they say is true we have been close to that ship coming in several times recently.
However, the funding for the second economic dev. officer is now at an end and council is not planning to keep that person on the payroll.
I think this is a huge mistake. Having no one out there physically tooting our horn means it is going to be very hard to get that ship to shore.
Last week the Vision 20/20 committee, which is comprised of volunteers, met to recap what it has accomplished in the past few years. They were clearly not happy that we will be losing our E.D.O.
We are nearly done our long needed water and sewer system updates. As we sit poised on a precipice, we will have no one to keep us from falling into the canyon once again.
It seems like we have worked so hard to get to the top of the mountain and are now throwing our future to chance.
Chance that someone might come a knocking. Chance that someone might want to bring a company here and create economic development.
We need more than chance.
–Until then, Ken