On Tuesday Oct. 26, SRPC held its weekly Seacoast Economic Development Stakeholders (SEDS) call. The SEDS are a group of economic development directors, chamber of commerce executives, and other public and private economic development stakeholders in the greater seacoast region that have held weekly virtual meetings since March 2020 to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on our economy and businesses.
During this week’s call, attendees participated in an interactive activity to compare regional priorities set in SRPC’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), Regional Economic Development Center’s CEDS and Rockingham Planning Commission's Regional Master Plan. To facilitate this, SRPC staff used Zoom Whiteboard as a workspace to have stakeholders identify commonalities between the various regional plans and the voted on their top 4 priorities in real time using the stamp tool.
Attendees identified affordable housing; workforce attraction, retention and development; infrastructure; and a quality of life as the most pressing issues faced by the greater region. Next week the stakeholders will begin brainstorming and prioritizing specific action items for those themes that could be implemented in the next 6 months to a year. This activity was useful in promoting regional collaboration and poising ourselves for joint projects in the future.
