The economy's hurting. Want to talk about it?
Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon convened the first of four business summits Friday to determine how to keep the state's most-populous county commercially and economically vibrant.
"If we want to weather this economic storm," he said, "we have got to figure out how to work together to create different kinds of businesses or improve the businesses we have."
True to his environmental agenda, Corroon introduced the initiative Friday from the showroom of sEnergy Technologies, where compact-fluorescent light bulbs, solar panels and thermostats designed to make refrigerators run more efficiently served as a backdrop.
It was a fitting setting for broaching the topic of Corroon's first business summit: "Green jobs." The mayor staged that round-table discussion with business owners over lunch Friday at the Economic Development Corp. of Utah, penciling ideas like these about how to grow Utah's green economy:
» Ramp up marketing efforts for existing "green" businesses.
» Require stricter standards for energy efficiency.
» Recruit businesses that distribute renewable-energy products, such as solar arrays.
» Teach about energy-saving technologies in schools.
"Green businesses are here to stay," Corroon said. "We are seeing a green revolution that we haven't seen in the past."
But Corroon's future business summits will venture into other sectors of the economy, touching on the state's struggling housing market, on higher education and on economic redevelopment.
It's an initiative that the mayor hinted at during his 2009 State of the County address, telling the County Council that economic recovery will require an improved "partnership between our government and our community."
But will the discussion produce something more than talk? The county's economic-development director, Dale Carpenter, thinks so.
"There is no reason to have them," Carpenter said, "if we don't intend to use them very seriously. [These summits] will actually guide our economic-development efforts."
