When it comes to developing the local economy, Houston County Commission Chairman Brandon Shoupe is looking beyond jobs.
“You look at the world that we have now, it looks a whole lot different from the world of just 10 years ago, especially 20 to 30 years ago,” Shoupe said. “These days when you are trying to grow a local economy, it’s not just good enough to have jobs because it’s hard to find people to work in those jobs.”
People are also reading… While Shoupe said he learned a lot over the past eight years as the District 4 county commissioner, he gets more excited talking about the future of Houston County and the Wiregrass. “Not everybody wants to live in rural America,” Shoupe said. “We all have social media; we all see what our friends from college and high school are doing. We all want nice things, too, for our own kids, for ourselves. At some level, we have to reinvest; we have to invest in ourselves as it relates to culture, as it relates to recreation. That not only makes a community, but it makes a community more worth living in. It makes people more excited and proud of their community.
“To use a military term, there are forces and there are force multipliers, and we are definitely a force multiplier,” Shoupe said. “There’s not a whole lot we can do on our own; but we can partner with municipal governments, and we can help multiply what they are already trying to do or what they need to do. Certainly, that’s not going to be limited to the City of Dothan.”
Shoupe said the region has a lot to be excited about. In the past few months there have been big announcements of new industries in the Wiregrass as well as a partnership between the City of Dothan and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology that brought HudsonAlpha to the Wiregrass.HudsonAlpha, he said, will pay dividends not only from an economic development standpoint but from an educational standpoint.
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