Arizona Flashback on Arizona's 96th Town Hall

By Derek Neighbors, Published on July 26, 2011

Thoughts from Arizona’s 96th Town Hall on Building Arizona’s Future: Jobs, Innovation & Competitiveness.. Actually these are notes that never made it in form of prose..

• Exposed weakness of state to me
• Lack of diversity
• Not prepared as a state
• Showed we are not competitive
• All Arizonians need to make Economic Development a priority.

Most important facts on AZ economy:

• economy basis for everything physical and social
• reverse is also true
• must be able to adapt and change
• innovation, creativity, knowledge, transfer technology
• diff scales local, state, regional, national, global (location matters)

Quality of Life

• growth handed to us because our great natural beauty and quality of life
• 1940 success of phoenix because we have capitalized on our sunshine – Goldwater
• 6.5 million people.. Sun corridor moderately dense comparatively
• was 2nd largest growing economy now bottom 50

New department of commerce. How funded? Right thing, right time?

How can Economic Development best happen in crazy ass AZ?

• Vote
• Community Building

How can we grow when college freshmen need remedial math?

Dumb workforce equates to bad jobs.

What are the economic impacts of bad immigration legislation?

• Visitors from Mexico spent 2.5 Billion in tourism alone
• Perceptions can seriously hurt us

At what point does funding for economic incentives erode funding? More assets means less need for incentives.

How do we build an economy not based on growth?

• Invest in education.
• Look at new possibilities