Video: State Of Region Lays Out Goals, Challenges For Area

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) — The CREATE Foundation’s Commission on the Future of Northeast Mississippi hosted its 18th annual State of the Region. Hundreds were on hand for the meeting from local business leaders to regional officials.

Three main issues filled the agenda for this year’s state of the region meeting.

State and regional perspectives on economic development, education and tourism.

Tennessee Valley Authority’s President and CEO, Bill Johnson, was on hand to explain TVA’s vision and outlook for the future.

“We see a slight rebound in the economy, slight but it’s getting better. We see a lot of interest from companies that want to come here so the economic development and activity has picked up and I think if we just stick to our basic knitting, energy, the environment and economic development and good jobs, things are looking up for us,” Johnson said.

Just as the economy is seeing an increase, so is education throughout the state.

Mississippi State Superintendent of Education, Dr. Carey Wright, hopes this meeting will give her an opportunity to encourage more people to be vocal about what is happening in education.

“And I want to try and develop this sense of urgency about how we go about doing things differently because I think that its going to take some real rolling up the sleeves and improving student outcomes is not an easy task and we can provide the professional development and we can provide as much as we can provide from MDE but I think our business community can also step in and think about how they can get involved in a real way,” Dr. Wright said.

Wright says although there are challenges in education expansion, businesses that are expanding in workforce training are leaving a footprint in the expansion effort.

As a three year planning process begins to wrap up for tourism in northeast Mississippi, Philip Walker, of Walker Collaborative, says there is a great deal of economic development through National Heritage Areas, as it has brought more than sixteen thousand jobs in 32 states already.

“What’s important for a heritage area is to come up with some discernible themes, interpretative themes and the four that we identified for this heritage area include Native America Heritage, African American Heritage, the Civil War and the arts specifically music and literature. And so those are the four stories we want to kind of stick with,” Walker commented.

The annual state of the region meeting is also a great opportunity to network with emerging leaders throughout the state.