Last week, more than 300 members of the Flint-Genesee County community gathered at the Regional Chamber Annual Meeting. It was a great celebration!
I enjoy our Annual Meetings because it is the perfect forum to publicly express our gratitude to our partners for their roles in helping to move the region forward.
I am pleased to report to Regional Chamber members that our work positively influenced $205 million in total business investment and contract value in 2011. And as a result, 1,482 jobs were retained in the region and 830 new jobs were created. We also formed new partnerships that have the potential to create thousands of new jobs such as the I-69 Corridor Next Michigan Development Corporation and e3 Innovation Network. We continued to see strong participation in our youth education and training programs YouthQuest, TeenQuest and Summer Youth Initiative; programs that prepare our children for a knowledge-based workplace and to compete in a global economy. We also made some internal changes that strengthened our agency; changes such as restructuring the organization, and adding new resources to create a talented, diverse staff that meets our needs today and into the future.
As we move forward in 2012, the Regional Chamber is focused on our 2012-2014 strategic initiatives. We are poised to seize new opportunities and meet the needs of a still challenging business environment.
I’m optimistic that 2012 will be another good year and I expect the economic recovery to continue for Flint-Genesee County and its citizens. Once again, on behalf of the Regional Chamber, I want to thank our members and our all of our partners for your ongoing confidence and support!