Talking over lunch

2009 comes to an end

Another year has come and is about to be gone. Over lunch yesterday a friend and I were talking about El Paso’s good fortune during this down turn in the national economy. While we haven’t seen a complete melt down in our local economy we are definitely feeling a slow down.

I mentioned real estate in El Paso, Texas and how it’s harder to get people qualified for home loans and the difficulty small businesses are having in getting loans, He talked about being a small business owner and how he was afraid he would not be doing any hiring and in fact he said “I can see myself having to make some cut backs, kind of belt tightening”.

He brought up a good point, “During all this national turmoil, El Paso’s unemployment numbers are at 9.5% about 1% point higher than the rest of Texas, is that good? I don’t think so! Why don’t we have more jobs coming into this area, the recession? I saw in the paper a few days ago that in Albuquerque a company involved in the solar energy sector, Schott Solar, was hiring 60 new employees. Give me a break why is Albuquerque ahead of the “Sun City” when it comes to spearheading the emerging alternative energy industry, especially solar?

Why Does El Paso seems to be so enamored with the auto industry and its sub manufacturing divisions? We are letting other communities hone in on the obvious up and coming, renewable energy sector, above all, the solar industry...”Hello El Paso” I have nothing against the auto industry, but isn’t that industry in the doldrums today? Why not go after an industry that has a tremendous amount of potential, the auto industry is not where we should have our primary focus today”.

He went on to say ”This city, El Paso and the surrounding region including Juarez should be focusing on being the headquarters for research and development of alternative energy, focusing on solar energy and all that it includes. Where best to manufacture, Juarez has all the facilities and labor. They might have the edge over just about any region when it comes to manufacturing. Yet I don’t see us doing much to take advantage of this resource. It’s frustrating to sit here and know that we have the climate, the manufacturing facilities and the manufacturing know how to be among the leaders if not the leader in an industries whose time has arrived and could be a catalyst for the creation of hundreds of jobs. I read somewhere that 1 out of 8 people in El Paso work in Juarez now. What would it be like if we had the corporate headquarters of companies in the solar industry right here because this was the epic center of research and then the manufacturing was taking place a stone throws away in Juarez? Why are we not aggressively pursuing it? If we are, we need to step it up”.

My friend is right, the opportunity is here, and it’s up to us to capitalize on it. Wow! Imagine, El Paso being the leader in research development and manufacturing of solar technology…hundreds of good paying jobs being created, and not just manufacturing jobs, corporate headquarter jobs too!! It’s up to us to capitalize on it.

It takes everyday people getting involved, speaking to our elected leaders and giving them the marching orders to commit to attracting high-quality clean technical jobs. Let’s quit listening to the reasons why we “can’t” and insist that “we can” And we need to quit being complacent.

I welcome your comments!