Newly-hired EDC director steps down

Craig Rees’ tenure at the Mitchell County Economic Development Commission’s director came to a quick end on Monday. Only months after being hired, Rees tendered his resignation to board members in order to focus on his duties as the City of Colorado City’s code enforcement officer.

Rees had been hired to fill the EDC director’s role in January 2021 to fill the position previously held by Rayanna NcGaha.

Rees, at the request of Colorado City City Manager David Hoover, resigned to take a full-time position with the city as a code enforcement officer. Rees was hired initially as a half-time EDC director and a half-time code enforcement officer for the city. Hoover said that he felt Rees would better serve the community by focusing on code enforcement, an activity he noted that could also help support EDC efforts to attract new residents and business to the county.

“Code enforcement has become a big issue with the rain,” Hoover said, “and the council is giving it top priority.”

Hoover said he was working with the Mitchell County Hospital District and the Mitchell County EDC to create an interlocal agreement to hire a director of marketing to fill the vacant EDC position. The director could then serve all three entities.

“We all have the same goal in that we want the area to thrive and grow,” said EDC member Margo Mitchell. “By pooling resources, we could afford to recruit and hire an expert professional to lead this effort.”

In other business, the committee appointed Raymond Whitener to the committee, pending the city council’s final approval. The vacancy on the committee was created by the resignation of Wade Sands, who stepped down in May after he had moved outside the city limits and was no longer eligible to serve.

Hoover urged the EDC to work toward making the community more "livable" and "family friendly" in an effort to make it more appealing to companies, or remote workers. Hoover said Colorado City had a good school system, healthcare system, an airport and a prime spot for events in Ruddick Park. EDC funds, he said, could be leveraged to improve the park for events and other activities that would be a draw families and young people to the community. Funds could also be utilized, he said, to improve the airport runway, fence it off, and make it a fully operable destination for pilots.

The committee also expressed the need to meet more often as a way to drive economic growth in the county.

“We all agreed in order to be most effective that we should be meeting monthly rather than quarterly,” said Mitchell, who presided over the meeting in the absence of EDC President Cade Carlock.

A proposal to switch the committee’s meetings to a monthly schedule will be presented to the group next month.