Economic deterrent: trash on roadsides reflects on all of us

In Tuesday’s edition this space carried our opinion that the announcement of the closing of Batesville Casket Company’s Panola plant coupled with the current search for a new Panola Partnership CEO should coincide with a re-examination of our definition of what constitutes economic development.
We advocated a multi-faceted approach that not only pursues the large manufacturing plums that can bring in upwards of hundreds of jobs at one time, but also an approach that can help locally-owned, smaller industries and businesses whose owners are less likely to relocate. We said that a multi-faceted approach should also include better utilization and promotion of visitors to Sardis and Enid lakes, an approach that should include cooperative efforts with municipalities.
There’s another problem area not usually associated with economic development that the Panola Partnership should consider as well: We are a trashy county.
As foliage along roadsides dies back in coming months, we will be exposed for who we are, and it’s not pretty. This has been a problem here for all of our lives. Once upon a time county government did not even consider peoples’ household garbage dumped along roadsides to be a county problem.
Over the years, county government has assumed more and more responsibility to the point that they now provide residential garbage collection to every residence in the county. The sheriff’s department has a crew traveling the roads constantly picking up trash, but no sooner have they picked up the chicken boxes, sacks and cups from a roadside than it is re-strewn. It’s impossible to pick up behind us as fast as we throw it down.
The point is that county government has about reached the limit of what is feasible for it to do about the litter problem.
The only real hope to get the trash off our roadsides is for our collective citizenry to stop throwing it from our vehicles.
And the only way that’s going to happen is to educate —  propagandize, brainwash, whatever — young kids so thoroughly against the idea of trashing the scenery that whenever the driver rolls down his window to discard his hamburger leavings, the kid in the back seat screams bloody murder. It worked with smoking tobacco.
And the only way we can mount a convincing anti-trash message that reaches young school kids is for the Partnership’s multi-faceted approach to economic development to recognize that looking trashy is a deterrent to economic development — the old idea of what kind of first impression we make.
Not that the Partnership should undertake untrashing on its own — it should just recognize that it is an important component in economic development and coordinate with schools, county and city governments. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that anti-litter campaigns belong solely in the realm of garden clubs.
None of these suggestions for rounding out the Partnership’s approach to economic development has quite the bling of landing a new industry who will hire 100 local folks tomorrow, but a more holistic approach could better steady us for closings such as we are experiencing since last week’s announcement.
Meanwhile, a search committee is scouring the region to find a new director for Panola Partnership. When that new person gets here, he or she will already have an advantage, with the attractive Airport Industrial Park at I-55 and Highway 35, in attracting a bling industry. And it should be remembered that it was the former director who provided the vision for what it looks like today and then cajoled his own board, the city and the county to provide the funds, labor and equipment to make it happen.