January 2007

Yesterday, at our day-long retreat, the Board of Aldermen worked through several dozen possible next steps for our economic development strategy and chose three to refer to staff and three to refer to itself.

Staff will be looking into:

-A leakage analysis of the Carrboro economy. Leakage analysis looks at what goods and services are being purchased in Carrboro from non-local sources and develops strategies to develop local alternatives. Although discussion of leakage locally typically focuses on retail sales, our consultant Michael Shuman points out that significant leakage occurs in such areas as food, energy, financial services, absentee landlords, and transportation. Leakage analysis is foundational to related initiates that, Shuman recommends, could include fostering entrepreneurship, building business support networks, mobilizing demand (what he calls “think local first” campaigns), and better systems for making equity available to locally owned small business. (Shuman’s powerpoint presentation developed for Carrboro should be available on the town web site soon)