OUR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL board of directors, in a renewed and restructured partnership with the Chamber of Commerce, has taken bold and decisive steps to recommit its energy and resources to community development. It is the job that organization was long ago tasked with, and for some time, seemed to have forgotten.

That this change coincides with one of this community’s most challenging moments was not intentional, but it is fortuitous.

A gradual change in EDC board membership has brought increased scrutiny of its budget, and a far more curious and deliberative attitude, in general, to the business conducted during monthly meetings over the last year.

The questions have been welcomed by many of us who had grown increasingly skeptical that the EDC’s founding mission was being served: to expand and diversify this county’s tax base, as a hedge against the next oil and gas bust that we knew would surely come.

Just as surely, it has arrived—and along with it, a pandemic of such monstrous proportion that it has brought our global economy to a screeching halt, and humanity to its knees.

This is the future we should have prepared for.

We come today not to criticize, but to champion the decisions and actions of the EDC and Chamber of Commerce and the demanding work their directors and staff have shouldered to ensure those tough decisions matter.

We’ve noticed the light of the midnight oil that has burned at those offices around the corner. We’ve seen firsthand the gravitas with which the challenge of throwing lifelines into a sea of struggling businesses has been met. We’ve witnessed the result of that hard work, and celebrated knowing that jobs and businesses have been saved—if not forever, at least for now.

Yes, we are in crisis. We have been here before. That much we all know.

What we also know, though, is that the true character of this community reveals itself daily—in every kindness, every act of generosity, every thoughtful gesture and uplifting word. Perhaps this, above all else, is what we had forgotten or neglected or taken for granted for too long. Perhaps this is the real treasure that we cast back into the water, knowing it will feed so many others.

Certainly this is the community we know and love, and this is our fighting chance.