The Governor’s directive to expand Wyoming’s diversification efforts, ENDOW (Economically Needed Diversification Options for Wyoming), met in Laramie to get public and student feedback that might solidify and condense a broader vision.
“Now we’re wrapping up these preliminary findings and making some determinations about key components that need to be addressed,” Wyoming Director of Economic Diversification Strategy and Initiatives, Jeremiah Rieman, said. “The University of Wyoming and the student body is one of those key components.”
“There hasn’t been a conversation yet about specific ways to involve the University but its importance to the greater scope is broadly understood,” Rieman said. “The executive council will be discussing specific engines or sectors where growth and sustainability can be harnessed.”
The council will meet live on Facebook this Thursday and Friday to present their strategy for 2018.
“This stage of our work is all about eliminating barriers to economic diversification,” Rieman said.
Other people are not as optimistic about the push to broaden Wyoming’s revenue capture.
“It seems like a lot of time and resources are going into researching things we should already know,” Laramie resident, Stan Smith, said. “I think it really seems like more of a gimmick than the help we actually need.”
“I know mineral taxes and fossil fuels would have to take a back seat at some point but we’ve also been sitting on a wealth of wilderness and wildlife,” Smith said. “We need to learn how to show that and sell it.”
There are very local reasons to be aware of Wyoming’s need for economic diversification. Students are faced with daily decisions about post-graduate job opportunities in highly skilled fields, many of which have zero marketability in Wyoming’s current economy.
“We have to tout our outdoors, our environment and our low population density,” Laramie Area Visitor Center Executive Director, Fred Ockers, said. “Colorado’s overrun and congested right now and it’s really working in Wyoming’s favor.”
“We try to market specifically to Northern Colorado as well as nationally because of I-80 and I-25,” Ockers said. “One of the biggest problems is how to get people around the state and we’re hoping for some improvement in air service or some other method.”
Getting people to Wyoming isn’t as difficult as getting them around Wyoming once they are here.
“As far as I’m concerned ‘Colorado’ is just another way to spell ‘California’,” Ockers said. “Wyoming needs to invest in its wildlife, its environment and some sort of annual statewide event that will draw people to its entirety.”
