The HUBZone Program mission is to promote job growth, capital investment and economic development to historically underutilized business zones… by providing contracting assistance to small businesses located in these economically distressed communities…
— US Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs website
We listened to a 15-minute presentation about “HUBZones” from Region 9 Executive Director Linda Lewis Marchino, at the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners morning work session on the morning of June 1. The full name for Region 9 is ‘Region 9 Economic Development District of Southwest Colorado Inc.’, and a photo of Ms. Lewis Marchino appears on Region 9 website’s home page, apparently discussing a business loan with a restaurant owner somewhere in the southwest corner of Colorado. Region 9 serves five counties, including Archuleta County, with economic development advice and funding.
I had walked in to the BOCC meeting a couple of minutes late, so I didn’t catch the beginning of the presentation, but I gathered that the federal government had granted state governors permission to designate some new HUBZone areas, and Governor Jared Polis had suggested that he’d like to designate some rural Colorado counties as HUBZones.
The question before us was, ‘Does Archuleta County want to apply to become a HUBZone?’ Such a desingation would theoretically enable certain Pagosa Springs companies to compete more successfully for federal contracts.
I honestly can’t think of a single Pagosa Springs company that has the staff or expertise to bid on ‘federal contracts’… except perhaps federal contracts concerning therapeutic hot spring soaks… or hot-air balloon rides…
…but I can understand how the BOCC might feel that our community has been left out of the whole HUBZone game, considering that Archuleta County appears to be surrounded by red-colored HUBZones. The dot in the middle of this map, below, is downtown Pagosa Springs; the red areas are counties already designated as HUBZones.
Ms. Lewis Marchino admitted that a HUBZone designation might provide very little benefit to the Archuleta County economy… but hey, why not fill out the paperwork anyway? You never know. And it couldn’t hurt… considering how the federal government seems especially eager, right now as we come out of lock-down mode, to throw money at citizens and businesses and governments.
BOCC chair Alvin Schaaf thanked Ms. Lewis Marchino for her presentation, and then moved on to another agenda item.
“Okay. Grant funding for broadband. Eric Hittle and Jason Cox.”
Curiously enough, when I was researching HUBZones for this editorial, I discovered Mr. Hittle and Mr. Cox also featured on the home page of the Region 9 website, posing in front of a new telecommunications tower. The two local businessmen, who co-manage Pagosa’s government-funded Broadband Services Management Office (BSMO), are apparently somewhat famous in local ‘economic development’ circles…
Mr. Hittle had appeared in-person at the BOCC’s June 1 work session, while Mr. Cox was attending via a Zoom connection. It wasn’t a terrible connection, considering the sometimes-uneven internet and phone service in Archuleta County.
From what I can tell, Eric Hittle knows about as much about ‘information technology’ as anyone in Archuleta County, and his own company — Echo IT — provides technical services to the Archuleta School District, the Town of Pagosa Springs, and numerous other agencies and businesses.
But the person charged with making the main presentation to the BOCC was Jason Cox, an expert of a different stripe. Mr. Cox is a fast-talking salesman, and very good at what he does. Since this presentation was essentially a sales pitch, Mr. Hittle was deferring to his BSMO co-manager.
Here’s Mr. Cox:
“I’m going to blitz through this as quickly as a can. We have a lot of information we can go into, an excruciating painful level of detail when it’s time, but right now, let’s just stay at the high level. We just want to show an overview we’ve shaped over the past couple of weeks. Strategic planning is coming together; that’s the most important driver right now. And really what we’re trying to do is come up with a vision. Which we have — through 2025, and beyond — so that we have a succinct plan that executable by project management, and that really addresses the broadband gaps and the needs in Archuleta County right now. I know we have some funding opportunities that are coming forward, that are unique. One of the delays, so far — we had hoped to have the strategic plan available by June 1, in a final form. We’re still not finished with the draft — and that’s not a bad thing, because of an amazing set of opportunities with partners, including LPEA, private partners, CDOT and others.
“And all of these projects — just like your stuff, with all this money coming in — are in flux, so things keep changing, and what we find is we have these opportunities we didn’t expect, so we’re trying to build a strategic plan especially from a funding model…”
Yes, there is money coming in.
It was fun to type out this introduction by Mr. Cox… offering a plausible excuse, in the most glowing terms, for why the BSMO does not yet have their strategic plan finished… which the co-managers had apparently expected to have ready by June 1… and why that’s actually a good thing.
What I cannot easily get across, in written text, is the speed with which Mr. Cox delivered the above introduction.
I used the term ‘fast-taking salesman’ earlier in this story… and listening back to my audio recording of Mr. Cox making his BOCC presentation, I think I can appreciate why a salesman might want to talk as fast as possible.
“Fast talking” prevents the listener from fully processing what they’re hearing. In normal conversation, the speaker will typically generate a polite pause, now and then, to allow the listener to take in and consider the (new?) information. Part of this mental processing involves a quick determination, by the listener, as to whether the speaker is saying something truthful, and meaningful… or whether we are hearing something erroneous, or fatuous, or misleading.
If a salesman can talk fast enough, we are left unable to correctly judge the value of what is being said. In fact, it tends to leave us thinking that what we just heard was… well, it was probably truthful, right?
How that can lead to good decision-making, I am not sure.