Amesbury has long been an innovative community throughout its history. This was exhibited by the horse drawn and electric carriage industries. Innovative approaches is not a term often used in the same sentence with government. Mayor Gray’s willingness to think outside the box and being business friendly are terms cities and state governments often claim, but are they actually doing anything? The only constant with government is that it never seems to run out of money, rather just tax increases.
Businesses on the other hand are timeframe driven. They often run out of money, particularly when things take longer than expected to execute. While an unfortunate result, fear of failure is what makes businesses competitive and successful – no room for complacency. This is particularly true for scaleup businesses that continually fight for survival. Larger businesses have some luxury with time given their success to date. They operate under the structure and guidelines included in their business plans – as a means to operate in a synchronous was across their entire organizations. To work collaboratively with a city and a state to relocate all or part of their operation to another location is a hefty challenge and requires coordination among all involved parties. Here is where the interdependent time frames create chaos. The speed a business moves has to be drastically faster than government is capable.
It is refreshing to see Mayor Gray acknowledge this fact and attempt to get out ahead on the government activities. He has created an environment of business friendliness and this is the most recent example with the ‘golden triangle’. If he can preemptively make the site appealing to a business, there is a higher likelihood of a business following.
We are pleased to have relocated to Amesbury and encourage other businesses to do the same. Best wishes to Mayor Gray in corralling city and state resources and support in one motion to attract businesses to Amesbury, MA. It is a taller order than may appear in reading the article.
