4CED's new executive director shares impressions after first week on job

Since taking over as the executive director at Four Corners Economic Development last week, Tim Gibbs has spent most of this time on a listening tour, meeting with local business, political, healthcare and education leaders as he tries to get up to speed on the economic issues San Juan County faces.

Gibbs acknowledged it’s been a challenge to try to absorb so much information at once, but he identified the willingness to listen to various perspectives as a key to his job, especially when it comes to understanding San Juan County’s history, and how and why its economy has developed the way it has.

“Even if you think you understand the issues a community is facing, you don’t understand the history or the core components of it,” he said, referring to the position he finds himself in as a newcomer. “You would be doing the community a disservice by not listening.”

In his first five days on the job, Gibbs met three times with the board at 4CED, the public-private partnership based at San Juan College that works with the county government and various municipalities to help plot the County’s economic future. He also took part in 4CED’s quarterly Partners Breakfast Meeting at the college, the Farmington Chamber of Commerce’s Business After Hours gathering at the Chili Pod restaurant and a meeting with officials at the San Juan Regional Medical Center.

Those experiences have exposed him to dozens of people who have been working for years to diversify the County’s economy, with an eye toward making it less dependent on the energy sector that largely has sustained it since World War II.

The feedback he has gotten has confirmed for him something he suspected about San Juan County before Gibbs and his wife Beverly arrived here.

“There’s not one single answer, and it takes the collaboration of everyone working together,” he said. “There’s no way outdoor recreation alone is a replacement for a coal mine or a power plant. But outdoor recreation is a great way to market your community and turn it into a destination.”

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Gibbs envisions a sort of “Moneyball” approach to solving the economic development puzzle here, one in which the local economy is rebuilt through several smaller elements rather than one or two major pieces. He said San Juan County already has several of those elements in place, and now it is just a matter of capitalizing on them.

Gibbs said he was especially impressed by the things he heard from officials at the hospital during his meeting with them. The San Juan Regional Medical Center already serves as the health care hub not just for the county, but for the region, and Gibbs said it is clear from what hospital officials told him that the institution’s presence and importance will only continue to grow.

He said 4CED has a major role to play in facilitating that growth.

“It was really, really interesting to listen to some of the things they’re doing in the future — and the things we can do to help them,” Gibbs said.

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The most encouraging thing he has seen thus far, Gibbs said, is a willingness to collaborate among the various stakeholders. That hasn’t been the case everywhere he has worked, Gibbs noted, noting that turf battles sometimes get in the way of achieving a greater good.

“I’ve had interesting conversations with the many of the partners, and they’ve been extremely open to working together and trying to make one plus one equal three,” he said. “It’s going to take all of us working together to budge the needle.”

Gibbs has worked directly in economic development for 20 years and indirectly for another 10, most recently as president and CEO of the Ashland Alliance in Ashland, Kentucky. But he has more than a passing acquaintance with the southern Rocky Mountains, having served in economic development positions during two stints in northwest Colorado.

Gibbs said oil and gas development was a major issue in those Colorado communities, and coal mines remains a significant part of the fabric of life in Kentucky, where he has spent most of his career. He said his experience with those fields means he arrived in San Juan County with a good grasp of how those industries operate and the challenges they face.

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As he acclimates to the Four Corners region, Gibbs is in the process of completing his doctoral thesis in educational leadership at Morehead State University. When he came to Farmington to interview for the 4CED position, he said he was delighted to find that its offices were located at the Quality Center for Business on the San Juan College campus, explaining that was a signal to him that the organization understands and appreciates the vital role education has to play in reshaping the county’s economy.

“My thesis deals with the realignment of jobs and opportunity with education for the local work force,” he said. “It looked like a very advantageous setting.”

Gibbs said he hasn’t had an opportunity to meet with Navajo Nation officials yet, but that is next on his list.

“There is one board member who is helping me with that,” he said, explaining that half-day and full-day excursions for him to sites on the nation are being planned.

“I know I’m going to have to learn a lot, but I’m coming to the table with respect,” he said.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com.Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Tim Gibbs took over as 4CED's new executive director on Feb. 26