(FT. LAUDERDALE, FL – June 2, 2026) – Cities and Counties are shaped by legacy and lifted by possibility. Places where resilience, community, and aspiration forge the way forward. However, if a city and/or county’s leadership officials are sincere about playing a key role in realistically improving the communities they represent, leaders in government, business, philanthropy, and community-based organizations must embrace accepting the collective responsibility of helping to strengthen every neighborhood instead of focusing solely upon their downtown areas and suburban enclaves (which means paying particular attention to and including urban neighborhoods that have long been neglected or overlooked) by expanding opportunities for teenagers, adults, and senior citizens alike by way of economic empowerment.
Instead of continuing to waste resources financing programs and organizations that have failed to deliver life-improving results, pouring excessive funding into duplicative services, and misappropriating or misallocating taxpayer dollars, there is a far greater need for many cities and counties to reinvent themselves to adjust to the times, prepare for the future, evaluate what is working, what is not, and align efforts across sectors so communities can finally benefit from more effective decision making and investment.
At the core of any successful and thriving community is a plethora of workforce opportunities, adequate and affordable housing, access to healthcare, forward-thinking education and training curriculums, and neighborhood infrastructure. All of which are created by or incumbent upon one immensely powerful tool: economic development.
The main mission for city and county leaders today should be assembling and managing a team of experienced economic development professionals to lead these efforts rather than giving such critical roles to friends, cronies, or brown-nosers who lack proven expertise. Recruiting the right economic development team (as Austin – Dallas – Houston, Texas; Sacramento, California; Jacksonville, Florida & Detroit – Warren – Dearborn, Michigan have successfully done) is one of the most important decisions any city, county, or state can make, because if done poorly, it can weaken—or even destroy—an entire community or region.
Too often, new administrations focus first on filling positions such as police chief, fire chief, district attorney – chief prosecutor, chief of staff, and other senior roles in a mayor’s, county executive’s, or governor’s office. While public safety and emergency services are important, people do not choose where to live based on who leads those departments. Instead, they choose communities for plentiful job opportunities, housing that is appealing, low propensity to crime, lifestyle amenities, quality schools, and overall affordability. Appointing people who lack the expertise to shape a community’s economic well-being and quality of life ultimately holds that community back.
Therefore, if ordinary American citizens ever have a realistic hope of achieving the American Dream, prompt decisions backed by evidence-based research involving economic development must be implemented. Otherwise, we’re merely spinning our wheels and chasing an elusive fantasy. The clarion call for every community today should not be the push to determine whether their local vicinity has suitable space for the development of an AI data center, a new or additional jail, prison, police station or training facility, but instead to consider ways to devise a forward-thinking plan on how and where to best utilize public-private partnerships and dollars to spark mass job opportunities for people who are skilled and those who are unskilled, those who are degreed and those who lack a degree.
Since nearly 73% of people throughout the U.S. are employed by small businesses (employers with 500 or less employees), significantly more needs to be done (governmentally) to help launch more small enterprises, and create greater numbers of living-wage job opportunities for more people, which will boost local economies. This is the most critically important, yet ignored, challenge facing every city, county, and state today and of the future.
Dr. Sheila Robinson, publisher of Executive Woman magazine, put it well: “The bottom line is that the world of work provides endless possibilities.” What could be added is that income-generating opportunities build character within people, allow people to develop a sense of self-worth and handle responsibilities, abandon thoughts of desperation rooted in frustration and bitterness, and allow even the lowest among us to establish and maintain personal and professional relationships by opening doors for everyone across the economic spectrum.
Thus, the ability or inability to earn a living wage is often the difference between most people feeling like they can carry on vs. those who feel forced to consider resorting to criminal behavior to maintain a roof over their head, feed themselves and their loved one(s), and/or merely survive.
We should all hope for the day when more people cease to worship or wait on elected and appointed officials to deliver solutions to every situation. Among the countless scholars who have provided us with options, the noted Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu introduced us to an effective, although unwisely ignored, ‘Master Plan’ in his heralded book, Black Economics, that will work for not only communities of color, but for the entire country as well.
The fundamental issues he illustrated – the low circulation of dollars within the minority community, the lack of economic education, support for foreign businesses, the preference for what is perceived as “good jobs” over the risk of entrepreneurship, and other educational and social factors that affect the future earning capacity of marginalized members of a community, in turn impacts an entire community’s economic potential.
It’s not physics, nuclear engineering, or rocket science. The more people in a household who are gainfully employed makes an entire household more financially secure. The more citizens in a city-county who are working means less fiscal stress on taxpayers and local governments, lower crime rates, and the community at-large prospers.
Change begins with building the right economic – community development team, shifting from a consumer mentality to an investment mentality, and creating economic opportunities that help people move from poverty to prosperity by strengthening cities, counties, and states through policies proven to ease financial burdens and increase individual abundance.
When potential is nurtured, possibilities become achievement.
* Santura Pegram is a business professional and freelance writer. A former aide-protégé to the “Political Matriarch of the State of Florida” – the late Honorable M. Athalie Range – Santura writes on topics ranging from socially relevant issues to international trade to politics.
