| The Prosperity Partnership coalition has reached a one-year milestone since it started implementing its Regional Economic Strategy for the Central Puget Sound Region. The Prosperity Partnership is a coalition of more than 200 businesses, agencies and government organizations from four counties: King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish.
The partnership was created by the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC). Kitsap area coalition members include Kitsap County, the city and the port of Bremerton, and the Kitsap Economic Development Council, among several others.
The coalition is currently focusing on five clusters: aerospace, clean technology, life sciences, information technology and logistics and international trade. The SEED (Sustainable Energy and Economic Development) project in Bremerton is among those supported by Prosperity as part of the clean technology cluster.
The goal of the strategy is to create 100,000 new jobs in the central Puget Sound Region.
Bill McSherry, PSRC director of economic development, said at a Bremerton Chamber of Commerce luncheon in September that the main reason the military was not an identified cluster was because the strategy development occurred at the time when the military was working to identify which installations would be downsized via its base realignment and closure initiative.
“The military is a huge part of the region’s economy,” he said, adding that Kitsap County has about 12 times the concentration of military jobs compared to an average county nationwide.
In addition to the cluster initiatives, the Prosperity Partnership has identified six foundations for economic competitiveness across all the sectors. Education and tax reform are among the six areas that are the focus of foundation initiatives. “We are trying to figure out a way to get rid of the B&O tax in Washington,” McSherry said.
The goal of the education strategy is to increase the number of higher education degrees, concentrating on high-demand fields. Although the region is among the highest-educated in the country, it lags greatly in the number of people graduating here, producing fewer degrees per capita compared to other states. “We are not preparing our students for our economy,” McSherry said. “We’re 36th of 50 states on per capita degree production.”
McSherry said as the coalition continues to work on its strategy, it is considering new industry clusters, with the military and tourism as some potentials. | 