What Will It Take!
What will it take for Raymondville to grow and provide for it's citizens? For the past 30 years or more Raymondville has been dying on the vine. While the rest of the Valley Cities have experienced tremendous growth Raymondville has failed to keep what it had 30 years ago.
Why is this? -- poor leadership or lack of -- lack of a plan for growth or commitment to carry it out -- too busy with the status quo to think of the future or just don't care -- Community leaders that do not want change for personal reasons -- an attitude of why change.
Who knows why, I have to say that I am as much to blame as anyone else. I left this community 30 years ago not caring what Raymondville did as a Community. When I left Raymondville it had a thriving Downtown area, there were several gins and packing sheds that provided jobs. There were hardware stores, several lumber yards and large implement dealers. Raymondville was a typical small farming community. As we lost these farm related jobs we did not replace them with new jobs or industries.
While running a $65 million a year company I learned that if your company does not have an aggressive plan to change and develop markets it will not be in business for long. The same type of aggressiveness must happen with cities for them to provide its citizens with the opportunities they need to survive. Cities compete for jobs and industries just like any other business competes for market share. If there are not sufficient resources provided for marketing and expansion a company (or a city) will soon see it lose out to the competition and will eventually go out of business. A city may not go out of business because it can levy taxes to keep it's self going, but because people in the community do not have jobs the burden of these taxes a shared among fewer and fewer people each year. Also as unemployment rises so does crime. We blame our County Attorney for not being tuffer on criminals but we support others for not providing for a cure for our unemployment, which breeds crime.
I have committed myself to making sure that Raymondville will grow in the future. I have tried to get people to get more aggressive in their efforts to bring in new industries and have even tried to give them some of the tools needed to help in marketing Raymondville. While I believe that there are many people and leaders in the community that would like to see Raymondville prosper again, I am not sure that the resources have been committed or utilized properly to make this happen. While we can not undo the past and recoup lost opportunities, we can make changes for the future. I will try to report to - You the Citizens of Raymondville - what is happening or not happening to make Raymondville a viable community, in future articles. You can also make your comments or opinions known by using the Willacy County Discussion Forum. This is a forum for those people who care about their Community and would like to share their ideals or comments. I will be holding our elected officials accountable for their actions or inaction's on matters that affect the growth of our Community. We have elected them to provide for this community and if they can't do that then everyone must know the type of job they are doing.
Visit the following links to see how we fare among the other Valley Cities: