The Problem With Aspirational Goals

You can have aspirational moonshot goals for your community, but you need to review your existing conditions.  What are examples of aspirational moonshot goals?  Be the region’s leader for fin-tech, full employment, twenty percent increase in start-up companies, thirty percent increase in new businesses, etc.  These are great moonshot goals for down the road your community can prepare a long term implementation plan to reach those goals over time.  However, do not lose sight of the forest through the trees. If you aren’t in a position to drive a Honda, you probably shouldn’t be purchasing a charging station for a Tesla.

Review your current conditions and before you start requesting grants for projects related to moonshot projects that may complicate your existing system, prioritize projects that can help your current system run well.  This could be utilities, transportation, education, workforce, etc.  Are your schools meeting the basic expectations for your students and teachers? Are your utilities operating at a minimum baseline standard that would be competitive with most comparable regions?  As discussed in previous posts and blogs, all sectors impact one another.  Quality of life is necessary for economic prosperity which means the fundamentals of all sectors must be at a minimum, providing residents adequate outputs and ideally excellent outcomes.  Then, you can begin looking at aspirational projects.  Otherwise, these moonshot projects can overextend existing systems and more often than not, overwhelm the capacity of your community’s staffing to manage the system.  

Finally, our most vulnerable communities lack the capacity for grant writers to prepare for fundamental grants, grants managers to ensure these grants are in compliance with federal regulations, and project managers to manage the procurement process and contractors. Until we can provide the capacity to manage these federal programs for the fundamental projects, we should keep the moonshot projects as goals and focus on what is needed right now.