Note to self

Riff Raff, by Michael Tilley
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Please know, Kind Reader, that what follows is commentary directed at myself. It’s not being selfish, but more a matter of the need to remind myself to avoid getting bogged down in the negative.

The negative is pervasive, and, because we are humans, easier to promulgate than the positive. Heck, even Maria Haley, director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, recently described the economy by using a word that is a slightly more pointed cousin to “crappy.”

Our regional unemployment rate is up to 8.4%, one of the highest metro rates in Arkansas. The future of the Whirlpool plant, once our largest employer, is in doubt. Legal issues may prevent Mitsubishi from opening its $100 million plant on time. Somehow we in Fort Smith have allowed the enjoyable angry to infect our body politic; and the verbal vitriol has morphed into physicality. And I could go on, but the point of this essay is to avoid, if only briefly, the recitation of bummer news.

A notion that there are good things happening in the region popped clearly into my feeble mind during the recent announcement that the St. Louis-based Sisters of Mercy would invest at least $192 million in its Fort Smith area hospital system (St. Edward Mercy Medical) during the next 10 years. That’s roughly $19.2 million a year. The investment will result in this region having a modern orthopedic surgical and rehab facility that will be among a small number of such facilities in the country. It’s not hyperbole to suggest that folks from much larger cities will in a few years travel to Fort Smith to replace a hip or knee or other critical movable body part.

The St. Edward news came just a few weeks after Sparks Health System announced construction of a more than $17 million modern surgical facility.

And that came just a few months after Golden Living, a nursing home and long-term care services provider, announced it will move about 200 jobs to Fort Smith by early 2013.

Also, the hospitals and clinics in the area, to include Cooper Clinic, are aggressively recruiting physicians. As Dr. Cole Goodman noted, the region has “some real problems” with respect to the number of area doctors, but progress is being made. That was not true just a few years ago.

The haters would have you believe St. Edward and Sparks and Golden Living are corporate entities who bleed more out of the area than they return. For now, count me in with the crowd who realizes no corporate entity is perfect, but a reinvestment in facilities and the creation of new jobs is much more preferable to the alternative.

A more reasonable concern is that related to the future of health care, especially with respect to physician reimbursement. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might note, there are numerous “known unknowns” in this large sector of the U.S. economy. If folks in Washington D.C. were really interested in economic stimulus, they’d pull down the federal health care law and agree to another overhaul process and plan.

Federal incompetence aside, the investments in our regional health care sector — to include nursing programs at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and Arkansas Tech University-Ozark Campus — will have a positive impact on our region. They also lay the groundwork for increased socioeconomic gains when the national and local economy returns to more stable footing. And it will do so at some point.

In fact, the area Education & Health Services sector has grown during the past few tough years. In January 2008, the sector employed 15,500 in the Fort Smith metro. The number was up to 16,100 in January 2011, and hit an estimated 16,300 in July.

Positive perspective is not just with the area health care sector. The Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce is close to its goal of a $2 million economic development fund. Chamber President Paul Harvel — who is connected to influential business and political circles — has innovative plans in the works for how to get the most incentive bang for the buck.

Yes, Harvel and his chamber team face big obstacles considering the reticence of businesses to expand in our uncertain political and economic environment. But for now, I’ll remain confident that Harvel and the chamber — in partnership with the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority, Van Buren Chamber of Commerce and the Regional Intermodal Transportation Authority — will help facilitate delivery of a few rounds of good economic news within the next 12 months.

Is this all a bit pollyannaish? Maybe. I easily concede it so for those determined to view the glass half empty.

But it’s not a fruitless nor offensive exercise to point to the folks who are doing their best to pour water in the glass faster than water is drained.

Anyway, thanks for humoring me in the effort to remind myself to not get bogged down in the negative.