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Message from Chairman Clay Wagner
Michoud and Stennis: National Assets for the Two State Region
As Chairman of Partners for Stennis, and as a lifelong resident
of the Coast and Hancock County, I am a strong advocate of
space, earth and ocean exploration. And, I know as you do, how
beneficial a two state initiative is to build and grow a
regional economy. Helping rebuild our surrounding communities to
draw scientists, engineers and business professionals to Stennis
and the NASA-Michoud Assembly Facility is a critical priority
for our future economic growth. To accomplish these goals, it is
important for us to work together, as a two state region.
Partners for Stennis has played a critical role in this goal for
more than 13 years. This 501 c 6 non profit MS corporation was
originally established to provide leadership during Base
Realignment and Base Closure. BRAC was our central purpose. Over
the years, we kept that mission in tact and expanded our goals.
When we were first chartered, the founders set out this mission:
to create a better understanding of the economic, technical and
educational value of Stennis among those who influence and/or
benefit from the activities of Stennis; to build a strong
support for the continuance of activities at Stennis; to
influence decision-making regarding the economic growth and
technical advancement of activities at Stennis; and, to foster
increased private enterprise (business) activity at Stennis. In
one word---jobs.
When we first began, we raised money as it was needed for
projects and ran it as a volunteer driven organization. In 2003,
we recognized the need to expand our goals and at that time
established an investment schedule for key stakeholders to
enable us to create an annual budget and contract with an
association manager, the Hancock Chamber of Commerce. The
Chamber is our staff and office and manages our finances, our
website, and coordinates all of our meetings, activities and
events for the organization. You may know our executive
director, Tish Williams, who also serves as director of the
Hancock Chamber. She will pass out a brochure on the
organization which describes our programs, mission and
investment schedule.
We recently completed a strategic planning session for 2010. We
revisited our mission and offer this as our purpose: to
advocate, link and inform key stakeholders about the assets and
resources of Stennis Space Center and Michoud for economic
opportunities.
Our plan for 2010 is to engage more key stakeholders from
Mississippi and Louisiana in this effort from Hancock, Harrison
and Pearl River Counties in MS and in LA to target more
stakeholders from St. Tammany and Orleans Parishes. We want to
target governmental leaders at the local, state and federal
level; economic development professionals to include agencies,
chambers and regional partners; contractors and agencies at
Stennis and Michoud and private companies as well; Higher
Learning Institutions and private citizens. Yes, private
citizens, because we all benefit from a robustly funded NASA
budget.
Our number one objective is to protect the federal budget for
NASA. We do this each year in May when we travel to DC with more
than 15 leaders from the two state area as part of a national
coalition: Citizens for Space Explortion. Over a three day
period, we meet with members of Congress to support the NASA
budget and are asking for 1% of the total federal budget to be
allocated to NASA and Space Exploration. But we don’t stop
there. We work throughout the year to invite key contacts to
visit Stennis like Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy and Bennie
Thompson, chair of Homeland Security to showcase NCCIPS and
MSAAP.
We also work at a state level. Each year in January or February
we travel to Jackson not once but twice as part of the Coast
Legislative Reception and then on a separate visit during
Stennis Space Center Day. We host our coast legislators for a
dinner and then meet with them the next day during a showcase of
NASA at the Capitol. We are advocates for funding of the
Infinity Center and for projects that MS and LA can support to
further develop Stennis. We would like to do the same thing in
Baton Rouge to advocate on issues as needed.
And, as was our original purpose: we stand ready to address Base
Realignment and Closure when the call comes as we did right
before Katrina. Through the efforts of Partners for Stennis, the
Navy Human Resources Services Center Southeast was de-BRAC’d and
we saved close to 300 jobs for our area. We also promoted
BRACing the MS Army Ammunition Plant to turn it over to NASA as
an economic development resource. And as we all know, this will
soon happen.
One of the ways we hope to engage more stakeholders is by
tasking each of our Partners board members with the
responsibilities of bringing these stakeholders to the table
through our monthly board telecoms; quarterly meetings and
business networking events; and, annual events.
We also want to facilitate the transfer of information to all
stakeholders. We have a dynamic website and we also have mass
communication tools to enable us to make this happen. We want to
promote the NASA Speakers bureau to civic groups to gain citizen
support of NASA; we want to develop “tell it and sell it
materials” working with our Chambers and economic development
agencies throughout the region to get everyone on the same page;
we want to link all of our resources and stakeholders through
our website; and we want to keep our site fresh with new
information monthly—this is already happening now with postings
of regular press releases from NASA; we also want to communicate
monthly with our stakeholders through a new e-news program.
Working with our economic development partners and Stennis
management we want to be a resource to them as community leaders
to help solicit new industry targets in IT / Data Centers;
Aerospace; Geospatial and High Security agencies and
contractors.
We know we need to protect the buffer zone as a national asset
because Stennis is the last place in the country where we can
test large engines or whole rocket stages. Without Stennis, NASA
does not have a place to do that.
Michoud is a “National Asset” too with in-place infrastructure
to support NASA’s manufacturing requirements for Space
Exploration.
With the complimentary missions of Stennis and Michoud as the
corner stones---the region has a solid base from which to
rebuild and provide high paying, good jobs for our citizens and
Partners for Stennis intends to continue to be a catalyst and
advocate to make this happen.
Clay Wagner
Chairman
Partners for Stennis
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