Mineral County commissioners retool high-tech jobs effort

A federal bill that would have brought high-tech jobs to Superior died in committee this year. But the economic development team said it was a valuable learning experience and they will continue to seek funding.

By John Q. Murray

Mineral Independent

Mineral County commissioners rewarded Alex Philp for his efforts and his perseverance last Monday with $5,000 to develop a new county website. The site will provide contact information for services provided by local governments.

It will also include links to property ownership information like the existing Missoula County website, Philp said.

"We’ve got some solutions that hook up to the state information technology services division and it also involves Missoula County. I easily think that could be segued into Mineral County and get them up to speed on geospatial services," he said.

Philp is president of GCS Research LLC, a Missoula company that participated in the economic development effort this summer when Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., promoted the $5 million "Project Rural Alert."

The money was to fund infrastructure—computers and the computer network—needed to transfer and analyze satellite images. The high-resolution, multi-spectral images could be used for many different purposes: to find lost snowmobilers or to analyze moisture content on Forest Service lands.

The $5 million was to be split between Mineral County and the Institute for Software Research, in West Virginia. Backers hoped that the project would get support as part of the homeland security effort.

Mineral County would have used the money to construct an "off-ramp" from fiber optic lines currently running past Superior. Such super high-speed access could then support many other new high-tech businesses, according to Kevin Chamberlain of the Mineral County Extension Office and the Mineral County Community Foundation.

"We’ve got the fiber optic lines running right past here, but there’s no off-ramps," Chamberlain said. Tapping into that high-speed bandwidth would help Philp and other businesses that move vast amounts of data over public or private networks. "We would have a place for them to be able to come and do business," he said.

"That’s the other arm of what I perceive we would be able to offer: the capacity to offer long-distance training," he said. "Businesses would have access to a room with viewers and computers, and be able to pipe into, say, Minneapolis-St. Paul and conduct training without having to ship everybody to the site. That would be part of our facility. We’ve just got to be able to make it a reality."

Chamberlain said the experience in promoting the legislation didn’t cost the county any money. "It didn’t cost us anything, and we’re smarter and better for it," he said. He praised Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg and their staff members, and said working with them was a valuable learning experience.

"We learned that we need to get our ducks in a row and then start our way up through the Burns hierarchy, so that by the time the proposal gets to Senator Burns, it is solid. We started top-down and had to do a bunch of backpedaling." The team didn’t significantly change its proposal, and they found out later that they should have, he said.

The team will also shift from the department of the Interior to Agriculture in its future efforts, he said.

Chamberlain praised Philp for his role in the effort. "Alex wasn’t here to ride the gravy train," he said. "He wants to get something going in Mineral County. He’s sincere in his efforts to want to do things out here."

In a telephone interview with the Mineral Independent, Philp said he remains committed to developing high-tech jobs in Mineral County. "All the other charlatans from back east, where are they? They’re basically gone. I want to follow up with the commissioners that we remain committed to this. We want to assist in the process. The last thing I want to do is create the impression that we were out there trying to take advantage of the opportunity. In fact, I donated I don’t know how many hours of free time helping them," he said.

Chamberlain had two suggestions for local workers interested in developing skills now so that they are ready when the high-tech jobs arrive. "One, they should develop a basic computer literacy. Two, a good work ethic," he said, which means, "They show up to work on time and do what they need to do with minimum supervision."

"Most of the entities we’ve talked with are willing to offer specialized training to get people up to speed. But we can’t train them to show up to work on time, be able to be trusted, and follow directions."

Philp and the commissioners will iron out final details of the new website Dec. 11 at 10 a.m.

Three websites currently offer information about Mineral County: thebigsky.net/MineralChamber, environmt.com, and the Montana Association of Counties site at discoveringmontana.com/maco.