Why a Selling Hartsville initiative? (repeat)

Change happens! The role of community builders is to Make Positive Change Happen – that is often very difficult. Jeanne Robertson, a motivational speaker from North Carolina used to use a line in some of her talks about how many of us feel about change. She said, “Change doesn’t happen until the pain of Change is less than the pain of staying the same.” Think about that… Do we really want to wait to bring about constructive change in our community until something happens that provides us no options?

The student business organization at Coker had some shirts printed with a quote from Walt Whitman, “Change favors the prepared mind.” That is an excellent quote for students coming from a dynamic liberal arts college. I think with a little tweaking, it is an excellent quote for the reason behind the Selling Hartsville initiative. The tweaking – “Change favors the prepared community.” If we want Hartsville to be a thriving community in another 10, 20 or 30 years we have to continue laying the foundation now. The best time to change is when you are in a position of strength and you can determine the direction of change. One of the worst times to begin managing change is when the change has control and you are just there for the ride. It would be my assessment that in Hartsville, we are in a good time for change. There are lots of positive things happening on which we can build. (For purposes of length, I will let you think of them. They are many.)

There are also alarms that have been providing some wake up calls. Some of the alarms are clanging, some just sort of nagging noises. A clanging alarm came the summer of 2007 when Harris DeLoach, CEO of Sonoco, told the July All-Chamber Lunch Meeting the number of Sonoco employees who moved their families to places other than Hartsville when they got Sonoco jobs. The income of those more than 100 families is being spent in places other than Hartsville. Recently, because of economic downturns, the Hartsville city manager has been warning council that less money is available for city projects and that this could significantly affect implementation of the comprehensive update of the city plan. Not too long ago updated census figures showed Hartsville had lost in-city population. In the past couple of weeks the Darlington County School District’s human resource department noted that new teachers do not have much to choose from in affordable housing in the county.

The Selling Hartsville initiative that is under way, which is going under the slogan/logo of “Hartsville, The Art of Good Living,” is one initiative aimed at building on the strengths of our unique community so that we can entice more people here to live, to shop, to play so that the vision that leads the updated 20/20 comprehensive plan is a reality in the next 12 years.

This blog has appeared as a letter to the editor in THE MESSENGER of Hartsville and is also on SC NOW, a Media General web presence.