Small business owners are invited to a meeting Wednesday to share their input as Brunswick County officials begin developing a new long-term strategic vision for the county.

The opportunity to discuss that vision, along with strengths and challenges from a small-business perspective, will be the purpose of a meeting of the county’s Small Business Advisory Commission at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the second floor conference room of the David Sandifer Building, located at the county government center in Bolivia.

“To me, small businesses are the backbone of our economy. It’s easy to get so focused on trying to recruit big businesses that you forget about small businesses, and we want to make sure we don’t do that,” said Brunswick County commissioner Frank Williams, who is chairman along with commissioner Randy Thompson of the county’s strategic planning committee.

Williams said another purpose of the meeting is that officials want to make sure Brunswick County is a good place to do business.

“I think it’s important to hear from them and make sure we know what’s on their minds, that if there’s something they see that we don’t see, we give them a chance to tell us about it,” Williams said. “We want to make sure that we have a good communication channel between us and the small business community and find out if there’s anything we can do to help them be more successful in our county.”

Officials have been conducting general Brunswick Vision community meetings throughout the county for the past several weeks, with the last two of 10 scheduled for next week: 6:30 to 8 p.m. Nov. 3 in the Jessie Mae Monroe Elementary School Cafeteria, 250 Pea Landing Road NW, Ash; and the same time Nov. 4 at Union Elementary School, 180 Union School Road NW, Shallotte.
 
Residents can also fill out a survey, a link to which is included on the Brunswick Vision website, to share their suggestions. Among the questions are: “In your view, what are Brunswick County’s greatest attributes/assets?” and “What do you feel are the greatest challenges facing Brunswick County?”
 
“I want to get as much feedback as we can,” Williams said.

The county's last strategic plan, Brunswick Tomorrow, was developed in 2004.

"It was a good plan, but if you think about it - Leland [for example] has probably more than quadrupled in size since then. Something I'd like to see us do a better job of moving forward is keeping that updated . . ." Williams said.