Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention (BEAR) program is set to host their first in person meeting since COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to them in March. This meeting will take place on Thursday, August 27 at 8:00 am at the Southeastern Utah Local Association of Government’s Atrium at 375 South Carbon Avenue in Price. BEAR Member, Karl Kraync stopped by Castle Country Radio to talk about the upcoming meeting.
“We have a topic of great interest to the tri-county area, Carbon, Emery & Grand County, we have Karen Titchener of the Huntsman Cancer Institute with whom we have been working for two years to help facilitate bring cancer treatments services to the community directly and prevent people from having to travel over the hill so much,” said Kraync. The program is now being funded by grant activities which by the way the community help facilitate, there was a massive letter writing campaign in support of their grant efforts which ultimately resulted in them obtaining a grant to bring services to the area.
Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention is an organization that promotes local business in Carbon and Emery Counties. Kraync gives a little history on the organization, “Castle Country BEAR is the outgrowth of an organization of economic development volunteers that got together back in 1999 to 2000 to start working economic development activities on a private basis overtime we had a number of successful activities and ultimately out of that group grew the Castle Country BEAR in 2005.” It was after that a BEAR Member got the idea to meet individually with businesses to determine their economic needs.
The Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention is looking forward to hosting their meetings again. “We will follow up with boards meetings in the future. We’re going to have the Chiefs of Price City, the Fire Chief and Police Chief during the month of September. Then BEAR worked with Zions Bank Financial to accomplish two goals, we got a sales tax leakage report generated, and we also have been working on a concept called Demographic Recruitment, where you in recruit people to the area, rather than businesses, hoping that the people, in fact, bring the business with them, they will be presenting in the month of October – kind of a split presentation; and we go on from there,” stated Kraync. The meeting that will be held on Thursday, August 27 will follow COVID 19 protocol, which means masks will be required until you are seated at your table.