Civic Engagement
Responsible Government | Collaboration | The Military
Why it Matters
Strong civic engagement is one of the cornerstones of a vibrant, thriving community. It fosters community pride and well-being, drives social change, and holds local governments accountable to responsible and informed policy making. But it’s not just the relationship between the region’s private citizenship, business leaders, and elected officials that ensures our region’s success for decades to come. We must also see inter- government collaboration at both the city and county level. Finally, in a longtime military region like the greater Charleston area, support for our military is paramount.
Responsible Government
Collaborative, well-funded local governments.
When a region recruits new businesses, the local government may be viewed as a help or a hindrance. That public-private relationship is so important to the economic landscape that healthy collaboration between our region’s three counties was part of the TCEOC’s founding mission. The lack of uniformity regarding government structure is perhaps the biggest hurdle we faced, but in the last few decades, regardless of the various systems, the three counties have transformed their working relationships through responsible, informed leadership, scoring major economic wins in the process.
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Charleston and North Charleston employ Strong Mayor systems, an option that has produced unprecedented growth and success in both areas for the past decades. In these instances, the mayor’s position is full-time work, and we support compensation aligned to match the intense requirements of the office. A good mayor can run any city for a few days. It takes an outstanding, well-compensated CEO to run a dynamic, prosperous city for years at a time.
Collaboration
Competition makes us faster. Collaboration makes us better.
Nothing is more important to our region’s future than healthy collaboration and communication between city and county governments as well as private citizens, businesses, and public officials. We firmly believe that by moving forward together with an open mind and a healthy skepticism of old ways of thinking, success will take care of itself.
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Our port is a global leader in efficiency because we support its efforts on local, state, and federal levels. New business and job growth occurs as our region shares the workload on regional planning, workforce housing, infrastructure, quality schools, a clean environment, and more. In the last few decades, major economic successes have included North Charleston’s Boeing campus and the Daimler manufacturing center. Nearby, Berkeley County’s Google Data Center continues to expand as production hums at the Volvo Cars Ridgeville plant. On the medical front, the City of Charleston recently approved a new zoning overlay that will pave the way for MUSC’s planned 62-acre downtown campus. But none of those successes happen without active participation from informed citizens, helping push responsible government to new levels of innovation and accountability.
The Military
Patriotism begins at home.
With its strategic East Coast location, deep port, and quick access to open water, Charleston has been a military city for centuries. In the last hundred years, the Charleston Naval Base, Naval Shipyard, Air Base Charleston, and SPAWAR weapons system operations helped shape U.S. wartime capabilities and peacetime readiness. The federal government began a post-Cold War downsizing in 1992, eventually shuttering the Charleston Naval Base. Its closure became one of the catalysts for the formation of the TCEOC. The restructured Joint Base Charleston, while considerably smaller than its predecessor, still employs more than 79,000 people and contributes $12.7 billion to the local economy annually, a major economic driver.