Craig McFarland, President/CEO of Pinal Partnership, outlines the organization’s top priorities for 2025

(Disclosure: Rose Law Group Founder and President Jordan Rose is chairman of the Pinal Partnership Board of Directors.)

By Golden Corridor Living Magazine

Our mission is to improve research and the planning and coordination of private and public efforts related to infrastructure, natural resources and community development.

Economic development priorities

  • Promote financing mechanisms or tools to improve local governments’ competitive position for business attraction, retention and expansion.
  • Pursue efforts to integrate workforce development programs and job training programs to help companies attract and retain a competitive workforce.
  • Support policies that promote the security, reliability and resilience of utility infrastructure and that encourage low and stable energy prices.
  • Promote policies to expand and diversify renewable energy production such as solar, bioenergy, geothermal, hydrogen and hydropower.
  • Support the expansion of broadband infrastructure to rural communities.
  • Support policies that recruit and educate migrant and seasonal farmworkers to sustain and enhance the workforce necessary for a viable agriculture industry.
  • Support military veteran preference in hiring.

Education priorities

  • Create strategies leading to increased wages, improved working conditions and enhanced professional development for teachers.
  • Expand certifications and testing facilities at community colleges to supply skilled labor to meet local workforce needs.
  • Focus on building a pipeline of students skilled in STEM-related computer science and technology curriculum.
  • Support investments in business training facilities, such as the Drive 48 facility to help train new employees to generate more economic growth.

Transportation, infrastructure priorities

  • Support Pinal County and municipalities efforts to fund future transportation improvements with a transaction privilege tax that is approved by voters.
  • Encourage state leaders to develop a comprehensive strategy to modernize funding sources to build, operate and maintain transportation infrastructure.
  • Support federal funding for Interstate 10 widening, Interstate 11 expansion and other high-capacity road networks.
  • Pursue grant opportunities for expanding Pinal County transportation systems.

Water resources priorities

  • Support policies that enable communities to gain access to and secure long-term sustainable and fiscally responsible water resources that reduce groundwater dependence.
  • Pursue larger contributions from other Colorado River Basin states to conserve additional Colorado River water. This will help achieve the protection volumes identified by the Bureau of Reclamation to ensure Arizona does not continue to carry a disproportionate burden of reductions.
  • Encourage Arizona Department of Water Resources to continue reviewing, refining and updating the Pinal Active Management Area 100-year assured water supply model to provide more certainty for new development, business investment and economy.

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