Everything COSTEP's Gonzalez said on Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force's recent zoom call

Rio Grande Guardian's Podcast

EDINBURG, Texas - Recently, Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force invited Rolando Pablos, former leader of Borderplex Alliance, to participate in a zoom conversation about regional collaboration.

Borderplex links the cities of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Las Cruces, New Mexico and brings in hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to boost their region.

In his remarks, Pablos acknowledged there was some resistance at first to setting up such a broad, regional, group, in part because it meant collapsing other organizations.

Adam Gonzalez, CEO of the South Texas Council for Economic Progress (COSTEP), was on the zoom call. After listening to Pablos’ remarks, Gonzalez warned against completely adopting the Borderplex model.

“So, the idea that Rolando Pablos mentioned about collapsing all the rest of the organizations, I think it's going to be a lot more of a difficult task for us because it wouldn't just be collapsing COSTEP or collapsing the (Rio Grande) Partnership and joining in one organization,” Gonzalez said.

“Just in Hidalgo County, as the judge (Richard Cortez) said, you have 22 municipalities, potentially 22 EDOs (economic development organizations) that we would need to agree to collapse and merge into one. And that's just one county.”

Gonzalez said it is a challenge to create economic development unity in a region as big as the Rio Grande Valley and North Tamaulipas. However, he said he was confident it could be achieved.

“I think it can be done. And I think we need to take baby steps. And I think the fact that we are creating a regional brand that everybody's going to embrace, I think is the first step.”

Here are the remarks Gonzalez made on the zoom:

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