Independence County, Arkansas

community. They were originally based in Chicago and moved to Batesville many years ago. When you tour the building, you see a lot of high precision robotic computerized processes, where they can grind the glass down to one- one-millionth of an inch.” BVM: To what do you attribute this strong interest from businesses? Judge Griffin: “The work ethic is a key factor. We have dedicated workers that are a draw for industries to locate here and make investments into our community. We’re currently negotiating with a company on an additional site for industrial expansion, at the same time one of our local investment groups bought about 17 acres on a rail spur that we’ll start doing some development work on over the summer. We’re continuing to build on the success we’ve had and try to make available more opportunities.” Baldwin: “One of the keys to our workforce is a good educational system. We have excellent K through 12 schools throughout the County. Parents can choose which school their children attend and that creates healthy competition between the different school systems. We also have UACCB (University of Arkansas Community College Batesville) which is an outstanding two-year college. It’s a huge asset for this area, especially with the technical skills and training for nurses, so it supports the hospital as well. And then there is Lyon College, a great four- year college. One initiative making a big impact this year is the Independence Promise School College Program that our educators put together. It allows concurrent hours between high schools and the community college. So, you can actually graduate from high school in the morning and graduate with a two-year degree from the community college that same evening. “Some students have selected this concurrent approach and enrolled in Lyon College to finish out the final two years of a four-year college degree. It’s very inexpensive. If you follow the