Community Executive Summary

2002 Annual Report Executive Summary

Four Corners Enterprise Community (4CEC)
The AZBREC has a large number of projects and activities which are experiencing varying degrees of success. Nearly 60 activities are benchmarked. The benchmarks are only slightly behind in reporting recent housing, and highway funds received or other accomplishments. The Nogales Entrepreneurial Development Center in the City of Nogales is a wonderful mechanism for providing service, training, and employees for local businesses. High unemployment remains a significant challenge. It is hoped that the community will work with NEDC and partners to develop incentives, which will encourage businesses to locate in the planned industrial park, with some emphasis on marketing and international trade.

A large number of projects have received federal, city and or state funding. Innovative strategies for seeking private, foundation, and other support in order to better leverage these funds and services should be sought continually. USDA/RD will need to continue to do all we can to further improve local infrastructure capacity, encourage activities that promote development and use of resources, and look at whether EZ/EC regulations and program delivery are responding quickly enough to the expanding needs of the AZBREC which has distinctive population growth issues, a spread out target area, severe poverty in some areas, and also extremely isolated areas. Much has been accomplished in the 4CEC with the award of a $3 Million Grant. This amount however, is merely a drop in the bucket. The challenges the agency faces in the EC region will affect the overall effectiveness of our program delivery. The effects of these efforts will be better documented during the upcoming management control review.