<\/p>\n
Chelsea Jones, the economic development specialist for Montezuma Community Economic Development Association, will be leaving the position within the next month.<\/p>\n
At MCEDA\u2019s annual meeting on April 19, Jones said her husband, a Colorado State Patrol officer, recently took a new job in the Denver area, prompting her to give her 30-day notice to MCEDA. The organization plans to advertise in local media outlets for someone to fill the part-time job, and Jones said she will be closely involved in the training process. She said she has enjoyed her time with the organization and feels it has a strong foundation to move forward without her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of great things on the table \u2026 to keep things moving forward and to help economic development grow in this area,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In her time at MCEDA, Jones has been a driving force behind the group\u2019s efforts to help the county governments work toward providing affordable internet services to residents. She said that\u2019s one of the projects she\u2019s most proud of, although she also mentioned her efforts in promoting solar power in the county and encouraging businesses to join the association.<\/p>\n
Jones spent about two years as an economic development specialist for the town of Mancos, and was hired by MCEDA at the beginning of 2016. Dave Hart, the association president, said the board of directors plans to meet on Friday to discuss a plan for finding a replacement. They have an \u201cexit strategy\u201d in place for Jones, but Hart said they don\u2019t have anyone who can fill in for her if they don\u2019t find a new recruit in time, since she\u2019s their only paid employee.<\/p>\n
After she moves to Denver, Jones said she doesn\u2019t plan to get another job, but instead hopes to focus on her online business and \u201cbeing a mom.\u201d She believes MCEDA is in good hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of the community and the chance to see people working together,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to seeing how Montezuma County and MCEDA drive forward. I think they\u2019re on a great path for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
seek new economic development specialist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,21,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-cortez","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70804"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}