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Torrington staff to prioritize business retention, hire grants manager to ease departments' workload
Summary
Staff said the mayor asked for stronger business retention and expansion work; the office plans to hire a grants manager to handle application workload and to develop dashboards and outreach to help businesses stay, expand, or relocate to Torrington.
Economic development staff told the committee that the mayor has asked the office to sharpen focus on business retention and expansion, and staff said they will hire a grants manager to reduce the grant-writing burden on other departments. The staff member said a grants manager could take on most of the time-consuming grant application work that now consumes other employees (citing a bridge grant that took 30-35 hours of the city engineer's time) so that department heads can concentrate on core responsibilities. "We're hiring a new grants manager. You should have very high expectations for this person that we hire," the staff member said.
Staff described plans for a business-outreach dashboard and more active networking to match businesses with local resources such as SBDC, SCORE and regional partners including UConn and Hartford Health. Committee members suggested low-effort initial steps like a newsletter and SCORE open office hours at city hall to connect small business owners to mentoring and training.
