Imagine that you planned to retire on an acre of land in a modest home you’ve fixed up over the years. One day, a four thousand square foot house rises on an acre across the street, with an asking price of $150 per square foot. Then imagine that someone from (horrors!) California buys it at the asking price. Just like that, your little house and land will rise in value once that building sells.

Were you in a selling mode, this would be good news. But if you were of moderate means with no desire to move, the resulting real estate tax may be devastating. It would be of little consolation to know that you are a bit actor in the grand scheme of economic development, that the new house created jobs during its construction, or even that the proud owner infused wealth into the community. Rather, it might infuriate you to experience how little control you have over your future, other than to keep your house in order, await the next Californian when you are ready to sell, and trust that you can sell high here and buy low elsewhere.

Examples of such vagaries abound at the macro scale as well. A Federal Reserve Chairman intervenes too late in a sliding economy, can’t catch up with its slide by half point interest rate reductions – and production lags while unemployment rises. A President stakes his political future on a massive tax cut in hopes of continuing surpluses, the surpluses vanish, the nation has to mortgage its present on the back of future generations – and our federal social safety net is torn. A Boeing executive decides to create a national image for his company, moves it to Chicago – and the cost of executive housing around Seattle drops. And so on.

The Kitsap Regional Economic Development Council has similar frustrations. It is all about creating the preconditions for jobs, but it is also subject to serendipitous international, national and industrial forces. Like the vintner who knows that he has to keep weeding, staking, watering and pruning to have a chance at a good harvest, but who controls neither the sunshine, wind or rain, the KREDC knows that inaction will lead to failure, but its actions cannot guarantee jobs.

It’s clear that entrepreneurs will shun Kitsap in the absence of reliable land use plans, regulations and practices, choices of properly zoned and available land, no less appropriate physical infrastructure for their businesses and social infrastructure for their employees. Moreover, they require assistance in weighing their risks in our communities as compared to others, and in dealing with an informed public. Recognizing all these to be needed for job creation, and to be within its sphere of influence, the KREDC toils away in the vineyard on each of them. Like that vintner, it does what it can. And like that vintner, it is not the master of its own fate.

For in spite of all its labors, the KREDC’s chance of success is tempered by the strength of each entrepreneur’s business plan, the receptiveness of their markets, and by external forces such as those mentioned earlier – and others. For example, the undercapitalized dot.com bubbles are bursting. And the dollar, which should be weak in our current economic slowdown, mysteriously strengthens and reduces exports. Yet these are not cause for dismay or resignation. To the contrary, they reinforce a commitment to practice the predictable within a larger framework of unpredictability.

That’s what makes work in the vineyards of economic development so interesting. It’s great to be there at the wine festival, but if you’ve done your best to make the harvest possible, there’s no shame in a setback. In other words – go out, buy that fixer-upper and take good care of it!

(Editor’s Note: Zoltan Szigethy is Executive Director of the Kitsap Regional Economic Development Council. This is the fifth article of a series on the KREDC.) .