Last week several local officials, including Surry County Board of Commissioners Chairman Craig Hunter and Mount Airy Commissioner Todd Harris, expressed support for a joint industrial park.

Although the details are many, the basic idea is simple — multiple jurisdictions agree to share the cost of developing, and the tax revenue generated from operating, an industrial park.

Typically localities compete for these sorts of developments because the locality in which an industry or business builds stands to gain from the tax revenue generated by the enterprise.

This joint development idea, floated by Surry Economic Development Partnership President Todd Tucker, came up during a city-county liaison meeting last week. While the development of such a facility isn’t a pressing issue because there are still some open spots in existing industrial parks, it is an idea all Surry County governments should pursue.

Such a park makes sense for several reasons.

First, as everyone knows these are tight economic times, which means it could be tough for a single governmental entity to foot the bill for development of an industrial or business park. Hopefully the economy is on the rebound — recent announcements locally would seem to indicate new jobs are coming to the region — so area governmental budgets might not be so tight a couple of years down the road. Still, it makes sense to share the cost.

Of course, that translates to shared revenue, meaning the locality in which the park is built stands to not reap quite so much economically as it would otherwise, but that is a small price to pay.

Second, and most importantly, sharing resources in such a joint project puts forth a united front in recruiting business to the community. Mount Airy and Surry County, and Pilot and Dobson and Elkin for that matter, shouldn’t be competing with one another to bring in businesses. All of those communities are already competing against Winston-Salem, Richmond, Va., South Carolina communities, cities and towns all across the nation.

These local communities already do a good job of working together, as one, through the Economic Development Partnership. Putting together a joint project such as this, with more resources brought to the table as a result of multiple jurisdictions working together, could mean the difference between Surry County and some locality in Kentucky or Tennessee or Virginia landing a given business.

In the end, the tax revenue generated is not the most important factor in economic development. The number of jobs brought to the community is. It really doesn’t matter if those jobs are in Mount Airy or Dobson, Pilot, or out in the middle of what is now some field in Surry County, as long as new jobs are created in this community.

When that happens, everyone wins.