Hazard, KY

Bill Gorman (about creating jobs):

"In the radio interview we were talking about the needs of the region and what he would do to change things. In those days we were in transition in the coals mines: we went from hand loading to machine loading. There where a lot of people displaced in the coal mines. In other words, they came out with mechanical loaders. For instance; a section of men would load 200, 300, 400 tons and they would have probably 20 men in that section and they would replace it with mechanical loaders and load a probably 1000 tons with 12 or 14 men instead of 100 men. And a lot of those men had been displaced. It has been sort of a lost generation because the only thing they had ever known was coal. And when their jobs where done away with they didn't have very many places to go. Hardly anything to do or that they could do. And we talked about the human side of it. How it was affecting the area and the creeks where this had happened.

And since I have been mayor, what I have been trying to do is, to diversify the economy and now we have got Wood Products Plant . . . that hires about 500 people and we have American Wood Market, another wood products plant, and they will hire about 500. This happened in the last couple of years. And, also we have a plastic injection plant that's got 115 jobs and they are  getting a pre-fabrication plant that will start fabricating some of the products that they are manufacturing. And with that we'll have a . . . factory that will hire about 400 to 550 people. Of course Hazard, like a lot of eastern KY, we have not only coal, but we have timber. We have oil, we have gas. So we've got the resources that we can call on. Plus the fact that we are a little bit more enthusiastic about going after other industries.

My background is not politics...I've been mayor for 25 years and I got 83% of the vote. I love these people and I want to is work for them and make the quality of life better for them. You just have to muscle down.
To attract industries you have to make people feel at home. You've got to let them know that the philosophy of this community, in this region, is pretty much what they are looking for. And the enthusiasm of......... looking for our workers came in here about 6 years ago and they settled down and built a factory. We have an excellent work force and a strong Community College here."