Meeting in the wooded confines at the Edward Lowe Foundation’s Tower of Tomorrow, members of the Cass County Board of Commissioners and other officials convened Friday morning to begin discussing, among other items, the future of county.

The board held their workshop last week, at which the seven commissioners and several county officials, including Administrator Roger Fraser, Financial Director Angie Steinman, Probate Judge Sue Dobrich and Sheriff Joseph Underwood talked about the county’s assets, both tangible and intangible, moving ahead into the next few years.

Fraser asked attendees to participate in a SWOT analysis for Cass County to determine what the county’s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats were. This is the first time Fraser has participated in a commissioner workshop, as he began his position with the county late last year.

“This is, in part, to humor me,” Fraser said. “I’m the newbie, and yet you asked me to play a critical role in helping you guys move ahead into the future.”

One of the strengths that Commissioner Robert Ziliak suggested the county had was its elected officials, he said.

“The sheriff, the treasurer, the clerk, the drain commissioner, these are all people that have really stepped up to the plate,” Ziliak said. “They maintain their offices. They’re not people that are elected and then don’t take any interest in the county.”

Steinman said that the county’s staff is also engaged with the goings on of the county.

“The staff cares,” Steinman said. “I’ve gotten tons of feedback. They want to know, ‘How is the budget?’ ‘What’s good and what’s bad?’ They genuinely care. I don’t get the feeling that people are just here for a job.”

Among the other strengths that the commissioners and other attendees suggested were the county’s parks and lakes, the presence of Southwestern Michigan College and organizations like the Cass County COA and the cost of living in the county.

Suggested weaknesses of the county included unemployment, lack of interstate highways and a relative isolation from Lansing.

“I would say health in general,” suggested Dobrich. “High infant mortality, high diabetes, high smoking. Health is a huge issue in Cass County.”

In terms of opportunities for the county, the attendees pointed toward tourism and agriculture as two potential keys for the county’s future success. They also pointed toward local shops as being an opportunity for growth.

“The secondhand stores in Dowagiac are becoming very popular right now,” Dobrich said.

In terms of threats to growth, suggestions included close mindedness, drug issues and family fragmentation.

“We lack a voice, in my opinion,” suggested Commissioner Bernie Williamson. “We are competing with the state and with our neighbors to achieve, and we’re overlooked so much that we lack one entity that stands together and says ‘look at us.’ We have to compete and we are not structured for it yet.”

Fraser said the preliminary discussions at the workshop will help set the course for county in the coming months, especially when it comes time for the commissioners to establish the budget for next year. The administrator suggested that the board and other county department heads meet in the near future to discuss what they are doing for the residents of Cass County.

“I’m hoping to set the stage for a more thoughtful look at our future, so that we just don’t spend the entire year doing the same thing over and over again, as we have seemed to do in the past several,” Fraser said. “If we’re going to do things in the future, if we’re going to have plan to affect some these opportunities, it’s going to take some sort of imagination different from what we exercised so far to get us there.”