There is no smoking gun that explains why the Serta Simmons Bedding plant at the Mason Industrial Park in Falconer is closing.

The plant’s closure is the confluence of factors far beyond local control. Serta has been in the midst of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization over the past two years after taking on some $2.5 billion in outstanding debt. Falconer isn’t the only Serta plant to close over the past two years, and it likely won’t be the last. Additional competition in the marketplace isn’t helping Serta, either, nor are tariffs that are increasing costs for finished products and imported components like foam and steel.

In short, this doesn’t seem like a situation where the county could have helped with a loan package. The wheels that are closing the Serta plant here have been turning for some time, and those wheels can’t be influenced locally. They are the same wheels that spared the Falconer SKF plant from closure as SKF underwent its own restructuring operation over the past few years. These announcements are the result of living in a global economy – events half a world away affect our neighbors’ livelihoods.

The real takeaway, in our opinion, is that the county needs to be in a constant search for the next provider of jobs. It doesn’t matter if it’s a local company or a national company. The state of flux that happens means we are almost constantly looking for something to fill an open manufacturing space.

County legislators have been debating job creation as a goal of county government over the past couple of months. We reiterate, again, that the best thing county government can do is create an environment that can help bring new business – low taxes, shovel-ready sites, programs that can help businesses take root and grow when they do choose to come here and being as proactive in looking for companies that are looking to expand.

As a county, we should always act as if the other show is about to drop when it comes to the county economy because, frankly, the other shoe always drops. Good news is followed with bad news. For every new company that brings jobs to the county, a familiar name goes away. Staying ahead of the curve is the name of the economic development game. So for lawmakers who say we need to fill our existing open positions before we worry about bringing in new companies, we point to that recent history. Sometimes, economic development isn’t about growing the number of jobs in the county, it’s about fighting to keep it from decreasing further. We’ll find workers to fill positions for the companies that choose to locate here. It’s not always easy, but we’d rather hear that companies are struggling to fill open jobs than that a couple of hundred workers are looking for a new line or work.