Two team members from Boyette Strategic Advisers visited the three counties of the TAP Alliance as the consultant begins fact-finding to develop a strategic plan for industry recruitment.

Tracy Sharp of Boyette’s Atlanta office and Charlie Sloan of the Orlando office spent a half-day Tuesday afternoon seeing parts of Tishomingo, Alcorn and Prentiss counties, said Gary Chandler of The Alliance.

“They looked at various quality-of-life aspects of the counties such as Northeast Community College in Booneville, Corinth and Iuka’s downtowns and so forth,” Chandler said.

The TAP Alliance selected the Boyette group last month to help the three-county coalition identify strengths, weaknesses and the types of industry they are likely to be most successful in recruiting.

“They’ll be conducting interviews with public officials, business leaders and other stakeholders in the counties,” Chandler said.

They also left an extensive questionnaire for each county to provide additional information, said Gary Matthews of the Tishomingo County Development Foundation.

“This was a kickoff for the study they’re doing,” said TAP Alliance President Brandon Grissom. “We talked about the project scope and goals and will have additional discussions as the project moves along.”

Boyette will give a mid-project update in late October or early November, with a full report due by January 2011.

“We’re very excited and optimistic about the effort,” Matthews said. “We could expect to see results in three to five years, which is a reasonable time to pull it together and see some measurable results.”

Contact Lena Mitchell at (662) 287-9822 or lena.mitchell@djournal.com.