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 The Lincoln/Logan County Chamber of Commerce, Main Street
Lincoln, the Abraham Lincoln Tourism Bureau of Logan County and the
Lincoln/Logan Development Partnership are making strides toward that
major step. Their goal is to make Logan County a place that is alive
and thriving, with residents having employment and visitors
traveling here to boost the local economy. These goals are based on
feedback from community focus groups that were held in February.
Representatives from the four organizations, and community leaders,
feel, based on feedback from community members, that it is important
to reduce redundancies, maximize the limited resources available,
while making sure there are results that positively impact the
community and that the services remain strong and relevant to our
community.
Community members also shared that they wanted to see the following:
Logan County have a clear, common brand for the community:
- More job opportunities that can support families ($45K- $60K
income level)
- Local colleges thriving and growing
- Education systems collaborating and leveraging each other’s
resources
- A sense of community
- More medium-income and accessible housing available
- A vibrant downtown Lincoln
- Less bureaucracy/more collaboration
- A better working relationship between County/City of Lincoln
- Leveraging Logan County’s assets (such as the convenient
location and new Lincoln Heritage Museum)
- Logan County events well-advertised outside the community.
The organizations, along with the City of Lincoln and the county,
hired a consultant to assist with the process. Marit Peters of
Albuquerque, NM, came to Lincoln in February after spending several
weeks working with each group to learn about Logan County and each
organization.
In the two-day session with Peters, representatives from the four
organizations and the city and county participated in a planning
process to improve the community. They determined opportunities for
alignment, and identified potential redundancy in programs and
services. They also explored ideas for streamlining resources and
identified ways to include many points of view in the collaboration.
After that session, Peters sent a recommendation for a new
organizational design for the four organizations.
“It is my recommendation that Tourism, the Partnership and Main
Street all fold into the Chamber of Commerce,” she wrote. “The
Chamber is the most staffed and resource-rich organization and could
accommodate the orchestration of all the functions with very little
disruption to their operations. This would also have the least
disruptive impact to the organizations as a whole.”
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Peters further recommended that the new Chamber of Commerce
be led by a smaller, newly-designed board which would represent
the voice of residents and businesses throughout Logan County.
The groups have made great strides since Peter’s recommendation
was released in March. The City of Lincoln passed a 2014-2015
budget that allows them to fund the “new Chamber” while funding
the Partnership and Main Street Lincoln in a “ramp-down period”.
Main Street has signed a contract with the City that will give
them funding through December 2014 to allow them to meet all
their obligations.
The Development Partnership and the City of Lincoln are still in
talks about the Partnership’s “ramp-down period.” The Tourism
Bureau and the Chamber are currently working together to make
their merger seamless and streamlined as not to disrupt chamber
and tourism services during this particularly busy time of the
year for both organizations. They are in the process of hiring a
shared employee as a first step. The Chamber board also has
voted to move forward with the process.
Peters has been retained to come back to Lincoln in mid-June to
help the organizations move into “Phase II” of the
consolidation. With Peters’ help a process will be created to
streamline the merger, including adoption of a mission and
vision statement. A major component will be determining how to
identify natural leaders to fill seats on the new board of
directors. The participating organizations felt very strongly
that Peters needed to pay close attention to helping create a
way that communities throughout Logan County have a voice in the
newly-created Chamber. The new organization will be a Logan
County based organization and everyone involved wants to make
sure the whole community is well represented.
As progress is made on phase II, the organizations involved want
to make certain the community is kept abreast of the progress
the group is making. The organizations plan to send out updates
to the media and post information on the Chamber’s website as
they continue to move forward in this process.
[Text received; ANDI HAKE, on behalf
of THE UNIFIED ORGANIZATIONS COMMITTEE] |
