|
 Snyder said that in his opinion, if the city should continue to
fund the CEDS, then the Logan County Alliance should be involved as
the city’s representing agency.
However, he said the first question is does the city want to fund
CEDS. He said that personally he has not seen much result from being
a part of this program.
He also said, “I don’t know that we have ever gotten a clear
explanation as to the advantages of CEDS.” He asked Kathy Horn to
comment on it. Horn has in the past been the city liaison to the
Lincoln and Logan County Development Partnership.
Horn answered, “The only thing that I know it was intended to do was
(help with) grants. The federal government had said you won’t get
grants unless you are a part of CEDS. But I don’t know if it is a
benefit to us as Lincoln or more of a benefit to the county.”
Michelle Bauer asked if that could be verified. She said, “I don’t
want to shoot ourselves in the foot on grants and funding.”
 Snyder said that he felt the city needed greater explanation of the
program. He said that his response would be “not now, maybe down the
road, but we need further clarification of where things are now with
CEDS. For a long time we were applying, we finally got accepted, and
I don’t know what that means because we still haven’t seen anything
from it.”
It was decided that the council would say “Not now” but leave the
door open for the future, pending further explanation of the
benefits of belonging to the program.
As a result of that meeting discussion, Snyder sent the following
communication to the Logan County Board Chairman:
“In response to your question
about whether the City would be providing CEDS funding through the
Logan County Alliance, their response was a clear, "Not now." As you
and I discussed, no one with the City has any clear idea about what
membership in the CEDS organization means and what benefits it
provides to the City. We have provided funding for the local CEDS
membership for each year for which is was asked with the only
benefits ever discussed being an amorphous suggestion that it could
mean federal funds for us down the road. The Council needs a clearer
understanding of what we're being asked to invest our taxpayers'
dollars in and what we can expect in return before they will provide
an answer about any future funding.
I remain of the belief that if
the City provides CEDS funding we would want our efforts coordinated
through the Logan County Alliance, the organization that will be
providing the City's economic development services going forward.”
CEDS is an acronym for Comprehensive Economic Development
Strategy. The county involvement with CEDS began with Development
Partnership Director Rob Orr and county coordinator Dewey Colter
paying a visit to Representative Ray LaHood. The two asked LaHood
what the county could do further their chances of winning federal
grant awards. LaHood suggested the county become part of a regional
economic development group.
[to top of second column] |
In 2008, Joel Smiley of the Partnership along with Logan
County Board member Bill Martin, began working with the Peoria
Economic Development Council. The end result was that Logan
County and the city of Lincoln were welcomed into a regional
council made up of Peoria, Tazewell, Woodford and Mason
counties. That regional organization was then called the
Economic Development Council for Central Illinois.
At first, the city was excited about the prospects of gaining
federal grants through the EDC and CEDS. Their greatest desire
at the time was to gain federal funding for the Fifth Street
Road project that has been a goal on hold for several years.
Smiley guided the county and city in creating their CEDS
application documents, and collected money from both the county
and the city to pay for the application.
However, getting the application approved seemed to be a lengthy
and costly process. From the city viewpoint, they paid $5,000
the first year for the CEDS application. Then in the second year
of waiting for approval they paid another $5,000 earmarked as
money for the CEDS application.
When the third budget year came around, Smiley once again asked
for money for the CEDS application, but this time the city
balked. They asked for greater explanation as to why the
application was costing so much, and why it was taking so long.
Smiley was not forthcoming with information, but after being
pushed for answers he said that many of the dollars collected
for the CEDS application had been used in CEDS related travel
and meetings. In that third year, the city reduced its funding
of CEDS, but stayed in the program.
Soon after, the CEDS application was approved. With the
departure of Smiley and the arrival of Michael Maniscalco as
director of the Partnership, the city did learn a little more
about the CEDS program and process, but reaped no reward from
their investment. After Maniscalco’s departure, Brian Bergen
addressed CEDS with the council once, and talked about working
on getting grants for capital projects for the city, such as
Fifth Street. However, no money came to the city.
Since Bergen’s departure from the Partnership in October of
2013, little has been said about CEDS on the city level.
[Nila Smith] |
