Action Steps

 

Vacant Properties

•    Pete Hobbs will contact Municipal League to seek support for conference on issue of vacant properties

•    Cliff went to a conference on vacant properties issue and has many pages of notes, will put together and email with notes from this session to everyone here

 

Generational Leadership

•    Focus on the redoing the resource directories to include a section on leadership development programs in the directories.  Herk and Kathie will talk with FRNA.

 

 

Tools and Resources

 

Downtown Beautification/Revitalization

•    First Impressions is a key tool for assessing communities’ downtown needs

•    Main Street is a key tool.  The four point approach is useful; design, promotion, economic restructuring, and organization.  Work plans are developed for each approach.

•    American Institute of Architects (AIA) is an important resource as is Vandalia (WV development non-profit) when looking at downtown vision and development.

•    Allegheny Power and US Forestry Service have a grant program to plant dwarf trees under existing power lines to reduce the need for routine trimming and maintenance.

•    State of WV has a building code that can be adopted by municipalities.  It is laid out for you.  The state’s code is the national code. Enforcement is the job of municipalities.

•    Land use planning codes are helpful in getting absentee landowners to clean up their buildings.

 

Generational Leadership

•    Sustainable Communities Training Program offered by Community Collaborative, Inc. (CCI) is an opportunity to cultivate leadership skills.  See Herk Conner, Ritchie County FRN and CCI, for more information to send a community team.

•    Another strategy being used for leadership developed in Ritchie, Doddridge, Gilmer, Pleasants, and Roane Counties is Possibilities Forums.  See Herk Conner, Ritchie County FRN and CCI, for more information.

•    4-H is a very effective leadership development program for youth.

•    Using the electronic story format learned through Carpetbag Theatre at Brushy Fork Institute and as presented here by Ritchie County is a great way to engage youth in developing and making presentations without speaking.

•    Prevention Resource Center is a resource for training.

•    Drug-Free Community Support Program, a federal grant is worth looking into.  It is for planning, coordination and evaluation.

•    Drug Free Schools grants can help provide resources for youth leadership development.

•    Character Counts is a great leadership training model involving both youth and adults as trainers.  Youth teach youth and adults serve as support.

•    Survival Skills for Women is another excellent training model with volunteerism as a component.

 

Affordable Housing

•    WV Housing Development Fund has products and programs, and links to other housing and housing resources—use them as a resource, they will come to you, ask for their help.

•    Consider these sources:

            FHLB—Affordable Housing Program

            Housing Assistance Council (HAC)

            USDA—multi-family and single family programs

•    Sharon Walden in McDowell County reported these sources for home repair:

            HUD—RHED

            DEP septic system funding

            FHLB home repair grants

            FORD foundation 4% loan funds

            USDA 504 home repair 1% loan funds

 

Main Street
•    Main Street Programs website www.mainstreet.org

How to Form a CDC
•    State bar has free service that they will refer local attorney's who have experience in formation of organizations. Can also use Secretary of State's office.
•    Use references that are available like the 501 c 3 toolkit that is on the CDP website at http//:www.cdpwv.org

Wellness Programs
•    First Lady Chairs Healthy Lifestyles Coalition – some grants have been made available
•    Ripley has a great program through Main Street
•    Morgantown has a great program.
•    WV Wellness Council also is a good resource
•    WVU and other colleges have tools and resources
•    WV on the Move

Rural Medicine
•    Look at PEIA programs such as weight management – free face-to-face program
•    Marshall University has great grants to apply for
•    Look at home health organizations for possible diabetic educators
•    SCHIP expansion and outreach is an important program – has the potential to cover a lot more children

 

Local Activities
•    Sponsors can provide banners (Pepsi, Coke) and goodies (bags, hats)
•    Extension, CEOS clubs, FFA, 4H clubs also may be a resource for putting on events

Building Organizational Capacity
•    The Standards of Excellence through CDP can help to revitalize organizations.

Recommendations

Peer Assistance Network

•    Inventory existing HCD skills among initial 10 communities and survey interest in sharing expertise

•    Explore the possibility of expanding the Blueprint website or other appropriate technology to accommodate the assistance request process

•    Approach the Bennedum Foundation or AmeriCorps to organize the initial effort, identify what other free HCD type services are out there and how to access them and create a process for matching skills to community needs for services, and/or a question/answer type forum.

•    Contact the WVa Chapter of American Institute of Architects to see what services they will provide to communities and what is the process for accessing those services.

Vacant Properties

 

•    Hold a conference to address vacant property issues, include FHLB and Municipal League

•    Put together a package that will attract a private developer

•    Contact our legislators personally, ask them to change some laws to make it easier to inspect and demolish without owners permission

•    Need to lobby for legislation to create tools to address this issue—possibly hand off to Municipal League

•    Copy ordinances from other states

•    Do this as collective action of the ten BP communities

•    Start a “blight busters” program

•    Hand out cameras to take photos of blighted areas

•    Develop means to stay in touch on these issues

Downtown Beautification/Revitalization

•    Establish a relationship with the assessor.  When property owners advertise properties for a large amount of money and the assessment/tax amount is low, we have been successful in getting property owners to decrease their unrealistic asking prices for dilapidated structures.

•    Find people in your town in positions of authority that are well respected to approach land owners to donate/sell or otherwise participate with the city/town.

•    Make your downtown a destination with specialty shops.

•    Find out from where your visitors and shoppers are drawn.  Find out what the needs and interests are of those around you.

•    Identify what is unique to your town.  Cultivate it.

•    Ask existing businesses in neighboring communities to relocate or establish a second location in your town.  Visit them.  Shop/Eat in their store/restaurant.  Invite them to see your buildings, ideas etc.

Generational Leadership

•    Mentoring is essential.  Pair younger people with experienced older people in areas of common interest.  Youth are energetic and older people are wiser – they feed off each others’ energy and at the same time preserving our culture and supporting our youth.

•    Include teams of youth in planning, not just one or two

•    Bring in outside faith-based groups and talk with them about providing a mentoring component when they do housing rehab and youth camps.  Ask them to engage local youth in partnering to lead.

•    Pull together Vision Shared’s Leadership Team and the Leadership Network to get and post a listing of Leadership Programs and resources.

 

Affordable Housing

•    Find out bands of wages for people coming in, then figure out if new housing is possible, or modular, or existing housing is more practical.

•    Talk to experienced public housing authorities about setting up housing development corporations—do research. Virginia Lewis in Mingo Housing Authority—has done both rental and single family development. Sharon Waldron in McDowell has developed all kinds of housing.

•    Start to inventory existing structures and land, which ones are better for rental, home ownership, or commercial. Can start assessment now., in order to know what you need so you will set up the right development corporation with the right powers

•    Educate the community about price gouging. Get realtors and appraisers on board (a tough one.)

 

 How to Form a CDC

•    If you have a 501c3 that has been doing something for a period of time, should you change the focus of that organization or have a new organization?  Don't change bylaws while going through process of application.  Write your bylaws generally enough that you can bring the local EDA or FRN under the umbrella if needed to sustain the activities of the CDC.  One of the ways you build capacity is to share capacity so utilizing other organizations assets to increase your capacity.

 

Wellness Programs

•    Start biking, hiking clubs

•    Challenge other communities to a “weigh off”!

 

 

Retail Development

•    Do a cluster analysis of what the area should look like, foot traffic counts, market analysis of area, develop realistic goals, design guidelines for the area.  Resources can come together and work together.  Get the right expertise on your Blueprint team.

 

 

Rural Medicine

•    Bring specialists once a month to an area (Larry J. Harless Community Center; Anstead has been successful in bringing in a gyn, surgeon.  Needs an endocrinologist now)

•    Become a designated site for AHEC/RHEP to attract residents

•    Connect to bring rural medicine students and residents to train/practice at facilities – shift dynamic to outreach – 80% will stay in an area where they train – also results in building an economic base – creating an industry from another industry – example- Pikeville KY grew hospital, medical school, residency program has grown. WV Osteopath school has grown and is developing post-doctoral sites across the states

•    Hold a Health Fair

•    Develop regional networks that offer telemedicine/remote emergency rooms

•    See firsthand what other communities are doing/lessons learned

•    Explore what insurance providers will cover local and specialist costs/telemedicine

•    Find out what hospitals have worked this out

•    Find out what services local doctors already have set up, where are they sending people for specialty care

•    Approach large employers in the county to see how they can help

 

 

Citizen Driven Strategic Planning

•    Pursue multiple strategies that fit the situation

•    Use "no dumb ideas" initial strategy to get as much buy in as possible.

•    Gather folks with common interests and play to those interests.

•    Focus on those parts of the population that typically are not engaged.

•    Tag onto existing meetings. Get on the agenda.

•    Hold multiple meetings in different locations.

•    Create a sense of community thru various gimmicks (i.e. buttons).

•    Celebrate the successes.

 

 

Local Activities

•    Activities targeted to kids get better turnout

•    Having an activities director makes a big difference (this is John's job, with City of Shinnston)

•    Make good use of volunteers

•    Start with small activities, see who always comes out, attends meetings, then create activities committee--open to everyone but want to get key people with useful skills--e.g., banker with financial skills

•    Need to plan activities 6-12 months ahead

•    Keep fees low to keep prices low for local people

•    If you hire an activities director, pay salary not wages, the job would have a lot of overtime if wages, base salary +/- $11.50/hour.  Start part time and expand from there.

•    Establish relationships with media from surrounding area.

•    Send fliers home with schoolchildren

•    Start out small and grow

•    Free events sell—take donations, sell refreshments, sell advertising in booklet

 

 

Building Organizational Capacity

•    Use the paper to advertise for volunteers to recruit those in the community who may want to be part of the organization or the project who other wise may not know about the event or need for their time.

•    Look at ways that organizations can combine, collaborate and stop duplication of services.  

•    Look to the youth groups in leadership groups in high schools and middle schools and groom them for leadership if they stay in the community.

•    Create a "JR. Blueprint Communities Group".  Others report that they have high school students on their Blueprint teams.

•    Send every organization a questionnaire to see what their goals are.  

•    Connect those organizations that had similar goals so they can work together and share the load.  

•    Share office space, reduce cost, and stop duplication of services.

•    To engage youth consider meeting via computer, use IM to meet and grow membership.

•    First Friday Forums may be useful for organizations.

•    Lunch and Learn opportunities for organizations.  

•    Hold a Business After Hours, and once a month a different business will host and have food.  St. Albans reports that having a theme really helped improve attendance.  You pay 10 dollars to come, and food and drink helps.  This give the business or organization the opportunity to be on the front page of the local newspaper the next week.

•    Do an organizational assessment to identify capacity needs.  What to ask:  name, what you do, contact information, how many board members, goals and objectives, strengths and weaknesses, what is their mission, ask their vision for the communities.  

•    Give the organization have five minutes to talk about their programs and goals.  Ask them how they think the county can be improved.  This is a great way to link for profit and non profits.  Knowing their mission and how it fits into building the community can be powerful.  Ask how you think that can be accomplished, and that is an important input and can help to break down walls and build bridges to each other.

 

 

Creating a newspaper supplement

•    Make friends with the ad person at the newspaper or supplement to make sure it is financially beneficial.  

•    Ask them if they would let you use the supplement as a fund raiser.  

•    Make sure you sign a contract with them.  

•    Never put anything on the second page (like a coupon) because people like to save the front page (pictures of family or other important stuff).

•    Keep copy to a minimum, and use lots of pictures.  Use large copy (large font).

•    Someone needs to take on the responsibility to take on the supplement.  

•    Go to each contact person and talk about the free advertising for their activities.  

•    Sit down with someone from the newspaper to put the supplement together.  DO NOT LET them decide what will go on the first page, you decide what goes on the front page.  

•    Let the paper know up front that you want some say on the design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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