Developer wins towns' praise

In an update to the Jay County Council Wednesday night, members of Jay County Development Corporation took time to praise the work of the county’s community developer, Ami Huffman.
JCDC executive director Bill Bradley opened the update with some quick information about new business prospects, highlighting one positive and one negative.
Gibson Home Improvement, which expanded to a facility just northeast of Redkey, is in process of moving into the building in a venture that could “employ, at some point, up to 90 people,” Bradley said.
Bradley also noted an expansion by Geesaman Industries that was planned for the former Sheller Globe plant in Portland is mostly dead at this point. That project would have employed around 50 to 100 people.
Bradley said, however that interest in the county remains high and that several projects are in the works.
“We’ve got a whole slew of projects looking at us,” he said, adding that he may be ready to announce some new business coming to Jay County in four to six weeks. “We’re getting a lot of attention.”
Bradley then turned the presentation over to representatives from JCDC and town governments, who spoke about the benefits of community development.
JCDC president Ramon Loucks informed the council that one of the goals of the county’s last strategic plan was to improve how it went after grants in order to bring about development projects.
“We weren’t competing well in the grant community,” Loucks said. “The community developer has helped us with a lot of those things. … The bottom line is grant work has been the most important project for this seat.”
Loucks cited that of 39 grants applied for, 26 had been approved while only six denied, with seven still in progress.
Another benefit of the developer position, he said, is that communities have a way to pursue grants without getting bogged down in up-front costs of hiring engineers or grant writers only to fail to convert on the grant.
Dunkirk City Council member Judy Garr told the council of how Huffman was a major player in getting the city’s water project completed.
“We were doing everything we could to get the brown water to turn clear,” she said.
With Huffman’s help, Dunkirk not only got its water project funded but has seen success with other projects.
“We’ve been awarded four grants,” Garr said, that totaled around $3 million. “We could not have afforded to do this ourselves.”
Don Crawmer of SolarAg explained how the community developer aided him in tracking down a highly competitive federal Small Business Innovation Research grant.
“It is the support of that office that we were able to get the SBIR grant,” Crawmer said, which has helped support solar system research and made Jay County “a real leader in Indiana in renewable energy.”
Redkey Town Board president Doug Stanley hailed Huffman’s work to secure funds for a new water tower.
“It really kind of lagged until Ami came along and made it accelerate,” he said. “I’d really encourage you to keep this position available to the small towns.”
Portland Mayor Bruce Hosier also praised the work Huffman has done to secure grants for the city.
“We had that important piece of the puzzle at the table for us,” he said.
“She has played a large role in the City of Portland.”
County council president Gerald Kirby thanked the speakers for taking the time to present and admitted that when the position was first created, he was skeptical that it could produce results. Since that time, he said, he’s been proven wrong.
“It has worked,” he said. “I’m not going to argue with you that it’s worked.”[[In-content Ad]]