Chamber 2006

One of my favorite parts of this job is when someone calls and asks me to research something, i.e. can you find us a grant for restoring historic buildings? (no grants but there are great low interest loans and tax credits). What would it take to get Cracker Barrel to build a restaurant here (25,000 cars going by on the new highway each day – we have about 4000 right now). Can we get a Flying J Truckstop (30,000 cars per day. They said to call them back in a few years.)

I enjoy the challenge of searching out information, finding out who to call, asking questions, and finding the answers that people want to know. I’ve talked to people all around the state of Illinois, in Washington DC and throughout the country, and in each call I start with my name and that I’m calling from Carthage, Illinois. Now once, when I was calling the Dept of Immigration, I talked to a guy who had grown up in Nauvoo so it meant something to him when I said I was in Carthage, Illinois. But to everyone else I have to explain that Carthage is a wonderful rural community in west central Illinois near the Mississippi. That is to everyone else except when I call the IHSA, the Illinois High School Association. I called them the first time years ago to find out if there were any problems with taping the high school football games and replaying them later in the week on our local cable TV channel. When I have called the IHSA I am always amazed at the difference in my initial reception. You can tell automatically from the tone of their voices that they know our town. They know our school, our coaches and their reputation. You get a tone of respect, maybe even a little admiration, just because you’re from Carthage.

That’s probably not a surprise to any of you. You’d have to be living under a rock not to know that Carthage athletics have been building up that reputation for years till it has gotten to the place it is today. But what I’m not sure people realize, and what I want to say to you tonight, is that that kind of teamwork, that striving for excellence, that goal of being the best that you have inspired in your children, that our teachers and coaches have cultivated in their students, and that has brought our school teams such success doesn’t stop with our children. It is something that also pervades our community. It’s not just in our school activities. We don’t have the kind of team sports for adults that would let us demonstrate that team spirit, but I think it shows in all the ways that we work together in this community and especially through the events that have been part of our Chamber and my work this year.

That sense of teamwork and the motivation to achieve success has been evident in both the tried and true events and the new activities we have done.

Probably the event that is most recent in our minds is the award of a grant of $1.14 million dollars from the U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development to build a ten apartment complex for low income senior adults next to city hall. It will be a wonderful addition to our community and till a great need. I’m already getting visits from people who want to live there. But a simple announcement can’t describe the years of work by many people that got us to this point. We have had a housing working group that has been meeting for the last six years that has looked at and worked on community housing needs. And they worked together with folks from the University of Illinois Extension and then with folks from the West Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging and finally with our city council to get all the components together that got us to this point. It was simple and exciting announcement, but it has a long history of teamwork behind it. Carthage teamwork.

Another housing project that will be announced in the next week or so will be a grant for $380,000 from the Illinois Housing Development Authority that will allow us to rehabilitate ten homes of low-income home owners in Carthage. It’s likely that we all know someone who owns a home, but doesn’t have the income needed to do some of the necessary maintenance. This grant will allow us to replace roofs, put in new wiring, plumbing, windows, and other basic repairs that make these homes more livable. This project has been a joint venture between the Carthage city council and the Western Illinois Regional Council. There will be a public meeting at the United Methodist church on February 23 to tell more about this. Watch the Journal Pilot for more information.

One of the other team projects that I have enjoyed most in the last year has been the planning and implementation of the Hancock County BizLink Breakfast. I had always felt that there could be value in finding ways to work with the other communities in the county as well as a need to bring together county business people for networking and education. But I never knew exactly how to do this. So I was very excited when Deb Kern suggested her idea for a county-wide business breakfast that would bring together business people around the county to meet, eat, and learn about current topics related to business and development. I enjoy Deb’s drive and creativity and it has been a joy to work with her and with Ginny Johnson, another creative dynamo, and representatives from around the county to make this breakfast happen. We have had sixteen planning meetings and four breakfasts so far, and they’re going great. And I’m glad now that Charlie Bair, our new county economic development director, has joined our breakfast planning team. In fact he’s going to be the speaker for the next BizLink Breakfast on Valentine’s Day in Nauvoo. You should plan to come.

Charlie’s addition to the U of I Extension and to the Hancock County Economic Development Association has been another highlight of my year. He’s someone else whose ideas and creativity I admire, and I’m very glad to be able to work with him. If you haven’t met Charlie yet, you should try and do so tonight.

Charlie’s expertise has been particularly helpful this year as we have worked with a stream of potential buyers for the old college buildings, as has the help of Gary Beeler, Brent Young, Rob Carson, Abbie Ray, John Huston, and others…... I always thought that if we were finally able to get the Koreans to want to sell the campus that the hard part would be over. But now I’ve discovered that our new challenge,……now that the Koreans are willing to sell,…..is to find the right resources that will help the right buyer to make those buildings into something that the community can be proud of again. We have met and talked with several potential buyers, but at this point none of those have worked out. The right buyer isn’t here yet, but I still have hope that a solution is out there somewhere. They’ve lowered the price to $800,000 so if you know of anyone who might be interested, let me know.

I have also helped this year on several other projects whose goals have been to bring in more people and more businesses to the community. We finished up our television commercials in June and though they had value, I think we realized that a better idea would be to work with some professional marketing experts to give us a plan that would be more tailored to our community and our target market. So we have been working with Don and Kay Norton from Mediacall in Macomb on a marketing plan that is specialized for Carthage. We have had two brainstorming sessions so far and got some great ideas. Two specific things that have happened so far from this are the community map and the signage committee. I think that Ada will tell you more about these. Both of these projects have also been an effort of a lot of people. The map, particularly, could not have happened if all of you had not seen it as a valuable effort. We ended up with 32 advertisers, and I am excited to say that, thanks to the creative help of the Norton’s and their Mediacall staff, and the efforts of the Chamber member services committee, that we have a draft copy here tonight for you to see. I encourage you to look at it, tell me about any changes, so we can get the final ones printed soon. The plan is to print 20,000. Ten thousand will be circulated through the help of NRI to their stakes throughout the county to get into the hands of future visitors to Carthage. The other ten thousand will be given out her to all of you as well as placed in the tourism racks in Nauvoo and Quincy. Other suggestions for distribution are always welcome.

Another team effort for business development that I wanted to touch on tonight are the efforts of the Carthage Industrial Development Corporation and the City Council to implement a Tax Increment Financing district in parts of our community. The details about this are lengthy so I won’t go into that here, though if you have questions, please call me. Having a TIF district will give us many new options and incentives for businesses that we have not had before and will be a motivation for new development. And if you want to see a dedicated team in action, you should come to a CIDC meeting. They are great and their commitment is inspirational.

One last team effort that I need to tell you about before I close tonight is one that I have mentioned in other speeches here. But possibly, and I know that they certainly hope so,…. this will probably be the last time I talk about them. And that is our Highway 336 Impact study committee. You know that this group has been funded with a grant we received from IDOT and matching funds from the City Council to help plan for what development could look like around the new highway interchange. And I know we are all very excited to say that we have received the draft of our final report from Steve Freiburg, our planning engineer. The committee is in the process of giving their feedback to this report, and on March 20, we will have an open community meeting so all of you can see it and give your feedback. Probably sometime after March first, copies will be available at the library and at city hall, and possibly on line for you to look at prior to this meeting. Watch the Journal Pilot for more information. But I want to especially thank John Huston, our committee chairman, and the other committee members, for all their patience and hard work over the last three years. Are any of you here? Would you stand so we can say thank you? CLAP

Finally, I am very excited that we have five new businesses in our community since we met last year and that four other of our businesses have expanded. I was especially glad to be able to help write a grant that got fifty thousand dollars to expand the recycling efforts of DisPosal Pro. That has been an excellent addition to both the community and the county.

I could go on to tell you about the work of the Touched by Suicide support group, the Dreamers workshop team, the Workforce Investment Board with Blanche Shoup, and many others with whom I have worked this year. But for that I’ll refer you to my published works, that is the information sheet which is somewhere on your table.

There are a lot of activities going on and the only thing that could make things better is to have more of you involved on one of our teams! None of this can be done alone.

Have you ever wondered why other towns our size don’t have the same level of activities that we have here? I do firmly believe that for those of you who grew up here… that that spirit of teamwork…. that desire to be the best …. that you got when you were a Blueboy or Bluegirl has not left you. And for those of us who came later, it was contagious. It is lived out in all those projects and activities that are happening in our community, and it’s not something that you find in every other town. If there were some kind of competitive playoffs for communities that was measured by team work, perseverance and a desire to be the best….Carthage would be the state champion there too.