2010 PED Activities

January

A Nebraska Tourism Grant was submitted for Thurston Watermelon Days.  This grant will assist in paying for radio, television, and magazine advertising for their annual event as well as building a website, and creation of a tri fold brochure for marketing.  The matching funds will be provided from the Village of Thurston as they are the applicant.  

The Workforce Development Grant began its training classes in January.  There are 20 scheduled classes to take place in the next 5 months.  

Hanna:Keelan Representatives were here on January 25^th to discuss progress on our Housing Study and Comprehensive plan.  

February

The BECA Grant hosted 3 Learning to Lead Workshops in Pender at the Fire Hall.  These workshops covered topics such as Collaborating with Others; Working with Other Personality Types and Conflict Management.

Housing needs surveys were distributed to all households and eleven of the largest employers of Pender to determine community feelings of housing desires.  These surveys will be compiled and reviewed at the March Planning and Zoning Meeting.

Data and a Photograph of the Heritage Museum were submitted to the Nebraska Travel and Tourism Council to be included in the next issue of the Nebraska Travel Guide as well as to be included on the Nebraska Travel Website.

March 2010

Utilizing the BECA and RCDI Grant monies available to our communities Pender and Thurston were both recipient sites for the BIT Mobile.  This is a mobile computer lab that is available through the UNL Extension that provides computers, as well as educators, to present free computer training to area citizens.  In March and April there were several classes available including Web Design; Social Networking; Computer Basics; and Spread sheeting.  These classes were well attended.

The BECA grant also afforded some of our elementary classes to become experienced in Robotics.  In these workshops our students assembled robots and then programmed instructions to run these robots through laptops.  Dewey Teele a UNL Extension Educator from Antelope County provided these workshops. 

The Nebraska Travel and Tourism grant was approved in the amount of $2,290 for the Village of Thurston.  This will allow a website to be built for Thurston Watermelon Days, as well as, advertising in the Nebraska Life Magazine; and Radio Advertising. 

Hanna:Keelan and Associates were present on March 8^th to discuss the findings of the Housing surveys.  In total there were more than 225 surveys completed for this project with Jim Puckett and Leslie Gatzmeyer winning the Chamber Buck drawings for their participation.

On March 25^th Hanna:Keelan presented data in a Community Housing Forum at the House Memorial Library.  Population trends and projections; housing surveys; corporate limits; and housing trends were discussed.  The completed Housing Survey will be presented sometime in the Spring.

April 2010

A grant was submitted to the Lower Elkhorn NRD for the Village of Pender to provide improvements to the swimming pool.  Improvements include sandblasting and painting the shower house and converting the exterior lighting to more energy efficient lighting.  This grant if approved would pay for 50% of the project.

The Pender Public School system is hopeful to provide daycare in the fall for the preschool students.  This daycare would allow for the preschool age students to attend a half day of daycare and a half day of preschool.  To assist in this venture, PED provided research for the Department of Health and Human Services grants that are available for new daycare centers opening in Nebraska.  

Utilizing the Nebraska Workforce Development Grant we have educated 108 people in 13 different classes from January through April.  There are several more classes still running in May and June.  This grant was initially approved for nearly $26,000 of free training for the 23 different companies participating.  All classes are being held at the Northeast Community College Education Center in West Point. 

May 2010

Collaborative efforts of PED; Pender Volunteer Fire Fighters; and the Oakland Office of RC&D created and submitted a FEMA grant for a new pumper for the Village of Pender.  Funding will not be known for at least 6 months.

A final copy of the Housing Study was presented at the Planning & Zoning Committee meeting held at the House Memorial Library on May 26, 2010.  Among items discussed were:  our current housing market; school enrollment; demolition of ‘bad’ housing; lease to own options; and occupancy permits.  The final copy of the housing study will be placed in the Village Office with the completed Comprehensive Plan.

A renewable energy fair is being planned through the RCDI grant.  This event will take place on July 23 – 24 in Lyons.  The event includes a bus tour and breakout sessions with exhibitors.   

Additionally, under the RCDI grant a Youth Leadership camp is being planned for June.  This will take place in Bancroft and will target youth from age 10 through high school.

The BECA grant is completed and was closed out this month.

June 2010

The Pender Thurston website statistics were published this month.  For a one month period from May 24 – June 24 there were 7,701 page views; 3,664 visitors; and 2,354 unique visitors.  These are possibly a bit high due to the Q125 celebration.  However, they are great numbers and show the utilization of the website for our communities.

The work force development grant was scheduled to be completed this month.  An extension was requested and granted for another six months or until December 31, 2010.  To date we have educated 138 employees from various companies within Pender, at a cost of $13,051.45.

Laurie Richards from the Heritage Nebraska group has visited Pender and is interested in helping us revitalize Our Main Street.  There are several old buildings that we would like to have restored and brought back into usefulness.

July 2010

The Thurston Watermelon Days website www.watermelondays.com is up and running.  We have linked their website to the Pender Thurston website to help promote the annual event. Their committees are working with Sara Klein on utilizing the tourism grant money.

The energy fair was held in Lyons on July 23^rd and 24^th.  Funding for this event was made available from the Rural Community Development Initiative Grant.

Pender will continue to hold the sanctioned BBQ cook offs annually in late June.  It has been requested that we apply for a Tourism grant to help pay for advertising for this event.  The Tourism grants are not available until late October and due in January.  PED will work with the Oakland RC&D Office on this application.

‘Red Line Aviation’ is the newest business setting up in Pender.  This is an Airplane Spraying business owned by Ryan Lihs and established at the Pender Airport.  A complete story of the business and its owner will be published in the Pender Times. 

Business Retention and Expansion visits are being planned for August 2010.  There are 25 businesses on the list to be visited covering all of Thurston County.  Representatives from Nebraska Department of Economic Development, NMPP Energy, local PED Board members and the Coordinator will take part in these visits.  These visits are essential for rural Nebraska to ensure that small business needs are being addressed at the local, state, and federal level.  

August 2010

Work is being completed on the new comprehensive plan for the Village of Pender.  This plan replaces the original plan done in 1974.  Items addressed within are: zoning regulations; proposed development; housing issues; public facilities; utilities; infrastructure; and economic development.  Once complete a public hearing will be required before the Planning and Zoning Committee can recommend this new study to the Village Board for adoption.  It is hopeful that all public hearings; Planning and Zoning meetings and Village Board meetings will be completed in September.

The School Board and Village Board have approved the writing of a new BECA grant for the Village of Pender.  BECA – Building Entrepreneurial Communities Act is a State Grant program that works to keep rural Nebraska strong.  The goal of this proposed grant is to write for a youth entrepreneur camp for the summer of 2011.  This camp would target two groups of children; 8-10 year olds and 11-13 year olds.  Proposed ideas are to target technology as well as, to utilize the airport.

The Business Retention and Expansion visits began in August.  There were 13 visits completed in Pender and Thurston on August 24 – 25.  The businesses outside of these towns but inside the county will be completed by the Representatives from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development in the near future.  The remaining Pender and Thurston businesses agreeing to participate in these visits will be completed in September or October.  This ensures that the summary report can be available by the beginning of 2011.

The Nebraska Workforce Development Grant classes are up and running.  August began the start of 9 more classes to be held at the Northeast Education Center in West point.  Our goal is to utilize all of this money prior to the grant deadline of 12/31/10.

• • In February the PED Board; Diann Ballard and Corrinne Pedersen from Nebraska Municipal Power Pool met for a Strategic Planning Meeting for Economic Development.  We discussed the communit y strengths and weaknesses.  Goals were set and prioritized for the community.  Several of the goals discussed were: Developing a written Economic Development plan – including a new comprehensive plan for the community; Bringing daycare to our community; Business Research and Expansion; Industrial Park developments; Creation of a brochure about our city; Website development; Tourism and Community Clean up.
• We readopted our mission statement for the Community:

“Small enough to know you; Large enough to serve you!”

• PED Coordinator, Diann Ballard wrote a grant for the Village of Pender for renovation of the shower houses at the pool.  The grant was funded from Lower Elkhorn NRD with a 50% matching funds requirement.
• PED hired Jason Sturek of the Pender Times to redesign the website.  This expense was paid through our Rural Community Development Initiative grant.  The website went live in June just prior to the June Jamboree.  The data is being updated and maintained through the Pender Times.
• In June a brochure was developed to market all of the assets of the City.  This brochure was available at the Alumni banquet for graduates, as well as currently we have brochures available in all local businesses.  These brochures were also funded by the Rural Community Development Initiative (RCDI) grant.
• UNL Extension Educator Dewey Teele provided a DreamWeaver class at the local library available to residents at no charge.  The fees were paid through the Website development grant that was awarded in 2008.
• In August representatives from Nebraska Municipal Power Pool the MEAN division did a presentation on energy efficiency grants.  There were fourteen people that attended this meeting representing nine local businesses.  After the meeting there were six businesses that had walk throughs completed with the MEAN representatives indicating areas of needed improvement.  
• PED Coordinator, Diann Ballard submitted a grant in early September through the Nebraska Workforce Development.  This grant is to provide training for 23 local businesses that agreed to collaborate with the Village on a grant proposal.  If funded this grant has the potential to provide training for up to 209 area employees.  We have asked for funding for 10 different kinds of classes all to be taught through Northeast Community College in West Point.  The matching funds on this grant are the wages that area employers would pay their employees to attend.  All other expenditures would be paid through the grant.  We should know if the grant was funded in early November.
• The Village and PED have agreed to have a Housing Study completed and an updated Comprehensive plan developed.  The work on this project is scheduled to begin in October.  In the meantime PED Coordinator with the assistance of Hanna Keelan Associates; a Nebraska Investment Finance Authority grant was completed to request $7,000 to pay for half of this project.  Funding will be determined in November.  
• I have requested an “Economic and Demographic Trending Analysis” to be completed for Thurston County.  This report is completed by NPPD at no cost because many areas of Thurston County are their customers.  This report will show statistics on labor force and employment; residence and work flow patterns; population and migration trends; retail sales; income per capita; median family income levels; etc.  This will be a great document for grant writing.  We are on the agenda to be completed in October or November.
• Leadership classes are being scheduled for this fall through the Rural Community Development Initiative grant.  These classes will be split up between Bancroft; Lyons; and Pender.  Each site will host three classes. 
• The BIT Mobile is a traveling computer classroom that is available through the UNL Area extension educators.  The BECA grant will be bringing this to the Pender area yet this fall to offer classes on the Internet; using email; and other basic computer classes.

• ¬ In late September Pender Economic Development was awarded $7,000 or 50% of the cost for the Housing Study and Comprehensive plan being completed by Hanna:Keelan.  The award came from the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority.

• Kathy Kriekemeier came to Pender and presented two town hall assemblies on “generational differences” in late October.  These were paid for through the Rural Community Development Initiative Grant.  The first seminar/assembly happened during the school day so many of the upper high school students could attend.  The second assembly was later that night for local citizens.

• Vicky Jones from the Nebraska Business Development Center in Wayne was brought to town to assist local businesses with government contract procurement.  Several local businesses were interested in this service provided to our community at no charge.
• The first SPEC house was sold in October 2009.
• The BIT Mobile was in Pender on November 19^th and 20^th providing free “Basic Computer Classes” offered  through the BECA grant.
• Several local residents including the PED Coordinator are working to provide Kent Neumann with data to write a FEMA grant for a new pumper for the Pender Volunteer Fire Department.

The Village of Pender was awarded the Nebraska Workforce Development Training Grant for $25,993.  This will provide workers over the next 6-12 months.