City honored by state organization

The City of Sidney has been awarded the title of an Economic Development Certified Community for the second time by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Nebraska Diplomats, according to City officials.

This certification lasts for five years and will designate the city as such for the years 2013 through 2017. Updates of the city’s condition however will be required periodically throughout that time period, city officials reported.

An official announcement of the communities that earned the title of Economic Development Certified Community will be given by the State of Nebraska in days to come.

Out of Nebraska’s 531 communities only 36 have earned this grade of accreditation. Among those 36 very few have held this designation as long as the City of Sidney has, nor have many communities achieved a renewal in this designation.

The City of Sidney with the Cheyenne County Economic Development partnership was one of the first communities in Nebraska to receive the title initially in 2007, according to the report.

In all of the city’s municipal or economic development communication a Certified Community logo can now be placed within the message, letting a contact know of the achieved honor.

“Sidney has qualified for several million dollars in federal and state economic, community development and public works project grants by having the designation,” according to city officials.

According to the report, for a city to be qualified for many of these project grants they must receive this designation.

“Many industrial prospects also will only deal with those communities having gone through this process,” city officials wrote.

“Sidney was the only community in Nebraska selected for two different pilot programs with the New Neighborhoods Initiative and the Downtown Revitalization Project as a result of having this designation and its consistent delivery of economic development programs,” according to city officials.

City of Sidney City Manger Gary Person said that the renewal of this title is a big accomplishment for the city because of all the standards of excellence that must be met.

“This is an extremely valuable and well earned designation for our community from an economic development preparedness standpoint,” Person said. “It also gives the community priority status when it comes to receiving major project grant funding and working with potential business and industry prospects.”

Within this achieved certification are many standards that the community must have accomplished.

According to the press release those criteria include:

-Establishing a long-range community strategic plan and funding plan

-Marketing materials to support those plans

-Keeping community websites incorporated with state data bases and up-to-date with recent, dependable information

-Updating city demographic statistics consistently

-Periodically evaluating successes and disappointments of economic development

-Having a full-time trained economic development professional on staff

-Presenting an active business retention and expansion programming effort and interview process

-Updating labor data information consistently

-Cooperating efforts with local, regional and state economic development organizations

Person said that the hard work of the City of Sidney as a whole as well as the work of one particular city employee helped make this designation possible.

“Megan McGown, our community development director, was tasked with the year long process of attaining the designation, and did exceptional work to make sure Sidney met or exceeded the many standards and requirements,” Person said. “There is an enormous amount of time and hard work involved to meet the standards of excellence and unless someone is on top of this on a day-to-day basis, you don’t achieve it.Meganhas put a ton of time and effort into this goal over the past couple of years, especially this year.”

McGown said that the designation is great for the community and that she was happy to receive news of the renewed title.

“It was a great feeling receiving that letter of designation. It puts us on a preference list that potential project creators will go to,” she said. “If anyone is looking to do a project this lets them know that this city is ready to go.”

McGown said that to sustain this city status it will take a lot of continuous updating and maintaining of city information over the next five years.