2010 Advocacy Accomplishments
TIME 21:
Advocacy continued for the transportation fund. Members were kept updated throughout the year on corresponding legislative activity and Board Member, Joe Blankenship attended and reported on the Transportation Day event at the Capitol. Members continue to express concern about the correlation between healthy commerce and the region’s transportation system.
HWY 34 Bridge:
Members of SWICO have actively advocated at a State and Federal level to secure funding for this infrastructure that is critical to the economic growth of the region for more than a decade. The groundbreaking ceremony for the bridge took place on September 9th at Hwy. 34 & 190th Street at I-29. State and Federal Legislators and their representatives from both Iowa and Nebraska were on hand.
Clarinda Mental Health Institute:
Budget cuts drew legislative review of Iowa’s state funded mental health institutions located throughout the state. The Clarinda Mental Health Institute was targeted to be closed. Coalition members from the region’s smallest communities to its largest used the power of emails to expedite urgent communications to legislators during their deliberations. The facility was kept open in the end, but this is likely not the last chapter. Legislators look to move mental health services to local, community-based programming in the future. However, the absence of accessible local programming, and the education about the effectiveness of the CMHI to serve the region’s needs from the advocacy campaign, have brought some additional thought to the legislative discussion.
Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) System:
SWICO members assisted with an email campaign against instituting new, cost-prohibitive rules for rural, local lockers to implement. Had the new regulation for testing been implemented, the region would have lost many of its local meat lockers.
Annual Legislative Agenda of Priorities Included and presented to the State and Federal Legislators were:
support of: Value-added ag program funding, Tax Increment Financing, TIME 21, Renewable Fuels, Housing, use of Economic Development Set Aside for home growing businesses, Livestock Mandatory Reporting, Regional Entrepreneurial Development, Fruit and Vegetable price reporting, local food initiatives.
Historical Accomplishments
State Lobbying Efforts Include:
• Enterprise Zones
• Real Estate Improvement Districts
• Housing E.Z.’s
• Clarinda Prison
• Glenwood State School
• Clarinda Mental Health Institute
• State of Iowa Business Accelerator Program for SW Iowa
• Cooperative Regional Marketing Funding Federal Lobbying Efforts
• U.S. Highway 34- Bridge
• U.S. Highway 2-Bypass Hitchcock House Designation NPS
Rural Development Funding Includes:
• RSIP, VADG, RHED, CDFI Transportation Projects
• Highway 34 Bridge
• Lane 34
• Highway 71 Improvement
• Highway 2 Bypass around Sidney
• Welcome Centers
• Highway 59 Super 2
• Regional Airports
• Expanded Passenger Rail Telecommunications and Technology Training Projects
• Heartland Net-Regional Startup
• Kellogg Grant for Managing Information in Rural America $200K in 10 communities for infrastructure improvement
• ICN Lobbying for “all” school access two way
• Statewide deployment of curriculum via the ICN Water Projects
• 4 County Framework Study, (Mills, Fremont, Page & Montgomery) Regional Water Source Surveys
• Impoundment Investigations
• Regional Water Conference 2000
Workforce Development Efforts
• Labor Survey CFM&Z
• Quality Jobs Website (in process)
• Diversity/Immigrant Labor Issues (SWILRC)
• Technical Training or Regional Development Center Planning
• IWD Lobbying for Surcharge Extension to Maintain Rural Offices
Regional Marketing Efforts
• Tabloid Advertisements “Midwest Business and Industrial Properties”
• Regional Website Development
• Regional Cooperative Marketing/Materials Money from Qwest, MAEC, Alliant and IDED Value-Added Agriculture
• Ag-Connect (Statewide)
• Wallace Foundation Supporter/Partner
• Beginning Farmer Loan Program Support
• Lobbyist on Behalf of Cybus Capital/TecTerra Funding
• VAAPFAP Lobbying Efforts
Legislative
• One-on-One Meetings with State and Federal Department Heads or Congressional Delegations (Annually)
• Rural Issues Summit’s in '94,'96, '99 , '03 & '10 (almost 1,000 attendees)
• Washington & Des Moines Trips (since 1996)
• Taste of S.W. Iowa (Ongoing since 2000)
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