Maxey, executive director of the Greater Hamilton County Growth Partnership –GHCGP– said he now has six Hamilton County communities that have committed to the Hometown Pride initiative, the minimum needed for an application to be filed with this Keep Iowa Beautiful program.

Maxey had to file a statement of interest by the end of January. During the past few months, there have been meetings held by Zoom with individuals from the various Hamilton County communities who were interested in initiating this program in their area.

“Hometown Pride is a program for empowering volunteers in their community to lead community projects,” said Maxey. Its focus is to identify unmet needs in a community that volunteers can address.

Maxey introduced Lauren Ditzler, associate director of Keep Iowa Beautiful, who is also a former coach for Hometown Pride. Ditzler has been involved with the Empower Rural Iowa Task Force, and had met Young, who is on this task force, at one of those events.

Although impressed with the program, Young said he just couldn’t find the time to explore it.

He mentioned it to Maxey, who explored it, and has taken it under his wing through the GHCGP.

Ditzler expressed a great amount of excitement as she talked about the success stories of the program. This included Delmar, a community of 542 people which had not seen any new businesses or amenities in 20 years. She explained that volunteers began working together to raise money for a splash pad for their community and raised more than $100,000.

In a success story report from the Keep Iowa Beautiful organization, it said this about Delmar: “After seeing what the community could achieve when they came together, local entrepreneurs and builders report that they gained confidence in the town, and over the next few years Delmar saw five new businesses, several new homes and a total of $2 million in construction projects.

Ditzler said the program needs applicants to apply as a group. Each town works independently and meets periodically as a group, encouraging each other. In Delmar, at the end of five years, they had several hundred volunteers, and raised over $1.5 million.

The Hometown Pride application is currently in process. Maxey reported that his initial statement of interest has been approved. This allows Hamilton County to apply for additional assistance, which would provide a Hometown Pride Coach for five years, who would coordinate and teach the volunteers how to meet their goals.

There is no guarantee that the application will get accepted.

“We have the minimum number (of communities) to apply,” said Maxey. “My goal is to have all nine cities commit to this.”

The strength of the program is to get people involved.

“The program isn’t just about the projects, it’s about building up leadership in the community,” explained Maxey. Instead of questioning what the city or county is going to do, it’s a question of “What are ‘we’ going to do together?” he explained.

The program isn’t free. The cost to conduct the program is $400,000 to hire the coach, who is committed to the communities for five years. If successful, Hometown Pride covers 75% of that cost, while the remainder would need to be matched locally.

The GHCGP has made a commitment to help support the program with $7,000 each year for five years. Maxey is also hoping to be successful in receiving a $10,000 grant through the Hamilton County Hotel Motel grant, which would make the cost to each city only $750 a year.

Maxey, in addition to providing the hours to communicate with the various cities and get their involvement, also has written the statement of interest that was due in January.

Young said Maxey’s involvement has been critical, and he is working on behalf of the GHCGP.

“Ottie will apply on behalf of the Growth Alliance for the rural hotel-motel tax grant that is open until March 6,” he said.

“I’ve been to a lot of a meetings over the past year and visited with Lauren Ditzler,” said Young, “I just didn’t have the time to pursue this.”

Most of the Hamilton County communities already have a development program in place, and are pretty excited about being involved in this.

“There will only be one new county to be part of this program. They have been really successful and they want to maintain this,” said Young.

If the hotel-motel application would be successful, it will help each community in the county..

Supervisor Chairman Rick Young commended Maxey.

“Kudos to Ottie for connecting the dots,” he said.

The applications are due in May, said Maxey. In the meantime, he is hoping the remaining three communities will decide to join with the rest of the county.

In other business, the lease for the Superior Street building was tabled again, and a hearing was held for the multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan.

Maxey also indicated that they are attempting to find a date to reschedule the legislative forum sometime in March.