The Hamilton County Supervisors were notified last week that they have been approved for the Hometown Pride Initiative, coordinated through the Keep Iowa Beautiful program.

Hamilton County is one of three areas in the state which were selected to participate in this program.

Union County, including the communities of Afton, Arispe, Creston, Cromwell, Lorimor, Shannon City and Thayer is the other county group which was approved for the program. The City of Newell was also approved with their program beginning in August of this year.

According to the Keep Iowa Beautiful website, the communities were selected based on their demonstrated readiness and enthusiasm for working together to create long-term community improvements.

Ottie Maxey, executive director of the Greater Hamilton County Growth Partnership –GHCGP– submitted an application on behalf of the county in January. Since that time every city in the county agreed to participate in this program if Hamilton County was awarded the opportunity.

Now it has.

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

Hamilton County Supervisor Rick Young was familiar with the program, and talked with Maxey about the possibilities, and Maxey has followed it through to this successful point.

“This is exciting news for Hamilton County,” said Hamilton County Supervisor April Ely. “It took a lot of collaboration to bring all of our communities together, and Ottie Maxey deserves a great deal of credit for leading that effort.”

With this program, each town works independently and meets periodically as a group, encouraging each other. They choose the projects of their choice, and will have additional assistance which would provide a Hometown Pride Coach for five years. That individual would coordinate and teach the volunteers how to meet their goals.

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 designed to be driven from top leadership down, it is meant to bring community members together and learn how to lead each town forward.

“Hometown Prides is another positive step forward and I’m excited to see the opportunities it creates for our communities,” said Ely.

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. Hometown Pride covers 75% of that cost while locally the remainder is matched. That funding is already in place.

The GHCGP has made a commitment to help support the program with $7,000 each year for five years. Maxey also applied for and received a $10,000 grant through the Hamilton County Hotel Motel grant, making the cost to each city only $750 a year.

More than 100 communities have participated in Hometown Pride since its inception in 2012. Together these communities have completed 2500 community projects, raised more than $23 million for local projects and engaged up to 2,000 volunteers annually.

Hometown Pride will launch in Hamilton County this fall. Information on next steps will be announced soon, but for now, it is good news.