Town to apply for Rural Center funds

The Sparta Town Council gave Sparta Town Manager Bryan Edwards the go-ahead to submit an application to take part of the North Carolina Small Towns Economic Prosperity Demon-stration Program during its Jan. 3 meeting at town hall.

Edwards told the members of the council the North Carolina Rural Center is going to designate 20 small towns in the state to take part in a demonstration project that would examine economic development within the towns. The towns are slated to be announced on March 1, according to information provided on the online application.

Noting the town’s work on the Sparta Teapot Museum and “street scape” projects, Edwards said, “Things that are going on and things that have gone on in the town would make it more agreeable and conducive to economic growth and development. We’ve already got several good things that are already in place and I think we should take advantage of what has already been done and the projects we’ve been working on.”

Mayor John Miller asked if there would be expenses involved on the part of the town.

In response, Edwards said, “Initially, we think there’s going to be about a $20,000 planning grant and then, over a period of about three years, we could receive as much as $200,000. We’re going to be spending a lot of this money anyway on projects...”

According to a document on the program distributed to members of the council, funding for the project is made available through the research and demonstration portion of the Economic Infrastructure Fund authorized last year by the General Assembly.

The project has three goals, to support economic recovery and revitalization in small towns affected by structural changes in the economy or recent natural disasters; to test a model of technical assistance and grant-making to aid in revitalization efforts; and to provide information to the development of public policies that support long-term investment in the economic vitality of small towns in the state.

Following the meeting, Edwards said the project would “take a look at what we’re doing to encourage economic development within the county. The details of this haven’t been fully explained to us yet, but they have said it’s not a grant, it would be matching funds. Anything we’d get we’d have to match and we’re assuming we’d have to match dollar-for-dollar. They’re saying the maximum would be $200,000 over a three-year period. If we were lucky enough to be designated as a demonstration project, then we’d have the potential to maybe draw down a couple hundred thousand dollars over three years to implement some projects.

“What we did in terms of our community visioning meeting and some of those things we’ve gotten started, puts us in a better position to be considered as a demonstration project,” Edwards continued. “To me, some of the things they’ve explained to me that they’re interested in, they want to know what you’re doing to improve your downtown situation. What are you doing about planning and what are you doing about reusing old buildings and trying to get them back into the mainstream? I think we can point to a lot of examples of things that we’re doing — just like this storm water study grant we’re applying for. That shows we’re taking the initiative to identify where we’ve got problem areas and try to fix it.

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