Region Comes Together in America’s Best Communities Contest Photo courtesy Mallory Haynes
UNITED WE THRIVE In 2014, our area embarked on a journey to find solutions to economic development in our rural community. We entered the America’s Best Communities (ABC) contest as the West Central Mountains (WCM), encompassing Meadows Valley and Valley County, including McCall, Donnelly, and Cascade. More than 300 communities from around the nation entered the contest by identifying strategies to strengthen and promote economic development in their own regions. For us, those strategies focused on six key areas: jobs, housing, transportation- infrastructure, educational, cultural and recreational opportunities, health and wellbeing, and regional communication. Our plan was chosen as one of the top 50 and we were awarded $50,000 to fully develop our community economic development strategy. In addition to hiring consultants to aid the WCM in our planning, our original committee of eight quickly grew into a regional steering committee of 20. By engaging each community in our region to identify common challenges, we were able to find common solutions. And that work paid off big! Even before submitting our final plan to the next ABC contest round, our economic development strategy was honored with the Vernon Deines Merit Award for an Outstanding Small Town Special Project Plan from The American Planning Association and the APA Idaho Outstanding Plan Award.
46
In addition to these awards, our plan moved us forward in the contest to the top 15, next to the top eight in 2015, which came with an additional $100,000 to start implementing our strategies. For a chance to win the top prize in April 2016, each semi-finalist was challenged to make as much progress on their economic development plans as possible within an 11 month timeframe. The WCM team came back to the region and got to work on 21 tactics to move forward. Over the course of 11 months, the committee was able to complete all but one of the tactics set forth. On April 19, 2017, the ABC contest came to an end. Although our plan was not chosen, we could not be more proud of the growth this contest has jump-started in our community. Moving forward, we plan to create the West Central Mountains Community Foundation and work diligently to fund future economic development projects to support our long term vision. United We Thrive!