County gets Three Star certification; boon to funding efforts
Warren County has received its Three Star community certification at level three, the highest that can be reached in the program, after a process that took seven months and involved the Chamber of Commerce, local businesses and organiztions along with local city and county government officials. According to Chamber president Lea Chrisawn Warren County is the only county of the 14 in the Upper Cumberland Development District (UCDD) to achieve level three.
The Three Star certification provides a variety of benefits to the county, including extra points when applying for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), and Tennessee Fast Track Infrastructure grants. The status also allows the county to extend the upper limits of CDBG and Fast Track grants and reduces the ratio on matching grants.
For example, a grant that had the state supplying 80 percent of funds for a project and the county matching at 20 percent could be reduced to a 85/15 split, saving the county money up front on many projects. Three Star certification also gives Warren County preferred status in some state programs.
Melinda Kiefer and John Payne, of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, and Suzanne Garnmeister of UCDD, made up the review team which evaluated the county for Three Star certification.
Keifer said attaining Three Star status is an important move for the county in many ways.
“It gives the community the chance to be awarded based on their assets and their abilities to network those assets to their utmost capacity,” Kiefer said. “The back end of that, after the benefit of the project, is the incentives they’ll receive from the state of Tennessee through the Community Development Block Grant programs and through the Tennessee Fast Track Infrastructure programs for industrial recruitment.”
Kiefer said program actually has more than one benefit for the county.
“It’s a two-fold process,” Kiefer said. “One is the process itself and how it brings the community together, and the other one is they’re being rewarded for going through that process. It allows the Three Star communities across the state to apply for a Community Development Block Grant and have the opportunity to receive the higher score because they have met these criteria.”
Chamber board chairman McMinnville Electric System CEO Rodney Boyd said the project has indeed pulled the community together.
“I’m so pleased with the effort that has gone into it,” Boyd said. “I’ve learned a lot through this process. I’ve learned a lot about the community. I’ve really come to admire some of the things that we were doing that really, until you look at it in this concept, you really don’t realize what all we’ve got going on around here. And the one thing that I have learned is there’s a lot of really cool people who really care a lot, and when the going gets tough, they will get behind you and help you get whatever you need. I think we’ve had a tremendous community effort with this.”
All the municipalities in the county were involved in the process and will benefit equally from the enhanced status when applying for grants. McMinnville Mayor Royce Davenport said he is personally proud of the community’s accomplishment.
“This is great. I love to brag about our community,” Davenport said. “This is another thing that we have done well and it goes back to having good citizens who are willing to volunteer their time and put the effort in that it takes to get these things accomplished. This will benefit us in all the grant programs that were mentioned, in industrial recruiting and in job retention.”
According to Chrisawn, the county will have to resubmit and be reevaluated every year to maintain Three Star certification, but the benefits are well worth the effort. Chrisawn said the level three certification was very much a cooperative endeavor.
“I am so delighted,” Chrisawn said, “and so appreciative of everyone that participated in the process. It was a community-wide process. We could not have done it without the help of all the different departments, the different governmental agencies, the volunteer groups that are out there working to improve the community, and then giving us that information so that we could submit it.”