The formula grant was formerly known as the allocation grant. You have to apply for it, but the money is allocated every year. That was awarded and that will be going to help the Ohio City project. We used it to leverage the grant. If you put the allocation toward something, you get more points on the grant. So if you look at it around the county there is $800,000, $500,000, $300,000, and $70,000, all in the last month.”

Down the road, there are more plans for other grant money. “Our next step in our five-year plan is the Village of Willshire to work on solving the flooding issue. Willshire is next in line as far as us trying a critical infrastructure or neighborhood revitalization grant. You can only have three of these open at the same time. The project in Middle Point is closing now, so along with the downtown Van Wert grant, then we will try to do Willshire. But in 2017, we’re going to focus on Venedocia. ODOT has a project going through to fix up (State Route 116), and we can use ODOT monies to leverage a project and do a million dollar project in Venedocia and it only costs the village a fraction of the value to do.”

Beyond the Venedocia project, Smith stated the county would like to do a project to take care of roads through the villages, like Convoy, Scott, and Wren to get some extra roads finished off. Attracting funding is easier with the practice of leveraging a project to achieve another project. Smith said the county and its associates have been teaching the practice to the City of Delphos and some small Allen County villages.

In other news from the county offices, Mike Jackson will officially be retiring on September 15 after many years of service. “Sue (Gerker) will be starting as a full-time county employee on September 1, and she will be helping with the grant administration,” reported Smith. “Sue will be working on grant administration and the revolving loan fund, and she’ll still be doing her role with City of Delphos. So she’ll still be in economic development, but now we have that grant aspect included in that.”

Smith added that Gerker has been learning the job by training with Jackson and that she is the natural candidate for the position right now.

“At least until January 1 and the strategic plan is launched,” stated Smith, “and we realize how we are going to combine all the offices.” The Van Wert County commissioners are working on a plan with G.O.P. mayoral candidate Jerry Mazur to combine the economic development office of the county and the city. “When we all come together, then all these big wins will come out of one office, and we can all work together and help do more,” Smith summarized.

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