Ask any local official his or her opinion of the Southern Indiana Development Commission and you'll hear nothing but praise.
“They're really good people to work with,” said Chris Ritchie, a Decker Town Council member. “They're so helpful. Any question that we have, they're there to help us answer it and if they don't know the answer, they'll find out.”
“They've been very instrumental,” said Tim Murphy, president of Bruceville's town council. “We're very appreciative of them.”
Within the past few years alone, SIDC has helped various Knox County communities with various projects, from housing rehabilitation projects and to grants for water line and sewer work.
SIDC recently submitted a grant for improvements to the water system in Decker, is working on submitting a grant for Bicknell's stormwater drainage repair project and helped get Vincennes' levee repair project get funded, among other endeavors.
And those projects contribute to a legacy of community improvement that SIDC has been fostering for quite some time.
Back in the 1970s, Indiana State University established the Center for Economic Development with a field office in Crane that would serve Daviess, Greene, Lawrence and Martin counties. It then adopted the name of SIDC and expanded to include Knox County.
SIDC was officially organized in December 1973 at City Hall in Washington, and the first SIDC office was located in the Southside Fire Station in Loogootee.
In the early 1980s, the office moved to its present location at 405 JFK Ave., Suite A, in Loogootee. The Economic Development Administration has continued to support SIDC through a planning assistance grant for the past 40 years.
And over the course of those years, the name of the game has always been the same for SIDC: focus on community and economic development and improving the quality of life in its member counties.
To receive SIDC's help, those member counties invest a certain amount of money into SIDC's budget each year, a stipulation the counties signed on to when they agreed to partner with the commission. For each person living in a member county, the county invests 25 cents. This year, for example, Knox County will pay a “membership fee” that amounts to $9,519.
Though that, coupled with the EDA funding, does help keep SIDC up and running, where the organization ultimately makes its money is through the actual administration of grant programs.
“Most of the grants come from federal or state agencies, which require the applicant to have some sort of financial accounting and control how the project operates,” said Greg Jones, SIDC's executive director.
And since SIDC actually helps the grant recipient carry out a particular grant project — they don't just help with grant applications — they're paid for those administration and management services. That money is generated through fees for service contracts, and additional revenue is also generated from other state and federal programs.
Every year, SIDC updates its comprehensive economic strategy to make sure the staff members at the commission know what projects communities and counties want the organization to be working on.
“We keep an eye out for certain grants as they come about,” Jones said. “We'll go out and research different grants and there are also some tried-and-true grants that come in every year.
“We also try to see if there's any way of tying certain projects together to help lower the cost for everyone involved.”
In that respect, SIDC is a big proponent of regionalism and cooperation amongst communities.
“We try to promote communities working together because when it comes to economic development, we don't need to be competing with people 10 miles away,” Jones said.
But the best way SIDC can serve its communities is by taking on the role of problem solver.
“What we like to see is someone coming to us with a project or a problem, and then we can go try and find funding to solve that problem,” Jones said.
Once a community comes to SIDC with a problem and the organization finds a grant that can address that issue, the timeframe for the actual release of the grant funding varies.
“If it's a planning-style grant, it can be considerably quicker — it can take three to six months — just because you don't have to worry about construction costs or having an engineer design a plan for you,” Jones said. “For infrastructure, which is when you start getting larger grants, typically those projects take longer. Sometimes it can take eight to 10 years to develop a project before it even goes into the grant phase.”
At the quickest, Jones said there's about a six-month period before the grant is administered, but that's only if the stars are aligned and everything is done right the first time.
Between all its different programs, SIDC submits 30-35 grant applications a year and Jones said the rate of return is pretty good: about 20 to 25 of those actually get funded.
“The other ones that don't get funded will be retooled and will be submitted in the next round of funding,” he explained.
All that work is done by a nine-member staff, relatively small given the amount of projects SIDC helps spearhead for a large geographic area.
“Our staff is so good at what they do that it takes them half the time to do it than it might take someone else. That's why we can take on a larger volume of projects than many other agencies would be able to,” Jones said.
Between 2008 and 2014, $54 million in grants directly touched SIDC, Jones said, whether SIDC worked on administration, project development, or some other aspect. That was the commission's busiest period because the government released federal funding to address all the problems that arose during flooding in 2008.
In that time span SIDC has brought around $12 million into Knox County, and folks around here are quick to say how grateful they are for what SIDC has done.
“It's an absolutely wonderful organization,” said Mayor Joe Yochum, who represents Vincennes on the SIDC board. “They pretty much administer all our grants and make sure that we have all the proper reporting done and everything is followed.”
“SIDC is always there to direct us with subtle guidance and we're very lucky to have them around,” said Mike Leech. “I don't know anybody else in the area who does what they do.”
Jones, who's been with SIDC since 2001 and has been executive director for seven or eight years, says SIDC is a uniquely talented and successful agency that's a great go-to community resource for a couple different reasons.
For one thing, SIDC has a hefty amount of institutional knowledge under its belt.
“When elected officials get elected and start (their terms), they don't always understand the federal and state regulations or how to develop a project within certain guidelines. That becomes a critical (role) for SIDC to perform,” Jones said. “Plus, we work on a lot of projects and elected officials come and go, but there's always someone at SIDC who's working on those projects to keep them moving forward. I think that's why we stay in business.”
Additionally, over the decades that SIDC has been in existence, it has achieved a level of trust amongst area communities that's sometimes hard to come by.
“Most of the elected officials come to trust SIDC because we've helped them through so many projects,” Jones said.
And at the heart of all those projects is, in one way or another, regionalism.
“If we work together, we can plan for better and brighter futures,” Jones said. “And that's a rewarding and fulfilling job.”