State outreach team outlines free Rural Economic Blueprint, grant windows for Emery County

August Granite, technical outreach manager with the governor’s office of economic opportunity (GOEO) Center for Rural Development, told Emery County mayors and commissioners that the agency is piloting a free Rural Economic Blueprint program to help rural jurisdictions build prioritized project lists and stronger grant applications.

"The idea is that we'll get the ball rolling... so that when a rural communities opportunity grant opportunity comes up, you can say we went through our due diligence," August said during his presentation. He described a five-part process: application/selection, an initial assessment based on one-on-one stakeholder interviews, forming a steering committee, strategic planning (to build a prioritized project list), and implementation assistance.

Deborah (the local outreach manager) was identified as the county point of contact for resources and grants, and August emphasized that outreach managers serve as local champions who assist applicants through the process but do not decide award winners. He identified the Rural County Grant (~$200,000) as broadly available to counties that follow the process and the Rural Communities Opportunity Grant (competitive, project-specific, up to $600,000) as appropriate for shovel-ready economic-development projects.

August warned that the competitive pool for the year has been reduced from about $5 million to roughly $2.5 million, making selections more competitive. He asked the COG members to serve as a steering committee for the blueprint process and to schedule one-on-one stakeholder interviews before the next meeting; several municipalities agreed to participate.

Next steps: COG staff were asked to provide contact information for scheduling interviews and to consider the county and municipal priorities that would feed into the blueprint and future grant applications.