![\"Van](\"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/VW-Council-committee-mtg-4-21-14-Group.jpg\")
<\/a>Mazur\u2019s suggestion was made after the county commissioners decided to end their relationship with OSU Extension earlier this year and organize their own economic development program.<\/p>\n
However, without support from the Judiciary and Annexation committee\u2019s other two members, Chair Stan Agler and Jon Tomlinson, who had both previously expressed their wishes for continuing the OSU Extension program, Mazur\u2019s suggestion went nowhere.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s meeting, which was moved up an hour because of Main Street Van Wert\u2019s Annual Dinner, mostly involved a presentation by members of the Van Wert County Economic Development Advisory Group \u2013 the organization created to advise the OSU Extension\u2019s development program.<\/p>\n
Advisory Group member Jon Rhoades provided a history of economic development in the county, beginning with the city\u2019s first economic development director, Mark Hartman, three decades ago.<\/p>\n
Rhoades noted that, after several locally hired development directors went by the wayside, chiefly because of the inability to pay an adequate salary and benefits, local officials heard of the OSU Extension program and decided it would provide a better way to fund economic development efforts. A contract was first signed with OSU Extension in 1997 to provide an economic development program for the county.<\/p>\n
Currently, the city\u2019s hotel-motel tax pays up to $40,000 of current Community Development Director Cindy Leis\u2019 salary, while OSU Extension pays the remainder of her salary and her benefits. The hotel-motel tax and OSU Extension also split the cost of Development Specialist Darlene Myers\u2019 salary and benefits.<\/p>\n
OSU Extension currently pays out approximately $36,000 a year in related salary and benefit expenses for the local development program.<\/p>\n
Vantage Superintendent Staci Kaufman, who chairs the economic development advisory group executive board, touted some of the successes of the OSU program, including obtaining approximately $15 million in grants and business loans for the community \u2013 $5 million alone for the area\u2019s Job Ready Sites \u2013 as well as support for the Towne Center retail project, the Van Wert Community Improvement Corporation\u2019s business incubator project, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Main Street Van Wert downtown development program and the revolving and microenterprise loan programs.<\/p>\n
Although there was not enough support for ending the OSU Extension program on the committee, several City Council members expressed their opinion that the city and county development programs need to work together and urged Kaufman and her group to set up a meeting with the commissioners to discuss how that might be accomplished.<\/p>\n
Kaufman said that, while the commissioners have also expressed interest in meeting with the advisory group, no meeting has yet been held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor As expected, Van Wert City Council\u2019s Judiciary and Annexation Committee decided to stick with the Ohio State University Extension development program at the end of a meeting held Monday to discuss the issue. A suggestion had been brought forth by committee member Jerry Mazur to give OSU Extension its required one-year notice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 02:06:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}