Financing Creative Communities

Financing Creative Communities was a two hour workshop lead by Bob Melville, from Performance Management Partners. Despite the title, the workshop focused more broadly on successful project management. The workshop took place on November, 15 2007 at the Fairfield Inn in Williamston, NC at both 12:00 noon and 6:30 p.m.

Financing a project is an important component to implementing a project. In order to have a successful project there must be leadership, vision, perseverance, performance measures, financial resources and public support. It can be difficult to organize and implement community-based projects these days even if you have all of these components. Voters often reject new taxes and referendums for community-based projects. The federal government has greatly limited its role in community development in recent decades.

There is a clear gap in eastern North Carolina between capacity and need. There are a large number of small local governments in the region. Public officials are consumed with the day-to-day operations of the town government and seldom have the time or the means to focus on developing and implementing new projects.

We reviewed the most significant indicators for gauging the financial condition and health of municipalities and discussed some of the most important best practices for the financial management of small communities. Project managers and town officials need to be aware that pay-as-you-go looks good on paper in the short-term but it means that there is no long-term investment. It can cost a town more in the future to repair infrastructure than it would to borrow now and invest in the future. This can be a particularly important issue for small towns with large enterprise funds for their public utilities

There is only so much that a small town government can do on its own. It is therefore very important for the community to identify stakeholders and to mobilize them. A strong business case must be made and a rigorous feasibility study should be conducted before project financing is sought or secured. The success of a project depends on the ability of key stakeholders to collaborate and coalesce on a vision for the community.

Handouts

The following handouts were designed and developed by FoR ENC to provide critical project management information to the members of the Creative Communities Commissions. These handouts offer information on how to assess the fiscal health of a community as well as resources that communities can draw upon for the development, financing and implementation of future projects. The worksheets are provided to guide the project development process and can be adapted accordingly. We plan to continually revise the handouts to incorporate any feedback we receive and will post updated handouts periodically.

SHEET 1: Fiscal Health Indicators [18 KB]