ECD

Zoning & Entrepreneurship

Lots of businesses get started out of the home and it's important for home-based entrepreneurs to understand the zoning laws and what to do if they would like for some of those laws to be changed. Here are some suggestions from Entrepreneur Magazine. The entire article can be found here.

If it's illegal to operate a homebased business in your city or county, there's something you can do to change things. Following are some steps you can take to change the zoning laws in your area.

1. Establish a committee of home-based business owners willing to stand up and be counted. Get mentally prepared for criticism from every corner and the chance that your business could be shut down.

2. Find out what the zoning regulations are in neighboring communities, particularly those similar in character and size to yours. If operating a home-based business is legal in these areas, it could lend credence to your arguments. If no communities in your area have enacted such an ordinance, contact a city with characteristics similar to yours that has even if it's not nearby.

3. Contact your zoning department to see if it has received complaints about illegally operated home-based businesses. Depending on your findings, you could use the results to prove that home offices are quiet and don't cause problems or to pinpoint a need to legalize home occupations and free up zoning inspectors to handle more important infractions.

4. Do your research. Get local and national statistics on how many entrepreneurs are working from home; describe who they are and what types of businesses they operate. If possible, find out how many people in your community have business licenses, what their average annual sales are, and how much local, state and federal taxes they pay. This will allow you to present data showing home-based business owners as people contributing to the economic foundation of the city. You might also want to highlight anyone who is the only local provider of a particular service.

5. Once you've assembled a research arsenal, use this information to build a coalition that will support a home occupation ordinance. This committee should include home-based business owners, major corporations that use the services of home-based consultants, government officials, homeowner's associations, labor unions, the head of the county zoning department and anyone else with a vested interest.

6. Remember, your goal is to educate first and then mobilize the community to support home-based entrepreneurs.

Doing Good by Eating Well: The "Pod Commisary Model"

A Vermont diner that focuses on buying and serving local foods is working toward a "pod commissary model" in which a "pod" of five restaurants share purchasing and preparation by a central commissary that makes purchasing, delivery by farmers, and initial processing much more efficient than if each restaurant did it alone.

When applying the multiplier effect of these dollars spent, it is estimated that the $1,200,000 spent by a 5-diner pod in local agrarian communities would translate into an economic impact of approximately $6,000,000 annually, encourage other farm and distribution-related services to be created.

Great Economic & Community Development Articles in the Journal of Extension

Submitted by Laura Hoelscher, Editor, Journal of Extension

During his presentation at the ECD Retreat last week, Chuck Hibberd referred Nebraska's Red Carpet Service program. You can read all about, "Red Carpet Service--Linking Rural Communities to Travelers and Tourists" in the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Extension (JOE).

And the April issue of JOE also has a few articles that may interest you, including another article on rural tourism and one on building entrepreneurship and leadership in rural communities. Check it out here.

Local Food Purchase Policy

In 2006, The Woodbury County (Iowa) Board of Supervisors passed a "Local Food Purchase Policy" that required local government departments to purchase locally-produced foods. The goal was to increase local demand and spur economic growth in the county. A copy of the policy may be found here. 

Meet Janet Ayres

Janet Ayres has been fascinated with changes in rural communities since she was a teenager on a diary farm in Carroll County, Indiana. The controversial public issues she witnessed in her community inspired her to devote her career at Purdue University to developing educational programs that build the capacity of citizens to affect the future of their communities. Her Extension and teaching activities focus on the areas of leadership and community development. Janet was a leader and collaborator in developing several state-wide programs including the Indiana Ag Leadership Program and Take Charge, a strategic planning program which has been adopted in several other states. Janet has worked in over 200 rural communities in Indiana and has published over 90 publications, manuals and curricula on leadership and rural development.

From 1996-2002, Janet served as assistant Extension director and program leader for the Leadership & Community Development program area. During this time she initiated and provided leadership to the Purdue Extension Land Use Team and the Leadership Development Team.

In 2003, Janet developed the Indiana Natural Resources Leadership Development Institute in partnership with the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources .This program is focused on developing leadership skills in collaboration, negotiation and conflict management for people who work with controversial natural resource issues. NRLDI is offered each fall.

Currently, Janet is working with the Indiana Conservation Partnership and has co-developed a new state-wide leadership program for Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisors.

Janet serves as a Senior Fellow with the North Central Regional Rural Development Center at Iowa State University. In this role, she developed the Foundations of Practice program to enhance community development core competencies of Extension professionals. A series of educational programs are offered through distance education to Extension staff across the country.

Students are a high priority for Janet. She serves on several graduate student committees and teaches an undergraduate course, AGEC 435 “Leadership in a Changing World”, during the spring semester. She was also a leader and collaborator in developing two new student leadership programs – Purdue’s College of Agriculture Leadership Development Certificate Program and the Leadership in Action program developed with the University of Wisconsin and the University of Illinois. She continues to be active with these programs.

Janet has received many awards including the Sharvelle Distinguished Extension Specialist Award, the Extension/Public Service Award from the Rural Sociological Society, the Fredrick L. Hovde Award for Service to Rural Indiana, and she is a fellow of the Kellogg National Leadership Program. Through this program, she studied leadership in emerging democracies as countries were making a transition in the early 1990’s. Recently she was recognized as a "Friend of Conservation" by the National Association of Conservation Districts.

Janet has a great interest in international work and has traveled to over 50 countries on study tours. She has conducted leadership and rural development programs in Poland and Russia.

Janet puts her leadership expertise into practice. She has served in over 80 leadership positions in state, regional and national organizations including the Indiana Rural Development Council, Indiana Institute of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition, Indiana Economic development Council, and the Community Development Society. She is also very active in her local community where she initiated a county-wide visioning process, Carroll County at the Crossroads, and a leadership development program, Leadership Carroll County. She serves on many local boards and committees.

Janet is a certified planner. Prior to coming to Purdue in 1977, she worked as a land use planner in private consulting firms in Saratoga Springs, New York and in Indianapolis. She loves being a part of Purdue and working to make the Land Grant mission of the university a meaningful reality.

Podcast Now Available: Indiana Circuit Breakers

We're glad to make available this inaugural On Local Government podcast featuring Economist Larry DeBoer (Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics). In this month's podcast Larry explains the Indiana circuit breaker. You can download this and load it to an iPod or listen online with QuickTime or Windows Media Player. The two formats are listed below:

• April 2008 Capital Comments Podcast (wmv format)
• April 2008 Capital Comments Podcast (mp3 format)

Extension Educators, you may consider burning this podcast to a few CDs and dropping them off with folks in your community who might be interested but may not be likely to listen online.

April 25 Local Government Finance Program Now Online

The On Local Government program from April 25, 2008 is now available online for viewing. Here is the link. The handout is available here.