Yesterday, Jeanne Stinson, the State Director for
Kansas Main Street was in
El Dorado for our annual evaluation.
By receiving reports from committees, surveys from business owners, and taking a good look at our work-plans and budget; she praises the organization on accomplishments and also guides us to correct other aspects of the duties.
This is always an evaluation that we anticipate and look forward to receiving guidance from our State Director.
2010 was a year that she saw many good things happening and then she also had some suggestions as to improving others.
She started by revealing some of the survey responses that she had received from local businesses.
These surveys had 5 questions/statements to “agree, needs improvement, or disagree” with.
The area that we are most proud of is the last statement “
Main Street had a direct impact on the physical appearance of the downtown district”.
This question was unanimously answered that they agree with this statement.
Our Design Committee is one of the organization’s hardest working committees.
With this response on the survey, they should be very proud.
This also shows that the businesses and the community are seeing our efforts to improve the visual aspects of the downtown.
The questions that were not as favorable were those that could be improved with better communication to the community and downtown businesses.
These surveys are great tools for the organization to see where we stand within the community.
Jeanne asked us to look more externally for setting our goals. She thought that we were very focused internally and now needed to set goals that would be considered outside of the organization. She instructed the committees to be more specific with our objectives instead of creating very broad work-plans and commitments. She praised us on our accomplishments such as current code enforcement changes which was because of relationships with the City and also on the growing number of volunteers that we have for our committees.
Jeanne gave us great ideas and encouraged a board retreat in the near future to make more specific objectives and to do additional training of board members.
El Dorado Main Street is a part of
Kansas Main Street which is through the Kansas Department of Commerce.
Because of this, we have great guidelines to work by and leadership resources that are not available to most organizations.
If you have more questions or would like to see a copy of the entire State Evaluation, please call me at 321-3088.
About a year ago the owner of the building located at 117 N Gordy approached El Dorado Main Street with a plan to paint his building. This would be a great improvement to the already painted (but bright white) facade that already existed. The El Dorado Main Street Design Committee has a facade grant program where building owners/business owners are able to receive grants for improvements to their properties. The Committee decided that this would be a great project to help fund. Much work went into the project and due to some weather issues, it took a little longer than expected. Last week I received a call that it was completed. We are very appreciative for the work and expense that went into this improvement to the building and to the downtown district.
