PEKIN, Ill. — University of Illinois Extension’s Richard Proffer is using his expertise to help local communities gain awareness of state funding sources for important assets like economic opportunity and development funding and broadband expansion. Following a successful multi-community meeting facilitated by the Fulton, Mason, Peoria and Tazewell County Extension unit office, Proffer is planning to take his informational meetings to more Illinois towns and cities during the remainder of this year. 

“We are really focusing on the smaller, rural towns,” said Proffer, who was inspired to host the meetings after speaking with community leaders who’d never heard of some of the programs for which he can offer links and contact information. “We started to say ‘they don’t know what they don’t know,’ and out of that sprang an idea to bring the state’s three largest funders to these people. These three funders can meet a lot of the needs these community leaders expressed.” 

Those entities include the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), the Economic Opportunity, Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) and the Illinois Office of Broadband. On Feb. 18, Proffer held the first Extension Rural Town Leader Funding meeting along with three representatives of the funding entities and around 20 community leaders representing several towns and organizations from central Illinois. The towns included Canton, Dunfermline, Bath, Havana, Manito, Elmwood and other rural farming communities. 

Attending the meeting were DCEO’s North Central Regional Managers, Lauren Gibson and Mark Adams, who discussed programs aimed at community and economic development. The topics included loans, grants, tax credits, incentives, workforce development programs, small business development programs and more. 

Discussing the state’s energy transition community grant, which focuses on the closing of coal mines and plants and the economic stress those closures created, was Matthew Swaine, CEJA grants manager. Swaine explained how the program came about and who could qualify. 

In addition, Lead for America Fellow Abi Amstutz-Spencer represented the Illinois Office of Broadband in speaking about the state’s broadband program, which is, as of press time, in limbo due to a federal review for DEI content, according to Proffer.

“These three entities offer great possibilities for rural Illinois. With CEJA having just announced their next round of grant applications, these leaders were able to hear about a ground-floor opportunity for their communities,” said Proffer. “With DCEO, a lot of their grant deadlines are on a rolling basis, with enrollment periods posted on their website. The broadband (program) has been curtailed due to the changes in the federal government, so we are kind of reorganizing and seeing what we can do with the new funding levels and guidelines.

“Our broadband program deals a lot with making fair and equitable broadband available to all in Illinois. That means people who have never had broadband, people who have a hard time keeping broadband because of affordability. In Illinois we would like to equalize that playing field. It is a DEI initiative, and under the (Trump) administration’s request we must re-think that.”

Proffer, who serves as Extension’s community and economic development coordinator for this region, plans to continue to offer Rural Town Leader Funding meetings beginning this summer. 

“(On Feb. 18) we met from 10 a.m. to noon and that afternoon I got a call from Hopedale wondering ‘when is our meeting?’ I had kind of focused that first meeting on the western part of my unit’s region, then Pekin called and asked ‘why weren’t we invited?’ So we are working to put another meeting together for the eastern part of Peoria County and Tazewell County, along with the eastern part of Mason County,” said Proffer. 

The next meetingmwill likely be held in the Tazewell County Extension unit auditorium in Pekin, the Tazewell County seat. “With all of the changes coming down on broadband, I’m kind of waiting to see how the dust settles before setting a date,” Proffer said. 

Interested communities and organizations can contact Proffer at (309) 347-6614.