OROVILLE – The Oroville City Council heard from Roni Holder-Diefenbach, Executive Director of Okanogan County Economic Alliance at their Dec. 3 meeting.
Holder-Diefenbach discussed an overview of the Economic Alliance and the various services that it provides.
“I’ve been going out and speaking to all the different city councils throughout the county, no matter how big or how small. We work with all the communities within Okanogan County,” she said.
Economic Alliance is a non-profit 501-C3 organization and was created in 2000 and before that it was called the Economic Development Council, according to Diefenbach. She said the organization has existed in one form or another since the mid-1970s.
“Our main goals and objectives are to promote economic development in the region through planning, research, small business advising, training, technical assistance and infrastructure development,” she said.
She said that a lot of times when people think of the Economic Alliance, that people feel all it does is provide services to small businesses.
“That’s a piece of what it is that we do, it’s a very important piece for our communities, but we also provide technical assistance and work with the communities themselves on public infrastructure and community projects that are going on with non-profits,” said Holder-Diefenbach.
The Okanogan County Commissioners identified the organization as an ADO, which is an Associate Development Organization and every county in the state of Washington has a designated ADO, according to Holder-Diefenbach.
“What that does is allow us to access funding from the Department of Commerce or small business help, including start-up retention, expansion and improvement. It’s a very small bit of funding that comes in for our organization from that,” she said.
She said the organization used to invoice every city in the county, as well as the county, for economic services. When she came in the county’s main objective, as well as that of herself and her board, was to look at the county’s .09 tax dollars. These had recently been allowed to be used to fund economic development, according to Holder-Diefenbach.
“Instead of our office invoicing cities where you’d be paying out of your general funds for the services, we now are able to not do that and get funding directly from the county commissioners using the .09 dollars to help fund our office,” she said.
She added the organization also gets funded through the Small Business Association (SBA) for the Washington Small Business Development Center. The center, according to The Economic Alliance, “is a network of expert business advisors working in communities across the state to help entrepreneurs or small business owners start or grow or buy or sell a business.”
Holder-Diefenbach said, “We have a contract with Okanogan County PUD because we work on industrial loads regarding site selection and recruitment and we also provide the administrative services for the Okanogan County Tourism Council. Any time anybody calls or goes to the Okanogan Country website and inquires about what to do in Okanogan County my office is the one that responds and we provide a clearing house for all the information that goes out. So, we have boxes and boxes of promotional materials on all areas of Okanogan County,” who provided several information sheets on the EA and its services, as well as contact information.
The Economic Alliance also offers
