By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
The East Troy Village Board discussed the possibility of creating a grant program for village businesses looking to improve facades or services on Aug. 15.
The board budgeted about $6,800 for “developer’s fees” for this year, but the use of that money has been debated by the board for months.
Trustee Ann Zess has been a proponent of using the money for some type of program to assist business owners when developing their properties. Whether the money is used in helping people with the fees associated with those developments or something else has been debated with the East Troy Community Development Alliance recommending a program such as this would be a good idea.
The matter has been discussed at previous board meetings and Committee of the Whole meeting, but nothing had been decided on.
When the agenda item came up at the Aug. 15 meeting, Trustee Dusty Stanford said the board had decided not to do anything with the money.
Trustees Zess and Forty Renucci said that wasn’t the case and the board still had the money in the budget and needed to decide what it should be used for.
Zess said she felt that lately if an idea came from her, it was being dismissed out of hand and wanted the board to seriously consider what it could to do promote business development in the village.
Zess suggested possibly using the money in a grant program similar to what the Village of Waterford does on a smaller scale.
There was a bit of concern from a few board members about funding a program like that year after year, but board President Randy Timms said he could possibly see something like $5,000 a year budgeted for it with 10 recipients each year at $500.
The board asked Zess to come back with a proposal for grant program for it to consider and vote on.
