Speaking for Nevada - December 2006

Nevada Commission on Economic Development

Helping the State’s Rural Communities

by Tim Rubald

The Nevada Commission on Economic Development has programs individualized enough to help one Eureka businesswoman who was operating out of her garage to take her product to a global market. We also have programs with a broad enough scope to provide the expert leadership necessary to help an entire community regain its economic viability.

Our national award-winning Procurement Outreach Program helped Nevada companies win $522.8 million in federal, state and local government contracts last year. Over the past 25 years our Community Development Block Grant program has infused $54 million in federal dollars to build projects in rural Nevada.

Last year the Legislature provided us with some new tools to help rural communities. Response to the Nevada Economic Development Fund (NEDF) has been amazing. We believe the success stories that will come out of the NEDF grants will be impressive. In addition to the NEDF, the Legislature appropriated $1 million over the two fiscal years to aid counties negatively impacted by slowdowns in the mining industry. That will really help the Elko Railport project.

In economic development, our focus is on creating wealth for Nevada. This means creating wealth not only for publicly-traded companies, but also for sole proprietorships. One of our success stories is that of Lisa Marshall. She began operating American Pet Diner out of the garage of her Eureka home in 1996. When an overseas distributor contacted her about carrying her product, she says she didn’t even know where to start to find out about trade regulations between the U.S. and foreign countries, so she turned to the NCED for help.

Our director of the NCED Global Trade program helped Marshall with foreign country regulations and documentation and helped her find out what tariffs and taxes were required. Our agency has trade missions that can help set businesses up with buyers, and our honorary consuls also work to develop potential business partners for Nevada companies.

Marshall needed help to find out how to best put her product on a pallet and get it into shipping containers to send to distributors around the world. Ten years later the Eureka woman’s American Pet Diner company boasts $1 million in annual sales. Now that’s a great success story.

Mineral County citizens turned to us when they knew their community was in trouble after jobs at the Hawthorne Army Ammunitions depot dwindled in the 1990s. In 1999 the Babbitt Land Use Study, funded by a Community Development Block Grant, was completed to determine the highest and best use of the area’s land.

NCED’s action planning and resource workshops followed in 2001, and Hawthorne citizens rolled up their sleeves and got to work. We brought in experts to talk about what resources were available to the community. Hawthorne’s industrious citizens followed NCED guidelines and applied for grants totaling $4,873,923. Some of the grant monies were used as matching funds for a $3 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant – one of the largest ever awarded to a single community. Those funds will provide the necessary money to extend water and wastewater infrastructure so 375 acres of land can be developed into an industrial center. The parcel is bisected by U.S. Highway 395 and is located adjacent to the Mineral County Airport. The grant money is expected to generate $218 million in private investments. The new economic center could ultimately create as many as 700 new jobs in Mineral County.

We’re currently working with Lovelock residents in Pershing County and hope to duplicate our success there.

            Our major focus is on creating high-wage primary jobs. Creating jobs brings new money into the economy, which support the services and the needs of people who aren’t currently taking advantage of the economy, such as retirees.

Nevada has been the fasting-growing state in the nation for the past 19 years and we are likely to retain that leadership role. The Nevada Commission on Economic Development stands ready to help businesses every step along the way.

Tim Rubald
Tim Rubald is the executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development.