Community organization shifts its resources

After a year at the helm of the Lake County Community Development Corporation, executive director Gypsy Ray is making tough decisions designed to strengthen the organization.

Ray eliminated or altered several positions, saving the organization money for duties she re-assigned into the job descriptions of other employees.

Lake County Community Development in Ronan serves Lake, Mineral and Sanders counties as well as the Flathead Indian Reservation. The organization cultivates economic growth in Western Montana by offering resources to develop communities, businesses and food and agriculture enterprises. The organization serves entrepreneurs, cooperatives and local governments.

Through its Business Development Center, the community development corporation provides businesses with technical assistance, education and financial support related to planning, management, marketing, government contracting, accounting, and food processing and product exportation.

Its Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center is Montana’s only inspected food hub, which provides resources to food and agriculture businesses including regulatory expertise, business planning assistance, food production and storage. 

Ray said the restructuring affects positions in the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center, The Business Development Center and the Community Development Infrastructure. “We need to run our business like we expect our clients to run their businesses,” she said. “We want to be efficient and effective on the federal, state, local level as well as in our own enterprises.”

Ray said all departments made cuts at the beginning of July, when the new fiscal year began.

“There are really strategic reasons,” she said.

The development corporation and its services are vital to the continual growth of the region, Ray said, “But the public doesn’t know who we are. We have so many things to offer.”

The organization is planning a September fundraiser. Harvest! A Celebration of Local Food, is an event designed to support and promote locally grown food and raise awareness of the organization’s strengths.

Money raised will go to an account designated for expense items the corporation doesn’t get from its regular grants and other income sources. The community development center is the brainchild of Billie Lee, who founded the group in 1992 and retired from her 22-year-long position this spring.

The Ronan complex offers business people a commercial food incubator or sorts to test, produce and process their products. The kitchen center has a large storage freezer, a quick-freezer to retain freshness and large dedicated dry-goods storage room. The culinary kitchen offers separate, government-certified processing rooms for meat, produce, wet and dry goods.

Several area businesses use the facilities to process and store their products. In keeping with its mission to help the farming-rich counties it serves, the organization will use a local venue and its employees, local food and other items to put on its September fundraiser.

On the Web: www.lakecountycdc.org.