By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
What exactly does the FIVCO area development district do for communities in the five county area of Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Greenup, and Lawrence Counties? That’s what the Grayson Area Chamber of Commerce’s guest speaker, community services director Tim Wright, visited to explain.
“Basically, FIVCO is here to help,” Wright told the chamber. “So, if you want to know how to write a grant, get a grant written, what’s going on in an area, and what we are doing to improve our area, we want to help.”
Wright told the chamber that FIVCO does a lot of its grant writing in the area of water and sewer to assist in local projects in that vein.
“And also, the infrastructure that no one wants to spend money on, we do a lot with that,” he said.
Many local government officials also serve on the FIVCO board, Wright said, and that helps them stay abreast of the community needs. But FIVCO itself is a neutral organization that tries to help every community.
“That is the economic development side,” Wright told the chamber.
“There is also a PDS, or Participant Directed Services,” he continued. “There are people who want or need to hire other people to come into their homes to take care of them. In the past, it’s been up to a year wait for those services, so it’s not an overnight process.”
Wright also told the chamber about ARC, the Aging Resource Center.
“People call FIVCO, and we ask how we can best help them. It is the Goal of FIVCO to keep older individuals in their own home for as long as possible. If someone needs food, we provide food. If someone needs non-medical care, we can help with that. We can even provide meals through Mom’s Meals or Northeast Community Action Agency in Olive Hill.”
On the economic side, FIVCO is also a good source of information about square mileage and population in an area, Wright said, and offered a few statistics.
“Carter County has 409.5 square miles, which is ranked 31 in the State of Kentucky. You have a population (as of 2020) of 26,627 people, 403 employer establishments, with 197 on the Chamber of Commerce. There are approximately 9,778 families living in Carter County, and the median age in Carter County is 41 years old. And the median income is $47,000.”
The value of these statistics, Wright said, is that businesses need to know who they are serving in order to bring them into their stores.
But beyond attracting business, Wright said, it is important to operate that business with integrity. “Given that there are over one hundred thousand business related lawsuits filed annually,” Wright said, “it might seem as though integrity is a lost art. But it is an art that everyone needs to learn, he said. And one of the ways to make that a hallmark of business is to get to know customers and for customers to be able to learn about the business.”
“If you want me to come into your business, I want to learn who you are,” Wright said. “I want to trust your face and trust what you do. I might cost you a little bit,” he told the chamber. “But the payoff more than outweighs the cost.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
