Times Observer photos by Josh Cotton
Dolores Timco outlined how the Ronnie and Joyce Weller Tidioute Development Fund will benefit her business as the fund’s first grant recipient.
With that sustained population decline come a whole slate of problems that towns throughout much of rural America face.
Solving those challenges is a big puzzle.
Some of the challenges can be tied to funding.
And the Ronnie and Joyce Weller Tidioute Development Fund aims to get some good things going.
Ronnie Weller, center, discusses his hopes for revitalization in Tidioute during this week’s Warren Worx stakeholder meeting held at Tidioute Community Charter School.
The effort was highlighted as part of this week’s Warren Worx meeting.
“We’re in this thing to make a go, and we’re planning to make a go,” Ronnie Weller said. “We started getting money for the people here.”
The development fund, in cooperation with the Community Foundation of Warren County, aims to boost economic growth by supporting existing businesses and fostering the creation of new ones.
Weller acknowledged the topic is emotional for him.
“We’ve got something here going good and we’re going to make it better,” he said of the town where he and his wife, Joyce, have made their life. “That’s what it’s going to be. Whatever we have to do. We’re asking for people to help us. We’re going to do whatever it takes to get this thing going.”
Dolores Timco, whose business J. Lauren Interior Designs was the first grant recipient, said that facade projects were implemented in Tidioute in the 1990s and 2002s.
“Since then, everything has declined,” she said. “Ronnie and Joyce Weller, Tidioute is their home. Their heart is here. They saw that’s happening to our town and wanted revitalization.”
Timco said the first $5,000 grant award will help her undertake marketing efforts, replace the window lettering as well as a weathered sign and make interior improvements.
The next $5,000 grant, she said, would be used to redo the lighting in her shop as well as some equipment.
Timco outlined how helping her businesses also helps several local artisans that sell items in her shop.
“People don’t know the backstory of businesses like mine,” she said. “There have been times (I’ve) just barely been able to pay the expenses. This is why this is such an incredible blessing. I’m very honored to be the first recipient.”
“We really appreciate anything that they’re doing with” the fund, Timco said. “This could really draw people once again from out of the area, if we can lift the town out of being so desperate looking.”
“(We’ve) got a Heart and Soul initiative that has done a lot of work, putting together plans (for) how they want to interface to help the community,” Rick Wagonseller, one of the funds’s advisory panel members, said, noting that the borough government is also “heavily involved. Ronnie has come alongside them. He really wants to help the businesses. By helping the businesses, you help the tax base. By helping the tax base, you help the school.”
