Main Street New Jersey program threatened

Preservation New Jersey broke the news today that the Main Street New Jersey program is under threat.  The PNJ blog posting is here with that news .http://preservationnj.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/main-street-new-jersey-faces-more-cuts-economic-development-successes-threatened/#comment-919.

This is really tragic because the program, run by Jef Buehler and assistant Main Street coordinator Heather McCall have done excellent work to grow the program.  Full disclosure:  I was a consultant for the last year for that program.  The reinvestment statistics from the participating programs are excellent.  I also understand from Carola Hartley, the Executive Director of the Bridgeton Main Street program, that a coalition of southern NJ Main Street towns have joined together to lobby. Here is their piece which contains a few talking points.  America_Grows_on_Main_Street-1

Friends in Washington State have recently been able to get their shuttered Main Street program back into the State Historic Preservation Office. Timothy Bishop, who runs the Main Street Ellensburg program has been the chief driver of the effort. Their Facebook page www.Facebook.com/Supporting Main Street in Washington State got over 500 fans in less than three days once the word got out, and now has more than 800 Fans.  They updated their fans regularly and created an awesome coalition to press for the program and budget over the last three months.  Tim and his crew are to be congratulated for a job well done.

In 2002 I was in Jef and Timothy’s position when the Illinois Main Street program’s budget was cut from $1.1 million to $100,000 by then Governor George Ryan. I wrote about our intense lobbying effort in Main Street News in January 205 . Read what I had to say then here in two articles:  What you can do:  Lessons from Illinois Main Street on page 10, and A Valiant Effort on page 6-8. msnews-2005-01 Main Street Advocacy

As we know more about the efforts to move the Main Street New Jersey program to the Department of State and get an appropriation for next year we will post that information here.