-: I'm Melissa Norby.
I'm the Director of Community Development
for the city of Decatur.
Mainly, my job is to be a liaison
between the community and the city.
If there's resources that our organizations
or our volunteers need, to connect them with the city
if the city has anything available.
I also investigate different grant opportunities
or funding opportunities if the city has a project
or if any of our local organizations or volunteers
have projects they are working on.
We're super fortunate in that we have about
20 local organizations that are all volunteer organizations
doing great projects on behalf of the city,
so it's important that the city keeps in contact with them,
know what they're doing, make sure that there's no overlap
in services and what everybody's doing
so that everybody's volunteer hours and time
gets the best impact for our city.
We're working on a lot of downtown development right now,
which a lot of rural communities in Indiana are doing,
and right now we're in the middle of fundraising
for a project called the Madison Street Plaza.
We have a lot of great downtown events that are happening
and right now, they just kind of happen on a block or on
a street and there's no rhyme or reason for how they happen.
Not a lot of resources to make sure
that there is restrooms and a sound system
and blocking the street off safely.
So we're creating this plaza and you don't feel like
you're in Decatur anymore, you feel like
you're in this special place, so we're working on
creating this plaza for all of our
downtown and community events.
This project was on the books before I started this job
about two and a half years ago,
and as different community projects come up
and funding is available and not available,
these projects kind of are on the schedule
but don't always happen as quickly as we would like
so we're relieved that this project
is gonna be under construction starting next week,
they're gonna start moving concrete and dirt next week,
and right now we're in the middle of a fundraising campaign
that we were able to identify if we raise $50,000 locally,
the Indiana Housing and Community Development authority
is gonna match us with $50,000.
So we're adding $100,000 more to our project,
which has helped us get to the point
where we're ready to start construction.