The Panther Valley Blueprint Community team got high marks at a recent training session geared toward presenting potential funders with projects to improve the area as the team prepares to set out on its own.

The team’s final training session was Sept. 18 at the Harrisburg University Academic Center, where members from Coaldale, Lansford, Nesquehoning and Summit Hill gave funding pitches to state agencies and banks.

The pitched projects focused on growth, revitalization and quality of life in the four Panther Valley boroughs and included studies on recreational trails, and water and sewer infrastructure, small business incubator and entrepreneurship training programs, and communitywide cleanup events.

The team plans to use the feedback it received from the session to better tailor pitches to meet the criteria sought by potential funders and others and to align them with the community projects.

“We have the preliminary draft done of our plan,” said team member Joe Guardiani of Nesquehoning. “All 10 teams had to produce a five-year development plan. Ours is all about consolidation.”

The team’s primary goals involve enriching the quality of life in the four boroughs and seeking ways they can come together to move the region forward, he said.

As far as consolidation, the team chose to start small, and looking at things the team can realistically attain as it embarks on the next phase of its 10-year journey, Chairman John Dowling of Summit Hill said.

“Consolidation of the police departments is something I think everybody’s starting to understand that we need, but it’s such a big task,” he said. “If we jumped into that today, it might sink us before we get out of the harbor.”

Last month, one of the pitches involved a sewer infrastructure study, as sewer capacity is vital to community growth, to see what the four boroughs need, Dowling said.

Team members got great feedback on the pitch, especially that they were doing it together as the four boroughs, he said.

Dowling hopes that sewer infrastructure study is something that will be an easy buy-in for the Panther Valley communities, councils and authorities.

“That’s a hard thing to say we don’t want to do, when we all know we need it,” he said. “If you want to build something new, you can’t, because there’s no additional EDUs. So we’re at a standstill. It stalls everything.

“Anything you want to do, you have to first get the sewer squared away.”

Part of the process moving forward would be reaching out to authorities and councils and to see what their thoughts are, Dowling said.

“I don’t think we want to usurp anybody’s authority,” Guardiani said. “Our intention was to piggyback where it makes sense and to bring the four boroughs together to look at some of these big infrastructure problems, whether it’s blight, sewer, water or affordable housing.”

An opportunity

The Blueprint team can’t be viewed a threat to the four communities, when in actuality, the team is an opportunity, Abbie Guardiani of Nesquehoning said.

“We are there to pull four boroughs together,” she said, and working on smaller projects first is a way to grow and become more confident on a path together.

“How many times have we heard in our lives, ‘You can’t do it,’” she asked. “You just can’t do it.”

“No,” Abbie Guardiani added. “Sometimes, you just can’t do it by yourself.”

The team has already worked on community engagement in the form of surveys handed out at various events since the team formed almost a year and a half ago.

Those surveys provided valuable information about what the community wanted or needed, as opposed to what the team thought the community wanted or needed.

That information helped the team develop a five-year plan, and the next phase of community engagement is going to involve connecting with the movers and shakers in each borough to get behind that plan, Joe Guardiani said.

“We need to find partners in the community,” he said. “We need to find people who are willing to work and be open to marrying resources, coming together and working together.

“Because we all share the same set of problems.”

Moving forward

The team is also looking for those people who have the resources to invest in community projects, and some of those people could be Panther Valley natives who left the area but want to give back to their hometowns, he said.

Many people who left the area still follow what is happening here, Abbie Guardiani said, and the team wants to make those connections.

They’re also looking at forming a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization or changing the designation of an existing one, as they’ve learned that some funders want to work with formal organization.

The team also has a fund that people can contribute to through the Carbon County Community Foundation for those wanting to help and invest.

The next step is to formulate a sustainability plan, showing how the team will stand on its own, and then, it’s graduation and certification as a Pennsylvania Blueprint Community on Nov. 12.

The 18 past months have involved intensive training and getting the team ready to work on revitalizing its communities, and come December, they hope to build on those lessons and connections.

“We did our pitches,” Dowling said. “We have some irons in the fire. I think, realistically, we circle back to them.”

Joe Guardiani agreed, pointing out that the feedback they received was good, and they can work with the connections.

“There are people willing to take meetings with us on the proposal we made,” he said, adding that they also need to share their plan and vision with people in the Panther Valley moving forward.

“We need to sit down and paint our vision and get their input,” Joe Guardiani said.