The effort to plan the spending of a half-million dollars that could shape Boulder’s future met a huge milestone in June, when a deadline was met to allocate the Boulder Development Fund — provided by the state following the closure of the Montana Developmental Center — to 15 carefully vetted economic development projects.
The two-year-long process involved many players. Notably, the 10 at the center of it all — the members of the Boulder Development Fund Board, or BDFB — were volunteers.
“There are always discussions about the lack of adequate numbers of volunteers for a variety of events and causes and here we have these dedicated individuals come forward for the good of the community,” Tom Harrington, co-manager of Jefferson Local Development Corporation (JLDC), said by email. “They have diligently met in the evening monthly over the past two years and put together the projects based on public input, meetings and many planning documents. They reviewed, discussed and recommended project proposals to the [Boulder] City Council that have gotten us where we are today.
