• Madison County is serviced in parts of the county by Farmers Rural Electric Cooperative. As part of their support of local economic development activity, a revolving loan fund is available. Criteria for consideration includes the financial need of the project, probability of success, security offered, number of jobs created or retained, quality of jobs, among others. Funds are made available as low-interest loan of up to $150,000.

Madison County is also serviced in limited portions of the southern county by Clarke Rural Electric Cooperative. Their revolving loan fund has a goal of providing low interest loans to assist with local economic development projects. Similar to Farmers REC, their priorities include job creation and retention, diversification of the local economy, improving skills of rural workforce, and upgrading public infrastructure. Loan amounts range from $5,000 minimum to $50,000 maximum.

• The Southern Iowa Council of Governments / The Southern Iowa Development Group (SIDG) was established for the purpose of administering the Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) program. The SIDG is designed to encourage new or expanded development activities in the Southern Iowa Economic Development District. The creation and retention of quality jobs in the region serves as the main objective of the program.

Key program components are:

• The program will make loans at an interest rate of 4% +/- below the prime lending rate to qualifying commercial and industrial projects;
• The project must create jobs, with an agency target of $10,000 of loan funds per new job created;
• A minimum equity of 10% will be required from the developer/owner;
• A coordination will be required with the local development corporation, who must financially support the application with a 25% local match;
• The maximum loan term could be twenty years;
• SICOG will request some type of security on the loan, and;
• The maximum loan generally will not exceed $125,000.

For more information on this subject please contact the SICOG office 641.782.8491.

Incentives can be available for projects in Winterset. The current property tax rate (2007 levy) for industry is $41.01377 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The city may use the incremental new value of newly taxable valuation due to construction of new industrial or commercial facilities to provide economic development incentives to a business or industry. Tax increment financing may be used to pay the cost of public improvements and utilities which will serve the new private development, to finance direct grants or loans to a company, or to provide a local match for federal or state economic development assistance programs. TIF does not increase a company’s property taxes, but it allocates virtually all of the taxes which are paid back to the city, where they may be spent to benefit the company.