Community Development
Thoma Celebrates 30th Anniversary
Thoma Development Consultants recently celebrated its 30th anniversary as a company. This is a tremendous milestone for our firm. We attribute our success to our dedicated staff and customers.
In the late 1970’s, Senior Consultant and business owner Bernie Thoma was working as a rehabilitation manager for the City of Cortland’s Office of Community Development. Each employee in the office was under individual contract with the City until an audit produced a finding that the City would need to hire the Community Development employees, or hire the staff as consultants. In late 1980, Bernie decided to start Thoma Development Consultants. The City of Cortland was retained as a customer and Thoma also added more municipal customers. Linda Armstrong had also been working in the City’s Community Development Office and agreed to come on board as Thoma’s first employee. She has been with the company every since.
Thoma’s customer base and services have grown tremendously over 30 years. The firm has served well over 100 municipalities, not-for-profits, and private business interests in Central, Southern Tier, and Western New York. In addition to Linda, Thoma now has a dozen additional employees, most of whom have over 10 years with the company. While the firm’s roots lie in grant writing for municipalities, we also provide an array of other services to our customers including grant administration and accounting, comprehensive and strategic planning, market studies, loan portfolio management, economic development, recreation planning, and radon and lead paint testing, to name just a few.
Linda Armstrong’s 30 years with our company assist us tremendously in “making a difference”. At the company’s inception, she was balancing a number of tasks: from grant writing and administration, bookkeeping, typing, and filling the role of receptionist. As the company has grown and diversified, Linda now concentrates her time on helping prospective homeowners navigate the mortgage and banking system and counsels them on homeownership responsibilities; manages the administration of our public infrastructure grants such as water and sewer; works with existing and new business owners on grant and loan opportunities; and addresses many of the day-to-day issues that arise such as subordination requests, and grant compliance issues such as prevailing wage. Her years with the company, knowledge of the issues, and breadth of experience have benefitted all our customers who work closely with her. She has assisted hundreds of persons in achieving the dream of homeownership and assisting businesses with start up or expansion plans.
This year Thoma looks forward to completing a number of important grant projects in the City of Cortland:
- Assisting with the Comprehensive Plan adoption process.
- Presenting the City’s East End Strategic Plan to the Common Council for adoption.
- Administering a 2010 HOME housing rehabilitation grant for City-wide housing rehabilitation.
- Assisting Cortlandville with its USDA Rural Development grant/loan to bring City water along Route 11 in the Town.
- Submitting a 2011 HOME housing rehabilitation grant.
- Submitting a 2011 CDBG for public infrastructure.
Revised 02-23-2011