Entries for Outstanding County Program Awards due Feb. 26

With 100 counties and 100 talented county staffs in North Carolina, there are bound to be a lot of good ideas for ways to improve and expand services to citizens. The NCACC Outstanding County Program Awards (OCPA) competition, approved by the NCACC Board of Directors in 1991, is designed to recognize that outstanding work being done by counties across the state and also to share these ideas and innovations with other counties.

Now in its 19th year, the awards program honors counties and groups of counties (not individuals) for their support of excellence.

Entries involving multi-jurisdictional collaboration are strongly encouraged to apply. Programs entered into the LGFCU Employee Productivity Awards Program also may be submitted for the OCPA program, but the focus is more directly on innovation and multi-county collaboration and, while productivity is encouraged, it is not the major factor in determining winners.

Projects/programs must have been implemented between Jan. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009. Applications must be postmarked, faxed or e-mailed to the Association by Friday, Feb. 26. Winning programs will be featured in an issue of CountyLines, and the winners will be honored during a meeting of their county's board of commissioners during National County Government Month in April.

To obtain an entry form, visit www.ncacc.org/awards/ocpa/about.html.

Judging teams made up of elected and appointed county officials review entries and select at least three winning programs in each of three categories:

• General Government includes programs related to environmental protection, economic development, libraries, arts, parks and recreation, human/race relations, and general county administrative services.
• Human Services includes programs related to social services, health, mental health and other programs to aid the elderly, disabled, low-income, youth, etc.
• Public Education/Participation includes any program that educates and/or seeks to involve citizens related to county programs or services. Programs can be audience-specific (news media, civic groups, youth, etc.) or directed toward the general citizenry.

Major criteria for the program are:

• Innovation: How unique is the project or program? What makes it different from others like it?
• Success: What were the objectives? How well were they met? How widespread is the impact of the project or program? What is the anticipated long-term impact?
• Effort and difficulty: How well did the project or program use available resources, given the limitations on such resources? What obstacles or challenges had to be overcome and how was this done?
• Collaboration: How did the project involve collaboration with other agencies, jurisdictions, nonprofits, businesses, etc.? How well was this collaboration achieved?