Overton Using $50,000 Grant For Three Initiatives

Overton County is looking to re-brand, boost tourism and strengthen its workforce through Tennessee’s ThreeStar program.

Livingston-Overton County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Shannon Cantrell said signage leading tourists downtown, a new county website and developing internship programs are what is planned. Cantrell said a bulk of the $50,000 grant will go towards online improvements.

“Everything has moved to online and when it comes to paying property taxes and things like that you can’t do it on the current county website,” Cantrell said. “It is not very user friendly.”

Cantrell said the new signs are targeting tourists that often miss downtown Livingston. She said this would hopefully bring in additional sales tax revenue.

“One of our challenges has been that a lot of the lake traffic, they always go the bypass and totally miss our downtown area,” Cantrell said. “So something that’s been on our radar for quite sometime, is putting some signage at the four-way and at each end of town. This would point people down to our central business district, which is our historic downtown square.”

Cantrell said the workforce initiative is to show Livingston Academy, Vol State and TCAT students they have career opportunities. Cantrell said she has worked with Director of Schools Donnie Holman on the best way to target young talent.

“Show them different things that are available in Overton County to keep them local,” Cantrell said. “We don’t want to lose our young talent to another community. We just need to make sure that we give them the opportunity to keep them here in Overton County.”

Cantrell said the next steps are just working through the implementation of these three components. She said there is roughly a 12 month timeline for using the grant funding.