Illinois Jobs Now! Financing to Help Additional 500 Families Buy a Home through "Welcome Home Heroes" Program

WESTCHESTER - November 12, 2012. In honor of Veterans Day, Governor Pat Quinn announced the investment of an additional $5 million to the Welcome Home Heroes homebuyer financing package to make homeownership more affordable for more military families. This new Illinois Jobs Now! capital funding will allow an additional 500 military families to access a $10,000 forgivable grant toward the purchase of a new home, as well as a mortgage tax credit worth up to $20,000 over the life of the loan.

Standing outside the home of newlyweds Army Sgt. 1^st Class Eric Sereda, 34, and Sharon Sereda, 27, Governor Quinn emphasized his commitment to help Veterans, active military personnel, reservists and Illinois National Guard members transition to civilian life. Welcome Home Heroes enabled the couple to buy their first home - a three-bedroom ranch home in suburban Westchester.

"As we honor our Illinois heroes on Veterans Day, we are proud to invest in the Welcome Home Heroes program to help those who sacrifice so much buy an affordable home," Governor Quinn said. "The Welcome Home Heroes program offers a secure financing package that protects those who have committed their lives to protecting us. This program helps military homeowners and improves local real estate markets across Illinois."

Since Governor Quinn launched the financing package last December, Welcome Home Heroes has helped more than 550 military families achieve their dream of buying a home. Welcome Home Heroes originally was funded through $5 million in Illinois Jobs Now! capital funds and $5 million from the Illinois Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The additional $5 million investment announced today will stimulate statewide economic activity:

·250 full-time jobs

·$8.4 million from real estate-related industries

·More than $6.7 million in economic activity for the state

·Additional $2.7 million in other statewide spending

Administered by the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA), Welcome Home Heroes is open to all qualified Illinois veterans. Active military personnel, reservists and Illinois National Guard members may also participate, but must be first-time buyers. The Welcome Home Heroes homebuyer financing package includes a forgivable $10,000 grant for down payment and closing cost assistance, an affordable interest rate (3.25 percent as of today) for a secure 30-year fixed rate mortgage and a mortgage credit certificate worth up to approximately $20,000 for the life of the loan. Welcome Home Heroes recently won national recognition from the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA), which lauded the program's role in empowering buyers such as Sereda.

Previously stationed at a California fort in the Mojave Desert as a combat engineer, Army Sgt. 1st Class Eric Sereda now works for the Army Reserves in suburban Arlington Heights as a career counselor after moving back to the area. A suburban native, Sereda returned to the Chicago area after the death of his father to help care for his family. He thought about renting before learning of the statewide program that could help him.

"We appreciate Governor Quinn tailoring a program to meet the needs of families like us. With the $10,000 down payment assistance, we had extra money to plan our wedding and begin our new life together," Sereda said. "The housing interest rates are so low, and Welcome Home Heroes was just too good to pass up."

Veterans returning home from their service encounter a special set of obstacles to homeownership. Many are underemployed, and while they qualify for job training programs - conventional home loans feature heightened down payment and credit requirements. Nearly one million veteran homeowners face severe housing cost burdens, paying half or more of their income for housing, according to a 2010 American Community Survey analysis.

"Under Governor Quinn's leadership, Welcome Home Heroes will continue to eliminate barriers to homeownership that many Illinois military families face by providing a financial package that is one of the most substantial in the nation," IHDA Executive Director Mary R. Kenney said. "As the state's housing finance agency, IHDA has enabled nearly 60,000 low- to moderate-income families buy a home securely and this investment means we can help even more families."

Under Governor Quinn's leadership, IHDA also is working to increase rental housing opportunities that provide veterans who are at risk of homelessness with access to supportive services and skills that will help them live independently. Of the 700 new units of affordable rental housing that IHDA recently approved, more than one-third of the total units will help veterans and people with disabilities find stability in communities.

"Governor Quinn is a great supporter of our service members," said Maj. Gen. Dennis L. Celletti, the acting Adjutant General of the Illinois National Guard. "He has instituted numerous programs to ensure our returning men and women in uniform have the resources they need to adapt to civilian life and to thrive in this great state."

"I thank Governor Quinn for this new financial commitment to help our military families transition to civilian life and establish roots in our Illinois neighborhoods," Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs Director Erica Borggren said.

Welcome Home Heroes program builds on IHDA's existing affordable home loan program, SmartMove, also available through IHDA's lenders. The financing package applies to 1-2 unit residential properties located in the State of Illinois that are purchased as a primary residence.

Buyers must qualify based on income and purchase price limits, and can apply for the loan package through an IHDA lender. A list of participating lenders throughout the state is available at ihda.org/homeowner/heroes. For more information about programs for Illinois veterans and servicemembers, visit OperationHomefront.org.

About IHDA

The Illinois Housing Development Authority (ihda.org) is an independent, self-supporting bonding authority that finances the creation and preservation of affordable housing throughout Illinois. Since 1967, IHDA has allocated more than $11.1 billion to finance more than 221,000 affordable housing units for the residents of Illinois.

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The Quad City International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) will hold a FREE Seminar on Monday, November 12, 2012 at MRA, 3800 Avenue of the Cities, Suite 100 in Moline, IL.   The speaker will be David Drewelow, Head Coach, ActionCOACH Heartland.  David will be presenting "Five Keys for Professional Development", based on John Maxwell's Book "The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth".   Following the presentation, a Chapter meeting will be held.

Networking/Gathering begins at 5:30 PM, Dinner at 6:00 PM (reservation is required - meal cost is $8.00) and the speaker will begin at 6:30 PM.

To register, please contact Stephanie Noyd by 11:00 AM on Friday, November 9, 2012 at  (309) 764-8354 or email her at Stephanie.Noyd@mranet.org

IAAP is the world's largest international association of administrative professionals. IAAP offers professional development, leadership training and networking opportunities for administrative professionals. IAAP is a non-profit, volunteer association.

Joining a professional organization demonstrates your commitment to your career. Work is most rewarding when we do it with enthusiasm and give it our best. Through IAAP you will gain knowledge, confidence and contacts that will help you advance professionally. IAAP works to build a professional image of administrative professionals in the workplace.

IAAP membership is open to all persons working in the administrative field, along with business educators, students, firms and educational institutions. There is no test of sponsorship required. Through IAAP qualified professionals can test for the certification rating, the benchmark of excellence in the administrative profession.

For more information please contact Kathy Riley at (309) 786-2705

Social media is the most rapidly changing aspect of communications to begin with. Throw in an IPO (Facebook) and a major overhaul (LinkedIn) and modifications are barreling ahead so fast, even the techies seem unable to keep up.

"I'm a big believer in social media marketing for my business, so when I started having a lot of problems with LinkedIn, I didn't wait - I sent an email to the Help Center," says Marsha Friedman, CEO of EMSI Public Relations, (www.emsincorporated.com), in Wesley Chapel, Fla.

"Last week, a 'customer experience advocate' finally emailed me back. He wrote, 'I apologize taking so long to get back to you. We are currently experiencing an unusual high volume of requests due to our recent site enhancements.' "

Many of the changes were implemented Oct. 16 and, as EMSI's social media specialist, Jeni Hinojosa, observes, "It's a great overhaul."

But, she adds, "It must not have gotten much of a test run because the site has been very buggy."

Over on Facebook, Friedman says she's noticed advertisements popping up everywhere - even in her news feed.

"Now that the site has gone public, it's trying all sorts of new tricks to make money for shareholders, but it's creating some problems," she says.

One of her employees got this error message while trying to post to her wall: "The server found your request confusing and isn't sure how to proceed."

Hinojosa offered a brief overview of some of the changes and a solution people are turning to - at least in the case of Facebook.

LinkedIn: "One of the new features I like is that you can check for comments and other activity without getting notices sent to your email," Hinojosa says. "Just go to your LinkedIn page and you'll see the notifications at the top, just like on Facebook."

"The bugs I and others have encountered include being unable to check private messages; sporadically unable to get into groups; and being notified that invitations to join others' networks are waiting - but when I look, I don't see any," Hinojosa says. "When we report the problems, the responses we're getting sound like they're working on them but they're overwhelmed.

"Hopefully, they'll get them worked out soon. The good news is, they're aware."

Facebook: "Sadly, I've been down this road before - and it didn't lead to a good place," Hinojosa says. "Remember MySpace?"

Since its initial public offering in May, Facebook has been making a lot of changes designed to add revenue. The newest of these are a $7 fee for "promoted posts" from your personal page and a $5 to $15 fee to promote posts from your fan page. They're not yet available to all 166 million U.S. Facebook users, according to tech bloggers, because it's still experimental.

Now, those with the option will see a "promote" button next to the "like," "comment" and "share" buttons. Click "promote," put the appropriate fee on your charge card, and that post will go to the top of your followers' news feeds a few times in the days ahead. (It will also wear the Scarlet S label of "sponsored post.") The promise is that more of your followers will see it.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense when applied to personal pages," Hinojosa says. "How many people will pay to show off their vacation photos? But people using Facebook as a marketing tool may be motivated to pay for more reach.

"Soon, everyone will be scrolling through a bunch of 'sponsored' posts before they get to the 'free' ones. If you want someone to actually see your post, you'll have to pay."

That's why, she says, people are jumping to ...

Google+: "If Facebook and Twitter had a baby, it would be Google+," Hinojosa says.

This toddler network, which launched in June 2011, combines Facebook's capabilities for sharing news and photos and Twitter's searchability.

"It allows you to designate one or more "circles" for your friends," Hinojosa says. "One co-worker might be 'business' and 'close friends' while another could be just 'business.' So everyone sees what's appropriate for them based on your relationship."

"Like Twitter, Google+ uses hashtags to help sort information and allow people to search for posts on particular topics," she says. "For instance, if you type #cutecats into the search box at the top of your page, you'll see everything with that hashtag - including comments that incorporate the label.

"What makes me happiest is, Google had its IPO way back in 2004," Hinojosa says. "So we shouldn't have to worry about this company suddenly drumming up ways to make us pay for what we previously got for free."

About Marsha Friedman

Marsha Friedman is a 22-year veteran of the public relations industry. She is the CEO of EMSI Public Relations (www.emsincorporated.com), a national firm that provides PR strategy and publicity services to corporations, entertainers, authors and professional firms. Marsha is the author of Celebritize Yourself: The 3-Step Method to Increase Your Visibility and Explode Your Business and she can also be heard weekly on her Blog Talk Radio Show, EMSI's PR Insider every Thursday at 3:00 PM EST.

$1.7 billion project now the single largest capital investment in Iowa history

(SIOUX CITY) - The Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) Board held a special, telephonic meeting to take action to award direct financial assistance and tax credits to CF Industries, Inc., for an expansion of its existing fertilizer manufacturing operation in Woodbury County.

The Port Neal project will add new state-of-the-art ammonia and granular urea production units to meet customer demand.  The project will supplement existing production of ammonia and urea ammonia nitrate (UAN).

The project will have a total capital investment of $1.7 billion and will create 100 new jobs with a qualifying wage of $20.12.

"This is another great announcement for Iowa, and we are proud that CF Industries has chosen us for its $1.7 billion expansion," said Governor Terry E. Branstad. "Our state is clearly well-positioned to take advantage of the growing domestic fertilizer industry.  Not only does that mean significant investment that will continue to grow our economy, but also the creation of high-paying jobs for Iowans."

Today, the IEDA Board awarded the project $1.5 million in direct assistance and tax credits in the total amount of $22 million.  The tax credit award is made up of $13 million in sales tax refunds paid during construction and $9 million in investment tax credits (ITC).  The board will also consider future amendments to the award to allocate an additional $12 million in ITC in each of the next four fiscal years (FY13-FY16) for a potential total ITC award of $57 million.

"It is so rewarding to watch existing companies continue to make investments in Iowa.  With today's announcement that a company with current operations in Iowa will make a capital investment of nearly $2 billion, it is obvious that we are on the right track to reaching our goals of creating jobs and increasing wealth for Iowans," said Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds.  "Just since January 2011, the IEDA has projects under contract that will result in $5.23 billion of capital investment in our state."

CF Industries is a global leader in fertilizer manufacturing and distribution, the second largest nitrogen fertilizer producer in the world and the third largest phosphate fertilizer producer among public companies. CF Industries owns and operates world-scale nitrogen and phosphate plants and serves agricultural and industrial customers through its best-in-class distribution system.

"CF Industries is proud of its long history of serving Iowa farmers and we are pleased to increase our manufacturing presence in Iowa in a major way," commented Stephen R. Wilson, chairman and chief executive officer, CF Industries Holdings, Inc.

In 2010, CF Industries acquired Terra Industries Inc., positioning the company as a nitrogen bellwether in the global fertilizer industry and the premier nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer manufacturer in North America.  In addition to its Port Neal facility, the company operates terminals at Spencer and Garner.

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