Oxford can continue to count itself among the nationally-recognized Main Street communities following a successful Jan. 17 evaluation.

“We did get reaccredited for our performance last year,” announced Glenn Pape, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), at his governing board’s Jan. 21 meeting.

During the evaluation, the DDA received credit for all of the criteria utilized by the National Main Street Center in Washington D.C. to measure progress in designated communities.

The evaluation looks at 10 criteria and whether the DDA is satisfying them. They include broad-based community support, vision and mission statements, historic preservation ethic, the presence of a paid, professional DDA/Main Street program director, ongoing training, reporting of key statistics, Main Street Network membership, comprehensive work plan, active board and committees and if there’s an adequate operating budget. To become accredited, all 10 criteria must be met.

While being reaccredited is good news, it doesn’t mean the DDA is operating perfectly. “We do have some weaknesses in our organizational performance. We all know that,” Pape told the board.

Some of those weaknesses include volunteer recruitment and development as well as advocacy for the Main Street organization within the region.

“They’re not major things,” Pape said. “But they are things that we need to do more formally and document (them) . . . They went to a new evaluation format this year and when we did our self-evaluation, we didn’t document those areas well enough.”

The DDA will receive a written report from the evaluation team within 60 days outlining Oxford’s strengths and weaknesses, and providing “suggestions for a plan of action to fix those things,” he noted.

Oxford regained its national accreditation in 2016, following a two-year lapse.

During the 2014 evaluation, the downtown lost its status because the DDA was forced to cut its director for the 2013-14 fiscal year due to a budget crisis that required drastic cost-cutting measures and a loan from the village government to prevent the entity from ending the 2012-13 fiscal year with a deficit.

By the time the 2015 evaluation rolled around, the DDA had a director again, but it failed to meet the criterion of having an active board and committees.

Despite these setbacks, downtown Oxford never stopped being a Main Street Oakland County (MSOC) community. It’s had that designation since 2004.

MSOC is an economic development program that assists downtowns.