The annual Cortez Area Chamber of Commerence announces their annual community awards Saturday night at a ceremony at the Main Street Brewery.

Winners included:

• Cortez Journal’s Citizen of the Year: William (Bill) Stroud.

This award goes to a resident who has made a significant contribution to the community quality of life through their involvement in any of a variety of community activities to include charity, youth, educational, patriotic, religious, or other like activity.

• Greenline Equipment’s Agribusiness of the Year: East Pines Ranch.

This award is presented to a business or individual who has demonstrated exceptional performance in the agribusiness sector, including farming and ranching, education, government service and other agribusiness-related areas.

• Empire Electric’s Green Business of the Year: Cliffrose Your High Desert Gardens.

Celebrating excellence in environmentally friendly practices, strategies and/or products, the award recognizes the most innovative, ambitious, or effective green initiatives for achieving sustainability and implementing energy efficiency measures to reduce the company's energy usage.

• Gerald L. Vincent Family Fund Excellence in Service Delivery Award: The Yarbrough family, owners of Pioneer Printing and Coldstone Creamery.

This award recognizes a business or organization that shows consistent dedication to superlative service and demonstrates its commitment through its service policy, staff training and/or other specific means.

• Excellence in Innovation: Osprey Packs.

This recognizes a business or organization that has enhanced its success through innovation - both in thinking and implementing the idea. An innovation can be in a product/service/technology or process.

• Four Corners Community Bank Honors an “Unsung Hero”: Vern Rucker .

This award recognizes a person who makes a substantial yet widely unrecognized or uncelebrated social impact. An unsung hero acts nobly and challenges others to believe in something more.

See Tuesday's Cortez Journal for complete story on the annual awards.