Rural Development - STATEWIDE Interactive

Originally aired February 22, 2002

RURAL DEVELOPMENT

PERSPECTIVE

On Tuesday night February 26 at 7 PM, Nebraska ETV will broadcast a special town hall program. 'Saving Our Small Towns' will look at the struggles rural Nebraska is facing. While most small towns are dealing with population decline or business closing, some are finding a way to hold on to what they have or even grow. Statewide's Perry Stoner has the story of two successful communities that will be featured in Tuesday's program. Ord and Callaway each have their own approach in the fight to save their small town.

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Transcript of Perspective

Transcript of (Rural Development: Saving Our Small Towns)

Volunteer:
Here's your two ballots.

Perry Stoner:
The last time Ord residents went to the polls; it was a vote for something more important than any elected official. It was a vote for the future of the community.

Mary Lou Kruml:
We're losing a lot of people, a lot of families. People are going elsewhere. We need to develop jobs here in Ord and the only way we're going to do that is by bringing business in.

Perry Stoner:
Last September Ord voted on a one percent city sales tax. The proceeds would be used for economic development.

The Nebraska unicameral gave communities this option as an economic development tool in 1991. About twenty Nebraska communities have adopted the idea and these Ord supporters home they are next.

Derry:
Congratulations, you did a super job; we've got an educated community. This thing won handily. Now what we need to do is make sure that the money gets used properly and we continue to grow where we can keep ourselves stabilized and keep growing. Thank you very much.

Perry Stoner:
The tax will raise an estimated $175,000 for each of the next fifteen years. Linda Fettig worked with Ord for about eighteen months to help get to this point.

Linda Fettig:
State and federal money is getting tighter and so communities have to have some source of local match for anything that we have. And so this gives them a chance to have that local match in place when opportunity comes. It gives them a chance to do some strategic planning about what kind of opportunities fit their community. And puts them in the ballgame is really what it amounts to.

Bob Stowell:
If you want Ord to stay the way it is, think about canoeing up the river. If you want to stay where you are you've gotta paddle like the dickens. And that's just what… that's just what we're doing right here.

Perry Stoner:
Nestled along the Loup River, Ord is the seat of Valley County. The new tax will be collected in town but the proceeds can go to projects throughout the county.

About two years ago Bob Stowell and other community leaders realized they had to do something to save their small town.

Bob Stowell:
This is a time in Ord's history that we have to do it now. And if we don't do it and get started, you know it may be too late. Because once you lose so much population base, you lose so much support base, I'm fearful there's a time when you can't mobilize what you have and move forward.

Perry Stoner:
In the nineties Ord lost eight-and-a-half percent of its population, over 200 people. Valley County lost over ten percent. So Stowell's group set out to court a business.

Bob Stowell:
Our first thought is, you know, why doesn't some industry come locate here? Or why don't we just go knock on some doors and bring a smokestack to town?

Perry Stoner:
That's where the state Department of Economic Development can help. Its field representatives work closely with communities.

Linda Fettig:
We don't know what's best for them. It's their community. They need to be responsible for the choices. We can make suggestions. We can help them with process, but we really can't make the decisions. And shouldn't.

And we have come quite a ways since we started this survey in January. We still have work to do on that but we will have…

Perry Stoner:
To move forward, four groups from Ord and Valley County got together and hired the area's first economic development director.

Bethanne Kunz:
We don't expect to be a growing metropolis. We would just like to right now stabilize our population and in the next ten years not have another eight-and-a-half percent drop.

Perry Stoner:
Valley County got a big boost late last year. Workers remodeled an existing building that would house new jobs. An Omaha telemarketing company announced they would open a call center in Ord. It brings much needed income to an available work force in the area.

Linda Fettig:
The technology that's available in many communities, not equally in all communities yet but in many communities, is opening up opportunities for people who no longer are place consistent. They can work from anyplace that they can connect to a computer. So now we're back to quality of life issues.

Perry Stoner:
But for many communities the best approach may be strengthening a business they already have, like a hospital.

Phil Lowe:
Does this paper list the type of procedure that's done as well?

Perry Stoner:
Quality of life attracts some to rural areas. Phil Lowe moved from Colorado about a year ago. He's administrator of Valley County Hospital.

Phil Lowe:
I've lived in rural communities before and I've lived in larger ones. And I'm so impressed with the real sense of pride here. And the excitement of making this community work. And I want to get right in the middle of it and help assist with that economic success here.

Kay Payne:
What I found is if towns are really upset about something I really hear about it.

Perry Stoner:
Kay Payne helps communities learn about themselves. From the University of Nebraska-Kearney, Payne conducts community needs assessment surveys.

Kay Payne:
Before somebody gives a grant, either from the state or from the federal government, they need to see that there is actual need for what it is that they're asking for. And these surveys do a lot to show that there is a need for some of these things.

Perry Stoner:
Payne's survey showed Trust Telemarketing, even before their new call center was ready, they would have plenty of people eager to work for the wages it pays. But that was just one factor that brought them to Ord.

Kay Payne:
These things don't just happen out of the blue. It wasn't that that community just happened to be chosen by this company to move into. They worked very, very hard to attract this business into town. And that's what you want to see in communities, that they care enough about their own future and that they're willing to invest their time.

Perry Stoner:
Each Labor Day weekend for the last eleven the skies around Callaway fill with kites.

Murphy:
I love flying out here. People are just super out here. They kind of treat us like royalty. We tell everybody all around the country this is the "fly" to come to. This is a fun time, a good time in the Good Life of Nebraska.

The town here normally closes up at five o'clock. Since we've been here they make sure they stay open for us 'til ten 'cause we're used to stuff open 24 hours. So they've been… they've done everything they could, bent over backwards for us.

Perry Stoner:
That hospitality exemplifies how Callaway does things.

Connie May:
I could be the chairman of something that never did a thing if I didn't have everybody else that comes forward, offers to help.

This is your first time to the kite fly? Oh my, what do you think?

And it'll be even different tomorrow.

Perry Stoner:
Connie May leads the kite flight but many in Callaway help in one way or another.

Kay Payne:
And in Callaway that sense of inclusiveness and that willing to share… a willingness to include new people in town into those processes, to mentor new people into those processes has been really good.

Ken Pitkin:
We send advertising out to four different communities to try to bring them into the trade area.

Perry Stoner:
Ken Pitkin owns the hardware store in Callaway. He's involved in many Chamber of Commerce activities.

Ken Pitkin:
The only ego that's involved I think in Callaway is that we feel like we're on the cutting edge as a community. It doesn't matter if they don't have it, we want it, we need it, let's go for it, let's get it.

Brian Gardner:
This room is a multi use room. We're hoping that this facility will get a variety of use by all segments of our community.

Perry Stoner:
The new community center puts Callaway's spirit on display. The half-million dollar facility was built almost entirely by private donations.

Brian Gardner:
I think we have a lot of things in our community that you might not have in a town as small as ours because of the fact that people are willing to step forward and not only volunteer their time but put some of their resources into that.

Perry Stoner:
A key to this project happening was the town's major institutions not competing for resources or for credit. They cooperated. The school will use the facility and the hospital donated exercise equipment and will use it for some patient services.

Perhaps the only thing trickier for small towns than keeping its residents is attracting new ones. Most small towns not on Interstate 80 lost people in the nineties. Callaway held steady and more. It added almost one hundred people, or 19 percent, for a current population of 637.

Ken Pitkin:
We feel the growth is just about the right pace. If we can grow ten or fifteen people a year, if we can build three or four or five new homes over a two-year period or something like that, a slow growth is what we need to do.

_______:
On issue two, 541 to 225, so both issues carried.

Perry Stoner:
On election night back in Ord, seven out of ten voters approved the economic development tax.

Bob Stowell:
Sure, it's just a sales tax bill but it was much, much more than that. It was a vote for the future of our city. Yes, we have a victory! This is a message from our community that we're going to do something about our future. We're going to have something to say about our destiny.

Perry Stoner:
In Callaway residents keep finding ways to bring people to town and attract some to stay for longer than a weekend of kite flying.

Brian Gardner:
I think what makes any small town successful is its ability to believe in itself and to think larger than it is.

Ken Pitkin:
Callaway's not on the way to anyplace. So if you're going to come here, you're going to have to decide to come here. And we want you to come and visit and a few of you stay every year, but not everybody stay forever.

Perry Stoner:
Callaway and Ord have found different ways to help themselves and help save their small towns.

Reporting for STATEWIDE, this is Perry Stoner.