Guest guest Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 course..ya have to live in kansas... Towns offer free land to newcomers By John Ritter, USA TODAY ELLSWORTH, Kan. — Billy and Sheila Canaan just wanted out of Baton Rouge. They didn't expect to be bit players in a new movement to keep the Great Plains from emptying. Billy gave up a $90,000-a-year deputy sheriff's job for one that pays a third as much. Sheila kept slipping on the thick ice of a bitter Kansas winter and broke a rib. Son Clayton reluctantly started his senior year at a new high school. To their Cajun palates, Midwest cooking had all the zing of roasted cardboard. (Clayton keeps hot sauce in his locker.) So why Kansas, when other rural states offer the same unhurried pace and relaxed lifestyle the Canaans sought? And why Ellsworth, a town of 2,900 with one grocery store, one stoplight and no mall, no fast food and no movie theater? Free land is why. Ellsworth's pitch is this: Agree to build a house here and pay nothing for the lot it's on. Got three kids in school? OK, that's worth $3,000 toward a down payment. Need jobs? We'll help you find them. Still not sure? Come visit, we'll show you around. The Canaans say crime and poor schools drove them from Baton Rouge. " Ellsworth has everything you could want, " says Billy, 34, now a corrections officer at the prison here. " It's quiet. You don't have to worry about your kids. Very low crime rate. Lots of recreation. " The proactive mind-set here and in at least five other Kansas towns that give away lots to lure new residents (www.kansasfreeland.com) is one wrinkle in a new economic development strategy sweeping across rural America. The goal is to reverse decades of population loss from the decline of small family farms and businesses, expand the tax base, keep schools from closing and preserve a way of life. " I guess we're so stubborn that we're not going to let our town die, " says Steve Piper, mayor of Marquette, Kan. For years, dying towns hustled the big score — a company with a big workforce — to turn their fortunes around. It usually didn't work. Too much competition for too few companies. Or, a company came, went belly up and left an unemployment line. " The chances of getting one are slim in the abstract, and now we have 50 years of experience that shows it doesn't happen in practice either, " says Frank Popper, an urban studies professor at Rutgers University. It was Popper and his wife, Deborah, who in the 1980s advanced the theory — unpopular in small towns — that a Great Plains population bust was inevitable and that vast stretches should be returned to the buffalo. One family at a time Today, " elephant hunting " — going after the big company — is giving way to " economic gardening. " The new mantra is don't waste time and money trolling for a major employer; instead, build one family at a time. Encourage small-business start-ups and develop aggressive local leaders. Fight " brain drain " by reaching into high schools and finding students willing to return after college. Nurture them with internships or hitch them to a business owner looking to retire. Ask seniors to will 5% of their estates to the town they love to endow economic development. Preach entrepreneurship and the promise of the Internet economy. Perhaps 30 towns, mostly in the upper Midwest, have embraced this " hometown competitiveness " strategy developed by the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Neb. Word is spreading, co-director Don Macke says: " There's been an explosion of interest, particularly in the last 24 months. " When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced it would award $8 million in grants for four rural entrepreneurship centers, more than 180 communities applied. For more than 150 years, rural America thrived because it had a competitive advantage: low-cost land and labor. Today, other countries have seized that advantage. " Rural places have to find a new way to compete, and that comes from being entrepreneurial. It's a necessity, " says Jason Henderson, senior economist with the Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo. The challenges are daunting. Rural Americans live on 80% of the land but make up just 20% of the population. On average, they're older, earn lower wages and are more likely to be poor than metro dwellers. Resource industries that sustained rural regions for decades — agriculture, ranching, timber, mining, oil and gas — are moribund. In the Plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Oklahoma, 89% of the 2,421 cities and towns have fewer than 3,000 people. Hundreds have fewer than 1,000. Most have been hemorrhaging population for years. Of those states, four grew at less than half the national rate of 4.3% from 2000 to 2004. North Dakota lost 1.2% of its people. Brain drain or " bright flight " has accelerated, too. For every 1,000 college graduates 25 and older, those five Plains states plus Iowa suffered a net loss of 80.5 graduates over the last four years, according to an analysis of Census migration data by demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. The lure is more than bright lights and warm climates. Today's wired, new-economy metro areas are further distancing themselves from rural areas, " a gap that will be difficult to bridge, " Frey says. Little federal assistance Popper sees more promise in hometown competitiveness than in soliciting Fortune 500 branch plants. " More of a 21st century feel, " he says. But he thinks successful towns will be the exceptions. " We still stick with our sense that a lot of places are going to continue to empty, " he says. Rural towns and counties are mostly on their own. A Kellogg Foundation study last July concluded that " funding for rural development has been a low priority for the federal government, " as little as 2% of the Agriculture Department's budget in recent years. Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., twice failed to get a New Homestead Act through Congress but they're trying again this year. The $30 billion measure would repay portions of college loans if graduates settle in declining rural counties, offer home-buying tax credits, create a small-business investment tax credit and launch a $3 billion venture capital fund. " It's been hard, " Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry says. " It doesn't have much appeal for big urban states. " But economic gardening is affordable and can unite a town. In three years, Valley County, Neb., (population 4,647) has graduated 70 from a leadership class; set up an endowment with $1.2 million willed by a local couple; and hired a business development coordinator. Ord, the county seat, has made seven small-business loans from a 1-cent sales-tax fund. A wealthy alum living in Arizona flies in to teach a class on growing entrepreneurs. A graduate came home from Lincoln to start an irrigation-well firm. Another plans a local dental practice. The county must attract 27% of its high school's average graduating class of 67 to stabilize the population by 2010. It won't be easy. " They need an economic opportunity. That's what we've been struggling with, " says Bethanne Kunz, the county's economic development director. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's publicized forays to New York and other cities to woo Iowans back at posh receptions netted 1,200 recruits in five years, fewer than those who left the state, according to Frey's analysis. To slow the exodus of graduates, the Legislature is considering a bill to abolish the state income tax for people under 30. Saving the schools Free-land offers spread icing on hometown competitiveness. Minneapolis, Kan., was the first. Marquette, 60 miles south, exploited the idea. Since May, the town has given away all 80 of its free lots and plans to offer more. Twenty new houses have gone up. One hundred new residents boosted the population to 620. A Pennsylvania couple had never seen Kansas until two weeks before their new house was finished. Piper, the mayor, says the town was jolted into action by the threat of losing its elementary school. It lost its high school 20 years ago. A town with no schools is naked against rivals. Marquette offered the lots, fixed up its downtown, opened a popular motorcycle museum, began promoting tourism and welcomed diversity — including Latinos and a Muslim trucker from California. In Plainville, Kan. (population 2,029), economic development director Roger Hrabe bought a building with his own money to " incubate " three small-business start-ups. " I stole the idea from a guy in eastern Kansas, " he says. Atwood's location in far northwest Kansas puts the town of 1,279 at a disadvantage in the free-lot sweepstakes — the Canaans who settled in Ellsworth with their three boys thought Atwood " was just too far out there. " To would-be residents anxious about the closest Wal-Mart, central Kansas towns shrewdly sell their proximity to cities such as Salina and Hays. Abundant deer, pheasant, quail and wild turkeys have always drawn hunters to Atwood, and now some of them are staying when they retire. Six free lots have drawn " scads of interest " but no takers, economic development director Arlene Bliss says. " Retirees from Denver have found out they can sell a very average home for $350,000, come here and buy a beautiful home for $100,000 and pocket the difference, " Bliss says. Ellsworth is close to Salina and has a prison that employs 200. It still rolls out extra goodies, including free water and sewer hookups, free building permits, golf memberships and swimming pool passes. Local lenders reduce house down payments by the free lot's value, about $10,000. Results of Ellsworth's " welcome home plan " have been encouraging: 24 new residents, four of whom reserved free lots, and 16 new schoolchildren who draw $6,000 apiece in additional state education aid. Economic development directors like Ellsworth County's Anita Hoffhines are a new breed of small-town civic booster giving an intensely personal touch to business recruitment. They're willing to try almost anything — Internet radio marketing is her latest ploy — if it benefits their towns. They know small towns will never appeal to the masses. They know high school seniors such as Dustin Engelken and Simon Orozco likely won't return. Dustin is drawn to cities and wants a Foreign Service career. Simon, headed to Harvard University next fall, leans toward medical research. So Hoffhines targets the few who are comfortable in small places where everybody knows everybody else's business, where an entrepreneur can set up shop and grow. " If you want to be creative in Silicon Valley, the cost is very high, " she says. " If you come to central Kansas, you can be very creative and have very low risk in comparison. And the quality of the people here is awesome. " What you see is what you get You've made your bed, you better lie in it You choose your leaders and place your trust As their lies wash you down and their promises rust You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns And the public wants what the public gets But I don't get what this society wants Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2005 Report Share Posted February 13, 2005 Thanks for this interesting/helpful info. I heard that the suicide rate in smaller towns is higher. Are there any articles in this regard ? Thanks. Vijay , fraggle <EBbrewpunx@e...> wrote: > course..ya have to live in kansas... > > Towns offer free land to newcomers > By John Ritter, USA TODAY > ELLSWORTH, Kan. †" Billy and Sheila Canaan just wanted out of Baton Rouge. They didn't expect to be bit players in a new movement to keep the Great Plains from emptying. > Billy gave up a $90,000-a-year deputy sheriff's job for one that pays a third as much. Sheila kept slipping on the thick ice of a bitter Kansas winter and broke a rib. Son Clayton reluctantly started his senior year at a new high school. To their Cajun palates, Midwest cooking had all the zing of roasted cardboard. (Clayton keeps hot sauce in his locker.) > > So why Kansas, when other rural states offer the same unhurried pace and relaxed lifestyle the Canaans sought? And why Ellsworth, a town of 2,900 with one grocery store, one stoplight and no mall, no fast food and no movie theater? > > Free land is why. Ellsworth's pitch is this: Agree to build a house here and pay nothing for the lot it's on. Got three kids in school? OK, that's worth $3,000 toward a down payment. Need jobs? We'll help you find them. Still not sure? Come visit, we'll show you around. > > The Canaans say crime and poor schools drove them from Baton Rouge. " Ellsworth has everything you could want, " says Billy, 34, now a corrections officer at the prison here. " It's quiet. You don't have to worry about your kids. Very low crime rate. Lots of recreation. " > > The proactive mind-set here and in at least five other Kansas towns that give away lots to lure new residents (www.kansasfreeland.com) is one wrinkle in a new economic development strategy sweeping across rural America. > > The goal is to reverse decades of population loss from the decline of small family farms and businesses, expand the tax base, keep schools from closing and preserve a way of life. " I guess we're so stubborn that we're not going to let our town die, " says Steve Piper, mayor of Marquette, Kan. > > For years, dying towns hustled the big score †" a company with a big workforce †" to turn their fortunes around. > > It usually didn't work. Too much competition for too few companies. Or, a company came, went belly up and left an unemployment line. > > " The chances of getting one are slim in the abstract, and now we have 50 years of experience that shows it doesn't happen in practice either, " says Frank Popper, an urban studies professor at Rutgers University. It was Popper and his wife, Deborah, who in the 1980s advanced the theory †" unpopular in small towns †" that a Great Plains population bust was inevitable and that vast stretches should be returned to the buffalo. > > One family at a time > > Today, " elephant hunting " †" going after the big company †" is giving way to " economic gardening. " > > The new mantra is don't waste time and money trolling for a major employer; instead, build one family at a time. Encourage small-business start-ups and develop aggressive local leaders. Fight " brain drain " by reaching into high schools and finding students willing to return after college. Nurture them with internships or hitch them to a business owner looking to retire. > > Ask seniors to will 5% of their estates to the town they love to endow economic development. Preach entrepreneurship and the promise of the Internet economy. > > Perhaps 30 towns, mostly in the upper Midwest, have embraced this " hometown competitiveness " strategy developed by the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Neb. Word is spreading, co-director Don Macke says: " There's been an explosion of interest, particularly in the last 24 months. " > > When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced it would award $8 million in grants for four rural entrepreneurship centers, more than 180 communities applied. > > For more than 150 years, rural America thrived because it had a competitive advantage: low-cost land and labor. Today, other countries have seized that advantage. > > " Rural places have to find a new way to compete, and that comes from being entrepreneurial. It's a necessity, " says Jason Henderson, senior economist with the Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo. > > The challenges are daunting. Rural Americans live on 80% of the land but make up just 20% of the population. On average, they're older, earn lower wages and are more likely to be poor than metro dwellers. Resource industries that sustained rural regions for decades †" agriculture, ranching, timber, mining, oil and gas †" are moribund. > > In the Plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Oklahoma, 89% of the 2,421 cities and towns have fewer than 3,000 people. Hundreds have fewer than 1,000. Most have been hemorrhaging population for years. Of those states, four grew at less than half the national rate of 4.3% from 2000 to 2004. North Dakota lost 1.2% of its people. > > Brain drain or " bright flight " has accelerated, too. For every 1,000 college graduates 25 and older, those five Plains states plus Iowa suffered a net loss of 80.5 graduates over the last four years, according to an analysis of Census migration data by demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. > > The lure is more than bright lights and warm climates. Today's wired, new-economy metro areas are further distancing themselves from rural areas, " a gap that will be difficult to bridge, " Frey says. > > Little federal assistance > > Popper sees more promise in hometown competitiveness than in soliciting Fortune 500 branch plants. " More of a 21st century feel, " he says. But he thinks successful towns will be the exceptions. " We still stick with our sense that a lot of places are going to continue to empty, " he says. > > Rural towns and counties are mostly on their own. A Kellogg Foundation study last July concluded that " funding for rural development has been a low priority for the federal government, " as little as 2% of the Agriculture Department's budget in recent years. > > Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., twice failed to get a New Homestead Act through Congress but they're trying again this year. The $30 billion measure would repay portions of college loans if graduates settle in declining rural counties, offer home-buying tax credits, create a small-business investment tax credit and launch a $3 billion venture capital fund. > > " It's been hard, " Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry says. " It doesn't have much appeal for big urban states. " > > But economic gardening is affordable and can unite a town. In three years, Valley County, Neb., (population 4,647) has graduated 70 from a leadership class; set up an endowment with $1.2 million willed by a local couple; and hired a business development coordinator. Ord, the county seat, has made seven small-business loans from a 1-cent sales-tax fund. > > A wealthy alum living in Arizona flies in to teach a class on growing entrepreneurs. A graduate came home from Lincoln to start an irrigation-well firm. Another plans a local dental practice. The county must attract 27% of its high school's average graduating class of 67 to stabilize the population by 2010. > > It won't be easy. " They need an economic opportunity. That's what we've been struggling with, " says Bethanne Kunz, the county's economic development director. > > Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's publicized forays to New York and other cities to woo Iowans back at posh receptions netted 1,200 recruits in five years, fewer than those who left the state, according to Frey's analysis. To slow the exodus of graduates, the Legislature is considering a bill to abolish the state income tax for people under 30. > > Saving the schools > > Free-land offers spread icing on hometown competitiveness. Minneapolis, Kan., was the first. Marquette, 60 miles south, exploited the idea. > > Since May, the town has given away all 80 of its free lots and plans to offer more. Twenty new houses have gone up. One hundred new residents boosted the population to 620. A Pennsylvania couple had never seen Kansas until two weeks before their new house was finished. Piper, the mayor, says the town was jolted into action by the threat of losing its elementary school. It lost its high school 20 years ago. A town with no schools is naked against rivals. > > Marquette offered the lots, fixed up its downtown, opened a popular motorcycle museum, began promoting tourism and welcomed diversity †" including Latinos and a Muslim trucker from California. > > In Plainville, Kan. (population 2,029), economic development director Roger Hrabe bought a building with his own money to " incubate " three small-business start-ups. " I stole the idea from a guy in eastern Kansas, " he says. > > Atwood's location in far northwest Kansas puts the town of 1,279 at a disadvantage in the free-lot sweepstakes †" the Canaans who settled in Ellsworth with their three boys thought Atwood " was just too far out there. " To would-be residents anxious about the closest Wal-Mart, central Kansas towns shrewdly sell their proximity to cities such as Salina and Hays. > > Abundant deer, pheasant, quail and wild turkeys have always drawn hunters to Atwood, and now some of them are staying when they retire. Six free lots have drawn " scads of interest " but no takers, economic development director Arlene Bliss says. > > " Retirees from Denver have found out they can sell a very average home for $350,000, come here and buy a beautiful home for $100,000 and pocket the difference, " Bliss says. > > Ellsworth is close to Salina and has a prison that employs 200. It still rolls out extra goodies, including free water and sewer hookups, free building permits, golf memberships and swimming pool passes. Local lenders reduce house down payments by the free lot's value, about $10,000. > > Results of Ellsworth's " welcome home plan " have been encouraging: 24 new residents, four of whom reserved free lots, and 16 new schoolchildren who draw $6,000 apiece in additional state education aid. > > Economic development directors like Ellsworth County's Anita Hoffhines are a new breed of small-town civic booster giving an intensely personal touch to business recruitment. They're willing to try almost anything †" Internet radio marketing is her latest ploy †" if it benefits their towns. > > They know small towns will never appeal to the masses. They know high school seniors such as Dustin Engelken and Simon Orozco likely won't return. Dustin is drawn to cities and wants a Foreign Service career. Simon, headed to Harvard University next fall, leans toward medical research. > > So Hoffhines targets the few who are comfortable in small places where everybody knows everybody else's business, where an entrepreneur can set up shop and grow. " If you want to be creative in Silicon Valley, the cost is very high, " she says. " If you come to central Kansas, you can be very creative and have very low risk in comparison. And the quality of the people here is awesome. " > > > What you see is what you get > You've made your bed, you better lie in it > You choose your leaders and place your trust > As their lies wash you down and their promises rust > You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns > And the public wants what the public gets > But I don't get what this society wants Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted February 13, 2005 Report Share Posted February 13, 2005 I can't give you any articles on it, but when I studied criminology, one of the first things the professor hammered into our heads was that large cities have higher homicide rates and rural areas have higher suicide rates. -Anna > [Original Message] > <rvijay07 > > 2/13/2005 10:05:31 AM > Re: free land! > > > > Thanks for this interesting/helpful info. I heard that the suicide > rate in smaller towns is higher. Are there any articles in this regard ? > > Thanks. > > Vijay > > > > , fraggle <EBbrewpunx@e...> wrote: > > course..ya have to live in kansas... > > > > Towns offer free land to newcomers > > By John Ritter, USA TODAY > > ELLSWORTH, Kan. †" Billy and Sheila Canaan just wanted out of Baton > Rouge. They didn't expect to be bit players in a new movement to keep > the Great Plains from emptying. > > Billy gave up a $90,000-a-year deputy sheriff's job for one that > pays a third as much. Sheila kept slipping on the thick ice of a > bitter Kansas winter and broke a rib. Son Clayton reluctantly started > his senior year at a new high school. To their Cajun palates, Midwest > cooking had all the zing of roasted cardboard. (Clayton keeps hot > sauce in his locker.) > > > > So why Kansas, when other rural states offer the same unhurried pace > and relaxed lifestyle the Canaans sought? And why Ellsworth, a town of > 2,900 with one grocery store, one stoplight and no mall, no fast food > and no movie theater? > > > > Free land is why. Ellsworth's pitch is this: Agree to build a house > here and pay nothing for the lot it's on. Got three kids in school? > OK, that's worth $3,000 toward a down payment. Need jobs? We'll help > you find them. Still not sure? Come visit, we'll show you around. > > > > The Canaans say crime and poor schools drove them from Baton Rouge. > " Ellsworth has everything you could want, " says Billy, 34, now a > corrections officer at the prison here. " It's quiet. You don't have to > worry about your kids. Very low crime rate. Lots of recreation. " > > > > The proactive mind-set here and in at least five other Kansas towns > that give away lots to lure new residents (www.kansasfreeland.com) is > one wrinkle in a new economic development strategy sweeping across > rural America. > > > > The goal is to reverse decades of population loss from the decline > of small family farms and businesses, expand the tax base, keep > schools from closing and preserve a way of life. " I guess we're so > stubborn that we're not going to let our town die, " says Steve Piper, > mayor of Marquette, Kan. > > > > For years, dying towns hustled the big score †" a company with a > big workforce †" to turn their fortunes around. > > > > It usually didn't work. Too much competition for too few companies. > Or, a company came, went belly up and left an unemployment line. > > > > " The chances of getting one are slim in the abstract, and now we > have 50 years of experience that shows it doesn't happen in practice > either, " says Frank Popper, an urban studies professor at Rutgers > University. It was Popper and his wife, Deborah, who in the 1980s > advanced the theory †" unpopular in small towns †" that a Great > Plains population bust was inevitable and that vast stretches should > be returned to the buffalo. > > > > One family at a time > > > > Today, " elephant hunting " †" going after the big company †" is > giving way to " economic gardening. " > > > > The new mantra is don't waste time and money trolling for a major > employer; instead, build one family at a time. Encourage > small-business start-ups and develop aggressive local leaders. Fight > " brain drain " by reaching into high schools and finding students > willing to return after college. Nurture them with internships or > hitch them to a business owner looking to retire. > > > > Ask seniors to will 5% of their estates to the town they love to > endow economic development. Preach entrepreneurship and the promise of > the Internet economy. > > > > Perhaps 30 towns, mostly in the upper Midwest, have embraced this > " hometown competitiveness " strategy developed by the Center for Rural > Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Neb. Word is spreading, co-director Don > Macke says: " There's been an explosion of interest, particularly in > the last 24 months. " > > > > When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced it would award $8 million > in grants for four rural entrepreneurship centers, more than 180 > communities applied. > > > > For more than 150 years, rural America thrived because it had a > competitive advantage: low-cost land and labor. Today, other countries > have seized that advantage. > > > > " Rural places have to find a new way to compete, and that comes from > being entrepreneurial. It's a necessity, " says Jason Henderson, senior > economist with the Center for the Study of Rural America at the > Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo. > > > > The challenges are daunting. Rural Americans live on 80% of the land > but make up just 20% of the population. On average, they're older, > earn lower wages and are more likely to be poor than metro dwellers. > Resource industries that sustained rural regions for decades †" > agriculture, ranching, timber, mining, oil and gas †" are moribund. > > > > In the Plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota and > Oklahoma, 89% of the 2,421 cities and towns have fewer than 3,000 > people. Hundreds have fewer than 1,000. Most have been hemorrhaging > population for years. Of those states, four grew at less than half the > national rate of 4.3% from 2000 to 2004. North Dakota lost 1.2% of its > people. > > > > Brain drain or " bright flight " has accelerated, too. For every 1,000 > college graduates 25 and older, those five Plains states plus Iowa > suffered a net loss of 80.5 graduates over the last four years, > according to an analysis of Census migration data by demographer > William Frey of the Brookings Institution. > > > > The lure is more than bright lights and warm climates. Today's > wired, new-economy metro areas are further distancing themselves from > rural areas, " a gap that will be difficult to bridge, " Frey says. > > > > Little federal assistance > > > > Popper sees more promise in hometown competitiveness than in > soliciting Fortune 500 branch plants. " More of a 21st century feel, " > he says. But he thinks successful towns will be the exceptions. " We > still stick with our sense that a lot of places are going to continue > to empty, " he says. > > > > Rural towns and counties are mostly on their own. A Kellogg > Foundation study last July concluded that " funding for rural > development has been a low priority for the federal government, " as > little as 2% of the Agriculture Department's budget in recent years. > > > > Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., twice failed to > get a New Homestead Act through Congress but they're trying again this > year. The $30 billion measure would repay portions of college loans if > graduates settle in declining rural counties, offer home-buying tax > credits, create a small-business investment tax credit and launch a $3 > billion venture capital fund. > > > > " It's been hard, " Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry says. " It doesn't have > much appeal for big urban states. " > > > > But economic gardening is affordable and can unite a town. In three > years, Valley County, Neb., (population 4,647) has graduated 70 from a > leadership class; set up an endowment with $1.2 million willed by a > local couple; and hired a business development coordinator. Ord, the > county seat, has made seven small-business loans from a 1-cent > sales-tax fund. > > > > A wealthy alum living in Arizona flies in to teach a class on > growing entrepreneurs. A graduate came home from Lincoln to start an > irrigation-well firm. Another plans a local dental practice. The > county must attract 27% of its high school's average graduating class > of 67 to stabilize the population by 2010. > > > > It won't be easy. " They need an economic opportunity. That's what > we've been struggling with, " says Bethanne Kunz, the county's economic > development director. > > > > Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's publicized forays to New York and other > cities to woo Iowans back at posh receptions netted 1,200 recruits in > five years, fewer than those who left the state, according to Frey's > analysis. To slow the exodus of graduates, the Legislature is > considering a bill to abolish the state income tax for people under 30. > > > > Saving the schools > > > > Free-land offers spread icing on hometown competitiveness. > Minneapolis, Kan., was the first. Marquette, 60 miles south, exploited > the idea. > > > > Since May, the town has given away all 80 of its free lots and plans > to offer more. Twenty new houses have gone up. One hundred new > residents boosted the population to 620. A Pennsylvania couple had > never seen Kansas until two weeks before their new house was finished. > Piper, the mayor, says the town was jolted into action by the threat > of losing its elementary school. It lost its high school 20 years ago. > A town with no schools is naked against rivals. > > > > Marquette offered the lots, fixed up its downtown, opened a popular > motorcycle museum, began promoting tourism and welcomed diversity †" > including Latinos and a Muslim trucker from California. > > > > In Plainville, Kan. (population 2,029), economic development > director Roger Hrabe bought a building with his own money to > " incubate " three small-business start-ups. " I stole the idea from a > guy in eastern Kansas, " he says. > > > > Atwood's location in far northwest Kansas puts the town of 1,279 at > a disadvantage in the free-lot sweepstakes †" the Canaans who settled > in Ellsworth with their three boys thought Atwood " was just too far > out there. " To would-be residents anxious about the closest Wal-Mart, > central Kansas towns shrewdly sell their proximity to cities such as > Salina and Hays. > > > > Abundant deer, pheasant, quail and wild turkeys have always drawn > hunters to Atwood, and now some of them are staying when they retire. > Six free lots have drawn " scads of interest " but no takers, economic > development director Arlene Bliss says. > > > > " Retirees from Denver have found out they can sell a very average > home for $350,000, come here and buy a beautiful home for $100,000 and > pocket the difference, " Bliss says. > > > > Ellsworth is close to Salina and has a prison that employs 200. It > still rolls out extra goodies, including free water and sewer hookups, > free building permits, golf memberships and swimming pool passes. > Local lenders reduce house down payments by the free lot's value, > about $10,000. > > > > Results of Ellsworth's " welcome home plan " have been encouraging: 24 > new residents, four of whom reserved free lots, and 16 new > schoolchildren who draw $6,000 apiece in additional state education aid. > > > > Economic development directors like Ellsworth County's Anita > Hoffhines are a new breed of small-town civic booster giving an > intensely personal touch to business recruitment. They're willing to > try almost anything †" Internet radio marketing is her latest ploy > †" if it benefits their towns. > > > > They know small towns will never appeal to the masses. They know > high school seniors such as Dustin Engelken and Simon Orozco likely > won't return. Dustin is drawn to cities and wants a Foreign Service > career. Simon, headed to Harvard University next fall, leans toward > medical research. > > > > So Hoffhines targets the few who are comfortable in small places > where everybody knows everybody else's business, where an entrepreneur > can set up shop and grow. " If you want to be creative in Silicon > Valley, the cost is very high, " she says. " If you come to central > Kansas, you can be very creative and have very low risk in comparison. > And the quality of the people here is awesome. " > > > > > > What you see is what you get > > You've made your bed, you better lie in it > > You choose your leaders and place your trust > > As their lies wash you down and their promises rust > > You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns > > And the public wants what the public gets > > But I don't get what this society wants To send an email to - > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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