On the Side | Brad Hicks
So far this month, we have heard a lot of elected officials, some of the state’s anti-tax organizations, and some of the anti-modern ag groups give their opinions on what needs to happen to either retain, save or grow rural Iowa. The reality is that a lot of those people have never lived in rural Iowa, so they know little about which they speak. It’s time for an honest assessment of rural Iowa, its trend lines, and its potential.
Assumptions
First, let’s agree on some assumptions that are undeniable in terms of long-term trends:
1. Farms will not get smaller.
2. Birth rates among those of European descent will not rise.
3. More schools will need to consolidate due to declining enrollment.
Also, let’s agree to a definition that says rural Iowa includes areas that aren’t within a county or connected to a population center of 40,000 or more.
Economic development
I would assert that when it comes to rural Iowa, everything has to be about economic development. We can no longer see schools as we do now – they must become centers for developing a workforce. We can no longer see community amenities as we do now – they have to exist to retain a workforce. We can no longer see downtowns and shopping areas as places to buy goods – we must see them as places where the community retains dollars and drives increases in tax collections.
It’s all about economic development.
I spent eight years on a county economic development board in rural Iowa, and then served a little more than two years as the Wright County Economic Development director, serving Clarion, Belmond, Eagle Grove, Dows, Goldfield, and rural areas. In both the board work and as a director, there were always the same items upon which we spent our time: business recruitment and retention, workforce development, and housing. It is no different today, and the results are similar – rural counties, such as Montgomery County, are losing population. Montgomery County lost almost 5 percent of its population in the first six years of this decade.
We have to be realistic about economic development. When I left my job in Wright County, I went to Texas to run a newspaper. The town was on I-45, which runs from Dallas to Houston. Ennis was 35 miles southeast of the Trinity River in Dallas. From there to Ennis, and south for a few miles, there are dozens of warehouses, factories, distribution centers, and the like. There is a workforce to be had, and great transportion. When I drove through there the first time, I thought to myself, “This is what I was competing against – and this is just 35 miles of one state.”
I think Montgomery County Development Corporation’s slogan – Growing Our Own – is a great approach. The state of Iowa is not coming to Southwest Iowa’s rescue – Iowa Economic Development Authority is all-in on shovel-ready development sites that meet a list of criteria. Montgomery County doesn’t have what IEDA seeks.
Montgomery County, like many others, has to grow its own.
According to sales tax permits, there are probably about 200 to 250 businesses in Montgomery County that have multiple employees. What if there was a way to have half of those businesses add one employee a year over the next decade? That would be 100 jobs a year. In a decade, that’s 1,000 jobs. It’s unlikely to be a net gain of 1,000, as we all know some firms close and move, but paying attention to what we have, and trying to help those firms grow – right here in our neighborhood – is the best chance to grow rural Iowa.
To grow our own, we have to pay attention to our own.
How? We have to change the way we think about our taxes, our communities, and the way we have always done things.
Retain capital
Rural areas have to retain capital. That’s done by shopping and spending in your community at every opportunity. When dollars leave your town for a bigger one, they very rarely return. Those funds are gone. This goes for government spending, too – hiring non-local subcontractors on big jobs only sends local tax dollars out of the area.
Train people
Rural Iowa needs to rethink its whole school loyalty concept and start thinking about ways to create school-to-work programs that directly impact local businesses.
Some of this is done in a couple of local programs, such as FFA.
Let’s think about that. What if we were to use the FFA hands-on, instructional model and apply it to other pursuits throughout our education system?
Actually, we don’t have to think about it. There are career academies popping up across Iowa. They are typically branches of community colleges, but a few are just agreements among local schools who want to offer specialized programs.
The Iowa Central Community College Career Academy is located in the former National Guard Armory building in Eagle Grove, a town of about 3,500 in Wright County. It was started three years ago. It’s about 35 miles from the main campus in Fort Dodge. It serves multiple school districts – including Fort Dodge. Yes, Fort Dodge students leave their town of 25,000 and attend these classes at Eagle Grove.
This academy includes college credit academic strands in bio-process technology, business, engineering technology, general education-college transfer, manufacturing technology, and a teacher academy. The local schools purchase “seats” in these programs for their students, then fill those seats. The courses are taught by Iowa Central instructors. The classes are no charge to the students.
Lots of high schools offer programs, but these academies are special.
For instance, here are the bio-process technology classes in the first semester: Intro to Process Technology, Applied Physics, and Mechanical Processes. That’s 10 college credits. The second semester includes: Intro to Biotechnology with a lab, Technical Math, Shop Operations, and Blueprint Reading. That’s another eight college credits. If you want to see more, go to iowacentral.edu/ca/.
These programs not only set up students for college training, they provide the basics for entry-level and just above entry-level positions in many local businesses. As or more important, they put a more skilled workforce in place. Skilled jobs flow to a skilled workforce, and unskilled jobs flow to an unskilled workforce. In the old days, a business might show up and train people. Today, a business might show up if you have trained people. We have to train, retrain, and retrain again our workforce. These academies, and community colleges, are vital.
Of course, these things take money. Our community colleges do great work. They are under-funded and under-valued by our lawmakers, and the anti-tax groups in Iowa that work to hold property taxes and income taxes and sales taxes in check have created a situation in which we are forced to choose in education – K-12, community colleges, universities, and now, perhaps, traveling vouchers.
Rural Iowa needs a big infusion of funding to create these programs through the community college system.
Retain population
Developing a workforce that is job-ready will attract business investment, so long as that trained population will stay.
Most of us understand the allure to young people of going to college or moving to a larger town. I have a son who lives in rural Iowa, but in a few months, he will be moving, and he hopes to land in Cedar Falls, Iowa City, Des Moines, etc.
You might be surprised why.
He’s interested in being more anonymous in his community, having higher speed internet, and being closer to friends. Think about that. Thirty-some years ago, my hopes were for a better job, my own house, etc. His generation is far different.
Others might want more cultural or recreational opportunities.
Can we meet those challenges in rural Iowa?
Access to technology is going to be one of the main driving forces. In fact, a community that cannot provide ultra-high-speed internet at a reasonable price is in real trouble moving forward. Businesses will demand it. It’s the way business is done. Large files must be transmitted fast. Payroll and financial data must be transmitted securely. Rural Iowa towns need to consider creating their own tech utilities, because a lot of providers aren’t going to make those investments. Communities that partner with a provider to build this infrastructure will have a leg up. Communities that build and maintain their own, and then sell access to a range of providers, will be farther ahead.
In terms of culture and recreation, Montgomery County is in good shape with The Wilson Performing Arts Center and the YMCA, an 18-hole golf course in Red Oak, an active bowling alley, and more. Many other places are farther behind. Iowa’s CAT and Vision Iowa programs did great things in small communities; reinvigorating them would be great.
Health care is another area in which Montgomery County is shining. MCMH is on the cutting eduge in many ways, including its commitment to wellness. But health care includes vision, dental, care centers, and more. Access is not the same in other places.
Embrace entrepreneurs
Everyone knows the guy down the street with the crazy idea. He might have a chance to get it off the ground if he had some support. But, no one is really ready to help.
We have to embrace entrepreneurs. We have to create entrepreneurs. We have to teach children at a young age how to be and think like an entrepreneur. In today’s age, given technology, many entrepreneurs can work from anywhere. And rural Iowa is part of anywhere.
We need places where start-ups can share spaces to keep costs down. We need mentors to help them with financial, insurance, and tax situations. This doesn’t take much money, and there may be businesses out there who would take on a tenant for cheap, allow use of a phone and copier for a reasonable amount of money, and provide other assistance.
Rural Iowa needs people with ideas, and it needs people to help these would-be entrepreneurs grow something.
Housing
Rural Iowa’s housing – and Red Oak’s housing – is in dire straits. There are some programs in existence that can help, but most require the units to be owner-occupied and meeting a financial criteria that’s pretty close to poverty level. How do we expect those programs to really address the situation?
In Wright County, I oversaw a county housing assistance program. An individual had to obtain bank financing, but the program would provide downpayment assistance or closing costs assistance for a home buyer. We also had a program to lend money for repairs, but again, the county program’s loan had to be tied to a bank loan.
Housing requires more attention than those types of options.
1. Enforcement of codes should be a priority. Investments in these properties help drive rents. If our labor is good, businesses will raise incomes to offset those types of increases. If you look around the country, the places that are committed to code enforcement are the places where development occurs.
2. Eliminating blight. Iowa’s urban renewal law was originally aimed at addressed blighted areas. It was sidetracked for economic development in the 1990s, and really hasn’t been redirected since. Iowa needs to create new ways for communities to address neighborhoods where houses are unsafe or a blight – whether through legal means to force owners to address situations, or to more-easily condemn properties that are hazards.
3. There needs to be incentives for new housing. One of the reasons housing development lags in rural Iowa is that once construction is complete, the cost of construction has outpaced the ability to charge rents or to recoup an investment. The Iowa Finance Authority funds various housing projects throughout the state each year. These are primarily aimed at providing aid for lower-income and regional housing projects. Rural Iowa needs that focus to be altered, and funding increased to allow for more direct aid in city and county housing programs that supplement developments.
Taxes
It is truly unfortunate that Iowa’s tax laws have been treated like political footballs over the years.
Republicans have tied themselves to groups that seek only to reduce taxes, and to fight increases at every turn, in the name of allowing people to keep the money they’ve earned, a veiled attempt at reducing government services and regulations to levels that threaten important oversight.
Democrats have worked very hard to maintain some sort of growth in tax rates and/or collections, but too often they have wanted to invest all of the growth into government jobs – mainly to satisfy the few remaining unions that are in their camp.
Oh, for some moderates.
A few years ago, Iowans voted to approve using a portion of the next statewide sales tax increase for environmental purposes. In some ways, that’s limited discussion about raising the state sales tax, because it limits how the money can be used.
In Texas, there is more leeway with local sales taxes, and I advocate that for Iowa.
What if a rural county had the ability to increase a sales tax by a penny, with the money designated for a specific housing purpose? What if that $250,000 in a year could be used to leverage a revolving housing fund that would be available for specific purposes?
Do, what...?
Rural Iowans need to start thinking about these things. Real changes are on the way. Will there be enough immigration to help sustain school districts financially? Will we have the money in our local economies to fund technology or economic development efforts? How can we sustain a housing stock that is rapidly aging?
It’s going to take out-of-the-box thinking.
It’s going to take intense lobbying and breaking political bonds.
It’s going to be up to us to grow our own. No one is coming to rural Iowa’s rescue.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Andrew Wheeler, (515) 225-5409, awheeler@ifbf.org
SECURING LONG-TERM, DEDICATED WATER QUALITY FUNDING IS A 2018 LEGISLATIVE PRIORITY FOR IOWA FARM BUREAU
Iowa Farm Bureau Applauds Governor Reynolds’ Commitment to Water Quality Funding During Annual Condition of the State Address
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – January 9, 2018 – Members of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF), Iowa’s largest grassroots farm organization, plan to focus their 2018 legislative lobbying strength on issues that stand to impact all Iowans, mainly securing long-term, dedicated state funding to support Iowans’ successful efforts to improve water quality and conserve soil, and measures which will protect taxpayers.
“Iowa farmers continue to take on the challenge of improving water quality and conserving the state’s topsoil, and farmers have made significant progress reducing nutrient loss and implementing successful conservation measures,” says IFBF President Craig Hill. “To continue that momentum, Farm Bureau will work with lawmakers during the 2018 session to secure long-term, dedicated funding to support the state’s scientific-based Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS).”
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State Address demonstrated a commitment to also make water quality funding a top priority during the 2018 legislative session, a statement that earned a standing ovation from legislators in attendance and strong support from Iowa Farm Bureau members. “My hope is that a water quality bill is the first piece of legislation that I have the opportunity to sign as governor,” Reynolds said.
Farm Bureau strongly supports a bill that was originally passed by the Iowa House during the 2016 session and was slightly modified and passed by the Iowa Senate during the 2017 session. The bill, now called Senate File 512, is also supported by Governor Reynolds and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS). Senate File 512 advances science-based research and watershed projects outlined in the NRS, promotes and incentivizes watershed collaboration, and establishes accountability as progress continues with water quality improvements.
The long-term, dedicated funding provided through Senate File 512 would allow farmers and the state to conduct long-term planning for watershed projects, soil conservation efforts, and collaborative projects within a watershed. Senate File 512 also maintains the collaborative approach of the 2016 House bill, which treats both point source (urban) and nonpoint source (rural) equitably.
Another focus for IFBF during the 2018 legislative session is tax reform. Specifically, the organization will work with legislators to help ensure that tax reform legislation will protect the benefits of federal deductibility and will also include coupling with the federal tax code for Section 179 asset expensing, a critical economic tool for Iowa farmers and small business owners.
IFBF has a long track record of protecting property taxpayers, and the organization will remain committed in 2018 to ensure legislation protecting property taxpayers remains a priority for Iowa lawmakers. Iowans paid more than $5.5 billion in property taxes in 2017, a number that has more than doubled since 2000. IFBF is dedicated to working with legislators to maintain current levels for the Homestead Property Tax Credit and the Ag Land/Family Farm Tax Credit, and to continue to extend other key provisions beneficial to property taxpayers.
“The Legislature has the opportunity to address several measures that help protect property taxpayers from further increases, and we will work with them to do that,” says Hill.
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About Iowa Farm Bureau
The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation is a statewide, grassroots farm organization focused on creating a vibrant future for agriculture, farm families and their communities. For more information, visit www.iowafarmbureau.com
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Contact Brad Hicks at publisher@redoakexpress.com.