Listen To This Story
The University of Nebraska held a listening session yesterday to talk about the university’s role in rural community development. Participants focused not only on problems to be solved, but on good news from small town Nebraska.
A few dozen people from across the state gathered in a conference room on the Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln. They gathered to address some basic questions: what is going well in your community? What can the university do to help?
Mike Boehm is vice chancellor for the Institute of Ag and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He said there are plenty of success stories in rural areas.
“It’s like looking at the night sky in Nebraska, and you can see the bright stars," Boehm said. "I sometimes though have a hard time of connecting the dots to make a constellation. So it feels like we have these amazing parts and pieces. This exercise for me is about connecting the dots.”
For Ann Bruntz, one of those dots is a success in her hometown of Friend, Nebraska, which has a population of around a thousand people.
“We were without a grocery store for three years, and in August we opened… it’s a combination grocery store/quick shop, and it was a combination of 43 investors," said Bruntz said. "It’s a $4 million dollar project. That’s mind-blowing for a lot of people. Through the combination of community redevelopment money, TIF financing, and pure investment, we’ve made it happen.”
TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing, where future property tax revenues are diverted to a project. Taxes are an important topic of conversation around rural development.
Cathy Lang directs the Nebraska Business Development Center. She said rural areas should be a part of legislative conversations about tax incentives.
“My question is: so what are we trying to incent with these programs?" Lang asked. "And I will just throw this out. If workforce, people, talent is our number one issue, why are there no incentives for people to come to Nebraska?”
Maxine Moul is a former Director of Economic Development for Nebraska, and agreed with Lang.
“The state of Nebraska is not supporting rural communities," Moul said. "We really need to push our legislative leaders on giving incentives to rural communities, giving support to rural communities. And that goes for the federal government as well.”
Many rural towns face population decline, and participants at the listening session focused on how to bring young people to their communities, as well as how to get people who grew up in Nebraska to come back.
Hillary Maricle said Boone County had success quickly raising money for a trail system.
“This was an engaging experience for young people in our community. This was an engaging opportunity for them to say ‘I care about this, and we need it, and let’s do it now,'" Maricle said. "And so now all of a sudden we have this whole new crop of thirty-somethings that are saying ‘we’re involved in our community.’ So not only did it give us a safe space to exercise and be healthy and be a community, but it gave a whole new crop of leaders an opportunity to shine, and now they’re staying engaged.”
Lang said those young people may be key to keeping businesses in rural areas running. Business owners, however, can be hesitant to talk about retirement and the future of their businesses.
“They don’t want people to know that they’re thinking about retiring. They don’t want to have it out there that they’re thinking about selling their business," Lang said. "And yet at the same time there may be younger individuals that would be very interested in taking on that business and then taking it to the next level. And I would love to figure out a way to rise that up without violating anyone’s confidentiality.”
Participants talked about how to encourage former residents to come home after college, but there’s also the possibility of new people moving to an area.
Michelle Krehbiel is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension.
“The question is how do we welcome outsiders?" Krehbiel asked. "And outsiders not just from the U.S., but from other countries. That’s a critical question.”
Tim Marshall sat in a small group with Krehbiel, discussing communities with large immigrant populations.
“The quality of life that we might define from somebody that was born and raised in Nebraska, as [compared to] what the quality of life of somebody that’s immigrated here, in my opinion, it’s gonna be broadly different,” Marshall said.
To make sure that quality of life is high for all members of a community, the group talked about how to bring immigrants and young people into leadership positions.
All these solutions are focused on individual communities, and when Don Macke asked how the university can help facilitate growth, Jeff Yost said university help should be community-centric by spreading staff around the state, and away from Lincoln and Omaha.
“In the twenty-first century we can certainly live and work wherever we want to live and work," Yost said. "Could the university be a leader in helping us to have more and more staff that are living and working in places, cause it’s not just where you’re gonna do your work: it’s where you’re raising your kids, where you’re gonna practice your faith, where you’re gonna volunteer for things, and that builds lots and lots of capacity.”
The listening session didn’t create concrete plans, but instead floated many ideas for the university and communities to consider. These ideas will help rural Nebraska connect the dots of success and plan for a future everyone hopes is as bright as the stars in a Nebraska night sky.