Ground Level Category Archive: Community Development

Behind the "brain gain:" Ups and downs of going rural

Posted at 11:43 AM on May 16, 2012 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Broadband, Community Development, Economic Development, Rural

"Growing up in the Twin Cities, I never thought I'd be standing under a tree someday, plucking chickens," said Karen Tolkkinen, who moved to Clitherall, in west central Minnesota, in 2010. "Oh, gosh, I felt sorry for them, especially the last one who kept calling and calling to the other chickens that were already butchered."

Raising poultry is just one of the adjustments Tolkkinen made after moving to her husband's family farm. She eats venison now and plans to generate income by selling produce at a nearby farmer's market. "I didn't realize it would be so hard to make money in rural Minnesota," she wrote in response to a query from MPR's Public Insight Network (PIN).

She is one of the people who represent what University of Minnesota Extension sociologist Ben Winchester calls the "brain gain" in research being published today. For a collection of other MPR News Public Insight Network members' experiences, go here.

"When I visit the city, I see my old friends wearing the latest clothes and they have smart phones with 4G and they go on expensive trips. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I lived in the Twin Cities, I looked down a little at poor people. You know, 'Get a job.' Well, when you're 30 miles from the nearest employer, and gas prices are $3.60 a gallon, and the job only pays $10 an hour, you really have to weigh whether that job is worth it."

And yet, she loves the "peace and beauty" of her new home. "Our farm sounds like a bird sanctuary in the spring. You can walk down the gravel roads for miles without seeing a car. In the winter, the snow stays white. During the summer, the fields shimmer with thick crops of hay or oats or wheat. And at night, the stars are brilliant."

Tolkkinen's experience is similar to that of many people who move from the city to the country. They love the beauty and peace and security. But they tend to have a hard time finding decent paying jobs and don't like to drive the long distances to work, school and shopping.

Winchester posits that while young people continue to leave rural areas for the cities, there is an ongoing countertrend of people in their 30s and 40s moving back. He calls the phenomenon the "brain gain." We'll have more coverage of the report this afternoon, but here's a summary of what people told us.

There are myriad reasons behind these moves to rural Minnesota. People may want to be closer to family and friends. In some cases, they return to look after a sick parent or relative. That's what inspired Jannet Walsh to quit a public relations job in Ocala, Florida and move to tiny Murdock, Minnesota. She made a video for us about the experience, which you can view here.

Sometimes people move to raise families, in the hopes of providing their kids an upbringing similar to their own, in a community where everybody knows everybody. Laura Knudsen moved to Alexandria eight years ago from Minneapolis. "My husband and I were ready to start a family. We had watched my niece and nephew grow up in a small town outstate. After a great deal of discussion we decided we wanted a similar experience for our children. There is a quality to life that is less revolved around material items in smaller areas. We felt that growing up in an area with a stronger sense of community was important when raising our kids."

The notion of freedom and natural pleasures was a big draw for Mike Bubany, a financial analyst who recently moved from Bloomington to Spring Valley, south of the Twin Cities, where he teleworks from his 21-acre property. He appreciates that nobody is looking over his shoulder, as he demonstrates in this video he made for us.

Sometimes, people move to rural areas dragging their feet, only to realize it was the best decision they ever made. "I was born and raised in Minneapolis and did not want to move to a small town," wrote June Kallestad, who moved to Cloquet in 1993. "I thought people would be small-minded...and there would be nothing to do. I found out that I LOVE the woods and outdoors. I didn't know that about myself. I have a lovely quality of life even though I don't make a lot of money. I have everything I need - including a horse! I also didn't know what a joy THAT would be!! I never even dreamed of owning a horse..."

BREAKING INTO THE CROWD

Interestingly, Winchester has found that people who move or return to rural areas tend to have higher incomes and be more civically engaged than longtime locals. That's definitely true of Ann Thompson, who returned to her hometown of Milan, in western Minnesota, seven years ago after living overseas for 18 years. "When I left, I didn't necessarily think I would come back," she said. "I just thought I wanted to see the world."

She moved back to spend time with her aging parents. "I didn't want to live with the regrets of not doing that," Thompson said. Also, "I wanted to start a business. I thought it would be easy to do here." She opened a gift and art shop called Billy Maple Tree's in a building that's been in her family for generations. She volunteers much of her time and teaches English as a second language to the town's growing Micronesian population. "Our lives are frantically busy, but that is our choice," she said.

"In a city it's easy to meld in with everyone and go with the flow. In a small town, your community is what you make it. I'm quite happy to get involved and make things happen. I've been energized by my return."

Michael Dagen, an audio engineer who moved to Hewitt in central Minnesota with his wife after living in Fargo, Duluth and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, kept to himself at first because he "didn't want to freak people out." But, he said, "It didn't take long to realize we needed to get involved." Now, they've used a grant to repair the local historical museum, are starting a lending library and have launched a music and barter festival that's in its third year.

"There is quite a creative community we're tapping into," Dagen said. "We feel right at home. We feel connected, which is a powerful feeling I've never had before. I imagine it's similar to the first settlers to the area that came because there was opportunity. Land was reasonable. Everybody depended on each other. Nobody had any money, so they would trade their services and goods."

But breaking into a small town's social scene isn't always easy. "It's hard to get to know people," said Amy Hoglin, who moved from a Twin Cities suburb to rural Lake Wilson in 1998. "People are all in their established groups and are not accustomed to welcoming newcomers."

"Meeting people when I first moved here was very difficult," Erica Ellis agreed. She moved to Bemidji from Delaware by way of Missouri 14 years ago. "A lot of people have lived here their whole lives and have established friendships, so breaking in to that was difficult....It is still difficult for me to meet people, because a lot of the social activity around Bemidji is church-centered and I am an atheist. There aren't any groups here for atheists, humanists, etc, so it is hard to find like-minded people. It is also a fairly conservative community and I am a liberal."

Being single doesn't help matters, wrote Cynthia French, who moved to Little Falls from Minneapolis 16 months ago. "People are nice, and it has been easier to make friends than I was told it would be... That said, most of my friendships are with people who have families. I have not found a supportive community for single people and I have to really work to make connections to creative people in my age group (which usually means driving 30 miles to arts events outside of my town)."

IT'S A LONG WAY FROM HERE TO THERE

Cheap housing draws a lot of people to rural Minnesota, judging by Winchester's research and responses to our PIN query. Hoglin wrote that her husband "was missing rural life and wanted to be able to hunt and fish more often. I was definitely not missing rural life, but eventually warmed to the idea of moving back when I realized we could afford to buy an acreage, while we couldn't afford to buy anything in the Twin Cities area."

"There are no decent restaurants," wrote Daniel Triestman, who moved to Eveleth 10 years ago from Philadelphia. "There is no diversity, be it ethnic or intellectual. On the plus-side, my wife and I were able to buy our home for under $12,000. Our family of five lives comfortably for under $30,000 a year."

While housing may be inexpensive, newcomers sometimes find that other aspects of rural living are more costly. "We have to drive to get everywhere or anywhere," wrote Tracie Yule, who moved from Chaska to Belle Plaine a decade ago. "It's expensive. Plus, it takes a long time to get anywhere and it's almost a day trip if we want to go shopping. Also, my husband and I have to commute to work because there aren't a lot of employment opportunities in our area or ones that pay well."

Knudsen, from Alexandria, wrote, "I also didn't expect the cost of living to be so out of balance with the wages in the area. Most of our expenses are the same or higher than living in the Twin Cities yet wages are lower."

French says the rural cost of living is helping push her to move back to the Twin Cities. "The decision is partially social and partially financial," she said. "I cannot sustain myself financially."

The answer for some is to adjust their standards of living and do more for themselves. "Friends from the metro tell me they would love to live in the country, but the jobs don't pay enough," said David Barrett, who moved from Kimball seven years ago to the country near Murdock. "My response is always that you don't need to make as much when your cost of living is less and you become somewhat self-reliant. Our taxes are less, we can't order food and the nearest big box is 35 minutes away. We are also able to cut our costs of living by providing our own heat, much of our own food and not having shopping as a hobby/habit. Living in the country is a luxury within itself."

WORKING AMONG THE TREES

With broadband Internet becoming more common in rural Minnesota, some people telework from home while drawing a paycheck from companies in the Twin Cities or other urban areas. But without an arrangement like that, the job landscape can be bleak.

Wrote Tolkkinen, "A lot of people in the country end up patching together several part-time jobs, so they work without any benefits, which is what I did for several years. After seven years in rural Minnesota, my savings are nearly depleted. I did start my own business four years ago, but finances and access to good health insurance continue to be a struggle. You have to look for different opportunities. You have to ask yourself, what do I have? What can I offer?"

Dave Konshok moved back to his home town of Park Rapids from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, six years ago after decades in the military. He calls Park Rapids, "a great community in which to raise the family, surrounded by a fabulous natural environment... But I also knew to expect limited economic opportunity: Upon graduating from high school here many years ago, my friends and I dubbed it a 'BYOJ' area - 'Bring Your Own Job'"

"Without a doubt, the biggest challenge of living in rural areas or small towns is economic: making enough money to survive and thrive," he wrote. "It's very unlikely a high-paying job will even exist, let alone be handed to you. You have to dial down your financial expectations, while at the same time be ready to do whatever it takes to survive financially."

Whether someone thrives in rural Minnesota seems to come down to priorities, what's most important in a person's life. Where some see social and economic restrictions, others see new opportunities to connect with people.

"My community is nothing like I expected and everything that I had hoped," wrote Adrienne Sweeney, who moved to Lanesboro in 2002 from the Twin Cities and was raised in Philadelphia. "Growing up in a huge city like Philadelphia, I had no idea what to expect from a small (REALLY small) town. What I have found is that it is one of the most artistically creative places I have ever been... To be able to create a piece of theatre and then have an in-depth discussion about the work with the teller at your bank or your server at the diner the next day is a remarkable experience and makes your work feel so much more real and immediate."

"To be able to participate in a molten iron pour or attend a barn dance or string quartet performance with your neighbors is so inspiring," Sweeney wrote. "I have been more artistically energized here in this town of 750 than any of the 'big cities' I have lived in."

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Why move to rural Minnesota?

Posted at 10:10 AM on May 16, 2012 by Molly Bloom (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Rural

New University of Minnesota Extension research being published later today shows people in their 30s and 40s continue to move to rural areas that otherwise are experiencing population declines.

So we asked sources in our Public Insight Network why they had moved to (or back to) rural Minnesota and how the experience has been. The benefits and challenges seem to break down into three categories: community, lifestyle and economics. Check out what some of our sources had to say and click on the link at the bottom to add your thoughts:

Community

We wanted our child to have a sense of community and to know all of her classmates. I like knowing that I can count on any of my neighbors in an emergency. I also like the fact that she can run around our neighborhood and I'm not going to worry as much as I would in the city.
-Tracie Yule, moved to Belle Plaine 10 years ago

It has been a much more difficult transition than I anticipated. Many people who are here grew up and have family connections. Our biggest challenge is forming relationships with others in hopes that we can have adult conversation other than amongst each other.
-Alyssa Besonen, moved to Madison, Minn. three years ago

Meeting people when I first moved here was very difficult. A lot of people have lived here their whole lives and have established friendships, so breaking in to that was difficult. But the friends I have made are wonderful. And the easy access to nature and outdoor activities is nice. We have a house on two acres and it's nice to have that kind of space.
-Erica Ellis, moved to Bemidji 14 years ago

My community is nothing like I expected and everything that I had hoped. Growing up in a huge city like Philadelphia, I had no idea what to expect from a small (REALLY small) town. What I have found is that it is one of the most artistically creative places I have ever been. To be able to participate in a molten iron pour or attend a barn dance or string quartet performance with your neighbors is so inspiring. I have been more artistically energized here in this town of 750 than any of the "big cities" I have lived in. People seem actually more open-minded than in the metropolitan areas in which I have lived. Since you know everyone, suffering is more real, as is joy.
-Adrienne Sweeney, moved to Lanesboro 10 years ago

We thought we would live here five years or so and then move on. We have been here fourteen years and now have a seven year-old too. It just became the place we are going to stay at and raise our family, possibly passing on our place to our daughter someday.
-Shawn Simonson, Lake Crystal

It is very isolated. Before having children I hated it here and went to the cities almost every weekend, but since my second child's birth I have enjoyed the time in the country. Is it what I expected? Yes. People are very private and stay to themselves. I don't have many friends, except now have more with children in school and active involvement with that and sports.
-Shannon Peterson, moved to Sleepy Eye 19 years ago

The folks are nice but colder than I expected, it has not been easy to break into the community without relatives or history here. On the other hand, folks have been nice, the home and property are awesome, schools and health care are off the chart good, it is safe and stress-free, and the distance to the Twin Cities would be considered a commute by my old neighbors in California.

There is no perfect place to live. I have also lived in Florida, Virginia, Guam, and San Diego. They have crime, a huge homeless problem, poor local services, poor public schools, bad healthcare for regular people, and everything is super expensive. But Minnesota is not perfect either, "Minnesota Nice" isn't really. It is more like "Minnesota Polite & Passive Aggressive". I wish folks would actually tell me what they think more and worry less about someone getting upset over the truth. That is the dirty little Minnesota secret, if you ask me. But we are staying put, even with as much as we hate the weather! This is a great place, and a great place to live.
-Paul Jensen, Alden

A big challenge is knowing who to trust. We have learned the hard way that those who befriend us right away can have ulterior motives because they have power (real or perceived) in the community and use it to manipulate. What I like the best is being able drive to the Twin Cities (in roughly an hour) to visit friends, which helps me feel less isolated.
-Sarah Lutter, moved to Litchfield seven months ago

We felt that growing up in an area with a stronger sense of community was important when raising our kids. What I didn't consider before moving is what it would be like to live in a non diverse area. We have been shocked at some of the racism we have found. We share the same European heritage as most of the residents and haven't been directly impacted in anyway but it has been difficult to express my concerns about this topic. I want to make sure these attitudes are not passed on to my children. I also didn't expect the cost of living to be so out of balance with the wages in the area.

When I lived in the metro the legislature passed a law limiting the ability of local school districts to tax second homes. As a resident of Minneapolis, it seemed reasonable that a person should not have to pay taxes to a school district that they would not be using. As a resident of the area, I now have a different understanding of the impact of this law. In Alexandria many homes and properties are owned by people outside our area. All that property is blocked from potential taxable revenue to our school district. Yet in order for our area to provide the services and industries those vacationers and seasonal resident relay upon we need to provide quality schools.
-Laura Knudsen, moved to Alexandria eight years ago

I am moving back to the cities. The decision is partially social and partially financial. I cannot sustain myself financially (the cost of living is not really that much different moving to a rural area. My rent is a lot less, but heat is more (I have a larger residence), and all the other bills stay the same). Rural communities don't have the same type of salary ranges as cities for nonprofit workers (not just in the arts), so as a single person, I just can't justify staying here for the job. I am also missing the creative outlets that I had in the city, and want to get back to pursuing my own creative work. I will be returning to the cities in June.
-Cynthia French, moved to Little Falls 16 months ago

Lifestyle
I was definitely not missing rural life, but eventually warmed to the idea of moving back when I realized we could afford to buy an acreage, while we couldn't afford to buy anything in the Twin Cities area. The people are a little more progressive than I remembered them being, but it's hard to get to know people.
-Amy Hoglin, moved to Lake Wilson 14 years ago

"City life" certainly has its advantages in terms of convenience, but I truly prefer a more laid back lifestyle in the country. Reasons include more space between neighbors, fewer regulations on land use, and as odd as it may sound but perhaps my most important factor- use of a private well/septic sytem. I truly cannot stomach the taste (and contaminants) of city water!
-David White, moved to Sauk Rapids six years ago

I was born and raised in Minneapolis and did not want to move to a small town. I thought people would be small-minded (in some ways I still see that, but there are small-minded people in Minneapolis, too!) and there would be nothing to do. I found out that I LOVE the woods and outdoors. Didn't know that about myself. And I have a lovely quality of life even though I don't make a lot of money.
-June Kallestad, moved to Cloquet 19 years ago

The biggest challenge is recalibrating my expectations to a small town. I still miss the dining choices we had in a larger city as well as other shopping options and most of all my running club! What I like the best is how fantastic all the options are for outdoor activities. I can put a kayak on my car and be out on the water in 10 minutes. I can be hiking in the bluffs in 15. On a nice day in the summer, my neighborhood has no traffic; everyone is out doing something.
-Aurora Jacobsen, Winona

It is more than we expected. We absolutely love living where we do. It is so quiet and peaceful. We love that our kids have the oppurtunity to help raise pigs each summer for our own consumption as well as a vegetable garden. We feel fortunate to have our own little piece of heaven far away from the traffic and congestion of the metro area. The biggest challenge is the commute. Most of the year it is not a problem, but winter traveling can be tricky. One thing that has made rural living much easier in recent years is the ability to shop online.
-Terri Barrett, moved to Murdock six years ago

Economics

I was burnt out and tired of the city. I wanted to return to the area I grew up and try apply my experience there. I didn't know specifically what I wanted to or would do. I just knew I wanted to get out of D.C. at that time.

There are big generational issues in rural areas. People in rural areas always say we want our kids to go off to college and then come back and contribute our economy and community in some way. It's not that simple when parents and grandparents are still working and like things "the way they've always been."
-Ben Anderson, moved to Thief River Falls three years ago

You know what's funny, is you visit Minnesota's north woods or lakes region and you see all these cute little shops and think, oh, what a fun place to live. You don't realize that those cute little shops are closed September through May. They make all their money off summer tourists. So when you move there, for most of the year you just see dark windows on Main Street.

No question: The biggest challenge is financial. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I lived in the Twin Cities, I looked down a little at poor people. You know, "Get a job." Well, when you're 30 miles from the nearest employer, and gas prices are $3.60 a gallon, and the job only pays $10 an hour, you really have to weigh whether that job is worth it.

It's so easy to feel part of the community. You can move to a rural area and it's not long before you're in the grocery store and recognize that lady from church, or that guy from the play you saw last weekend. City life can be pretty anonymous, but in the country, you might actually have gone to school with the EMT who gives you CPR, or be an ex-in-law to the township clerk. This familiarity can be good or bad, but so far I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
-Karen Tolkkinen, moved to Clitherall two years ago

It is hard to get some necessities without driving to larger towns. Everything is just a bit more expensive. Worst of all after my company-wide layoff I have found it difficult to find similar work, and the people who live here are underpaid for their skill and education levels.
-Cat Schermeister, moved to Menahga eight years ago

The biggest challenge is lack of broadband Internet. In today's worlds, businesses need broadband. The state really needs to step it up and get broadband to everyone. I think this is one of the biggest failures of Minnesota when it comes to businesses.
-Bryan Hansel, moved to Grand Marais eight years ago

My new community is my old community - I grew up in Park Rapids and am a third-generation resident (my grandfather settled here in the 1930s). So, I knew what to expect: a great community in which to raise the family, surrounded by a fabulous natural environment (the headwaters of the Mississippi lie just 20 miles away from town center). But I also knew to expect limited economic opportunity: upon graduating from high school here many years ago, my friends and I dubbed it a "BYOJ" area - "Bring Your Own Job".

Without a doubt, the biggest challenge of living in rural areas or small towns is economic: making enough money to survive and thrive. It's very unlikely a high-paying job will even exist, let alone be handed to you. You have to dial down your financial expectations, while at the same time be ready to do whatever it takes to survive financially. What I like best about small town life is convenience - everything is close by, whether that's the grocery store or walking paths through the woods. I also love that strong sense of community rarely found elsewhere.
-Dave Konshok, moved to Park Rapids six years ago

Have you moved to (or back to) rural Minnesota? Share your experiences here -- or in the comments.

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Central Minnesotans kick the tires of regional plan

Posted at 3:24 PM on May 9, 2012 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Brainerd, Community Development, Economic Development, Local government finance, Rural

For more than a year, a group of a couple hundred people--business owners, elected officials, students, retirees and others--from five counties has been meeting to drink coffee and work toward establishing a set of goals for central Minnesota. They've been hashing over transportation, housing, job creation and other topics with the goal of creating a shared idea of what residents and local governments should try to accomplish by the year 2035.

It's an example of how organizers and leaders in Minnesota and elsewhere are looking for new ways to both sample public opinion and engage people in making choices about the future. The belief is that a strong, consensus-driven vision will lead to better policy and economic decisions. Ground Level has been tracking the project and we've even hosted a couple of related online discussions, which you can find here.

Yesterday afternoon, the group gathered at The Lodge in Baxter, where wooden boats and old motors festoon the walls, to review and give feedback on a preliminary set of plan recommendations built around 11 topics. In some cases, participants expressed skepticism at what the group has so far rendered and pushed toward greater specificity.

"We're getting closer to the end," said Dan Frank of the Little-Falls-based Initiative Foundation, which is helping facilitate the sessions. The process is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune of $825,000 and is one of about 45 efforts HUD is underwriting around the country. "This is the input part today," said Frank. "We want to give you the chance while [the plan] is still in draft form to give us input."

Participants, seated at numbered round tables, were asked to select four topics out of the possible 11 to discuss and to move to the appropriate, topic-centric tables. Specifically, they were asked to comment on what works, what doesn't, what's missing and what's next. "Focus on goals, rather than the how-to," advised Frank, adding that the action steps will come later.

At a table focused on "Changing Populations," participants contemplated an outstate population that's both aging and becoming more diverse. One person said immigrants will be crucial when it comes to offsetting the loss in economic contributions from retiring baby boomers. Another suggested including the goal of trying to improve the attitudes of locals when it comes to immigrants. Yet another said she simply didn't think the draft recommendations were attainable.

At another table, where people were talking "Education and Workforce Development," participants pushed to make the recommendations more specific by suggesting a focus on funding for college and apprenticeships. One person suggested that an emphasis on teleworking and online jobs should be included.

The meeting, it seemed, accomplished what leaders hoped it would. The group kicked the tires of a variety of proposals and gave frank, real-world feedback, which will be incorporated into the final plan.

Cheryal Lee Hills, executive director of the Region Five Development Commission, which has spearheaded the two-year project, told the group that central Minnesota is being held up as a model in other parts of the country, due to the high level of participation in the visioning process and the partnerships forged with foundations.

Hills said there are just two meetings left, one in June and another in August. In June, the group will review draft policies and discuss implementation. "On August 14th, we'll celebrate the final plan," she said, adding that she'd invited U.S. Senator Al Franken to be the keynote speaker. "So far, we're on his calendar," she said.

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We redesigned the Ground Level page

Posted at 9:50 AM on April 17, 2012 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

We've been at this Ground Level project for a couple of years now, exploring community issues around Minnesota, looking at what people think is important and what they're doing about it.

As our collection of these topics has grown -- from rural health to broadband access to clean water to entrepreneurship to the dilemmas of local government -- we felt the need to organize the coverage a little more effectively and make it friendlier to mobile platforms. So here it is, thanks to our new digital producer, Will Lager.

Our hope is that this collection page will be an entre to a growing variety of topic pages, to the Ground Level blog, to a rotating selection of some of our best stories and more.

I'm especially happy with the "Topics" tab, which shows you the wide range of coverage we've been able to provide. It's a good list and it's getting longer regularly, showing some important challenges Minnesotans are facing, who is taking them up and how they're doing. There's a lot of good reporting, writing and photography there, by Ground Level reporter Jennifer Vogel and a host of others in the MPR newsroom.

Take a look at let us know what you think. Then look for our next topic coming up soon.

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Making Ardelle Neufeld smile

Posted at 2:25 PM on April 6, 2012 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Community Development, Rural

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I went looking for my grandparents in the newly released 1940 Census forms but found my real reward when the face of Ardelle Neufeld, an 80-year-old woman I'd never met, lit up at BB's Diner in Mountain Lake on Wednesday.

As half the world knows, the federal government on Monday made public the actual forms census takers filled out 72 years ago this month. (That's the half that clogged the National Archives' servers for at least a couple days trying to do what I was trying to do.)

I immediately went searching online for the farm in Cottonwood County, in southwestern Minnesota, where my grandparents raised my father and eight other sons and daughters. I knew the farmstead was long gone, its buildings razed, its trees cut, its identity erased to become a ghost on the corn-and-soybeans fields of Carson Township.

But it had been there in 1940, so, when the Internet let me, I started scouring through the hundreds of names in Carson Township, looking for clues to a life I was connected to but had no memory of.

Bob Peters and Gladys Harder try to pinpoint a location of where their grandparents farmed near Mountain Lake, Minn. The recently released 1940 Census data gave Bob and his brother Dave a lot of insight into their relatives past. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR

Nothing. I looked in nearby townships. Same result.

Did the census taker skip them? Did they refuse to answer? I resigned myself to waiting months for an index of names to become available. Instead, I switched grandparents and decided to hunt down my maternal grandmother in the nearby town of Mt. Lake.

Online paydirt this time. I found records of the home I had visited as a child, a solid square brick house my mother grew up in. In the 1940 record, there was my widowed grandmother, Mary Kintzi, and her oldest daughter, still at home at 36 and listed as assistant housekeeper. There were two other daughters, one a doctor's receptionist who had earned $504 the year before, the other still in high school. My great uncle, wounded in World War I and on disability, was living there as well. The home was listed as worth $4,000, on the high end for those times; my grandmother called herself a housekeeper, 55.

I knew that a fire broke out in the house last year, and it was torn down. But, just to see what I could see, I enlisted MPR News reporter Dan Olson and my brother, Bob Peters, to drive three hours to Mt. Lake on Wednesday and maybe find someone in the town of 2,100 who could reveal more than five lines of a census form.

We found what was now a school parking lot, in 1940 the home of five people. Pines still stood, but the mulberry tree I remembered was gone. The ice cream store down the block was empty. It wasn't a particularly revealing moment, I have to acknowledge.

Wilma Lindstrom looks out her window as she reminisces about life in the 1940s in Mountain Lake, Minn. Lindstrom said she did a lot of rollerskating in her youth, and thinks that kids today play too many video games. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR

But we wandered across what had been the garden and back yard and chatted up Wilma Lindstrom, 89. She's lived in the neighborhood more than 50 years and remembered my grandmother and especially my Aunt Rachel. She was happy to reminisce about high school days and how what once was a town dominated by Russian Mennonites has in recent years begun to reflect a much larger world, changes brought by an influx of Laotians and others.

"They've really helped our school, I guess," Lindstrom said. "They are learners. They're really intent about getting an education."

Mt. Lake firefighters try in January 2011 to control a fire in the home that belonged to Mary Kintzi when the 1940 census was taken. The home was later torn down. Photo: Mountain Lake Observer/Advocate

By now it was lunch time, and that brings me back to Ardelle Neufeld.

She's the mother of Kris Langland, the editor of the Mountain Lake Observer/Advocate, who had graciously agreed to meet us and invite a few old timers along, including Ardelle. As it happened, my cousin Gladys Harder showed up, too.

Bob and I explained how we'd found the home of our Grandmother Kintzi but scratched our heads at the mystery of our missing paternal grandparents' farm.

Wait a minute, Ardelle said. She had grown up near my grandparents. They didn't live in Carson Township. Phone calls were made, maps were consulted. It was Midway Township.

Thank goodness the Internet gods at the National Archives had calmed down. (And thanks to my Verizon wireless card.) I opened my computer on the diner's table and pulled up the census site. I found Enumeration District 17-13 and started paging through.

From left, Gladys Harder, Ardelle Neufeld and Bob Peters look at a map of Minnesota in BB's cafe in Mountain Lake, Minn. to try to find where a relative of Peters farm property might be. Bob and his brother Dave traveled to Mountain Lake to revisit their past by looking at the 1940 Census data that was recently made public. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR

Bingo. There, on a laptop screen in the middle of a table full of hot beef commercial and BLT sandwiches, were my missing grandparents. I was surprised to find my father (29 years old, a bachelor teacher making $1,275 a year but still living at home, something I didn't know), and there were six younger siblings. The kids spoke German as their first language, all living on a small, diversified farm that today is but a corner in a large field.

I scrolled down the page, following the path of the census taker 72 years ago, and there she was in his scrawled penmanship. Neighbor, Ardelle Loof, 8, daughter of Joe and Gertrude Loof, farmers who had come from Iowa. The woman across the table from me beamed, mouth open, tickled to see how this record from days gone by has resurfaced and to find it on a computer screen. It was as if a light went on.

And with that, she, Gladys and another long-time resident, Don Ross, were off to the races, recalling times past, recreating a community and a time they loved.

The census form noted that Ardelle's 8-year-old self in 1940 had already completed two years of school. "There was only one boy in first grade and they didn't want him to be the only student, so they said, 'start her, she's ready.'

Ardelle Neufeld, whose maiden name is Loof, looks at the record of herself and her family from the 1940 Census in BB's Diner in Moutain Lake, Minn. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR

Ardelle had eventually married a Neufeld and moved to town (as did my grandparents and most other farmers. The rural population of Cottonwood County is a third what it was in 1940.)

There was the 1939 high school basketball team to recall, the invention of a new clothespin by a local man during World War 2, people to conjure up from the census list of names.

Ross graduated from high school (with my aunt) and went to war. His brothers landed in Normandy on D-Day. He came home and went into his father's dry cleaning business. He should have gone to college, he thinks now, but it's been a good life.

After the war, he said, "The whole world was different, not only Mountain Lake."

Brothers Dave and Bob Peters pose in front of a mural in the business district of Mountain Lake, Minn. Dave, director of MPR News' Ground Level project, and his brother took a personal journey into their past by looking at the recently released 1940 Census data and traveling to Mountain Lake, Minn. Photo by Jackson Forderer for MPR News

So in the end, it wasn't really the record of my grandparents that made the day. It was meeting a few folks who liked how their lives turned out, were proud of their community and who could happily open a window to the past and paint a little picture for some strangers.

In not too many years, that window will close, of course. I can only hope that when the 1960 census is made public in 20 years, someone will look me up and bring a smile to my face as rewarding as Ardelle's.

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Join a chat: Central Minnesota's housing squeeze

Posted at 11:06 AM on April 5, 2012 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development, Todd County

We're holding another online live chat at 11:30 this morning to talk about affordable housing in central Minnesota.

This is part of the planning effort that several hundred residents have been engaged in for more than a year, talking about what they want Crow Wing, Morrison, Wadena, Cass and Todd counties to look like in 20 years.

Right now, almost half of the low-income residents in those five counties spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. You can check out what some people think about the situation and what to do about it by going to this page .

Then come back to the same page at 11:30 a.m. Thursday when you can join in a live conversation. See you there.

More on the central Minnesota "Resilient Region" effort here.

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Sibley County postpones broadband vote

Posted at 2:10 PM on March 28, 2012 by Jennifer Vogel (1 Comments)
Filed under: Broadband, Community Development

We've been tracking a fiber broadband project in Sibley and Renville Counties in southwestern Minnesota, interesting because it would be publicly owned and bring high-speed Internet to farms in the area. Now, the RS Fiber project has reached its do-or-die moment where the communities involved need to vote yes or no on whether to sell around $69 million in revenue bonds to build the network.

So far, there have been four votes. Three communities--Buffalo Lake, Winthrop and Renville County--have voted yes. The city of Arlington has voted no. Sibley County commissioners were supposed to vote yesterday, but instead opted to postpone a decision. Sibley County is the entity that would bring farms into the customer base. A no vote wouldn't kill the project, said Mark Erickson, Winthrop city administrator and project champion, but it would make it more city-based.

"Sibley postponed and wanted more commitment cards and buy-in from the townships," said Erickson, who interrupted a meeting with local township representatives this morning to talk with me. "I think we have a way forward." The project's success hinges on having enough customers to make the bond payments, but it's hard to know how many customers the network will have before it's built.

Erickson said the other communities that are part of RS Fiber--Fairfax, Gibbon, Gaylord, New Auburn, Green Isle, Stewart, Brownton and Lafayette--will vote by April 11th. "If by the end of April Sibley County isn't in, we'll proceed without the county," he said. That would be a disappointment, but it could also have an upside. "We wouldn't do the farms, which would make the business plan better, " he said.

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Join a conversation: Affordable housing in central Minnesota

Posted at 8:29 AM on March 26, 2012 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development, Todd County

Whose job is it to make sure there's enough affordable housing in central Minnesota? What's the difference between affordable housing and cheap housing?

We're starting our second online conversation about the future of central Minnesota, asking questions about affordable housing in the area around Brainerd. Check out this Resilient Region discussion here and add your thoughts by using the comment feature at the bottom.

As we did with the first of these conversations, we're posting questions posed by the Region 5 Development Commission and the Initiative Foundation to some of the residents involved in the Central Minnesota Sustainable Development Plan. Then we're inviting anyone who wants to join in.

More about the effort here.

The discussion is part of a federally funded, several-year effort to create a vision for life in Crow Wing, Cass, Wadena, Todd and Morrison counties for the coming 20 years.

We'll plan to follow up with an online chat at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 5.

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Northeast Minneapolis residents take development into their own hands

Posted at 1:56 PM on March 15, 2012 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development

Hoping to fill some of the empty commercial space on Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis, a group of locals has come up with a novel idea. They're forming an investment cooperative, whereby members each throw in $1,000 and the money goes toward buying and fixing up properties and helping new businesses get established.

So far, the NorthEast Investment Cooperative (NEIC) has drawn 15 members and more than 30 pledges. At a meeting in late March, the group will establish bylaws and elect a board of directors. Much is yet to be determined, such as which properties around Central and Lowry avenues might be targeted, what sort of new businesses people want to encourage and what incentives and assistance might be offered to would-be business owners.

(Photo by Mike Mosedale)

All over the state, communities are trying to grow businesses from the ground up by offering microloans, mentoring programs and incubator spaces with cheap rent. We reported on the approaches as part of our recent One Job at a Time project. This is yet another twist on the theme.

If all goes according to plan, the NEIC will start with a high-profile troubled property on Central Avenue. The group will buy the building, rehab it and find one or more businesses to fill it. Once the businesses are on their feet, the hope is they'll purchase the building from the cooperative. The money would then be reinvested in the next property and so on. Since the NEIC is for-profit, members might see a return as well.

NEIC co-founder Amy Fields, who also manages the Eastside Food Co-op on Central, thinks local ownership and management of commercial properties can make a difference. "For a lot of property owners, they are interested in a return on investment, not whether a particular business makes it. So many businesses come in with six months of cash flow and once they've gone through that, they're gone."

At the NEIC, she said, "We've got the triple bottom line that includes community and environment and so I think we're going to be looking at a way to have a long-term relationship with tenants."

"How the main street goes is how the rest of the community goes," Fields said. "If Central Avenue is invested in and becomes a more desirable location, everyone who lives here benefits from that."

The NEIC is aiming for a minimum of 100 members and Fields hopes the effort will strengthen the fabric of Northeast Minneapolis. "This is my community," she said. "I know people and I see people every day. I just want more of that. There is a sense that there is such talent and good will and energy and just commitment that you don't know about that is out there."

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Minneapolis art students share ideas with a small city

Posted at 2:45 PM on March 1, 2012 by Dave Peters (2 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development, Local Food, Rural, Young people

MONTEVIDEO -- Last Saturday at the community center here, a handful of students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) presented ideas aimed at revitalizing the local economy and culture through arts, broadly defined.

An arts-based economy is emerging in western Minnesota, in the Upper Minnesota River Valley. I wrote a story about it that will run next Tuesday as part of Ground Level's One Job at a Time project.

Meeting with some four dozen residents, including potters and organic farmers, the MCAD students tossed out ideas that included enlisting young documentarians to make a short film establishing a narrative for the region, opening a restaurant with local foods and furnishings and formalizing an internship program where MCAD students would earn credits for working with local artisans.

The students were part of the school's new Rural Arts Initiative, funded by the Bush Foundation, which seeks to lay fresh, problem-solving eyes on the Montevideo area and also the Iron Range. The students spend a little time in each location and return to present creative suggestions, along the way gaining a feel for real-world problems. (Full disclosure: Ground Level receives support from the Bush Foundation.)

"We are not coming in to save people through art or design," said class professor Bernard Canniffe, who chairs MCAD's design department. "I think artists and designers do more damage than good in these things. 'Oh look, we're going to create a mural.' It's like God almighty, really? That's all we can do? Or create a papier-mache donkey standing on its head that symbolizes hope in Montevideo? Many times that's what these things become, padded resume builders for designers or artists. It doesn't accomplish anything. This is something different."

Canniffe, who is from South Wales, said the goal is to "create innovation" and hopefully establish a long-term relationship with the community. "Art can assess and create," he said. "That's what art and design can do, look at things quickly and assess them really quickly."

"The next ground-breaking initiatives or ideas are going to come out of the Midwest and not the coasts," he said. "Pick any subject that's affecting the world now. It could be globalization, population densities, entrepreneurism, agriculture, cultural ethnicity, Christian versus Muslim identification. All these things are happening in one shape or form in Minnesota or Iowa."

Aside from one audience member who thought it paternalistic to have student documentarians from elsewhere tell the region's story, the response to the presentation was largely positive. Attendees seemed to appreciate the opportunity to exploit young talent and energy and perhaps draw a student or two to stay. "Out of the creativity phase, hopefully something comes and clicks and becomes a new model," said Patrick Moore, of Clean Up the River Environment, based in Montevideo.

Moore is one of those people who make things happen in a community and he facilitated the student presentation. "I'm hoping that the economic development of western Minnesota can grow. I love the towns and the people and the river. I want people to live in this landscape. I don't want it to be inhabited by robots and machines. I want people in these communities to thrive and raise kids and create art and music and plays."

"It's about building a new society in the shell of the old," he said.

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One job at a time

Posted at 9:56 AM on January 24, 2012 by Dave Peters (3 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development

Measuring entrepreneurship is an elusive business.

Data crunchers from the census bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, academia, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and other organizations take a variety of stabs at getting a handle on it.

None of them capture precisely the psychological, light-bulb-going-on approach to the world that people have in mind when they think about entrepreneurship. But, taken together, they can shed light as communities try to think differently about entrepreneurship and its role in economic development.

A lot of those measures haven't looked so good lately in Minnesota.

You hear more people around the state talking these days about developing a "culture of entrepreneurship" as a promising means of developing and sustaining healthy local economies. It's time, you hear these people say, to stop relying on large employers coming into town and hiring hundreds. Instead, you hear increasing talk about "gardening" and "growing your own," one job at a time, by creating environments that make entrepreneurship more attractive.

Ground Level, MPR News' project for exploring community issues in Minnesota, is going to take a look at that effort over the next month or two. Look and listen for stories from around the state about incubators, microlending, start-ups, people with bright ideas and people forced by a poor economy to become entrepreneurs. We're calling it "One Job at a Time."

But first, here are two things that jump out at me after strolling through the data for a few days.

--When you look at graphs showing change in Minnesota's self-employment or in new companies started or in income generated by sole proprietors -- all of which get at part of entrepreneurship -- you see a dropoff in the latest years for which numbers are available.

Two examples:

The number of Minnesotans identifying themselves on their tax returns as generating income from self-employment peaked in 2007 and then fell two years in a row. Some predict this number is starting to rise again but here's what it looks like from the numbers available.

And the amount of income reported by business proprietors (including both self-employed and those who hire others) likewise has seen a decline since a peak in 2006, as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

--But interestingly, when you break those sets of numbers down geographically, an area of southwestern Minnesota seems to be fighting the trend better than other places.

Almost every county declined in self-employment since the peak in 2007, but a half dozen counties along the upper Minnesota River were among those with the smallest declines. The darker shaded counties showed the least decline (Yellow Medicine was flat, in fact.)

And when it comes to proprietor income, counties bucking the trend and actually increasing since the 2006 peak are concentrated in the same part of the state. Again, the darker shaded counties showed the biggest increases. (Traverse County, the state's least populated, led the way.)

I asked Kurt Thompson, program officer for the Southwest Initiative Foundation in Hutchinson why this might be the case. The farm economy has been booming, he noted, but he also mentioned an ethic of hard work and something in the culture of the region that makes people do for themselves.

Likewise, Pam Lehmann, economic development authority director for Lac qui Parle County, said the emphasis is on entrepreneurs in her part of the state. She told MPR News reporter Jennifer Vogel:

"When I started in January 2007, my board said, 'We don't want you to chase any smoke stacks. We don't want you to chase the big company that will employ a couple of hundred people.' If they want to come here, we won't turn them down, but we're not actively recruiting them. We feel we'll have more long-term impact by helping the one-man shops get started and grow. If you help 100 small guys get started, you've created 100 jobs. If one or two fail, that's not the impact of one big employer failing and losing all the jobs."

I'd love to hear people's thoughts about the value of this data and whether there are signs of change in the wind. We've been asking entrepreneurs in our Public Insight Network what they think about conditions, as well.

We plan to go down this avenue with our reporting in the coming weeks. We'll look at places where artists underpin entrepreneurship, where former manufacturing plants have formed a platform for small-business growth, where green energy is triggering action and where the "secret ingredient" seems to be a person who's just plain good at making something happen.

Stay tuned.

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Central Minnesota chooses a future

Posted at 11:15 AM on December 16, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

Brainerd, Minn. -- About 130 people from five counties got together Thursday and voted on their future.

They weren't making choices about next year's taxes or a big road or school project, or weighing in on a divisive election.

Instead, they voted on what they wanted central Minnesota to look like in 25 years and what they thought it was worth investing in and planning for.

Broadband? Yes, they said. Lots of connectivity is needed to make everything else run smoothly.

Water quality? Yes, improving lake quality is a plus for the economy.

Roads? Enough to move products to market but perhaps let others go without maintenance.

Economy? Invest in ways that encourage increases in manufacturing, retail, health care and agriculture but maybe let sectors involving arts, construction, real estate and education services continue at current levels.

Affordable housing? More than is available now but don't aim for the moon.

The exercise these people -- business people, local officials, high school students, retirees and others -- went through for two hours in a meeting room at The Lodge in Baxter was part of a two-year planning process. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune of $825,000, the "Central Minnesota Resilient Region" project is trying to create a shared idea for what residents and local governments can shoot for by the year 2035.

Launched in February, it's one of about 45 efforts HUD is underwriting around the country. Only a little over a dozen are rural.

It's an example of how a variety of organizers and leaders in Minnesota and elsewhere -- some elected, some not -- are trying a variety of ways to both sample public opinion and engage people in making choices.

In this case, for almost a year, small groups of people have been talking about land use, transportation, housing and economic development, and now those conversations will be woven into a large, single vision.

When organizers asked people's help in imagining potential economic, environmental and lifestyle futures that they need to prepare for, "We got everything from very optimistic to very dark and disturbing," said Phil Hunsicker of Envision Minnesota and one of the project's organizers.

On Thursday, Jean Coleman, sustainability organizer for the University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnership, led participants through a series of choices about parts of what that vision might look like.

How much growth did people want to see? Coleman sketched out alternate futures and asked them to choose. Most of those in the room made choices involving some growth but not rampant increases that might be prompted by a booming economy.

What about transportation? Most rejected a future of comprehensive public transit and road system improvements and the investments required. Instead, they preferred a vision that improved main rail and road lines but let some local streets go unmaintained.

"You're the experts," Cheryal Lee Hills told the people in the room. Hills is executive director of the Region 5 Development Commission and has spearheaded the project.

Local elected officials have been among the 200 people included in the project, and when it ultimately produces a vision for the area, they will be key to whether policies get enacted to carry it out.

Organizers plan to bring the group together again in May to look at how people's preferences on Thursday might translate into public policy.

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Minnesotans find themselves "Forced to Choose"

Posted at 3:51 PM on October 26, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development, Local government finance

Over the past couple of weeks, MPR News listeners have heard a half dozen news stories on All Things Considered and Morning Edition generated by a new project called "Forced to Choose."

In Owatonna, voters are choosing between higher taxes and letting a historic set of buildings deteriorate. In Foley, residents hope to save money by cutting police protection. All over Minnesota, businesses are bracing to bear a bigger property tax burden resulting from a state effort to save money.

Today we've launched the online version of this project, a look at how Minnesota communities are coping with a new austerity that is putting pressure on city, school and county budgets, on taxes and on how residents come to agreement on what they want their communities to accomplish.

The new "Forced to Choose" site will collect, amplify and add to the stories we're doing for broadcast. For example, you can listen to reporter Jennifer Vogel talk this afternoon with All Things Considered host Tom Crann about the increasingly shabby look some Minnesota cities are taking on and then check out her thoroughly reported story online with all the details.

Likewise, if you're confused by how the state changed the property tax law in its special-session efforts to balance the budget (and who isn't?), check the stop-action video MPR News staffers Curtis Gilbert and Molly Bloom put together. It's got music, it's got houses made of Legos and it's only three and a half minutes long.

Did the Legislature in effect raise property taxes this year? We're surveying selected cities to find out and will report the results soon.

Look for a lot more in coming months as cities, schools and counties choose what to spend money on, what to give up, how to pay for what they want. This reporting effort is part of our Ground Level project to look at community issues, but we've pulled in other resources as well, assigning a total of a half dozen reporters, editors, photojournalists and web developers.

We're going to report on decisions about fixing streets, providing enough police, closing libraries and finding innovative ways to save money -- all crucial elements of the public debate.

But we also want to shine light on how communities come to grips with these questions and how they make decisions. What happens when every idea has an enemy? Does a customer-service approach leave residents expecting more than they're willing to pay for?

We've already tapped into our Public Insight Network to learn from residents about city services, libraries, law enforcement and other topics. We'll continue to do that and to look for other ways to let people contribute. Feel free to comment here and stay tuned for more coverage.

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'We've just built more than we can maintain'

Posted at 5:00 AM on October 5, 2011 by Dave Peters (10 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

The dilemma local officials face this time of year is usually portrayed as a struggle between cutting services and raising taxes, a choice that gets harder each year as budgets get made and taxes get levied.

As these choices play out, you can see how Minnesota residents define themselves and the places they live in. Budgets reflect community personalities; some even talk about them as moral documents that lay out what a community ought to do with its common resources.

But precious few are coming to grips with the real challenge, says Chuck Marohn.

"We seem to be operating under the guise that there's going to be a recovery," he says.

Marohn is a Brainerd area engineer, planner, writer and voice in the wilderness crying for local governments to adapt to a new world. He is president of Strong Towns, a non-profit organization that advocates for changes in development patterns, and has compiled a booklet from the Curbside Chats he's been delivering to community leaders, a 57-page guide to why he thinks the local world will never be the same.

Chuck Marohn at a Ground Level panel discussion in Princeton last year.

Put simply, his message is that the growth communities have built on and counted on is not sustainable and, in fact, has generated a set of road, sewer and other built-in infrastructure costs that will become increasingly difficult to pay.

"We've just built more than we can maintain," he said Tuesday.

Marohn was part of a panel discussion Ground Level hosted last year in Princeton, focusing on the costs of growth in nearby Baldwin Township north of the Twin Cities.

His new report cites a number of examples showing long-term maintenance costs of housing development roads, industrial parks and sewer systems outweighing the ability of the beneficiaries to pay for them. He points to the small city of Backus, which needs to replace its 1960s era sewer system. The cost is $3.3 million, or $27,000 per household. The median income is the same $27,000.

The proposed Stillwater bridge (rendering above courtesy of MnDOT) is likewise designed to generate a poor return, he argues. If the planned bridge over the St. Croix River were considered a local improvement and served 16,000 vehicles a day, its $668 million cost would translate into a $6 toll for each trip, Marohn figures.

Faced with tighter budgets, cities all over Minnesota are deciding to delay street repairs and maintenance to save money, for example. That's not cutting; it's simply putting off expenses, in Marohn's mind.

What they should be doing, he thinks, is making choices about what local investments truly will pay an acceptable return in terms of tax revenue or benefits and sacrificing the rest. He says he doesn't see many communities making choices like returning roads to two-track paths.

A few nuggets from his new booklet:

The benefits of growth are immediate: additional tax base and tax revenue. The costs come after one life cycle, when infrastructure needs to be maintained.

Once a problem is identified, it is natural to want a clear solution. We are often asked what can be done to solve this problem? When people ask this question, they often mean: What is the solution that will allow me to continue to live essentially the way I do now without undergoing too much turmoil? The answer is: no such solution exists.

The standard economic development model at the local level in the United States relies on convincing an employer from outside the community to relocate to the community. We have established an immense system of subsidies, supports and programs to facilitate these transactions. Not only is this vastly inefficient, it almost never works as planned.

Marohn doesn't minimize the difficulty. He sympathizes with city managers who see a problem -- traffic congestion or crumbling sewers, say -- and don't like the expensive fix that consultants may suggest. But they see no alternative.

So what's his advice?

--First, stop building infrastructure projects that add to a community's long-term maintenance obligations.

--Add up the true long-term obligations a community has taken on to maintain its infrastructure.

--Then divide communities into high-amenity and low-amenity areas. Put the public investment into the former and cut investment in the latter. Maybe not every place needs a wide street.

--Shift emphasis from cars to pedestrians.

And if that leaves some communities or parts of communities withering, there might be no way to avoid it, Marohn thinks. "A lot of these areas will be used for salvage. Send a machine out and grind up the asphalt."

When it comes to economic development, Marohn likes two approaches.

One, pioneered after tough times in Littleton, Colo., is known as "economic gardening," helping existing small companies (10 to 100 employees) become growth engines.

A second calls for relying less and less on bringing products and services from elsewhere, finding ways as energy prices rise, to make things locally. Food is a prime example, he said.

"We're not going back to 2005."

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Trees, sculptures and more to show community collaboration

Posted at 10:09 AM on September 1, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

In Rochester, people planted 1,143 trees in the boulevards.

In Pine City, a local gay pride celebration has grown over the past seven years.

In Mankato, sculptures from around the country were arranged for a walking tour.

Blue Chain Jane was one of the sculptures on display in Mankato's sculpture walk.

If you want some ideas about how people around Minnesota are trying to make a difference in the communities they live in, drop by Carousel Park at the State Fair on Saturday for the Minnesota Community Pride Showcase. Thirty entries from among 67 were selected to demonstrate how people have collaborated to improve things.

The project was hosted by InCommons, where you can find out more, and also sponsored by the Minnesota State Fair and MinnPost.

Disclosure: MPR News is a partner with the Bush Foundation in InCommons, a project aimed at providing a real-world and online place for collaboration.

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Minnesota foundation gets into cropland rental business

Posted at 9:00 AM on September 5, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Social entrepreneurs

A childhood friend who has been farming his whole life told me not long ago he was worried about losing most of his land.

He's a successful corn and soybeans farmer in southern Minnesota who has done very well for himself and his family over the decades. He's not the victim of a scam or some bad financial moves, and he'll be fine, no matter what happens.

But he rents most of the 1,000 or so acres he farms, and the owners are getting quite old. When they die, there's no telling what the heirs might do with the land. My friend assumes they would sell, but he figures he's too old to take on the debt involved. It could easily pass into the hands of an absentee owner with other plans. He in turn might be forced into retirement before he's ready.

The Southwest Initiative Foundation is trying to step into situations like my friend's in an effort to keep renters on their land and generate income for itself. Through a new program it calls Farmland Retention, the foundation has gotten into the land rental business and stands to generate substantial income in coming decades that it could then spend on other programs in the 18-county area it serves in southwestern Minnesota.

The foundation, based in Hutchinson, has started soliciting gifts of farmland so that it can continue to rent to existing tenant farmers. The donors get a considerable tax break, tenants stay on the land and money stays in the community.

Sherry Ristau, president and chief executive officer of the Southwest Initiative Foundation, says that between now and 2030, $4.5 billion of wealth will be transferred from one generation to the next in southwestern Minnesota.

Here's a breakdown of that money by county:

Much of that value is in farm land, and many owners will pass it on to heirs who live elsewhere. Often the end result -- whether it's via corporate ownership or another outcome -- is that farmers who have rented for years will no longer be able to continue to do so, and money leaves the area.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a third of the farms in Minnesota include at least some rented land. Landowners often have close and long-term relationships with their tenants, and for many it's important to preserve that even after the land changes hands, Ristau said.

So far, the foundation has received two parcels, both in Cottonwood County near Windom, totaling 350 acres. It's working on a third deal that would almost double the holdings.

"Usually when a foundation gets a piece of land, they sell it," Ristau said. Her foundation is apparently the first in Minnesota to want to hang on to the land and make money by renting it out as active farmland. The foundation can't promise in writing that it will keep the current tenant on the land, but keeping it in farm production with the same tenant is the goal.

So far this year, the foundation's land is growing corn and beans and, in an area where cropland brings from $200 to $250 a year per acre in rent, is generating about $58,000 to use for other purposes. The foundation rents at market value and pays the normal property taxes.

"We want to make sure the wealth stays here."

Ristau says the project could become a critical tool for rural philanthropy and thinks other foundations will follow suit, particularly as the wealth transfer numbers accelerate. She talks about attracting 5 percent of the total transfer, which theoretically would amass more than $200 million for the foundation in the coming decades.

Lakefield attorney Pat Costello has been an architect behind the effort. He said a key legal shift a few years ago in Minnesota created an exemption to the state's anti-corporate farming law, making it clear charitable organizations can own farmland.

He thinks the idea is beginning to take hold nationally, too, as it becomes clearer that foundations and other charitable organizations can own farmland to generate revenue.

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Divining how Minnesotans want to fix things

Posted at 8:19 AM on August 18, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

Minnesotans pretty clearly think the state's economy is headed in the wrong direction, and they are increasingly likely to say the vaunted quality of life here is getting worse.

And they certainly weren't happy with the outcome or the process state leaders used to address Minnesota's budget problems this year.

Those are some of the top line results of a Wilder Research poll commissioned this month by the Bush Foundation that my colleague Tom Scheck is reporting on today. But what to do about it? One thing the poll shows that some might find surprising is support for cutting the number of people who receive state services.

By now, it shouldn't be a surprise that most of Wilder's randomly selected 600 respondents favored a balanced approach to budget problems, wanting to find more revenue AND cut state services. Fifty-seven percent said this. That was pretty clear from the conversations Bush sponsored around the state last month, which I wrote about here on Ground Level.

But the new survey does offer some nuance around people's priorities.

Heavy majorities say government services should be more efficient and the tax system should be reformed (not necessarily by raising or lowering taxes) to make state revenue more stable. But those are easy things to say and probably wouldn't really solve the problem.

When you get to some of the hard choices Wilder put to people, almost half (45 percent) said reducing the number of people eligible for state services should be a major part of the state's budget solution.

That's interesting for two reasons. First, other questions in the poll established strong support for the notion that government services are critical to life here. (More than four out of five agree with that statement.) People seemed to be saying they want services available but the state has to cut the number of recipients.

And second, by comparison, only a third of the respondents said raising income or sales tax rates should be a major part of solving state budget woes.

There was slightly more support for finding other revenue by broadening the sales tax to food, clothing and Internet sales or by generating new gambling revenue. Thirty-eight percent thought that should be a major part of a budget solution.

You can find all the questions and responses here and Bush's report here.

Disclosure: MPR News is a partner with the Bush Foundation in its InCommons initiative to find means of helping Minnesotans make connections and deal with challenges.

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Rural gathering focuses on -- what else? -- national security

Posted at 8:41 AM on June 29, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Several hundred people from around the country gathered in St. Paul Tuesday evening to start a three-day assembly on issues facing rural Americans.

So, oddly enough, the kickoff keynote address for the National Rural Assembly was delivered by two military men with long service in defense.

Sound strange? It might, but one point made by Navy Capt. Wayne Porter and Marine Col. Mark Mykleby, advisors to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, is that the United States should make strong local communities a security priority.

For an entertaining hour, the two, standing in full military uniform before an audience of community activists, local officials and others, tagteamed the notion of why the United States needs to shift its approach to the rest of the world. The dialogue ran from Newtonian physics to the Peace of Westphalia to terrorist attacks.

Why bring this show to a conference on rural America?

"You epitomize what it means to be American citizens," Porter told the crowd.

Earlier this year, the two men published, at the request of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a framework for a national strategy that would replace the national security approach the nation has taken since the end of World War 2. That appeared in the publication of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

They argue that the United States should no longer base its approach to national security on a strategy of controlling risks and bringing power to bear on problems around the world. Instead it should adapt to a world of uncertainties and build strengths internally in order to compete. The country needs, in their words, to go from a strategy of containment to one of sustainability.

"It's not about controlling the system," Mykleby said. "It's about evolving within the system."

Mykelby said he was stationed in Mali in 2007 when the Pentagon created a new military command structure Africa. He was stunned, he said, to learn the reaction among citizens of Mali was to ask him, "Who are you going to invade now?"

"That hit me between the running lights," he said, to think that might be a prevailing view of U.S. policy.

People in this country have the wrong idea of what national security is, the two said.

"You go to the Mall of America and ask someone what's national security and they'll say that's what the military is for," Mykleby said. "That's a bunch of s---."

The country's security lies in things like a new-energy economy and new approaches to agriculture.

"We've become competition averse," Porter said. "We've lost confidence in ourselves."

Where to start? Education.

"That is the tool for innovation," Mykleby said. "We have got to get to that place where we get our swagger back and that means invest in our kids."

The most arresting facet of the evening, of course, was to get this message from two military men. Porter and Mykleby made clear their views didn't necessarily reflect those of the Pentagon or Mullen, although Mykleby couldn't help saying that they should.

They also tried to steer clear of specific political issues, insisting they were simply trying to establish a new narrative for the nation.

In the end, Porter said simply, "Over to you. The military can't do it."

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Rural America heads for St. Paul

Posted at 9:30 AM on May 31, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Economic Development

For a couple days in late June, St. Paul will become the heart of rural America as the third National Rural Assembly comes to town.

More than 200 local elected officials, community advocates, non-profit leaders, federal officials and issue experts from the Midwest, the Mississippi Delta, Indian Country, Appalachia, the Pacific coast, New England and elsewhere are expected to show up to talk about the issues consuming rural communities.

If you think that somehow makes this an ag summit, think again. They'll be talking about Internet access, about health care, about education, about housing, about philanthropy, about climate change and more.

Among the questions to be tussled with: How does health care reform affect rural communities differently? What are realistic expecations for economic development when broadband is available? What are communities doing on their own to curb greenhouse gas emissions? Are there fresh ways to tackle immigration tensions?

Supported by several foundations, the assembly is organized jointly by a number of grassroots and other organizations, with the Center for Rural Strategies in Kentucky acting as the operations nerve center. The goal: finding ways to link people with similar interests across a broad swath of geography.

Why St. Paul's Crowne Plaza hotel for the first one of these outside Washington, D.C.? A big reason is the plethora of non-profit and community activist leaders in Minnesota and the Midwest generally, says Tim Marema, vice president of Center for Rural Strategies. The state is home to a lot of rural-focused groups, he said, mentioning the McKnight Foundation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The federal government isn't a sponsor but among those agencies with a presence will be the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Education, the Health Department and, of course, the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Rural America is big and it's diverse," Marema said. "It's not just one thing."

For a feel for what makes the Center for Rural Strategies tick, check out the online newspaper it produces, the Daily Yonder. The gathering takes place June 28-30. Find more about the assembly here.

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One last plea for long-term thinking on the state budget

Posted at 12:42 PM on April 25, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

If we were smart about it, the balancing act at the Capitol in the coming month shouldn't be so much between cutting spending and raising taxes as it should be between short-term action and long-term.

That was the message on MPR News' Midday this morning, which felt like one last plea to the governor and Legislature before they wrap up this year: Please do something long term. Don't just solve a budget problem that will come right back in two years.

On with Gary Eichten were Pam Wheelock, vice president of the Bush Foundation; Stacy Becker, who directed the Citizens League's Common Cents project on the state budget; and Michael Caputo of MPR News' Insight Now.

The conversation was an effort to inject into the state budget debate the results of the Common Cents meetings around the state last fall and winter, looking for ways residents might address the state's budget woes. The strong conclusion from the project, which was conducted by the Citizens League in partnership with the Bush Foundation, was to make long-term changes that get the state where people want it to go, even if that involves short-term sacrifice.

But the fear, apparent at those meetings and again at Caputo's online conversations, is that "when decisions get made, the long term goes out the door," as Caputo put it on the air.

One of the reasons for Bush's interest was to test whether people are ready for significant change, said Wheelock, who's been around Minnesota's budget question for years. They are, she said.

Even people who are willing to see taxes rise want to know whether "If you raise taxes this year do you have a plan for not doing it again next year and the next year?" Becker noted.

Wheelock made a couple analytical points worth highlighting here. One was that a fundamental part of the long-term debate needs to be over what activities and services do we want to provide that are not based on individuals' ability to pay for them? In other words, the rich will always get the best health care, but what level do we provide for the poor?

And the other was the advice to state officials to set policy and then give flexibility and authority to those in local communities to make decisions, combining a sense of certainty with flexibility.

Listen to the hour-long conversation here. Get a sense from MPR News' Insight Now on how people have been weighing in in recent weeks.

Here is Ground Level's March post on the Citizen League meetings.

In a related matter -- how communities are looking at what city government should be doing -- the League of Minnesota Cities is planning a set of meetings in 10 cities around the state to let residents examine what they want their cities to do.

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A Craigslist for activists

Posted at 8:30 AM on April 15, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

You sold some tires on Craigslist. You bought a guitar.

Now, the Craigslist Foundation wants you to use a similar system to tell the world how your neighborhood fought graffiti or to find out how somebody in Portland started a community garden.

The foundation this week launched LikeMinded, an online project aimed at sharing community success stories. It's still in beta, but the folks who created it are eager to have you load both projects you've worked on and resources you think might help others.

For example, I loaded three of our Ground Level topic pages, so if you search the site's resources for "Minnesota" you'll get our guides to local food, cities in crisis and broadband access.

Conversely, when I typed in "graffiti" up popped, among other entries, a short description of how a group of volunteers is trying to tackle graffiti in their West Seattle neighborhood.

"It's for people who care about their local community and like to use online services with an eye to being active," said Arthur Coddington, director of online programs for the foundation. Whereas Craigslist connects people to make a transaction, LikeMinded wants to connect people to trade information.

It's geared directly at local action, and ultimately Coddington says he'll measure success largely by how many organizations are using it as a platform, pulling a LikeMinded feed of projects and resources onto their own sites. So, for example, a local-food organization could pull onto its site all food-related LikeMinded projects and resources from around the country.

The site isn't trying to be a social network for those folks. Facebook already exists, Coddington points out. There are some "lightweight" means of connecting with somebody whose idea you like, but the site is less about networking than it is about spurring people to action with a good idea.

It's also not like Jumo, for example, which tries to connect people with organizations they might like to contribute to or know more about.

The foundation initially met with a variety of activists, non-profits, local government officials and others to plan the site, but Coddington likes to think of it from the point of view of a "beginner," somebody who has nothing more than a concern and a yen to do something.

The site's creators are eager for ideas on how it can be made more useful, so jump in. They do curate what comes in, making sure the resources and projects that people suggest are about actions more than organizations. And users can flag things they think are veering toward spam.

Craig Newmark blogs about LikeMinded here. The Knight Foundation, which is supporting the effort blogs here.

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Arrowhead urges entrepreneurship as big mining renews its lure

Posted at 11:48 AM on April 6, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arrowhead Region, Community Development, Economic Development, Northern Minnesota

Some 200 residents of the Iron Range, Duluth and the North Shore chewed over their economic challenges for an hour and a half last night. In many ways, they covered the familiar ground of mining, tourism, education and diversification in a spirited conversation they could have had 10 or 20 years ago.

But you could sense urgency in the room, a theme picked up by community college teacher and Iron Range blogger Aaron Brown, who was there and wrote about it this morning. It was an urgency pointing increasingly toward self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship.

"Our region was settled by adventurers, not really entrepreneurs," Mary Mathews, president of the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund, told the crowd, which gathered for a forum sponsored by MPR News and Northland's NewCenter in Duluth. "People, after those businesses were started, they left. We became a company town.

"To some extent we're still a company town, but there are nuggets of entrepreneurial spirit," Mathews said.

Her non-profit organization has helped 1,300 businesses get started or grow over the past 22 years, she said.

Obstacles are the lack of a clear career ladder for enterprising young people and a dearth of investment capital, she said.

Drew Digby, a labor analyst for the state Department of Employment and Economic Development , agreed, noting that it's a spirit that doesn't seem to come naturally in northeastern Minnesota. In the past, "people would come and assume a big company would give them a job. That sense of creating your own opportunity is really hard."

Some in the room had it.

There was a fifth-generation Duluthian who moved away and came back and is selling solar energy collection equipment. An artist talked about the boon the Internet has been to keeping his business going for 15 years.

Matt Tyler said he's put together a forestry consulting business and his girlfriend runs an organic farm in Finland, Minn. He harvests wild rice to supplement his living.

At the same time, hovering over the whole evening was the big PolyMet proposal to start mining copper and nickel near Eveleth. For some, it's a great promise that holds the possibility of firing
a struggling economy for decades to come. For others, it's a repeat of relying on big outsiders that will prove harmful in the end and threaten to dampen fledgling entrepreneurial spirit.

So it's fascinating to watch communities struggle with the notion of helping entrepreneurs as the path to a different future, at the same time a big outside force is holding up the promise of wealth "the old-fashioned way." To be fair, PolyMet's Brad Moore told people the mining industry has learned lessons and simply has to do better than it has in the past in terms of protecting the environment and staying in the community long-term.

What was clearer by the end of the evening was how three Arrowheads are trying to find their way -- the Iron Range, Duluth and the North Shore. A near-depression in one place is a good time in another. A savior in one place is sometimes seen as a destroyer in another.

Can a move to "relocalize food," for example, or build a narrative involving artists compete for mindshare and people's energy and enthusiasm with the promise of hundreds of mining jobs? The conversation at the Duluth Radisson was a useful look at a community asking itself questions like these that will define their future.

To get a sense of the evening, read the live blog hosted by MPR News' Michael Caputo, complete with lots of Twitter contributions from those attending.

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Northeastern Minnesota's economic future: Join a forum tonight

Posted at 10:00 AM on April 5, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arrowhead Region, Broadband, Community Development, Economic Development, Health care, Northern Minnesota

We're expecting at least a couple hundred people to show up in Duluth this evening to talk about how northeastern Minnesota's economy might look two, five or 20 years from now.

Will the Iron Range and the North Shore continue to go their separate ways economically?

Will tourism thrive forever? Mining?

How does so much growth in the health care industry square with efforts to rein in health care spending nationally?

How will the North Woods economy respond to climate change that alters the forests? Will broadband access to the Internet change the economy up the shore?

As much as any region of Minnesota, the Arrowhead is a complex brew of powerful economic forces, engaging cultural history, new ways of thinking about the environment and changing politics. If things go well tonight, a lot of that will be on display.

If you can, come to a forum this evening at the Duluth Radisson hosted by MPR News and Northlands NewsCenter. Reception starts at 6 p.m., the conversation hosted by MPR News' Cathy Wurzer runs from 7 to 8:30. Details here.

If you can't, join what promises to be a lively chatterfest/live blog at MPR News' Insight Now. Michael Caputo and Michael Olson will be blogging, tweeting and collecting comments from bloggers and tweeters around the room and the Arrowhead.

Click here for more about that or simply come back to this Ground Level post when the action starts and watch and participate through this window:

Details

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If counties have a better idea, will the state let them try it?

Posted at 8:00 AM on March 31, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance, Todd County

In the drive to make local government more efficient and innovative in changing times, Minnesota's counties are about to ask the state to loosen the reins.

Give us the right, they're saying, to do things not prohibited in the law instead of just those things the law directs us to do. And for those things that state rules prevent, give us a flexible, accountable way to experiment without a long, cumbersome approval process.

Case in point: Todd and Crow Wing counties in central Minnesota, like most every county, know that a certain group of residents use a great variety of county-provided help, from social services to health care to corrections. They also know that communication among those government operations can be minimal, that applications for help duplicate each other and that rules prevent smart social workers from doing things they can plainly see would help people and save money.

So together they are trying to develop a project that would break down some of the barriers. Nathan Burkett, administrator for Todd County, gave this example.

A low income mother with a part-time job receives both medical assistance for health care and help from the county to pay for day care. Her employer offers her a full-time job. But if she takes it, her income will make her ineligible for medical assistance and for the day care subsidy and her pay increase will vanish. So why not give a county social worker the power to make a decision: take the woman off medical assistance and save the government some money, but let her keep the day care subsidy to make it worth her while to become fully employed?

Maybe it's a good idea and maybe it's not. Maybe it saves money but maybe it invites a greater likelihood of bad decisions. The point here is that to try it out requires the counties to go through a cumbersome and time-consuming state waiver process in a system whose bias is to say no, Burkett says.

That's what the Association of Minnesota Counties wants to change with a bill it expects to introduce later in April.

Minnesota doesn't rank very highly in measures of government innovation, says Ryan O'Connor, policy analyst for the association. "We're trying to encourage innovation on an issue by issue basis," letting local officials try to solve whatever transportation, social service or health care problems they think they can.

The proposal the association wants to float would introduce what is known as the Cooley doctrine -- letting counties do things not specifically prohibited by law instead of letting them do only what the law dictates (that would be Dillon's rule). It also wants to create a process that counties could use to set up a business plan for new service ventures, identify the desired outcomes and report to the state on the results.

Instead, for example, of making a county have a detox facility, O'Connor said, why not let it experiment with other ways to accomplish what really is the objective -- getting drunk adults off the street? Instead of taking eight years to get approval for redesigning and then building a highway, why not cut the time and cost with a design-build experiment? In return for greater flexibility in such cases, the counties would be expected to provide accountability to the state when the data becomes available.

So far, the counties aren't getting hammered with cuts to their state aid in the same way cities are in legislative discussion. But they do deliver a lot of services that likely will see other cuts in state money. So it will be interesting to see whether the state will grant some greater flexibility as the money shrinks.

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Funkley, Minn., back on top . . . er, bottom

Posted at 8:57 AM on March 18, 2011 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

For many decades, the Minnesota towns of Funkley and Tenney have been vying for the distinction of smallest city in the state.

Funkley appears poised to regain the title.

In the 2010 numbers that the Census Bureau put out for Minnesota this week, the two were tied for littlest -- five people each. For Funkley, which lies 32 miles northeast of Bemidji on U.S. 71, it was a return to glory, of sorts.

In almost every census from 1940 to 1980, as its population dwindled from 26 to 18, Funkley ranked as the smallest in the state. But in 1990, Tenney, which is near Breckenridge in western Minnesota, outdid Funkley by shrinking to four people.

And now, after 20 years in single digits, Tenney is considering whether to dissolve. A hearing is scheduled for April 5, after which a judge may order an election. If a majority of the city's handful of voters approve, the city will dissolve and become part of Campbell Township in Wilkin County. The petition to ask for the hearing was signed by only one person, Mayor Kristin Schwab, but that met the legal requirement to get a third of all voters to sign.

It's about time, says Wilkin County auditor Wayne Bezenek, who has to oversee elections. "There's hardly anything in that town," he says, just a grain elevator full of corn, beans and a little wheat.

It's a rare situation, as it turns out. Since the law governing city dissolutions was passed in 1949, only two cities have dissolved -- Island View, near International Falls, and Ronneby, near St. Cloud. One city, Kingston, near Litchfield, held an election but voted against dissolution, according to Chris Scotillo, executive director of municipal boundary adjustments for the state.

Funkley, meanwhile, is persevering. The biggest business is the Funkley Bar and Lounge, owned by Emil Erickson, who is also the city's mayor. Erickson moved to town five years ago from Leonard, Minn., just as the former mayor was moving out. So he got the job.

Erickson says there aren't many burning issues for the city, but he did attend last month's Beltrami County board meeting to testify that having the bar stay open until 2 a.m. had not resulted in any problems.

Interestingly, the bar is licensed by the city of Funkley, not the county.

Erickson, 53, says he'd like to see Funkley grow, but notes that "there ain't much to draw people."

Beltrami County Auditor Kay Mack notes that only one person voted in Funkley in the November election. She also points out that the city levies $1,000 in property taxes to pay for elections.

(Thanks to U of M Extension researcher Ben Winchester for pointing out the tie in this census and for the great set of ancient census data.)

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Almost half of Minnesota counties lost population this decade (plus trivia question)

Posted at 11:11 AM on March 17, 2011 by Dave Peters (3 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

The list of Minnesota counties losing population grew in the past decade. Let me give you the details and then I'll tell you how to win a rural Minnesota bar bet.

From the Canadian border to Iowa, from the Mississippi River to Lake Superior, counties that grew in the 1990s went into the losing-population column in the 10-year headcount the Census Bureau put out for Minnesota on Wednesday.

If you're counting, 37 of the state's 87 counties lost population. That's up from 25 the previous decade. See the counties in beige on this map from the state demographer's office. Obviously growth continued in the suburban Twin Cities, the Rochester area and the "vacation" corridor extending up into the north woods and lake country.

(But see my post yesterday for how that pattern can be misleading when it comes to suburban and exurban growth.)

In the past, areas with declining populations tended to line up along the rural western and southern borders of the state. That trend has caused plenty of hand-wringing over the future of rural Minnesota. The new numbers will only intensify that concern because that pattern took a giant step east and toward the center of the state.

Every county on the northern border lost population in the 2000s except Cook, which added eight people.

In the center of the state Swift, Grant, Waseca and Sibley -- including towns like Appleton, Benson, Elbow Lake, Waseca, Winthrop and Gaylord -- joined the list of population-declining counties.

In the far southeast, Fillmore and Houston began losing population.

And of course, the biggest county to lose population was Ramsey in the heart of the metro area.

Now, here's how you win your 2010 census bar bet: Exactly one of Minnesota's 87 counties lost population in the 1990s but GAINED people during the first decade of the 2000s. Which was it?

ANSWER: In far northwestern Minnesota, Polk County, whose county seat is Crookston, took that distinction. The state's 35th largest county, with a population of 31,600, picked up about 230 people in the latest census after losing a couple thousand in the 1990s.

County administrator Jack Schmalenberg was at a loss to explain the phenomenon this morning. The economy has been stable but no large employers moved in or expanded during the decade, he said. Anchors of the local economy are the University of Minnesota, with a campus in Crookston, and American Crystal Sugar, which operates two plants in the county.

He suggested the area might be getting a little shine from Grand Forks, N.D., where the economy has been strong.

The numbers aren't big, but in a county that size and with the trends going the other way all around him, Schmalenberg said, "That's significant for us."

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10-year map masks population shift

Posted at 3:54 PM on March 16, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

We've gotten used to Minnesota population growth maps that look like this, with an intensely colored ring around the Twin Cities:

For decades, the collar counties around Minneapolis and St. Paul have led the state's growth, leaping up by 3 and 4 percent a year. And the map the Census Bureau put out today shows more of the same -- growth by 15 or 20 or 25 percent in those collar counties between 2000 and 2010.

But that's not really what's going on today. For the past three or four years, the growth in those counties looks more like the growth in the core counties of Hennepin and Ramsey, says state demographer Tom Gillaspy, about 1 percent a year. His office puts out population estimates every year.

So if you compare the Census Bureau's new 2010 numbers with the state's earlier, mid-decade estimates you find that Anoka, Dakota, Scott and Carver counties have exhibited slight population losses either in the past year or since 2007, when the economy started to turn. Some of that, of course, could reflect methodoloy and the way the state makes its estimates, but the trend of slower suburban growth is clear nonetheless.

And look at the ex-urban formerly fast-growth county of Sherburne to the northwest of the Twin Cities. It added about 24,000 people in the past decade and is among the dark blue counties on the map. But only 2,000 of that growth arrived since 2007. Wright and Isanti, too, have slowed, Gillaspy said.

What that means is when you see this same map in 10 years, the ring around the collar may be gone.

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Wilder: Education surges past economy as Minnesota concern

Posted at 10:19 AM on March 15, 2011 by Dave Peters (4 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Minnesota residents' concerns about the economy apparently have eased, and education and government budgets now top the list of what people worry about when it comes to the state's quality of life, according to a new Wilder Research report.

Wilder asked 404 Minnesota residents in December to name three concerns regarding the state's quality of life. More than half included education. Government budgets, the economy and health care were named by more than a third.

In contrast, when Wilder asked the same question in late 2009, the economy topped the list and only a third mentioned education.

The results make sense. As 2009 closed out, Minnesota's unemployment rate stood at 7.7 percent (seasonally unadjusted). After dropping steadily through 2010, it reached 6.8 percent in December. At the same time, the state's budget problems have loomed larger, and K-12 education is a prime feature in any state budget discussion.

Two out of three people in the telephone survey told questioners that they think the state's budget troubles have reached crisis stage and that difficult decisions have to be made. A third said they would not support tax increases as part of those decisions but close to 60 percent would if they were convinced the system were fair and they were getting more for their money.

Priorities for changing the way the state delivers services? K-12 education and health care for children, the poor, disabled people and the elderly, respondents said.

The survey also delved into a place these temperature-taking efforts often neglect -- pain and sacrifice.

Asked what they would be willing to put up with if they got more cost-effective government services, half the respondents said they could accept "getting used to a new way of doing things" and more than half said they would be OK if they had to do more for themselves.

Less popular were such consequences as less convenience (think waiting in line longer), putting government workers out of their jobs and having less regulation and inspections.

Here are the consequences numbers:

To what extent are you willing to live with this consequence if government services become more cost effective? Percentages are those respondents who said they would be willing to deal with the consequence in all cases.

Doing more for yourself -- 59%
Getting used to a new way of doing things -- 51%
Change in location of services -- 37%
Less convenience -- 29%
Loss of government jobs -- 27%
Less regulation and inspection -- 22%

The Wilder survey was sponsored by the Bush Foundation as part of an effort to understand what people think about their quality of life and how well equipped they think their communities are to deal with challenges.

Despite the challenges, respondents were more likely this past December to say they have a sense that the quality of life is improving, particularly at the community level. Thirty percent said life in their communities was getting better, compared to 24 percent who said life in the state was getting better. For both, those figures were about double from a year earlier.

One of the Bush Foundation's goals in sponsoring the Wilder survey is to explore the question of community leadership. Exact comparisons with national data are hard to make, but Wilder researchers say Minnesotans tend to have greater trust in their leaders than does the nation as a whole.

In particular, Minnesotans express high levels of trust in leaders in law enforcement, higher education and charitable organizations. They have their lowest levels of trust in leaders in labor unions, the media and state government.

The survey has a 5 percent margin of error.

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Central Minnesota launches ambitious 2-year planning effort

Posted at 10:26 AM on February 24, 2011 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

BRAINERD -- For the next two years, a couple hundred people in central Minnesota will be arguing -- with civility they hope -- about how to fix transportation, housing, land use and the economy.

They'll be talking about people's property rights, the role of government, the common good and more. And in the end, they hope they will have a plan that communities in a five-county area -- Crow Wing, Cass, Todd, Morrison and Wadena -- will put into effect to make life better.

It's an ambitious and unusual effort that could mean putting affordable housing near job centers, for example, or coordinating transit plans over a large area or even treating waterfront property rights differently. Whatever it means will come out of a serious conversation that started at The Lodge in Brainerd on Wednesday.

The effort is taking place under an $825,000 grant from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, one of 45 such grants around the country to get communities to create regional, sustainable plans for their future.

The idea was born out of concern at HUD and other federal agencies that in an era of scarcity, there is a greater need for collaboration and sharing of resources, said Cheryal Lee Hills, the executive director of the Region 5 Development Commission and the project's coordinator.

The project represents unusual collaborations at several levels. HUD, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are involved at the federal level. People from townships, cities and counties are involved at the local level and across county lines. The process will bring transportation, housing, land use and economic development planners together.

The University of Minnesota will be heavily involved as well, lending expertise from a variety of centers and academic departments.

"What we are doing now isn't good enough," Phil Hunsicker, of the 1000 Friends of Minnesota, who leads the land use planning work group, said on Wednesday. "Change needs to happen."

So what the 200 people gathered in Brainerd -- high school students, real estate agents, business owners, government officials, health care professionals and more -- heard was a work plan for the next 24 months.

Four groups of 25 to 35 residents each will tackle four topic areas -- land use, transportation, housing and economic development. For the coming six months or so, each will get together to discuss what's working and what isn't in central Minnesota and what the uncertainties are about the future. What will gas prices be? Will there be manganese mining?

They will hear experts from the university and elsewhere talk about possibilities. Ultimately, each group will draft plans that the remaining larger body of 100 or so residents will review and respond to.

Regional planning doesn't always get the best review from local government officials, particularly in central Minnesota, where local officials have outspokenly guarded their prerogatives. But there was plenty of township and city representation in the room Wednesday to at least see what the fuss is about. And the winds of collaboration are blowing, for reasons involving scarcity of resources these days if nothing else.

There was a sense in the room that there are substantial needs in central Minnesota. Housing has suffered and the economy has become increasingly dependent on tourism, but people also worry about the quality of the water and the woods that draw visitors.

"I wish we had done this 10 or 15 years ago," one participant said.

In the end, there's always the chance that an $825,000 plan will sit on the shelf, and Hills said she realizes that. Those involved need to ask, "How does this help the person on the street," as she put it.

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Community and family, not professional skills, drives moves to the country, U of M study shows

Posted at 11:54 AM on February 4, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Professionals and people with business management skills may be moving to the countryside, but they often wind up not using those skills to make a living.

Whether that's because they can't find the work or because using those skills isn't that important to them, this is perhaps the most interesting finding in the latest "brain gain" research done by University of Minnesota sociologist Ben Winchester.

Rural residents for decades have been wringing their hands about the "brain drain" -- the best and brightest packing up after high school and heading for the bright lights.

Winchester, a research fellow in the university extension center for community vitality and a resident of Hancock in western Minnesota, for a while now has been pitching the notion that people shouldn't worry so much about the youth draining away and focus instead on the "brain gain." By that he means the people in their 30s and 40s who either are returning to rural areas or are moving there for the first time.

The Economic Development Administration at the U of M Crookston has just published the result of a set of interviews Winchester directed last year of some 53 such newcomers to five western Minnesota counties -- Swift, Lac qui Parle, Big Stone, Chippewa and Yellow Medicine. Some arrived from places as far away as California and Pennsylvania; others were from the Twin Cities.

Winchester's goal was to recommend some strategies for encouraging that behavior -- how communities can make better information available, how to encourage job creation and telecommuting possibilities, how to support the newcomers once they arrive.

But why move? Residents told him they were worn down by the city, wanted self-employment, liked proximity to family, were interested in farming, were looking for a good place to raise kids. People seemed to talk a lot about community and family; not so much about professional advancement.

Specifically, almost half of the people interviewed said they had skills in business management. The same number said they had professional skills. But only about half of those people said they were using those skills in their jobs in rural Minnesota. On the other hand, those newcomers with health care skills seemed to be putting them to use in their jobs.

I'm not sure whether the findings say more about rural Minnesota or the people interested in living there.

The late Bill Holm once wrote about his (and, until I was 10, my) home town of Minneota that nobody ever moved there after being a success somewhere else. Holm meant that as a suggestion that we think differently about failure and success.

The people Winchester talked to perhaps have taken that suggestion to heart.

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Is community policing enough in Rochester?

Posted at 10:41 AM on January 24, 2011 by Michael Caputo (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

Andy Kilen has a window into Rochester crime. For about 20 years, Kilen has volunteered at the Olmsted County Jail. He directs Next Chapter Ministries -- an organization that gives about 100 offenders a place to transition from jail to the outside world.

Kilen has seen over the past year how Rochester's police chief, Roger Peterson, defined crime as a "serious problem" but wanted to emphasize prevention through community policing. To that end, last November, Rochester Police Department created a new unit - the Community Action Team - that focuses on specific crime hot spots or problem areas of the city.

Kilen praises the Rochester Police and the Olmsted Sheriffs Deparmtent for doing "a great job of catching criminals and locking them up."

But he says community involvement in policing isn't enough. From his standpoint, the community must get involved in the lives of the potential criminals, more specifically, the children of offenders:

"Children who have had a parent incarcerated are far more likely to go to jail or prison. I have heard that it's as high as seven out of 10 children with an incarcerated parent who will themselves be incarcerated at some point. A majority of inmates have children. If the community is going to be safer, residents of the community will need to be involved in solving the problem of crime beyond being angry about it."

To Kilen, the fiction about crime in Rochester is that stepped-up policing alone will solve the problem.

MPR News and the Rochester Post-Bulletin plan on holding a forum at the Mayo Civic Center at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 1. The conversation will aim at the fact and fiction around crime. Kilen, who will attend the gathering, gave his answer to MPR through the Public Insight Network.

Others in the area have also contributed insight about what they consider the myths and facts surrounding Rochester and public safety:

Sherry Jester
A mother and a retired pediatrician who lives just outside the city limits.
"(T)here is very little knowledge about the gang activity and drug activity in the greater Rochester community amongst the public. (When asked what a Rochester crime fiction might be, she said) Many people (at least among my peers) consider Rochester to be more dangerous than it actually is. I have lived in several communities with much higher crime rates including: Detroit suburbs, Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia. Rochester is a very safe community in my opinion. I have no reservations about visiting any area of town. I do use reasonable caution when visiting areas where I have some concerns."

Michele Blesken
A conflict resolution consultant who lives in Rochester.
"Perception is that there is more crime with the recent years of drive-by shootings in the (northwest) neighborhoods. Yet out Police Chief indicated that crime is not rising and recommended that we spend our public dollars on prevention including early childhood education versus more police on the street. The Rochester city council overturned the Chief's recommendations and instead allocated municipal dollars for new police officers. To their credit the community members that did attend city council meetings made a big stink about public safety and the need to increase the police force to protect what they perceived as increase crime in their neighborhoods."

Diane Hellie
A software engineer who lives in northwest Rochester.
"(Crime in Rochester is) less than most places but we have some problems with gangs. In general the response to public safety concerns is good. I have heard gunshots in my neighborhood twice in the past few years and there have been several murders in NW Rochester. I prefer seeing more emphasis on preventing crime and helping youth so they exceed in school, etc. and have opportunities other than crime."

If you are from Rochester, what can you add to this conversation about crime, fact and fiction? Also, let us know if you could participate in our Feb. 1 forum at the Mayo Civic Center.

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You've done good; now how to scale up?

Posted at 9:15 AM on February 3, 2011 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

You have a good idea for your neighborhood or your town and actually get a project going to help get meals to senior citizens or grow food for the school or teach English to immigrants. You want to make sure the project is sustainable and maybe even can make it happen again in another neighborhood or in Milwaukee. Now what?

You need to scale up, something encountered by a growing number of non-profits and social entrepreneurs. How do you find people talented enough to continue your mission elsewhere? How do you find the money that will take? How do you know whether an idea that worked in one place will work in another and continue to function and have impact?

Those are the questions on the table Feb. 8 at a Twin Cities Solutions Forum at the Walker Art Center. The forum is sponsored by the global organization Ashoka and by InCommons and is split in two. An invitation-only session in the afternoon tackles those questions of scaling up in a hands-on advice conversation.

Solving problems in new ways is what Ashoka is trying to foster. The group has had a staff presence in the Twin Cities for a short while but you'll likely hear more from it in the future.

"Ashoka has supported scaling innovations for more than 30 years, seeing as this is how we consider the way people can change the world," says Kila Englebrook in Ashoka's Washington, D.C., office.

The evening conversation will focus on two Ashoka fellows who have made a difference elsewhere.

It will be similar to one Ashoka and InCommons held a couple months ago.

This time the two people on stage will be Conchy Bretos, who has devised ways to make assisted living facilities available for people with lower incomes than those who usually can afford them, and Felipe Vergara, who has devised funds that invest in a poor student's education, reaping payback when the student is later employed.

Both are people with powerful ideas who have dealt with the "scaling up" challenge.

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Join the rural health care conversation: Virginia and the public hospital dilemma

Posted at 11:45 AM on January 19, 2011 by Michael Caputo (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Sometimes a larger problem can be best discussed by looking at a single example.

Take the issue of health care in rural areas of Minnesota. We know that changes to Minnesota's General Assistance Medical Care program hit health providers in greater Minnesota especially hard. Some low-income patients in rural settings have had to travel hours to the Twin Cities for care (MPR held a discussion on this topic last summer at our Insight Nowwebsite).

And that's pressing down on hospitals in these more rural settings. Places like Paynesville and Arcadia, Wisconsin (just east of the Minnesota border).

Then there is the city-owned hospital in Virginia. The Virginia Regional Medical Center has been losing money and is struggling to survive. Leaders there are studying the possibility of merging with another facility or being sold. They also have had a tough time attracting qualified doctors to work there.

It's not just a Virginia issue ... but looking at what that community sees as challenges -- and as potential solutions -- can inform rural health care discussions across Minnesota.

Minnesota Public Radio is teaming up with Hometown Focus, a newspaper and website in the Virginia area, to host an online forum about the hospital and the state of rural health care providers at noon on Friday, January 28.

Who should join the conversation? Of course, those from the Virginia region. But also those who live in greater Minnesota, those who have an understanding of the health care system, those who have experience in health care issues.

Let us know that you would like to join by clicking here.

(Photo from Fox21online story dated 10/12/10, photojournalist Adam Jagunich)

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Where are the entrepreneurs?

Posted at 11:15 AM on January 18, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Check out MPR Reporter Mark Steil's piece today on a new examination of whether Minnesota has a healthy environment for science and technology jobs. It certainly got me digging around a little.

As Steil points out, the thrust of the report by the Legislature-appointed Science and Technology Authority is that the state is lagging behind other states. You can read the whole report here, but what struck me was the low ranking it found for Minnesota entrepreneurship.

That echoes a theme from a different but related group last month, which said the state is well off its goal of being in the top five states when it comes to broadband speed and availability.

The latest report sites findings by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which compiles a state-by-state "new economy" index. That foundation found not only that Minnesota ranked 42nd in the nation on entrepreneurship in 2010, but that the state's ranking had slipped from 24th just three years earlier.

In the top-ranked state, Georgia, 0.5 percent of the population are considered entrepreneurs. In Minnesota, it's less than half that, 0.22 percent. It's always a good idea to take these measurements with a grain of salt, but why would that be?

Are people less likely to take risks than they once were? Is it a question of credit that microlending programs can address?

By the way, if you want a sobering assessment of the nation's ability to claw back to its leadership position in innovation, check the foundation's full report.

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Volunteers look for greater impact

Posted at 11:20 AM on December 23, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Why do people volunteer?

"People want to help and people want to change the world," Ami Dar, executive director of the Idealist.org website, said on Midmorning today. He was part of an enlightening chat with host Kate Smith on the state of volunteering.

You can listen to the whole thing here:

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sponsor:

A highlight was the discussion of the changing demands volunteers themselves are making. Not satisfied to stuff envelopes and offer to do anything, more and more volunteers are coming to organizations with a mission.

They want to know what impact they can make, perhaps by using skills they've gotten on the job elsewhere, said Mary Quirk, volunteer resources leadership project manager for the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration.

Minnesota is among the nation's leaders when it comes to residents offering their time and labor to non-profits and public organizations. The face of that effort is changing, Quirk said -- more men than before, more immigrants, for example.

Verna Toenyan joined the conversation for a bit. She's the aging coordinator for Todd County, where Ground Level conducted a reporting project on aging earlier this year. The latest focus for volunteering there is computer training for seniors.

And Heather Cox, director of volunteers for the Science Museum of Minnesota, called in, too, backing up the notion that volunteers' interests are shifting. Because volunteers have shown up with ideas, the science museum has created a program that funds projects organized by volunteers, Cox said. Nine have hit the museum floor so far.

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River 'friendship' collaboration wins $25K

Posted at 1:20 PM on December 15, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Lake Pepin on the Mississippi River below Red Wing is filling faster than normal these days, and few dispute that the sediment and the pollution is coming predominantly from farms upstream in the Minnesota River Valley.

Ask what to do about it and the finger-pointing begins.

But the non-profit group Clean Up the River Environment in Montevideo in western Minnesota is going to win $25,000 tonight from the Bush Foundation for suggesting another way. It hasn't solved the problem, but it got some people talking who otherwise might do their communicating through lawyers and public relations reps and arguments before regulatory bodies.

Last August and September, the group's leader, Patrick Moore, convinced some farmers along the Minnesota to pay a visit to Lake Pepin to see for themselves what the problem looks like. And then downstream environmentalists returned the favor by visiting farms in western Minnesota to see first hand the forces and incentives and complexities involved for the corn and soybean growers that dominate the region.

"The traditional model would be that those two groups would perhaps engage in dialogue but it was about somebody winning and there were sides," says Wayne Formo, of the ag consortium Minnesota Agricultural Water Resources Coaltion. "This new model we're trying to develop is really more about coming together and before we figure out what winning is we need to better understand one another so that in the end perhaps we both can win."

The collaboration was the winner among more than 200 nominations in a Bush Foundation challenge aimed at highlighting collaboration efforts and helping launch a new networking site for Minnesotans called InCommons. Some 3,000 people voted online for one of three finalists to determine the winner.

Moore says his group was looking to develop a circle of trust before attempting a solution. If you check out the video prepared for the InCommons challenge, you get the sense that the "friendship tours" indeed resulted in some better understanding.

Michael McKay of the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance puts it this way: "We took them out to the river . . . I think they appreciated that we cared for our land as much as they cared for theirs.

"They have convinced me they are good stewards of their land," the environmentalist said. "I think the challenge is to extend that stewardship to a wider piece of property."

The hope is that coalitions and collaborations like this one can lead to better land use policies.

MPR News is a partner with the Bush Foundation in InCommons.

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Trees, recess and people who cause change

Posted at 10:00 AM on December 9, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

As a teenager choking on smog in Los Angeles, Andy Lipkis started planting trees in 1970. What started small has turned into a $5 million organization, TreePeople, with 56 employees and 9,000 volunteers dedicated to improving the urban forests of L.A., trying to protect the city's air and water.

In 1996, Jill Vialet heard a tirade from an Oakland, Calif., school principal about the battle zone her school playground had become. Vialet figured out a way to manage recess for low-income urban schools. As a result, students play better and pay more attention in class, and her now-national organization, Playworks, has attracted millions in grants, serves 250 elementary schools and this year started working with schools in St. Paul.

Lipkis and Vialet were in town Wednesday talking about their successes and failures in hopes that others take heart. Both are fellows of the global organization Ashoka and were on stage at the Walker Art Center in the evening, urging an audience of about 150 that they, too, can foster change in their communities.

In an informal hour-long conversation led by Rick Kupchella, former broadcast reporter who now operates the online news site Bring Me the News, the two emphasized their contention that waiting for government or others to take the lead on important issues of the day is futile.

"You have everything you need right here," Vialet told an audience filled with people representing non-profit organizations. "And nobody else is coming."

Lipkis recalled an early venture in which he planned to obtain 20,000 unused trees from state nurseries to plant in dying forests near his city. When he couldn't come up with the $600 to pay for them, the nurseries started plowing them under as part of their normal seasonal growing process. A story about his frustration in the Los Angeles Times brought donations flooding in to his parents's house, many of them 50 cents a piece from children to buy the remainder.

Vialet talked about roadblocks as well, describing the organizational difficulty in taking a concept national. "Who knew? Management is a real thing."

The two are among 2,500 people around the world designated by Ashoka as "changemakers," people who engage successfully in what has come to be called social entrepreneurship -- using the tools of traditional entrepreneurs to attack problems of poverty, the environment, education, child care and more.

Ashoka was founded in 1980, starting by addressing Third World needs, but in 2000 it started operations in the United States. It has named a handful of fellows in Minnesota:

--Steve Rothschild, former General Mills executive who founded Twin Cities Rise!
--Steven Clift, former Minnesota state employee who organized E-Democracy.org
--Terrie Rose, creator of Baby's Space.
--Jim McCorkell, founder of Admission Possible.
--Kevin Long, who organized Global Deaf Connection.

All are examples of individuals taking action to make their world a better place, demonstrating what for Ashoka is a key principle: the recognition that changes are taking place so fast in today's world, everybody needs to learn how to deal with them, to become "changemakers."

Ashoka is, as is Minnesota Public Radio, a partner with the Bush Foundation in creating the InCommons real-world and virtual forum for encouraging residents to get engaged with the world around them. InCommons, which will be formally launched next week, also was a sponsor of the session Wednesday evening.

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Why are you attached to your place?

Posted at 9:13 AM on November 15, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

For several years, the Knight Foundation has been delving into why people feel attached to the places they live -- what makes people want to put down roots.

The commission just rolled out a report on the third year of its study, done in conjunction with Gallup, and the results are revealing. Neither people's sense about the availability of jobs nor their feeling of safety have the strongest connection to their sense of attachment.

What do? A place's physical beauty, the opportunities it offers to get together with others and a its sense of openness to all people turn out to be the biggest drivers of attachment to a place.

The study is not a national survey. Rather it's a continuing look at 26 individual cities, including St. Paul and Duluth. It has found that cities where residents feel a greater attachment to their community do better economically.

For people interested in residents' engagement with challenges in their communities, it's worth a look. It's called Knight Soul of the Cities.

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Four questions for tornado-torn Wadena

Posted at 1:40 PM on November 1, 2010 by Nancy Lebens (2 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

A deer hunter's dinner, a chance to watch the volleyball team protect its winning record and a beautiful pre-Halloween evening didn't keep 264 Wadena residents from peering into the future.

This past Friday and Saturday, the Minnesota Design Team held a series of meetings in Wadena to help people there figure out what the town should look like after this year's tornado.

The June 17 storm ripped up the part of town that held the high school, community center, ice arena and fairgrounds. But the visioning process this weekend went beyond just how to repair and replace what was lost. It was all about how to keep the town going.

Wadena councilman Don Niles says the process was like attending a crash course on everything that makes up the town, from geology to economic development.

The all-volunteer Design Team, led by Minneapolis architect Michael Lamb, posed the following questions:

Your cousin from (insert odd town name here) is visiting. What would you say are your reasons for living in Wadena?

What do you think could be improved in Wadena?

What could be done to improve collaboration in Wadena?

If you were sailing over Wadena in hot air balloon in the year 2030, what would you expect to see?

Niles says the questions were meant to be both fun and get at the heart of the issues the town faces: how to create jobs and convince more people to stay in town.

Concrete suggestions included linking Wadena-Deer Creek High School with the community center, ice arena and perhaps a National Guard armory, at least with a covered walkway.

Another idea was to build a small lake on the old airport land a few miles from town to keep some who work in Wadena closer to town. Niles says some of the wealthier professionals live on lake shore in Perham or Detroit Lakes and commute.

The Design Team also sketched a possible solution to the number of highways converging on the town, especially the heavily traveled Highway 29, which runs by the schools. Don Niles says the Design Team had a solution involving Highway 10 and the railroad tracks, which carry 60 trains a day.

We have the only stretch of two-lane highway on Highway 10 from LaCrosse, Wisconsin to Fargo-Moorhead and the city has been pushing for 50 years to make it four lane...So the Design Team's suggestion when that occurs five to 10 years off, is to have Highway 29 reconfigured, too, to get rid of that safety issue and have an overpass (over the railroad tracks).

Niles says that latest project is part of a jobs bill that may be introduced by the current House Transportation committee chairman Democrat James Oberstar in the spring.

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Wadena sketches a future look

Posted at 4:08 PM on October 29, 2010 by Nancy Lebens (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Among the many communities hit by the powerful spate of tornadoes on June 17, Wadena sustained the most damage. The twister blasted through the town's west side. Buildings were blown apart, the school was damaged and hundreds of trees were destroyed. Now a so-called "emergency" meeting of the Minnesota Design Team is trying to help Wadena residents design a new town.

The visit's Design Team co-leader Michael Lamb says the losses occurred on the west side of town, where the fairgrounds, pool, ice arena, community center and high school were located:

The fairly well preserved main street is very impressive. Essentially it wasn't touched by the tornado. But once you get to the west side of town, it's pretty incredible the amount of damage that was done.

Wadena Deer Creek High School after the tornado

The Minnesota Design Team, or MDT, is group of architects, landscape architects and planners who have experience working with other towns. There are 300 members who volunteer to visit a few towns a year.

The program began in 1983 as a way to teach people to appreciate design in all forms. The most recent MDT visit was to Stewartville in October. The Wadena visit, today and Saturday, is considered an emergency visit, which normally happens after a town has experienced a devastating event. The MDT also has worked with Rushford, Roseau and St. Peter, and we wrote about the design team's work on the Iron Range in March.

Over two and a half days the team spends time with people in the town, and not just its leaders. The team wants to make sure that as many different people are involved, so towns have to show that churches, schools, seniors and farmers will participate.

Once people have provided their ideas of what they value and what they want preserved or changed, the MDT makes up 18 - 25 display boards with colored hand drawings. These the town gets to keep as guideposts toward a new look. Even if the town isn't redesigned completely, the conversation helps break down some barriers, according to Wadena councilman Don Niles.

Probably the main point of enthusiasm is the new opportunities to collaborate that were completely impossible before the tornado. This is not a disaster that anyone would wish for but now with the clean slate we have an incredible opportunity to look at green technologies...

The MDT volunteers its time, but the travel and materials usually run $4,000. Fewer cities have asked for designs over the last few years because they've had limited resources to make changes.

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If collapse is nigh, get to know your neighbor

Posted at 7:30 AM on October 27, 2010 by Dave Peters (8 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Nicole Foss does not paint a pretty picture of the near-term future.

Energy will get more expensive. The financial system will collapse when the biggest debt bubble in history pops. Real estate values will plummet. Wealth will disappear. Jobs will get more scarce. Climate change will wreak havoc soon enough but in the meantime, we've got real problems.

But despite the apocalyptic nature of her world analysis, Foss got a warm reception from several dozen people on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus Monday afternoon. Foss, who lives and works in Ottawa, Canada, has established something of a guru status among people convinced that humankind needs some pretty serious behavior modification.

An analyst and speaker who blogs at The Automatic Earth, Foss is a short woman with cropped silver hair and a speaking style that delivers punch after punch, PowerPoint graphic after graphic on return on energy investment, the great market collapses in modern history, the diminishing ability for new oil discoveries to meet the demand.

But 45 minutes into a densely packed talk, just when you think she's going to sell you a book for $29.95 on where to invest cash or to pitch you a gold-buying scheme, she hits you with "the most important thing you can do."

Build community.

Sure, there are individual actions to take -- hone Depression-proof skills like growing things, fixing things, even entertaining; get rid of debt; think about where you want to be when a cratered economy she predicts makes mobility difficult. ("If you're going to get stuck, it will be good to have thought through whether you're in a good place to be stuck.")

But above all, "focus your effort at the local level" and built trust among the people around you, she says. Think about resilience.

Foss is a proponent of a loose-knit organization that is getting a foothold in Minnesota, called Transition Towns. If you check out various Transition Towns websites -- Transition US or Transition Twin Cities, you find advice on everything from canning food to building chicken coops to bartering to creating time banks (you spend time providing a service and somebody else does the same for you.)

Several chapters have started, one in Northfield and, more recently, several more in Twin Cities neighborhoods -- Corcoran and Longfellow in south Minneapolis, for example, and St. Anthony Park and Mac-Groveland in St. Paul. They're a disparate bunch, each talking in its own way about neighborhood actions or perhaps just plain talking.

Jonathan Bucki, a St. Paul organizational consultant who has been involved in the movement, said what the community groups have in common is a focus on trying to make a more resilient society, prepared for a huge economic, climate and energy system buffeting. There's less of a change-the-world mentality than an adjust-to-the-change-that's-coming philosophy.

"We don't all have to agree photovoltaic is the way to go," he says. "We don't want everybody to have chicken coops (although Bucki has one) or biodiesel cars. Let's try lots of things."

And, although many people involved in Transition Towns are motivated by a belief that big change is nigh, Bucki says to think of an apocalypse isn't right either. He puts the future somewhere between the wonderul world of George Jetson and the bleak universe of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

"There's a middle path," he says.

At this point, Transition Towns in Minnesota seems to be about conversation and philosophy as much as concrete actions. But if you're intrigued, check out the website or drop in for coffee Wednesday mornings at the Blue Moon Coffee Cafe at 38th Avenue and Lake Avenue in Minneapolis or the Cahoots coffee shop on Tuesday afternoons at 1562 Selby Avenue in St. Paul.

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Solve a problem together, win a contest

Posted at 11:46 AM on October 19, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Know anybody who has gotten people together to solve a problem in your community?

Let 'em know they could win $25,000 by explaining how they did it.

Since we launched this Ground Level project at MPR News earlier this year, we've used it to explore and provide news coverage of how Minnesotans are grappling with challenges and taking action to make their communities better places to live in.

We pursued this reporting -- with help from the Bush Foundation --because it's consistent with MPR's mission to strengthen communities and with Bush's goal of helping community leaders take action.

Now the Bush Foundation is expanding on its effort by, among other things, holding a contest. They're calling it the InCommons Collaboration Challenge.

It's open to any non-profit organization in Minnesota and people affiliated with a non-profit. So if you know a good example of a group that came together to solve a community problem, check it out.

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Stay or come back: Youth and the rural Midwest

Posted at 3:17 PM on August 17, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

You can't get very far into a conference like the Midwest Rural Assembly I've been attending in South Sioux City, Neb., before the Big Question rumbles to the surface: How Do We Keep Our Young People?

It's the plaintive cry of people who care about rural communities and see some of the best and brightest residents hit the road after high school graduation, heading for college and bright lights, generally never to return.

So it was a highlight of this gathering of some 120 community organizers, activists and government officials from around the Midwest when the organizers essentially put the question to a panel of five articulate current or recent college students who seem invested in a thriving rural community.

People have been kicking this question around for generations, but the answers this morning were instructive.

"If our small towns are going to survive in the 21st Century, we need to keep our young people around." That from Joshua Preston, from Montevideo in western Minnesota and a junior at the University of Minnesota Morris. "For the most part, young people want to stay in the culture they are familiar with."

The answer, he thinks is threefold. A job, the ability to tap into a global network and the capacity to create an identity. For an increasing number of young people that last requirement can involve the land itself.

"There's something spiritually satisfying about putting my hand to the mud and seeing something grow out of it," Preston said. To the extent that's true, it means the next big obstacle to answering the Big Rural Question is getting land in the hands of those who want to use it differently.

Another of the panelists, Jonathan Buetler, programming associate at Renewing the Countryside and a native of northern Wisconsin, suggested keeping higher education local is a key. Why not treat education like food and put the stress on local, perhaps by restructuring community colleges to be a better pathway to four-year degrees?

Buetler, too, is enthusiastic about a back to the land move among young people. "The idea that we can make a living in agriculture is really inspiring."

To Julia Soap, who worked after college in a health clinic in a Texas border town, health care is the energizing force to stay rural. "Our communities deserve better."

There are a variety of subquestions that swirl around the debate. Are communities overinvesting in the bright young people who are bound to leave and underinvesting in the underachievers who don't? Is it better to get people to stay or to come back? In addition to Preston's list of three, others would add health insurance. Given the necessity to juggle income-producing endeavors in rural communities, the requirement to maintain a job with benefits can really limit flexibility.

Often unspoken are other potential drawbacks to rural communities, close-mindedness, intolerance for diversity, resistance to ideas from outside.

And those returning after an absence don't always fit. Debra Marquart, an English professor at Iowa State University, opened the assembly talking of her life growing up in North Dakota. "The shape you made upon leaving doesn't match the shape you make on returning," she noted.

They didn't come up with all the answers here, but there was commitment in the air from a handful of people who look like they'll make a difference.

As Preston said, "Passion unrealized is an injustice and robs us of leaders."

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The politics of an exurban shift

Posted at 7:30 AM on July 26, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Baldwin and other exurban and rural areas may have a greater impact in upcoming redistricting than the state's cities or suburbs, says Charley Shaw over at the Politics in Minnesota blog.

This is mainly because recent growth in Minnesota has been focused not in the cities or suburbs as it has in the past, but in what state demographer Tom Gillaspy calls a "doughnut" around the city.

Redistricting of these exurban areas will likely result in more political power for places like Baldwin and an increase in the size of districts along the doughnut.

This could mean state politics will be shaped more by residents of exurban areas than before.

The changing position of exurbs in the power structure of Minnesota is another example of how dramatically the exurban shift is affecting not just the everyday interactions of residents in these areas, but also much broader structures within the state.

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Entrepreneurs and the recession

Posted at 5:21 PM on July 14, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

I mentioned a few months ago that at a gathering of community organizing groups in Little Falls, one of the prime topics on people's minds was financing.

Because banks had tightened credit, worries were rising that entrepreneurs were going to have a tough time getting backing to launch new ventures that might help pull the economy out of its doldrums. One of the people expressing interest at that "Friends in the Field" gathering hosted by the Initiative Foundation was Michou Kokodoko of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Kokodoko was looking for help finding enterpreneurs he could survey to see how the finance question was playing out. Kokodoko found some and wrote about his conclusions in a report that my colleague Paul Tosto highlights in his MinnEcon blog.

So where are today's entrepreneurs finding startup cash? Kokodoko got a small sample but from what he could tell, the answer seems to be their own savings.

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Ex-urban growth -- a pause or an end? Still unknown

Posted at 12:42 PM on June 28, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development

As we were exploring issues in Baldwin Township earlier this year, one of the questions that bubbled to the surface was whether it would continue to grow rapidly, or more precisely, whether the growth it saw in the 1990s and the early years of this century would resume post-recession and post-foreclosure crisis.

We kicked the issue around in February.

Since then, foreclosures have continued unabated and there's little evidence of growth. The state demographer's office will put out its 2009 population estimates in a few weeks and it will be interesting to see what trends are evident at the city and township level.

In the meantime, state demographer Tom Gillaspy sends along this intriguing chart based on U.S. Census Bureau estimates of county populations in Minnesota.

Central cities have been growing faster; exurban places like Baldwin Township and suburban places have been growing more slowly. Ex-urbia's growth rate has been falling since 2002, and growth rates everywhere seem to be converging on slightly less than 1 percent a year. That's a significant historic change, Gillaspy says.

But . . .

"Is this a long-run change or a short-run one driven by the housing and job markets? Don't know yet," Gillaspy says.

It's always interesting to read Chuck Marohn on this topic. Put him in the growth-is-gone camp -- here's his latest piece looking specifically at Baxter, near Brainerd, and his contention that planning that assumes continued growth is unwise.

What does a place like Baldwin do in this environment with its roads and other services? What do cities around Minnesota faced with tighter and tighter budgets do if growth is less of an option? How does planning change in a new growth world?

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A lesson from smallpox: You can fix the system

Posted at 8:22 AM on June 16, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

I took in one of the University of Minnesota's "Great Conversations" at Ted Mann Theater on the West Bank in Minneapolis last night. Larry Brilliant, a physician, epidemiologist and philanthropist, was interviewed by Jonathan Foley, head of the U's Institute on the Environment.

As the talk went from the eradication of smallpox to the science of climate change to using Google to track the next pandemic, I was thinking of Steve Lawrence, the planner for Pope County in western Minnesota. Lawrence talked last week at the U's small towns symposium in Morris about finding a $5,000 grant to help a local florist turn his shop's greenhouse into a lettuce-growing operation for the winter to grow produce to be eaten locally.

That was one small example of an effort in one small community to get a handle on living a life on a more sustainable scale, and that was pretty much what Brilliant was talking about.

"The lifestyle we live is not sustainable," Brilliant said. But he declared himself an optimist, at least partly because he spent 10 years in India working on the successful elimination of smallpox and has seen what people working together can accomplish.

Among the elements of his call to action: pay attention to good science, learn to judge and communicate risk wisely, act in concert.

"The system is breaking at the seams and the fixes have to be as systemic as the problems."

Brilliant started his career in the heady 1960s and says he feels something familiar today. "There was a feeling in the '60s that something better was right around the corner. We didn't have a word for it or the vocabulary. I think that movement has returned."

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Small towns meeting boils down to connections and leaders

Posted at 4:32 PM on June 10, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

More than 200 people turned out today for the Symposium on Small Towns and Rural-Urban Gathering put on in Morris on the University of Minnesota campus.

A similar gathering planned last year failed to get enough interest to actually take place, so organizers were gratified at the turnout -- everyone from community organizers to students to experts on food, energy and immigration.

Jane Leonard of the Minnesota Rural Partners and David Fluegel of the Center for Small Towns asked me to try to wrap things up at the end of the day for those attending, so what follows is more or less what I told folks.

It wasn't an especially auspicious time to hold such a gathering. The economy is squeezed and uncertainty abounds about how quickly it can rebound. Politics is in turmoil at all levels and we seem to be having a fundamental debate about what we as a society want to do collectively. And, to get to dollars and cents, Minnesota's income-tax-based aid to cities has been cut and could be cut some more, a portent that small town officials consider an approaching disaster.

Jim Thoreen, a recently retired county administrator and a candidate for the Legislature, told me at breakfast he thought people were looking for the new normal. We don't know what it is but we know it's coming, he said.

And I think the conversation today was around what that new normal might look like. Of course, God is in the details:

Architect Richard Peterson described his small-scale, affordable kit houses and eco-villages. Willmar has been getting architects and city officials and residents together for several years to focus on a specific set of downtown revitalization projects. The city's inability to pay for beautification was compensated for from the non-profit organization set up. The small town of Hoffman accomplished a laundry list of successes -- filling storefronts, adding jobs, building places for kids to play, getting money from the Minnesota Twins, the health department and anywhere else economic development director Muriel Krusemark could find.

Pope County found $5,000 to help a floral shop experiment with growing greenhouse lettuce in the winter. Small wind generators are popping up; food cooperatives are extending their reach. Immigrants are filling empty storefronts.

Two principles emerged from the day for me:

Relationships. Colleen Landkamer, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rural development office in the Twin Cities, stressed the importance of connections among government officials. Independence Party lieutenant governor candidate Jim Mulder urged people to look for new relationships to get things done. It isn't the rules and laws that will determine a new normal; it's the right people talking and thinking to other right people.

Leadership. At every turn, it becomes clearer that the difference between failure and success in the new normal is the ability to engage in acts of leadership. People acting on ideas make things happen.

As Dave Engstrom, of the Minnesota Association of Small Cities said after hearing Krusemark list her accomplishments in tiny Hoffman, "Every small town needs a Muriel."

The 200 people in the room are among the people who can show that leadership but beyond that, it seems to me, their task -- besides thinking about food sheds and sustainability and jobs -- is to help others commit those acts of leadership.

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Rural, urban and Control Data

Posted at 11:05 PM on June 9, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

When people talk about ties that bind rural and urban Minnesota together, I think of Control Data.

In the pre-personal computer era so long ago, Control Data was one of the giants of the computer industry, building computers for airplanes, submarines, researchers and more. In an industry dominated by IBM, the Minnesota company built some of the fastest computers in the world.

It may have been exaggerated, but some sage explained to me once that the company succeeded because it was filled with young folks who grew up tinkering with tractors and hay balers and milking machines in rural Minnesota and who then went to the University of Minnesota and became world-class engineers. They knew how to make things work and woe to Control Data and Minnesota's computer industry when the pipeline ran out. I don't know if the pipeline ever ran out but certainly Minnesota's computer industry bit the dust.

However accurate that is, when you think about rural-urban connections in Minnesota, it pretty much portrays a one-way road. The picture that emerged this evening in Morris when Minnesota Rural Partners explored the issue was much more robust.

The organization is trying to establish a council to look at rural-urban connections and, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is doing research on the variety of connections and trying to map them as well in coming months.

You can put the rural-urban connections into a bunch of categories, Kate Searls, working with Minnesota Rural Partners, told more than 100 participants in the Symposium on Small Towns:

Demographic links include the commuting patterns, the second homes, the movement of poor people from rural to urban settings, even prison populations that tend to go in the other direction.

Material links involve food, energy, water, waste, processed food, manufactured goods -- all moving one way or the other.

The flow of money is another connection, including business development, the rise of buy-local movements, even philanthropy.

The University of Minnesota and, I would say, Minnesota Public Radio are examples of information flow.

Clearly, the more you think about it, the more you realize how all-encompassing is the network of ties between rural and urban. The evening was the warm-up for a look at small towns in Minnesota on Thursday -- what successful ones are doing and what others might do to meet the challenges they face.

More tomorrow.

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Gut-check time for Minnesota towns

Posted at 10:11 AM on June 9, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Local government finance

Amid a squeezed economy, inexorable demographics and declining state and federal help for local governments, some 200 people are gathering in Morris, Minn., tonight and Thursday to talk about small towns and the future.

The University of Minnesota's Center for Small Towns, housed on the Morris campus, is combining with Minnesota Rural Partners Inc., to host the gathering, titled "Finding Solutions and Redefining Communities."

Highlights:

--Minnesota Rural Partners is hosting a gathering at 6:30 this evening at the Prairie Inn in Morris to focus on the creation of a council that would find ways to form rural-urban partnerships, focusing especially on education, workforce and entrepreneurship.

--Minnesota governor candidates will participate in a forum on public policy and small towns. MPR News' Kate Smith is hosting.

--Colleen Landkamer, Minnesota State Director for USDA Rural Development and former President of the National Association of Counties is speaking.

--People from a variety of small towns will talk about how they have tackled housing, jobs, immigration and other challenges and opportunities.

The session this evening is free. You can register for the daylong symposium Thursday for $65.

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Residents trying to create visions in central Minnesota

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 8, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development, Todd County

Tonight is the first of four "community visioning" sessions planned by residents working with the Initiative Foundation in four central Minnesota communities.

Residents in Todd County, where one out of six people is over 65 years old, are gathering at 5:30 p.m. at the community center in Browerville to focus on the challenges and opportunities of maintaining service and quality of life as the community ages. Check out our video, audio and text coverage of Todd County at Ground Level's Todd County web page.

Next up, on June 22, is Brainerd, where residents are likely to focus on the high unemployment and high rental rate in the city itself, as opposed to the more prosperous lake country surrounding Brainerd.

On June 29, residents of Baldwin Township in Sherburne County, will tackle the questions of growth, planning and the foreclosure boom that has been lowered on many communities in the outlying regions of Twin Cities exurbia. Find out more at our Ground Level Baldwin page.

Then on July 20, residents in Eden Valley will hold a similar session, looking at the general issues of how small, rural towns compete and survive.

All four places are participating in the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership, a program that provides training, expertise and cash incentives for residents trying to grapple with issues that can make their communities better places to live. MPR News' Ground Level has conducted a pilot project by providing news and information in two of the communities in an effort to increase the level of engagement among residents.

In each case, the "visioning session" is an opportunity to let anybody in the community have a say in what issues residents want to address. It begins a process that will narrow those suggestions down to a manageable few and then allow a core team of residents to take action. A key to success is that the team have a broad spectrum of support from business, education, local government and other interests.

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Sharing the load in Breckenridge

Posted at 10:14 AM on June 11, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

I had a chance last week to chat via a Minnesota Rural Partners videoconference with Marcy Hanneman, community services director at Brekenridge Public Schools. She's in charge of the area's early childhood education program, and she made the point that as public money dwindles, demand for the services of her program and others grows.

Breckenridge is in far western Minnesota, on the North Dakota border. It's the seat of Wilkin County, population 6,565 and shrinking. Once you get past the major employers of schools, hospitals and other services, the economy is in tough shape.

"We're seeing greater disparity between the haves and have nots," she said.

But one way family service providers have come up with to cope is a more rigorous comparing of notes and workloads. Every week, staff members from early childhood, law enforcement, public health, family services and the court system meet to compare notes about people potentially in need. Depending on the individuals and the time in their lives, the appropriate service can deliver what's needed. Between meetings, the emails and phone calls continue the communication.

Hanneman mentioned the case of a teenager turning 18, headed for court on a variety of charges but whose girlfriend just had a baby. He was a known commodity among service provders in the community but at this point it was time to send someone in who could educate the two on parent skills.

"We can't live in silos and each provide services and not bump into each other," Hanneman said.

She's the first to acknowledge there isn't really much good measurement of such collaborative approaches to family services. While there is ample evidence that early childhood programs prepare kids for school, for example, it's tougher to measure a collaborative effort that gets a new mom to redirect the behavior of a misbehaving child by means other than spanking.

The services involved are short on cash as it is, so devoting resources to measurement doesn't make much sense. But even so, spreading the safety net more broadly seems like a good idea.

"There are so many families that continue to fall through the net. That's the hard part."

It may well work better in a small city or a rural county because people are familiar with cases, but it also provides an inkling that simliar efforts that join towns and cross county lines are also ways to deal with increasing local government budget pressure.

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Who's in the toughest shape when local aid vanishes?

Posted at 3:31 PM on June 1, 2010 by Dave Peters (4 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development, Local government finance

Who in Minnesota should worry most as state and federal officials put the squeeze on money that goes to local governments?

To name names:

That's the conclusion of Chuck Marohn, who in March joined our MPR News Ground Level public forum panel on Baldwin Township and whose planning and consulting group has now ranked Minnesota's cities on how vulnerable they will be if and when local government aid continues to shrink.

That's a prospect that is becoming an assumption among leaders around the state and nation, by the way.

Marohn's group simply calculated how much of a local property tax increase Minnesota cities would have to levy to replace the money coming from state and federal governments.

As the top of the list indicates, some small towns are clearly in the toughest shape, by his analysis. In the Top 50, only eight have populations over 1,000. The biggest of those is Chisholm, on the Iron Range, where Marohn figures the elimination of state and federal help would force a property tax increase of more than $2,400 on a house worth $100,000, unless spending dropped or revenue was found elsewhere.

Marohn's conclusion in the report Vulnerable Cities:

State funding of local government activities has waned, placing intense pressure on cities to reduce services and raise revenue using their primary source of local funding: Property taxes.

He goes on to analyze the tax-and-spend divide this way:

• It's a revenue problem because property taxes are clumsy, regressive mechanisms that create a direct disincentive to more efficient land use. It's a spending problem because we as citizens are accustomed to consuming local police protection, clean water and well-maintained streets which we do not fully fund through local property taxation.




• It's also a productivity problem. The most vulnerable Minnesota places produce local tax revenues that are less than what voters there demand. Using state and federal subsidy to meet core public needs is a way of addressing inequities, perceived or real. It also effectively tables discussion of how communities need to redesign their physical layout, infrastructure, or human capital to fund a higher percentage of total public services consumed.

In a phone conversation this morning, he went so far as to suggest that one way to interpret the problem facing rural towns is that an inability to cope without state and federal help is an indication that metro areas are now subsidizing the small town life so many people (including him) cherish.

On the other hand, he offers more creative ideas than simply whacking away at the budget and saying sorry to residents. Local sales taxes and better comprehensive planning are two. But in the end, he says, the reality is some cities just won't be viable in the 21st Century.

Maybe, he said, it's a choice between hospice care and a new model based on smaller scale economies, not big infrastructure.

If that's true, what principles will determine who lives and dies? Proximity to regional centers? Strong leadership? Tax base upheld by some large corporation? An entrepreneurial spirit? More cooperatives?

Marohn writes the Strong Towns blog about small town issues. You can find the city ranking here and if you want to look up a specific city, use this list.

Is there another way to interpret this analysis? Is there a role in some small towns for the big infrastructure approach to entice a big company?

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Pine City art lessons bring artists out of the shadows

Posted at 11:48 AM on May 28, 2010 by Dave Peters (5 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Pine City, a little more than an hour up I-35 from the Twin Cities, hasn't been known as an artists community. As of a couple years ago, there was no art gallery in town and there's no annual pottery tour, for example.

And yet, when a few people in town started to talk a little more than two years ago about establishing a center for the arts, it caught on. Serving less as a showcase for accomplished artists and more as a learning opportunity for residents, the Pine Center for the Arts opened in an empty storefront last summer. Started as a volunteer effort, it received $15,000 from the state Legacy Amendment and "started to kick it in gear," says Kris Seuntjens, one of the organizers.

Right now, about 25 artists and others are teaching classes and offering lessons in art, music, dance, literature and the theater. About 7,000 people have somehow been touched by the effort, including 15 violin-lesson recipients and other budding musicians who "exercised their courage muscle" Thursday evening by putting on a concert.

One effect has been to bring accomplished artists out of the shadows where no one saw them, Suentjens says. "The artists make a little money (from teaching) but it also lifts them up and they can say, "Oh, this is really valued by people.'"

Suentjens thinks there's a potential economic development impact in town. That's a dream in a lot of Minnesota towns, but even if it's elusive, the organization seems like something that can be duplicated elsewhere and has other value.

"I would love to encourage small towns to do this because, it's good for the arts, of course, but it creates this wonderful sense of happiness, community and friendship."

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Main Street program is back in business

Posted at 3:44 PM on May 19, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Elmer Gantry, as played by Burt Lancaster in the movie of the same name, is a hard-drinking, fast-talker selling religion to the Midwest in the 1920s. No doubt there are lessons for today that Sinclair Lewis, author of the book the movie was based on, would be eager to have us learn.

But the reason you can see Elmer Gantry for free at 6 p.m. May 27 at the Main Street Theater in Sauk Centre is simply that the world premiere was held there 50 years ago. And that apparently was reason enough for it to serve as entertainment for the relaunch of Minnesota Main Street, an economic development program aimed at helping residents take advantage of their historic downtowns.

The program, which existed a couple decades ago but ran out of money and state support, obviously has the same name as Nobel laureate Lewis' most famous novel, which was based on a fictional version of his home town, Sauk Centre. (Too bad Burt Lancaster never got near a movie depiction of Gopher Prairie.)

Minnesota Main Street is back, powered by $100,000 from the state Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund (Legacy Act money) through the Minnesota Historical Society and operated by the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota. On May 27, the Alliance will formally ask communities to apply for the program (there's a program at 4 p.m. and time to wander the Original Main Street before the movie) and it hopes by the end of June to pick five places to focus on in the next year.

Residents in those five communities will get training, outside expertise, consulting services and other help to make their downtowns look better, to preserve history, to fill vacant storefronts, to bring activities downtown, says Emily Northey, newly hired coordinator for the program.

A partner in the effort will be the Minnesota Design Team, which is a collection of architects who offer their time for related services to Minnesota towns. The design team's most recent effort was in Crosby, in northern Minnesota, which I wrote about here.

It's not hard to find moribund downtowns around Minnesota, and it's not exactly a new problem for residents. People's consuming, driving, working and shopping habits continue to evolve, and so does their sense of community, both real and virtual. It will be interesting to see what blend of historic preservation and 21st Century usefulness people come up with in this incarnation of Main Street.

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Microlending: Interest is growing. Does it work?

Posted at 8:25 AM on May 20, 2010 by Dave Peters (3 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

I mentioned here a couple weeks ago that I was hearing more about interest in microlending in Minnesota and I've been sorting through some data to get a better handle on it. There's no question interest is rising in using small loans as a tool to get entrepreneurs off the ground.

The Aspen Institute for almost two decades has been surveying organizations giving the small loans, and when it conducted another round of research last summer and fall, it found more such organizations than ever.

It compiled the results in a report you can read here. There's even a searchable database here, which identifies 10 organizations in Minnesota that responded to an Aspen survey about their 2008 lending activities.

The biggest one, with 47 microloans disbursed for a total of $550,000, is the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund, which serves 11 counties in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin.

In all, the Aspen study identified well over 100 microloans given out by Minnesota organizations in 2008, totalling more than $1.5 million. A lot of the activity researchers found was outstate -- other active microlenders were non-profits like the Southwest Initiative Foundation in Hutchinson and the Northwest Minnesota Foundation in Bemidji.

Given those numbers, it's clear we're not talking about the kind of 22-cent or $5 microloans that gave the field great visibility and one of its promulgators, Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize a few years ago. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh gave very tiny loans to people, mostly women, to let them invest in small-scale operations in their homes in an effort to alleviate their poverty.

In the American microenterprise world, the definition of a microloan can go as high as $35,000, but the targets still tend to be low-income, inexperienced people unable to get credit through normal banks.

Mary Mathews, president and CEO of the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund in Duluth, says "demand is through the roof." The number of loans her organization provided rose to 65 last year, she said. This year demand is still up.

A big reason is that bank credit is hard to come by, and microlenders fill a gap. It's hard to know when bank credit might ease, but the state and non-profits are increasingly exploring microlending.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development got approval in the legislative session just ended for a plan to make $500,000 in federal money available to outstate Minnesota communities. The communities need to contract with non-profits to give small entrepreneurs technical assistance. DEED's Bart Bevins says the department has been hearing from organizations who say there's a need and "we'll test that. We're going to find out if there's interest."

At the same time, two regional development commissions serving 10 counties in central Minnesota are conducting a feasibility study and expect next month to roll out a plan that would address any microloan needs they identify.

There's been debate over the effectiveness of microloans in alleviating poverty in Asia and Africa and whether it feels right as for-profit investment operations get into the business. And, as microloan providers will tell you, the need is great for, not just money, but technical assistance to help new entrepreneurs.

(For an interesting look at what those microloans do and don't accomplish, check the May 17 New Yorker profile of Esther Duflo, a young economist who conducts research into Third-World development ideas.)

Are these efforts working in Minnesota? Are small new concerns actually getting going? Mathews says 85 percent of the small businesses her organization helps are still in business two years later. What other evidence is there? What are the right ways to measure success?

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Designing Rural Minnesota

Posted at 9:56 AM on May 17, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Todd County

(MPR photo/Nikki Tundel)

There are plenty of architecture and planning centers around fixing up urban landscapes. But when it comes to pushing for better design in small towns and rural areas, there is only one major outfit in the world: the Center for Rural Design at the University of Minnesota.

"It seems like there should have been something called rural design a long time ago," says Dewey Thorbeck, who founded the center in 1997. "Design professionals had ignored rural America."

The center has gained cachet lately, due to growing enthusiasm for local foods and urbanites moving to the country to start hobby farms. Last January, the center hosted the first ever international symposium on rural design. It's about to start an online education and certification program. And Thorbeck has a book in the works.

"The more knowledgeable people are about their surroundings," he says, "the more likely they are to make the kind of decisions that reflect their own values."

He notes that rural Minnesota has seen a lot of change lately, related to new food production methods, the aging of the population, emerging health issues and even global warming. "A lot of our projects are to help citizens manage change and connect the dots," says Thorbeck, who was born in Bagley, in northern Minnesota.

In other words, the idea is to help rural communities survive and reinvent themselves, whether as tourist destinations, recreational havens, thriving agricultural areas or bedroom communities for larger cities. "Each small town has a unique role," Thorbeck says.

He encourages communities to look beyond city and county boundaries to forge useful partnerships, find efficiencies and discover common solutions.

Thorbeck hasn't worked in Todd County, but says, "If I were to go up there and meet with them, I would try to say, 'Maybe we should get Wadena, Little Falls, and Alexandria - some representatives from other counties - to sit in on a regional discussion.'"

Examining the county's geography, he adds, "Wadena and Staples, toward Little Falls along highway 10, they have much more in common with each other I would think than Staples does with Long Prairie."

Rural people tend to be an independent lot. So, Thorbeck treads lightly when consulting, letting ideas bubble up from the communities themselves.

"There is a spirit in America of property rights which is more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas," he says. "We don't preach one thing or another. We try very hard to say that we aren't the U coming in to tell them how to live. Public engagement is critical. This is community based design."

Presently, the center is working with Minnesota dairy farmers to develop environmental and building standards that Thorbeck hopes will someday become law. "If you have 5,000 cows under one roof and have people in there milking and cleaning, there ought to be some guidelines and there just aren't."

Over the years, he's learned a few things about rural Minnesota. "There are a lot of smart people living in rural areas," Thorbeck says. "Maybe that's stupid to say. But they know a lot more than I do."

Also, he adds, "They are probably more conscious of their landscapes than urban people because the land is more open. You see the rivers and the forests. A lot of people living in Minneapolis probably have never gone along the Mississippi River bank. Almost every rural person has a pretty good sense of where they live."

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Rural-urban connections via videoconference

Posted at 8:26 AM on May 6, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development, Todd County

I seldom think about farmers when I walk past the meat counter at Rainbow.

But when you check out the cuts of lamb, beef and pork in the Whole Farm Foods Co-op in Long Prairie you can't miss the connection to the people who raised the meat. They're the folks selling it to you. Likewise if you purchase their goods through one of the Twin Cities churches the cooperative markets through.

If you want to learn more about that kind of rural-urban connection, whether it's about food, energy, health care, education or something else, check out a series of videoconferences offered by Minnesota Rural Partners in the coming weeks. The organization plans to offer examples and highlight collaborations region by region.

On Monday, May 10, the focus will be on Northeast Minnesota and broadband, entrepreneurship and workforce. On Tuesday, May 18, it will be on Northwest Minnesota with a look at education and workforce. On Wednesday, May 26, the focus shifts to east central Minnesota and the arts.

In each case there will be several places you can attend the videoconference, including St. Paul, for the urban bound.

Details and registration at the Rural Urban Connections Project.

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What's on community minds? Microlending, broadband, credit

Posted at 9:30 AM on May 3, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Community Development

Every time I sit in on the quarterly (roughly) meeting of Friends in the Field in Little Falls, I'm looking for a pulse.

I don't mean in the sense that there's no life to this group of a couple dozen people who participate in, for lack of a better term, the community development industry. They come together to trade notes from a variety of roles -- University of Minnesota Extension, foundations big and small, the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Center for Small Towns, Central Lakes College, the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota and even the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

So, although the cast changes a little bit from one session to the next, these are people who as much as anyone in Minnesota have a feel for what communities think they need to, as we say here at Ground Level, "face the future."

Jobs? Trails? Better planning? The organizations around the table at the Initiative Foundation office offer a good bit of intelligence about what people on the ground from Marshall to Cloquet are thinking they need.

So, to me, they feel the pulse of Minnesota communities and I go to hear them. So what was I hearing at the latest gathering last week?

1. Credit is tight, and now it matters. Small town banks have been pulling in their horns as regulators look hard at them. A few months ago, not so many businesses or entrepreneurs were looking for capital anyway, but now they're starting to and not having an easy time finding it.
2. Interest in micro-enterprise is growing. DEED has a program delivering community block grant money to local governments who want to contract with non-profits to provide small-loan help for businesses started from low and moderate income households. And the Region 5 Development Commission has someone trying to determine demand level and sustainability for microlending.
3. Scratch only a little bit and you can find a broadband itch. The Blandin Foundation has led a lot of efforts in this arena and they're thinking the debate is not only about creating an infrastructure but about building demand for high-speed connectivity.

Do these themes resonate? Is anyone else seeing action or interest along these lines around Minnesota?

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