On the Side| Brad Hicks
Red Oak, Montgomery County, and southwest Iowa in general are at a critical crossroads in history.
The economic base that fueled this area for decades is rapidly changing, and has spawned what has the potential to be a vicious circle of declining population and decreasing opportunities.
Some weeks ago when I saw the biennial Census estimates had been released, I thought we had better report on that. When it said that Montgomery County had lost nearly 5 percent of its population in the past six years, it was an alarm I felt needed sounding. Thus, it wound up on the front page.
This year’s chamber president, Larry Brandstetter, produced a copy of the paper at one of the subsequent chamber board meetings and rightly pointed to it as a concern.
Since the 1920s and 1930s, Iowa has been battling demographics. Mechanization allowed for increases in farm sizes as long ago as that. The result has been a variable decline in rural population, further school consolidations, and drastic changes in business counts – ever exacerbated by people’s ability to travel to shop regionally, and now via computer.
Technology has been touted as a potential great equalizer for rural Iowa and rural America – you can host a business anywhere, they say – but until Mediacom’s recent rollout, the high-end speed needed for e-commerce has been slow to arrive. And folks who live in the countryside are still waiting for a realistically-priced and high-performing option.
Against that backdrop, Red Oak and Montgomery County are now trying to change the way economic development efforts are coordinated. The ROCIA has been the mechanism for handling and developing contacts in recent years. A structure was in place. Now, the Montgomery County Development is going to be the main contact for industrial development at least, and it seems that MCDC and the ROCIA are working out which is going to handle other types of contacts.
It is important the two organizations are on the same page, and that will take time, because situations will arise that will require good leadership to navigate. We cannot forget that the chamber is a membership-based, dues-funded organization, and that shifting some responsibilities elsewhere could – I repeat, could – result in some lost member funding. There are only so many of those dollars to go around.
At the same time, each of the organizations is looking for its next executive director. Change always presents opportunity and risk. We must all pull for the leaders of these organizations to successfully recruit directors who will embrace a vision of retaining what we have and pursuing growth.
Which leads me back to where I was months ago. Demographics are working against all us. We need a comprehensive, community visioning process that leads to comprehenisve community goals being set. Our revised organizations should make that a priority for 2017-18. We don’t want another 5 percent to leak away by 2020.
Contact Brad Hicks at publisher@redoakexpress.com.