Friday, September 12, 2008 4:12 PM CDT
Coles County is on the right road to economic growth
Guest Report
By KEITH TAYLOR, The University of Illinois
Rural communities across the United States should learn from Coles County.
Coles has adapted to the de-industrialization of the Midwest relatively well. Local businesses such as Sweet Tooth Bakery and Little Mexico are showing entrepreneurial spirit while community leadership pushing for an emphasis on localism continues to grow.
The community support for FutureGen demonstrates not only Coles’ strengths, but also Coles’ latent opportunities to adapt and prosper in this ever-challenging global economy.
Coles is not unlike other communities seeking answers to the conundrum of community development and resiliency. Coles has lost union manufacturing jobs with the closings of Blaw-Knox and Trailmobile. Other local factories have downsized due to global market challenges and increased technological advances, diminishing available high-wage jobs. Additionally, governments everywhere lack the resources to provide employment and stimulus that rural communities used to expect.
This is not to denigrate the inherent capacity of Coles County to adapt. Indeed there are strong signs Coles has such capacity.
It is with this mindset I offer some prescriptive ideas for Coles derived from not only my personal research for the Community Studies and Outreach department at the University of Illinois, but also as a local, my knowledge of Coles and of the assets held within.
Coles must work to build a local business ethic. Coles abounds with many successful local businesses. Wave Graphics and United Graphics grew from the bottom up and now service broad regions. Common Grounds and Jackson Avenue Coffee arrived a few years ago and provide friends, family and community groups a meeting place complete with a great cup of coffee. The Mattoon downtown is improving visibly, as is the business climate in Charleston.
Residents must do our best to encourage local business growth by shopping local and creating local economies. Local restaurants should consider purchasing produce from community farmers and gardeners, and entrepreneurs should arise to meet those needs.
City and county governments and institutions should purchase their supplies solely from locally owned office stores (I’m referring to the schools, libraries, and courthouse, respectively).
Use local funding wisely. Coles Together, for example, is a quasi public/private institution, receiving funds from private enterprise and local government. With local funds should logically come a local focus.
Private investors approach Coles Together for information, data, and insight on the local economic scene in Coles. Regardless of the strings attached (i.e. potential investors must be able to offer a strict threshold of jobs, tax revenue, and business stimuli before Coles Together and other similar institutions offer their services), these investors have no responsibility to locate in Coles after receipt of services.
Imagine if instead of seeking out a big score (which like lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice), Coles Together worked primarily with other institutions, pooling its resources toward growing local businesses.
Local grain and electric cooperatives could work toward building a small business finance program with other interested investors and business people. The cooperatives are uniquely positioned to create community “buy-in” due to their member-ownership structures and deep roots into the community through the farm bureau, local banking institutions, and embedded family lineage.
Member dividends could be reinvested into such micro-credit programs, creating more opportunity for investment, businesses, and additional profit-channels for the cooperatives’ membership.
Local schools could expand programs teaching youth about entrepreneurship and community development in an effort to stem the tide of brain drain. In an article by Professors Neal and Jan Flora of Iowa State University, they find one of the key factors in community resiliency is the retention and involvement of local youth. The necessity of preparing youth through the educational system is a core component of community revitalization and durability.
If Coles wishes to grow, it is not enough to acknowledge the importance of local youth, but to make them stakeholders through involvement in civic activities by giving them leadership positions.
Additional to working with local youth, Coles could form a task force through the Lumpkin Business School at Eastern Illinois University, Lake Land College and Coles Together to not only guide budding entrepreneurs, but to also retain EIU graduates who desire to buy, build and grow local.
EIU and LLC could provide human capital and brains, whereas Coles Together could piece together the financial incentives. Such a task force would be instrumental in retaining local youth, expanding economic opportunities, nurturing a local business ethic, and growing a resilient community.
None of these ideas are the cure-all that ails Coles or any other rural American community. Instead, these prescriptive ideas are intended to reveal how rural communities such as Coles have the capacity to develop in the absence of outside assistance.
Each of us has the capacity to influence local institutions to act on the behalf of the common good while prospering individually. The potential exists. The only question left is “what are you waiting for?”
Keith Taylor, formerly of Mattoon, is a research assistant in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois
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Mama says wrote on Sep 13, 2008 5:59 AM:
Dad would take me to see trains turning around and have some chipped ice as old icehouse (not a bar) was there and how good cold ice on hot day and watch the trains. We would fish at Lake Paradise and I slept in car when tired. Dad took the lawnmower,,,,,and burnt the trash found in campfire, so had a clean area. The dog went along, and kept the raccoons away. He had fun chasing squirrels, rabbits, and birds. When age 12 a fire burnt all pictures and I always long to see them. Taught me put pictures in bank box. We also later years went to Lincoln Log Cabin and had good day there often, and went to New Salem State Park (where lived age 11 to 13) across river from there. I went over often as could ride bike there and had fun with just a dollar (the good ole days). "