by American Communities ProjectSeptember 25, 2019Print
The American Communities Project traveled to six counties in four states — Arkansas, Kansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota — to understand the complexity and diversity of rural America in 2019. The goal was to explore how different rural America can look even in communities that are not far apart from one another. Below find details of the three regions we visited and some high points of our visits.
The Rural South Along Racial Cleavages
An African American South community in the Mississippi Delta, St. Francis County, Arkansas, is 52% black. Part of Working Class Country in the foothills of the Ozarks, Fulton County, Arkansas, is 95% white. Both counties highlight the challenges of the rural South — low incomes and population loss — as well as the racial differences that are a legacy of the region’s history.
St. Francis County’s points of progress:
Forrest City’s new mayor is making strides to gather together whites and blacks.
Residents are bringing economic development to the town of Palestine.
Forrest City School District is receiving academic recognition.
Fulton County’s points of progress:
North Arkansas Electric Cooperative is bringing broadband Internet access to the county and larger Ozark region in the next five years.
The Spring River Innovation Hub is a space for small business incubation.
A tri-county economic development pilot program is providing training in the retail, hospitality, and recreation fields.
The Rural Midwest Along Agricultural Gulfs
Finney County, a Hispanic Center in southwest Kansas where the population is 50% Hispanic, has held steady since the 2010 Census. Gove County, an Aging Farmland in northwest Kansas with a mostly white population, has shrunk 3.3% since 2010. Finney, a local economic hub, shares the traits of an urban area, particularly its diversification of industry and population. In Gove, a truly small farming community, agricultural industrialization has led to population decline even as production has grown. The counties’ population changes show the fissures of the modern agricultural economy.
Finney County’s points of progress:
Finney County Economic Development Corporation is building an Early Learning and Childcare Network to meet a burgeoning child care demand.
The community health coalition, LiveWell Finney County, holds health screenings and outreach events, often with translators.
Community leaders and organizations, like Sister Janice Thome with the Dominican Sisters Ministry of Presence, help connect new residents to local services.
Gove County’s points of progress:
High-end agricultural manufacturing equipment lessens manual labor for farmers.
Gove County Medical Center, home to the Bluestem Medical practice, has seven providers: three MDs, two nurse practitioners, and two more MDs who started in September 2019.
The website lovesmalltownamerica.com, started by a graphic designer in the county, promotes small towns across the country.
The Rural West Along Resource Disparities
From gold to oil, the boom-bust cycle has been a part of life in America’s rural communities throughout their collective history. Near the state capital of Bismarck, Morton County, North Dakota, in Rural Middle America, has seen 12% growth since the 2010 Census, partly driven by the oil boom. In south-central South Dakota where resources seem scarcer, Todd County, within the Native American Lands, has long struggled with poor health factors and outcomes. Both counties are searching for a new equilibrium.
Morton County’s points of progress:
There are robust incentives for startup and expanding businesses in Mandan, the county seat.
Custer Health has a syringe exchange program, the first in North Dakota.
The old Mandan Junior High has been turned into affordable housing units.
Todd County’s points of progress:
Rosebud Economic Development Cooperation’s data collection efforts are progressing, aimed toward building models for a new economy that helps residents thrive.
Residents are reasserting the traditions, norms, art, and language of the Lakota people.
Sinte Gleska University is an anchor for education and community development.
Mammoth Spring. All photos in this chapter by Ari Pinkus.
The town of Mammoth Spring.
At the foothills of the Ozark Mountains where the hills run on for miles sits Fulton County, Arkansas, a Working Class Country community of 12,055, founded in 1842. And on the Arkansas-Missouri line, in the town of Mammoth Spring (pop. 990), one of the world’s largest springs flows and the Civil War’s vestige still echoes. The Old Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Air Force Reunion has gathered here each summer going on 126 years, starting as a Reunion of the Blue and the Gray to heal the war’s divisions. “Fulton County men fought on both sides in the Civil War…” begins a marker at the Mammoth Spring State Park.
It’s true that many families can trace their roots back generations, and a comforting sense of home envelops today’s residents from bankers to educators. Fulton County boasts solid schools in the state with dedicated, well-trained teachers; its 20-plus churches stand as a rock for the community. A Christian mindset, including a deep faith and caring for your fellow man, shines through in conversations, even in a sidewalk “blessing box” display to “Take what you need” and “Give what you can.”
At the same time, residents are clear-eyed and candid about their many challenges: infrastructure gaps, severe economic hardship, drug addiction, apathy, and perhaps most urgently, a youth brain drain, which has been emptying the county of the talent needed to help turn around these challenges. Fulton’s population has declined 1.5% since the 2010 census.
While the economic and social barriers to growth are high, the conditions are ripening for green shoots to pierce pockets. Several community leaders are rolling up their sleeves to bring renewal in the forms of broadband Internet access; water expansion; a tri-county grant for training in the retail, hospitality, and recreation fields; an innovation hub; and financial literacy. Fulton’s future, it seems, is very much a work in progress local residents are building day by day.
Fulton County Within Working Class Country and Rural America
Working Class County is among the least diverse community types in rural America, with a population that’s 94% non-Hispanic white. Fulton County follows this pattern: 95% identify as non-Hispanic white; 1.3% as Hispanic; and less than 1% as African American, Native American, or Asian.
Socioeconomic factors convey Fulton’s hardships. The median household income is $35,700, with 29% of children in poverty, and 30% living in single-parent homes. Compare this to the household income medians of $43,800 in Working Class Country and $46,600 in rural America. The child poverty rate is 24% in Working Class Country and 22% in rural America. A bright spot: The high school graduation rate is 98%; it’s 92% in Working Class Country and 90% in rural America.
Health outcomes and additional factors show a county in great distress, according to the 2019 County Health Rankings:
The premature death rate of 12,300 exceeds Working Class Country’s rate of 9,400 and is considerably higher than the rural America median of 8,641. Lack of health-care access, unhealthy behaviors, and depopulation likely contribute to this high number.
Teen births stand at 44 per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19 — a much higher rate than the 36 median in Working Class Country and the 34 median for rural America.
Preventable hospital stays are 6,972, while Working Class Country’s and rural America’s rates are much beneath that at 4,949 and 4,732, respectively.
Access to dentists is very poor with a ratio of 6,030:1. This compares with 3,265: 1 for Working Class Country and 2,802:1 for rural America.
The food environment index is weak at 6.6; for Working Class Country, it’s 7.7 and for rural America, it’s 7.6.
Overall, 22% of Fulton residents say they are in poor or fair health, compared with 18% in Working Class Country and 17% in rural America.
Building an Infrastructure
Broadband
“By supporting this measure we help … improve rural living standards, equalize farm and city cultural advantages, and strike a great blow for economic betterment throughout the land.” It was April 1936 when Rep. Thomas Fletcher (D) of Ohio spoke these words in the U.S. Congress about the Rural Electrification Act, which became law a month later. After which time, rural residents came together and organized electric cooperatives to connect their regions to electricity; more than 900 such cooperatives exist today. One is North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, based in Fulton County, employing 125 people.
Now many electric cooperatives, including North Arkansas Electric, have expanded their focus to provide broadband Internet for the same reasons. “We’re at a point with broadband we were at years ago with electricity. For the folks at the communications companies, the cable companies, their business model does not fit rural America….That is exactly the reason my coop is investing $130 million for fiber-delivered high-speed broadband,” says Mel Coleman, CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, which serves Fulton, Baxter, Sharp, Izard, and parts of Lawrence and Stone counties, counting 31,000 members. A $4 million pilot project in the region was completed last year. North Arkansas Electric has been partnering with others, including Como Electric Cooperative in Missouri, which has been in broadband for more than six years.
Fulton County’s broadband access rate stands at 60%, lower than Working Class Country’s 66%. In context, Arkansas is the 49th least connected state, with just 71% percent of households holding a broadband Internet subscription, according to the 2016 American Community Survey. The U.S. average stands at 81%.
In Coleman’s cooperative service area, the hurdles are sizable. One is population density, which requires one mile of line for every seven homes. In a city, a mile of line might reach hundreds of homes and businesses. The cooperative has received $22.8 million from the Federal Communications Commission for this project. “We still have another $100 million that we have to fund,” Coleman says. Notwithstanding the challenges, the cooperative expects to deliver fiber-optic broadband to every home in its territory in the next five years, he says.
Basic broadband Internet service, at 100 megabits per second, runs $49.95 a month, Coleman noted. Residential telephone service runs $39.95 a month. Because some rural areas don’t have cellphone coverage, “VoIP is about the only choice they have,” he says. (A local phone company would provide landline service.) Many residents purchase a package of Internet, TV, and phone service.
Coleman envisions broadband’s comprehensive benefits. “I don’t care if you’re looking at education, health care, business development, industrial development, or just a child doing homework at night, broadband is the single most important element in the development of quality of life in rural America,” he says.
Water
Water Authority Manager Darrell Zimmer.
To fulfill another area of need, the Fulton County Water Authority has embarked on a new phase to extend water to its more rural areas north and west — slated to reach more than 1,200 customers, says the Water Authority’s Manager Darrell Zimmer. “We’re about a third of the way” toward covering the county, he says.
The biggest obstacle is funding; they will seek low-interest loans from the USDA and grant funding from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, Zimmer says. Another challenge is the topography — running into rock while trying to install a water main.
Sometimes he encounters residents who are hesitant to move off well water, and he talks with them to understand why and explain the benefits. He finds that some feel they draw good drinking water; others express concern about chemicals. Many come around because they want the insurance and generator backup of the county’s water system, recalling an ice storm in 2009 when they were without electricity for two weeks. “When they see the actual work going on, they want to get on board; sometimes it’s a little more expensive to do that than it is to sign up ahead of time,” Zimmer says.
Highway
The 62-412 corridor in Salem, Arkansas.
Fulton County is situated about two and a half hours from Little Rock, Arkansas, and two and a half hours from Springfield, Missouri — two regional economic hubs. In the past several years, some passing lanes were added on Fulton’s main highway, 62-412, otherwise a hilly two-lane corridor in the national highway system, running through the county seat of Salem (pop. 1,608).
Expanding to four lanes could boost economic development opportunities and reduce local transportation costs. “When you talk to businesses trying to move here, there’s always the issue of trying to get their goods in and out, and there’s always an issue along that route. They’re driving all the way up into Missouri and coming back down,” says Zimmer, who’s also on the North Arkansas East/West Corridor Association board.
The association keeps the state’s studies, has held public meetings, and is seeking federal funding. “We’re focusing on the dangerous areas through the crash loans of the highway department because if there’s a safety issue, they’re more likely to fund that, and it solves two things at once,” he says. Three danger areas have been identified in the western part of Fulton.
Zimmer is cautiously sanguine about the highway’s future. “As far as complete, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but we’re making progress,” he says.
Moving to Revitalize a Depressed Economic Landscape
Fulton County Courthouse.
Residents remember Salem’s square bustling with mom-and-pops in the 1980s, particularly on Saturdays. A significant economic loss came when the Tri-County Shirt Factory closed in 2001, and 138 employees lost their jobs. Today, a few shops and one family diner, Swingles, surround the square where the red-brick Fulton County Courthouse stands; a Dollar General is close by on South Main Street.
An eclectic mix of private and public events takes place down the road in Salem at the Fulton County Fairgrounds. The county fair’s theme this year was “Celebrate 100 Years of Fulton County’s Best.” Recently, the Salem Civic Center on-site held a dance recital and a Fulton County Hospital Foundation gospel concert.
Fulton County Fairgrounds in Salem, Arkansas.
Salem Civic Center in Salem, Arkansas.
Just as often residents harken back to Walmart wanting to build a store in Salem in the late ’60s–early ’70s. The story goes that after the town fathers fought the effort, with concern for local businesses, Sam Walton, who in 1962 opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, said there would never be a Walmart in Salem. “If we only had a Walmart…” has become a refrain here.
Lifelong county resident and Salem Chamber of Commerce President Zach Branscum says everyone from state to local residents recounts this part of Fulton’s past. “I hate that story. We can’t focus on things that happened in the ’60s. We’ve got to be more progressive; we’ve got to start somewhere,” he says.
He sees younger people as the linchpin to revival. “People that had money and started these businesses were mostly all from here. That’s what they did their whole life.…That’s why we’ve got to have people that want to come back here and start those entrepreneurial type [businesses]. Because the people that have always been here want to see it like it used to be.”
That doesn’t mean they dislike modern business strategies. Seizing on a national trend, the Chamber started promoting through Facebook “Food Truck Fridays,” in which a few trucks from within and beyond the county set up in downtown Salem about once a month. Branscum hopes the initiative will entice people to visit local businesses and return, he says. The Chamber is also sharing via Facebook “small town spotlights” of businesses to highlight their offerings and help them recruit employees. One was Progressive Eye Center of Salem that sought an optometrist not long ago.
Chamber representatives are under no illusions about retaining young people in Fulton, but take heart in recent education and workforce trends. “Most kids want to go off to college, and they don’t want to come back here because they don’t see any opportunity here…. The trades are coming back. They can start those while they’re in high school,” says Michele Tomlinson, a board member on the Salem Chamber of Commerce. It’s helping keep some people here, she adds.
Branscum, a health-care professional, suggests one way to jump-start more ideas: “We’re all volunteers at the Chamber. It would be helpful to have somebody who would spend their time dedicated to economic development,” he says, noting that neighboring areas pay staff to work in this area.
Other community leaders are focused on improving the local economy as well. “Everybody’s hungry for jobs,” says Salem Mayor Daniel Busch, who also serves on the Chamber of Commerce. As a small community, Salem relies heavily on tax revenues, and its sales tax is about $25,000 a month, 1% of which goes to infrastructure, police, fire, and industrial development, Busch says.
Agriculture is a crucial sector of Fulton County’s economy.
Elected mayor more than four years ago, Busch is a lifelong resident of Fulton who graduated from Mammoth Spring High School in 1999. He describes agriculture — particularly beef and recently poultry — as the main industry in the tri-county region, encompassing Fulton, Sharp, and Izard counties. The mayors and county judges (a county’s chief executive officer) have realized that developing a sustainable workforce requires a regional approach, Busch says. The three county judges, for instance, have been meeting over the past year to discuss what business prospects could come to these parts.
Besides the narrow roadways, a deficiency is that Salem has no natural gas — only propane and electric, Busch says. With the expectation of broadband Internet, there’s a thought the community could begin to attract millennials working online.
A Pilot for Economic Development
A new economic hope stems from the selection of Fulton, Sharp, and Izard counties to participate in a multi-state pilot program, aimed at developing the counties’ retail, hospitality, and recreation industries. The pilot is part of a $2.7 million grant from the Walmart Foundation to the Southern Rural Development Center. Other states involved are Oklahoma and Kentucky.
Launched in January, the Create Bridges project is being run through the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Community and Economic Development. It held its first retail academy in Salem in the spring. “The retail academy went very well for us. We had around 40 participants and really good dialogue,” says Stacey McCullough, assistant director of community and economic development. In early May, they began conducting interviews with business owners/managers and surveys of workers in retail, accommodations, tourism, and entertainment fields.
“Create Bridges builds upon Stronger Economies Together (SET), a collaborative effort across 32 states led by the Southern Rural Development Center that helps rural counties work together to develop and implement an economic development plan for their multi-county region,” according to Talk Business & Politics, a news site that covers business, politics, and culture in Arkansas.
The project runs right along with Busch’s mission to leave Salem better than he found it. Busch was approached by Mayor Gary Clayton, who led Salem for more than 35 years, to run for this seat. “He paved the city streets and built up the infrastructure. So I want to build on what he left, and then [let] whoever is after me continue building. We don’t need to sit stagnant and go backward,” Busch says.
Reimagining Cherokee Village
Director of Placemaking Graycen Bigger and Community Developer Jonathan Rhodes in Cherokee Village, Arkansas.
About a half-hour southeast of Salem, straddling Fulton and Sharp counties, is the community of Cherokee Village, complete with directional signs and a town center. The vision of Arkansas native John Cooper, it was the first planned recreational community in the state and one of the first of its kind in the U.S. Amenities include seven lakes, two 18-hole golf courses, parks, recreation centers, and swimming pools.
In the 1950s and ’60s, people were recruited to the Village; property owners have hailed from across America and abroad. For many years, Cherokee Village represented a successful graduated retirement model: It attracted young couples in their 30s with kids who made it their getaway, then when their kids left the nest, they returned to settle in the community they loved. In the ’80s, civic engagement was robust.
As retirees passed away or moved to where their children lived, marketing efforts diminished. “There’s this natural cycle here. Problem is, there was no one cycling behind with the same kind of civic minded” mentality, says Jonathan Rhodes, community developer of Cherokee Village who grew up here, then lived in Washington, D.C., Rome, and Sudan. “We’ve got these wonderful assets that are not easily replicated… we have to recreate ourselves.”
This begins with jobs. “The backbone of our community here is tourism and small service business,” Rhodes says. “We’ve got to make sure that we are supporting small business. And we’ve got to create platforms for anyone who’s got an entrepreneurial passion or an idea, or home-based business, or job dependent on technology.”
The new vision of being a small business incubator is starting to come to life in the region’s new Spring River Innovation Hub at Cherokee Village. Part of the town center has become a co-working space, providing high-speed Internet, mentoring, community events, and professional development. The hub was made possible with $20,000 from the Delta Regional Authority and additional support from FNBC Bank. Graycen Bigger, director of placemaking for Cherokee Village, is also the hub’s executive director.
Innovation Hub in Cherokee Village, Arkansas.
Artmobile makes a visit to Cherokee Village.
A native Arkansan, Bigger brought her artistic sensibility here after earning a master’s degree in art business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. “I was very interested in how art impacted communities,” she says. In mid-March, Cherokee Village hosted Arkansas Arts Center’s Artmobile, giving local schools and community groups access to the art show “Who, What, Wear,” focusing on the relationship between art and fashion.
In the renewal of this place, Rhodes and Bigger express the penultimate goal of creating a sustainable community that can continue well into the future.
Meeting Individual and Community Health Needs
Fulton County Health Department Administrator/RN Wanda Koelling and Hometown Health Manager Kelli Dunegan.
For the Fulton County Health Department, drug use, particularly meth, is top of mind. A sales tax increase went into effect April 1 to help the sheriff’s office contend with the problem. The health department team has also earmarked the major health concerns cited in the County Health Rankings: smoking, obesity, lack of dentists, preventable hospital stays, and child poverty. Also on their radar is teen pregnancy, and Health Department Administrator/RN Wanda Koelling confidentially counsels young people to prevent STDs and pregnancy, she says.
One strength of the health department is giving immunizations. Where there’s room for improvement day to day: Having a nurse practitioner who can attend to general health, not only family planning, Koelling says.
Fulton County Hospital in Salem, Arkansas.
A significant challenge on health-care access is similar to many rural areas: Fulton residents must travel 45 minutes to an hour to a major hospital in Mountain Home or Batesville. While Fulton County Hospital has long been a fixture in Salem, it hasn’t provided surgery or obstetric services in many years. However, physicians are on call all the time in what is now a critical access hospital with 25 beds.
Meanwhile, Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirement, which was blocked by a federal judge in late March, has not had a big impact here, according to Koelling. More than 18,000 people in the state had lost coverage after it was implemented in June 2018.
Institutions Nurturing Youth
Schools
Salem School District Superintendent Wayne Guiltner.
Of Fulton County’s three school districts — Salem, Mammoth Spring, and Viola — Salem is the largest and most recognized. Salem Elementary receives an A score and Salem High School a B, according to Niche’s 2019 Best Public High Schools, which draws on academic and student life data from the U.S. Department of Education, test scores, and college data. Mammoth Spring Elementary scores a B+ and Mammoth Spring High School a B; Viola’s elementary school obtains a B+, its high school a C+.
Salem School District focuses on academic success much more than sports, says Wayne Guiltner, who is finishing his third year as superintendent and was previously high school principal for 12 years. ACT scores are above the national average. “With 65% of students on free and reduced lunch in the school, most studies would show we should not be doing that well,” he says.
Guiltner, who grew up here, offers some reasons for bucking these trends. “There is pressure on the school; a lot of that comes from parents wanting their kids to do better than they did.” Moreover, Salem’s teachers continue to obtain 60 hours of professional development each school year, compared with the 36 hours required by the state, Guiltner says.
With a graduating class ranging from 60 to 75 students, the district focuses on preparing students for career paths afterward. In addition to Advanced Placement courses, students have access to community college classes while in high school. “You can get an associate’s degree here, and we pay for the majority of it,” Guiltner says. The district also accommodates students’ interest in the trades, including welding.
Devoted educators, like Algebra teacher Ted Kerley, are role models for students. Born and raised in Salem, Kerley lives on his family’s farm, in the family since 1942. “I have 17 former students working with me now; education is a big deal to us,” he says. A major change he’s noticed since he started 24 years ago: Many more students come from one-parent homes. Teaching life skills is his forte. “I tell kids, I care about you as a student, as a person, an athlete, but I also care about your soul,” he says, careful to add that he does not discuss religion with them.
Kerley was in college around 1992 when Salem High’s longtime Algebra teacher asked Kerley to take his place. Kerley studied day and night to ready himself for the position. “Turns out I had a higher GPA in college than in high school because my work ethic and study habits tripled,” he says.
Church
First Baptist Church in Salem, Arkansas.
Salem First Baptist Church’s Pastor John Hodges is also a Fulton County native. He graduated from Salem High School in 1980, then headed off to the Air Force, college, and graduate school. After returning in 1996, he noticed “more of a sense of economic desperation, and that was sad to me,” he says.
The economic and social decline only deepened in the passing years. Hodges remembers arranging a summer job for his son here after his first year in college in 2002. On the phone one day his son said he wasn’t coming home and planned to work at a children’s camp. “All my friends are using drugs,” he told Hodges. As Hodges ticked off names in disbelief, his son confirmed their drug use. In one case, a father introduced his son to meth. Today, the pastor’s son lives in Austin, Texas.
Pastor John Hodges addresses Fulton County’s divides, its stabilizing forces, and the work of serving the needy but not fostering dependency.
First Baptist Church Pastor John Hodges.
As Hodges works to better the community, he pays special attention to young people. His argument: “Do you want to be a recipient, or do you want to be contributor? By being a contributor, you have the possibility to move up, better your life, and better the community.” Because a lot of kids have grown up in homes where they don’t see a work ethic, Hodges teaches them life lessons as well as the Bible. For example, high schoolers and young couples learn how to manage money through Dave Ramsey’s personal finance education. Some have used the saving tips to pay off debts and take vacations, Hodges says.
He’s seen a few young professionals move into or return to Fulton, including his secretary’s husband, a banker. As Hodges puts it, “It’s good to see because they really are trying to make change in the community. But we just need more.”
Morton County, North Dakota. City of Mandan. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Bridge built in 1882. Morton County is the seventh-largest county in North Dakota, encompassing 1,936 square miles. There are six incorporated cities in the county; Mandan is the county seat. All photos in this chapter courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
The Missouri River, lining the eastern boundary of Rural Middle America’s Morton County in North Dakota, is much more than a physical border between counties; residents point to the river as a cultural and psychological marker of two divergent work-life rhythms. To the east lies Burleigh County, containing the state capital, Bismarck, where people often conduct business and politics in suits and ties; to the west sits Morton, where many folks farm and go about town in jeans and cowboy boots. So ingrained is Morton County’s ranching culture that Mandan, the county seat, is home to the longest-running rodeo in America, held since 1879 for three days over the Fourth of July.
In Travels with Charley in Search of America chronicling his 1960 road trip, John Steinbeck captures the stark terrain in iconic fashion: “This is where the map should fold. Here is the boundary between the east and west. On the Bismarck side it is eastern landscape, eastern grass, with the look and smell of eastern America. Across the Missouri on the Mandan side, it is pure west, with brown grass and water scorings and small outcrops. The two sides of the river might well be a thousand miles apart.”
While residents recognize the benefit of their proximity to the political capital, they value their place apart. Morton County’s rural, western character has held through the ebbs and flows of its history. Founded in 1873, it grew up around the Northern Pacific Railroad — passenger trains stopped passing through in 1979; freight trains routinely run through downtown Mandan today. Some businesses are longtime fixtures, including Mandan Refinery that opened operations in 1954 and now can turn out 74,000 barrels of oil a day, and Cloverdale Foods, owned by the Russell family for more than 100 years — and expanding today.
Since the 2010 census, Morton County’s population has grown 12%, partly propelled by the recent oil boom in North Dakota. Situated some 200 to 300 miles from the oil fields, the county has become home for many traveling west to work for a couple of weeks at a time. In 2016, Morton became a battleground in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Lately, Morton County’s growth has been evening out (pop. 30,796). Two telling signs: Housing is easier to find, and its affordability is becoming a priority. Other economic indicators point in a positive direction. The median household income is $63,300, higher than the $57,600 national median, while the county’s unemployment rate stands at 3%. Startups continue to pop up in repurposed buildings in downtown Mandan, where the incentives for entrepreneurs are robust.
Yet there are signs of strain. Residents say the current workforce is not keeping pace with the jobs available. On health, the health department in the county is working to meet residents’ significant needs on drug use and home visitations. Other challenges: Bridges and roads need attention; social services are deluged. How the county copes with such constant churn will test its pioneering, rugged sensibility. All are opportunities for Morton to draw on residents’ ingenuity and continue tapping its resources for new uses in the years ahead.
Morton County Within Rural Middle America and Rural Counties Overall
The clearest way Morton County stands out in Rural Middle America is its population growth. Gaining 12%, the county counters the trend in this swath, where 74% of counties have lost population since 2010.
The population is 90% non-Hispanic white, 4% Native American, 3% Hispanic, and .5% Asian. This is slightly more diverse than in Rural Middle America, where the median is 93% non-Hispanic white, 3% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and 0% Native American.
A second reason Morton is better positioned than its rural peers: household incomes. While Rural Middle America’s median household income stands at $53,200; Morton’s is about $10,000 higher. The median of all rural counties is $46,600.
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Compared with Rural Middle America and rural counties overall, the food environment index is high at 9, according to the 2019 County Health Rankings. In Rural Middle America, it’s 8.2; rural areas overall stand at 7.6. In Morton and rural counties generally, 7% have limited access to healthy foods, defined as being low-income and not living near a grocery store.
Another encouraging health factor: Just 9% report severe housing problems, slightly lower than in Rural Middle America and rural counties, where the rates are 11% and 13% respectively, according to the Rankings. This indicator takes into account overcrowding, severe housing cost burden, and inadequate facilities, such as no full kitchen.
The Rankings show several health challenges, particularly in health behaviors.
The median adult obesity rate is 33%, which matches Rural Middle America and rural counties overall.
Alcohol abuse is a major issue here. Excessive drinking stands at 25%, whereas the rate drops to 20% in Rural Middle America and 17% in rural counties overall. Along those lines, alcohol-impaired driving deaths are at 57%. Rural Middle America’s median is 28%, and the overall rural median is 27%.
Morton’s premature death rate stands at 7,200. Rural Middle America is close behind at 7,100. Both fare better than the 8,641 median in rural counties overall.
Morton’s educational attainment levels convey mixed progress vis-à-vis its rural counterparts. Here 82% graduate from high school, lower than the 91% rate in Rural Middle America and the 90% rate in rural areas overall. And 72% of 25- to 44-year-olds have some post-secondary education. This is considerably better than the 62% rate in Rural Middle America and the 54% rate in rural counties overall.
On social capital, loosely defined as relationships and institutions that help people gain advantages in society, Rural Middle America’s social capital index stands at .45; Morton County falls below at .08. This index, produced by Penn State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, is made up of religious, civic, sports, professional, and labor organization variables.
A Farming Bedrock
The role of ranching and agriculture in Morton County’s economy cannot be overstated; more beef cattle are raised here than in any other county in North Dakota. Morton County contains 781 farms, whose average size is 1,570 acres, according to the 2017 Agricultural Census.
“Many of these ranches have been here since before the county was a county, even. Families have continued the operations. They’re pretty self-reliant. And they’re not inclined to complain about things very much,” says County Commissioner Bruce Strinden, who owns a ranch four miles outside of Mandan.
Morton County Farmers Union President Dan Belohlavek owns a 1,200-acre farm 10 miles southwest of Mandan, which his parents purchased in 1942. He’s carried on raising livestock and growing cash crops. Today, farmers’ No 1. concern is low commodity prices; trade is also an issue. “You’re just vulnerable to whatever the market trends are,” he says.
This stress is taking a toll on the farming community. “They don’t know how they’re going to pay the bills, or they don’t see a future,” Belohavek says, noting that the Farmers Union has outreach programs to help those struggling.
An odd drawback in this farming region: up-and-down access to fresh food, remarks Belohavek’s wife, Dawn, an auditor who works in Bismarck. “When we travel and go overseas, you get fresh food, fruits and vegetables, and here we are in rural America, and we don’t have access to that fruit and vegetables much.”
Despite such challenges, Belohavek sees young people interested in taking over their families’ farms. The Farmers Union runs a youth camp in Morton County, and FFA (Future Farmers of America) and 4-H are important pipelines.
Cultivating Talent and Business Development
The snow coming down sideways, the wind whipping ’round wouldn’t stop weekly Trivia Night from commencing at the Mandan Depot Bier Hall on Main Street, where 60-plus people packed in, eating, drinking, and playing a rousing game for a few hours in early April. Once the town’s train station, the converted restaurant was one of three establishments Edgar Oliveira owned downtown. Since April, things have gotten tougher for Oliveira’s restaurants; the Depot closed on June 30. “There has been a number of new places that opened in Bismarck and Mandan. The increased competition has not been kind, and there seems to be an overall drop in people going out to eat,” he says.
A native Brazilian who previously lived in Santa Barbara, California, Oliveira explains why he continues to like living in a smaller community like Morton County. “There’s a lot of room to create things here.”
Edgar Oliveira, a restaurant entrepreneur, walking on Main Street in Mandan, North Dakota.
At the Mandan Depot Bier Hall, entrepreneur and restaurateur Edgar Oliveira describes the nightly scene in Mandan, the changing labor market, and his businesses’ ups and downs.
As Ellen Huber, business development and communications director for the city of Mandan, says, “We’ve carved out Mandan as a fun place to be, and we’re proud of the community events we host.”
For many years, growth downtown was blocked by diesel fuel contamination coming from Burlington Northern rail yard fueling activities. In the mid-1980s, more than 3 million gallons of petroleum were found under the downtown, curtailing investment. In 2004, a $30.25 million settlement went toward cleanup and related impacts. Now there’s a sense things have turned a corner. When Huber started in the role in 2006, Mandan’s property tax base was 25% commercial; as of 2018, it’s up to 33%.
The city has developed different assistance tools for businesses. Bank of North Dakota’s Flex PACE program buys down the interest rate for a business that the local community deems important, and the community must put down a 35% match toward that interest buy-down — a program available for new and expanding businesses. A three-year restaurant rewards program that ended in March offered new and expanding restaurants a 1% local tax rebate for five years. “We have seven new restaurants open now, and three to open in 2019,” Huber says. A retail incentive program provides a stipend on a per square foot of operating space for the first 12 months of operation.
In general, meeting workforce demand is difficult. “We have a lot of great business career opportunities, and we can’t have people trained and ready to go into the workforce fast enough. We need to attract people from beyond our state. We can’t just keep shifting workforce around or cannibalizing from one business to another,” Huber says.
Workforce development is one of the major challenges Mandan Public Schools Superintendent Mike Bitz sees. In his nine years at the helm, the school system has grown from just above 3,000 to more than 4,000 this school year. Some growth can be attributed to the oil boom; Cloverdale Foods, too, has recruited workers from far away, including Puerto Rico and Guam. “It’s hard for us to attract and retain people to work. Unemployment is so low…. Several of our paraprofessionals and cooks will do something else over the summer and not come back to us. They’ll find something that pays better,” Bitz says.
In the schools, student body diversity has increased as a result of new arrivals. “We went from a handful of English learners when I came here to 120 now,” Bitz says. An achievement gap persists, particularly with Native American students. After finishing school, about 70% of the senior class enroll in higher education, many to Bismarck State College across the river. About 5% go into the military, the others to the workforce, Bitz says.
Morton County, North Dakota. City of Mandan. Mandan Public Schools’ mission is to provide students with rigorous and personalized learning experiences and to help them develop the social and emotional skills to become productive citizens. The district’s vision is that every student will graduate Choice Ready; ready for college, career, and life.
While Mandan has the largest district in Morton, there are four smaller school districts in the county’s other towns: Flasher, Glen Ullin, Hebron, and New Salem-Almont’s consolidated district.
“On workforce development, we’re working with our K-12 schools and higher education. We’re also looking at how do we retain as many of those young people as possible, and how do we bring them back home,” Huber says.
Health Challenges and Promising Programs
Keith Johnson, administrator for Custer Health, encompassing Morton, Grant, Mercer, Oliver, and Sioux counties, articulates an overarching problem that hampers his department’s work. “In Morton County, one of the major challenges is a lack of a social infrastructure; there are no leading institutions around which to address health problems or any other problem.” Custer Health’s Director of Nursing Jodie Fetsch adds that this makes it difficult to build coalitions. “We just started a coalition again, and it’s tenuous to keep it.”
The community health needs assessment has outlined obesity, physical inactivity, substance abuse, and mental health issues as key concerns. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the suicide rate in North Dakota jumped more than 57% between 1999 and 2016 — the highest in the country.
“I know opioids have made a big splash nationally. We’re certainly taking steps regarding that. But meth is still the substance of choice around here. Of our syringe exchange clients, I would say 80% are tweakers,” Johnson says.
In January 2018, Custer Health began a rigorous syringe exchange program with the North Dakota Department of Health, the first one in the state. “They have to bring in dirty syringes to us before they can get clean syringes, and we test them every six months for HIV and Hepatitis C,” Fetsch says. Today, 165 people are on the program.
“About half of them are Hep[atitis] C positive. And of the half that have come in not Hep C positive, we have not had any serial conversions since we started the program,” Johnson says.
Custer Health is continuing home health visitation with the full backing of its board of health; the department charges clients based on income, and most do not pay a fee. “One-on-one services are not where public health is supposed to be. But there was an absolute demand, both among decision makers and our population. It’s one of the most valued things we do,” Johnson says. “That is going to continue despite the trend nationally.”
Residents also have access to a hospital in Mandan. Vibra Hospital of the Central Dakotas, a long-term acute care hospital, treats patients with chronic conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, and traumatic injuries.
For particular programs, Medicaid expansion has been essential, Johnson says. These include Women’s Way, screening for breast and cervical cancer; and Health Tracks, providing screenings and well-checkups for children and young adults. North Dakota expanded Medicaid with federal funding in 2013, with coverage effective in 2014. Today, the program covers about 20,000 residents statewide.
Grappling With Social Ills
Morton County’s Social Services Department that Dennis Meier oversees has its hands full, handling eligibility for Medicaid, Medicaid expansion (the Affordable Care Act), TANF, heating assistance, child protection, foster care, in-home, daycare and foster care licensing, and home and community-based services for elderly and disabled residents. The department was servicing 3,500 residents, according to the county’s recent monthly data.
For those needing child protection services, internal documents report that approximately 75% of cases involve drugs and/or alcohol use, and prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol is on the rise, Meier says. In recent years, he’s recognized new populations have entered the community, and this has strained available resources. (The department’s budget for the 2019 fiscal year is $3.275 million.) Children entering the foster care system are younger than they were 10 years ago, some five- and six-years-old, with more behavioral challenges, such as aggression.
Underway now is a major structural and cultural change for delivery of social services, as North Dakota’s legislature in April approved redesigning counties into regional “human service zones.” The 52-county social services offices have until December 1 to create up to 19 multi-county human service zone agreements stating their intentions to form into zones. Meier notes that today, Morton County maintains strong relationships with smaller counties to the south and southwest, Grant and Sioux, and acts as the resource hub for its rural neighbors. Therefore, it would only make sense that Grant, Morton, and Sioux Counties form a zone, he adds. Zone boards have until March 31, 2020, to hire directors for each zone.
With the redesign, Meier says he looks forward to social workers spending more time with families in the field and fewer layers of bureaucracy, which has prevented his team from focusing on other important duties. The redesign, Meier says, also opens the way to better communicate social services’ work and may involve convening community forums. “We’re more than just an agency that disseminates SNAP and Medicaid Services. We’re here to help people who are poor and vulnerable and make sure children are safe…. There’s a problem when people would rather have law enforcement at their door than us,” Meier says.
Meanwhile, violent crime has been ticking slightly upward in Morton, with 223 incidents per 100,000 population, according to the 2019 County Health Rankings. In 2016, the rate was 199. In early April, Mandan was rocked by a quadruple murder at RJR Maintenance and Management, a property management firm. The man charged was a chiropractor and Navy veteran living in a mobile home park managed by RJR. “That hurts everybody’s heart, because we just don’t have those kinds of things going on here,” says Strinden.
Innovations in Housing
Community leaders describe how some people choose to live in Mandan because home prices are lower here than in Bismarck. For Mandan, the median value of owner-occupied housing was $194,300 between 2013 and 2017; for Bismarck, it was $223,200, according to census figures. Over the same period, the median gross rent in Mandan was $849; in Morton County, it was $839. Bismarck’s was $821.
In a move forward on affordable housing, the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency helped provide the financial support to redevelop a key landmark in Morton County. Historic Apartments On 4th opened in December 2018 at the old Mandan Junior High within walking distance to Main Street. It contains 39 units for individuals and families with comfortable square footage, ranging from around 600 to nearly 1,500.
Morton County, North Dakota. City of Mandan. Historic Apartments on 4th is bringing new life to the former Mandan Junior High within walking distance to downtown Main Street. An adaptive reuse of the school has been renovated into 39 brand new apartment homes.
At the Historic Apartments on 4th in Mandan, N.D., each apartment has energy-efficient appliances, central air conditioning, and plenty of square footage, with many unique floor plans to choose from.
The complex is just about full; three one-bedrooms run between $600 and $615 a month, 22 two-bedrooms range from $499 to $690 a month, and eight three-bedrooms run from $567 to $775 a month. To qualify, a household’s income cannot exceed 50% of the median family income. For one person, that’s $32,200; for two, it’s $36,800; for four, it’s $46,000. Six service units have been reserved for homeless, as the county doesn’t have a shelter.
The structure is a mix of old and new — the redevelopment of the housing project cost more than $8.8 million. The original school building was finished in 1917, with the three adjoining buildings erected in 1924, 1954, and 1977. In a unique set-up, the school lockers, original wood railings, and terrazzo floors remain intact. The old gym is now a community room; there’s a laundry room, exercise room, elevator, secure entry, and on- and off-street parking. New artwork graces the halls. A private playground exists on-site, and a daycare space big enough for 12 residents’ children is ready and waiting for a license.
Historic Apartments On 4th is managed by Kaycee Boehm, the on-site property manager with MetroPlains, a real estate development and property management firm, which also specializes in compliance training for government programs, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Housing Tax Credit programs.
To help area residents, the Morton County Housing Authority, managed by HJL Management, administers the housing voucher program in Morton, Grant, Sioux, McLean, and Oliver counties. How it works: The client pays 30% of income for housing, which includes rent and utilities; the Housing Authority supplies to the landlord the difference between the client’s amount and the contract rent. HJL Management’s Housing Specialist Wanda Schmidt and Accountant Stacy Kramer say a major challenge they face is that potential tenants have trouble passing background checks, in part because of the drug epidemic.
The county also has been expanding its housing options beyond single-family homes to townhomes, multi-dwelling units, and senior living since Morton County’s Comprehensive Housing Study was released in 2014. For one, HJL manages Liberty Heights, a 55-plus community that contains 178 units. Townhomes and condos, too, are more available now. “Before when there was a unit, it didn’t take long to fill it. And now they’re sitting empty,” Kramer says. And why? “I think we finally caught up to the need,” she replies.
Attending to Aging Infrastructure
About 1,200 miles of gravel roads and just 108 miles of asphalt cover Morton County, meaning less than 10% of county roads are paved, according to County Engineer John Saiki. While the roads are generally in good condition, we have to overlay those paved with asphalt in the next five to six years to preserve them, Saiki says. “We don’t have enough money to really expand or improve,” he adds, noting that his budget runs $6 million a year. “Same thing with our gravel. The more good quality gravel, the more passable the roads are.” The county spends about $750,000 a year to keep up gravel roads.
Morton counts more bridges — 216 — than almost all other counties in western North Dakota. Forty-eight are inspected by Saiki and his team, the rest by the state. Built with timber in the 1950s and 1960s, many need upgrading, some replacing, Saiki says, adding that the county spends about $400,000 a year to maintain and repair its bridges.
Morton County hopes for a boost from the state’s new Operation Prairie Dog law, signed by Gov. Doug Burgum (R) in March. Totaling $250 million, the operation adds new categories to the state coffers filled by oil tax revenue, and will be given to city, county, township, and airport infrastructure projects in North Dakota. Counties and townships can receive up to $115 million. Money will become available for projects in mid-2021.
Redefining Community Identity
As the county’s aforementioned sectors undergo change, a new generation is emerging in the uncertainty. It used to be that many residents left after high school and returned later to raise families, according to the Morton County 2045 Comprehensive Plan. This has changed lately, as 18- to 24-year-olds made up the fastest growing age group between 2010 and 2016.
For Keith Johnson, the health administrator who’s retiring this year, it’s a heartening sign. “We’ve got a generation coming up whose ideals and social mores are more advanced than the generation that’s leaving.”
The demographic shift requires reimagining how the community functions — work that remains unsettled, according to Johnson. “When we were talking about the lack of social infrastructure, fraternal organizations and churches were the social drivers, and they were largely because this was a vertically integrated community. You had a grandpa and a son or daughter, and the kids and grandkids were all part of that church. This vertical integration has disappeared.
“And we haven’t figured out how to horizontally integrate groups and make them matter to each other. For one thing, millennials don’t go to places to be part of groups. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to do community things. We haven’t figured that out yet. We just haven’t,” Johnson concludes.
Tucked in southwestern Kansas is a county that upends the common conception of rural America as a monolith. Finney County is possibly one of the only rural places in Kansas where Vietnamese pho is a staple and Hispanic grocery stores sell their wares down the street from Somali and Burmese mosques. Here, the community comes together to celebrate Beef Empire Days, the Tumbleweed Festival, Tết (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), Cinco de Mayo, and La Fiesta.
In this majority minority Hispanic Center, more than half of residents are Hispanic or Latino. Approximately 37,000 people live in Finney County, largely in Holcomb (pop. 2,112) and Garden City, the county seat (pop. 26,895).
Vietnamese restaurant Pho Hoa One in Garden City, Kansas. Photo by Megan Jula.
Garden City boasts the slogan “The World Grows Here,” and aptly the county’s population skyrocketed before the turn of the century. Between 1980 and 2000, the population grew by more than 50%. Migrants from around the globe — primarily Central and South American, Asian, and African countries — have been drawn to Finney County’s agriculture industries and strengthened their development. And for years, refugees made their homes in the county with the aid of a resettlement office.
“We value the presence of different cultures,” says Bertha Mendoza, an extension agent with the Kansas State Research and Extension Southwest Kansas Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program. Mendoza immigrated to Finney County from Chihuahua, Mexico more than 26 years ago, and now lives in Holcomb, across from the Tyson Fresh Meats packing plant. “We learn from each other.”
A community filled with residents of different backgrounds, languages, and beliefs faces its own set of challenges. One primary obstacle, Mendoza says, is bridging gaps in communication. Learning about services takes time when you have recently moved to the community, or don’t speak the language, she explains. Newcomers often prefer face-to-face meetings over pamphlets and phone calls.
Leaders like Mendoza are crucial — they help connect community members to resources in areas such as health care, housing, nutrition, and employment. Helping out your neighbor is a core value of the community, residents say, and diversity is what makes Finney County thrive. “There really is a kind of in it for everybody mentality here,” says Melissa Dougherty-O’Hara, a planner for Garden City Neighborhood & Development Services.
Community health worker Ifrah Farah and Birgit Lemke make phone calls for Somali refugees Koos Husen (in yellow) and Asli Muhamud (in red) at LiveWell Finney County Neighborhood Learning Center in Garden City, Kansas. LiveWell helps refugees and immigrants with health care, housing, and job applications and offers classes in English, nutrition and other life skills. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Like most Hispanic Centers, Finney is a young county. Here, 31% of people are under 18, compared to about 27% of people in Hispanic Centers and 22% of the ACP’s rural counties, according to the 2019 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps.
Finney excels in access to food and exercise opportunities, number of primary care physicians, and certain economic measures.
On the Food Environment Index Finney County earns an 8.6, higher than the Hispanic Center median of 7.8 and the ACP rural counties median of 7.6.
About 85% of people have adequate access to locations for physical activity, well above the Hispanic Centers’ median of 68% and rural ACP counties’ median of 60%.
The primary care physician ratio is 1,749 patients for every 1 physician, compared to 2,549:1 in Hispanic Centers and 2,288:1 across ACP rural counties.
The county scores well on employment, with a 2.7% unemployment rate, compared to a median of 4% in both Hispanic Centers and ACP rural counties.
Income inequality, the ratio of household income at the 80th percentile to income at the 20th percentile, is 3.7, on par with U.S top performers. The median for ACP rural counties is 4.4.
Finney also shares similar struggles with other Hispanic Centers.
About 14% of residents are uninsured, lower than the Hispanic Centers median of 19% but higher than ACP rural counties median of 11%.
Adult smoking (18%) and obesity rates (37%) are relatively high – the medians for Hispanic Centers are 16% and 30% of the population, respectively. In rural ACP counties, the median adult smoking rate is 18% and the obesity rate is 33%.
The county’s teen birth rate is 52 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19, with the rate among Hispanic females (66 birth per 1,000) nearly double that of white females (34 births per 1,000). The median for Hispanic Centers is 49 births per 1,000 and the median for ACP rural counties is 34 per 1,000.
Where the World Grows
Cows at the Brookover Feed Yard in Garden City, Kansas. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Finney County became a hub for immigrants in the early 1900s when migrants from Mexico began arriving to work on ranches, and later sugar beet farms. The first annual La Fiesta was held in 1926 to celebrate Mexican culture and contributions to the county; the 93rd iteration will be held this fall.
Growth continued with the opening of the country’s largest beef packing plant in Holcomb in 1980. Immigrants from Vietnam arrived to work in the beef industry and later people from Burma, Somalia, and Ethiopia. By the turn of the century, Finney was the fastest growing county in Kansas. Between 2007 and 2008, the county became majority minority.
Today, half of the population is Hispanic or Latino (50%), 5% is Asian, 3% is African American, non-Hispanic and 1% is American Indian or Alaskan Natives. Only 41% of the population identifies as white, non-Hispanic, compared to a median of 88% of the population across ACP rural counties.
About 23% of the population is foreign born and residents speak a plethora of languages — more than two dozen in Garden City alone. In the county overall, 43% of people report speaking a language other than English, according to the U.S. census Bureau’s 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. About 12% are not proficient in English.
“When you have these newcomers, it’s a different culture, different practices, different expectations,” says Amy Longa, a Garden City resident and former director of the Garden City International Rescue Committee office, which helped refugees settle into their new lives here. “It’s like holding the hand of a baby and helping them begin to walk, crawl, and then eventually run.”
Listen to Amy Longa talk about the history of migration to Garden City, the county seat of Finney County:
Longa, who is originally from Uganda, moved to Garden City about nine years ago. The IRC office, part of a federally funded program, was forced to close in fall 2018. “They’re still Garden City residents,” Longa says of the refugees who have come through her office, or migrated to Garden City from other cities across the country. “And we know that as Garden City residents, they should have the ability to access the same services as any other Garden City person would. As a city we’re not just going to turn our back, we’re going to be intentional to ensure that we’re filling in those gaps.”
Community Connectors Bridge Gaps and Foster Dialogue
Sister Janice Thome and Tina Kinney attend the Community Services Council Meeting at the Finney County Extension Office in Garden City, Kansas. The monthly meetings bring together community groups to share updates. The meetings are chaired by Tina Kinney of Kansas Workforce, which connects local employers to a motivated workforce having skills to obtain and maintain meaningful employment. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Sister Janice Thome does not get much down time. Thome, a Dominican Sister of Peace with the Dominican Sisters Ministry of Presence, has provided all manner of services to Finney County residents since she moved to Garden City 22 years ago. Her office is her car; in just one day she may drive an expectant mother to a medical appointment and then arrange finding furniture for a newly arrived family. “Our ministry is directed by the person, not by us,” she says. “You can never predict your day because one phone call changes it all.” At age 50 she traveled to Mexico for three months to learn Spanish so she could better serve more of the community.
Thome exemplifies how important communication channels are to connect those in need with services that already exist. People know to call her when utility bills are due or to look for any resource they need at the moment.
A network of leaders and organizations ready to collaborate is a unique strength of the community, according to Garden City Commissioner Shannon Dick. “Why does Finney County do so well?” he says. “We get together and we actually all work towards a common goal.”
And this idea is not abstract; leaders physically meet several times a month to talk about new and on-going projects. At a Community Services Council meeting in March, a representative from the public library presented plans to obtain more books in Farsi, Burmese, and other languages, while Kansas Workforce shared updates on summer job openings.
Garden City is also home to 16 advisory boards, which allow residents to provide input on topics from the local zoo to the police department. One board fostering dialogue between residents of all backgrounds is the Garden City Cultural Relations Board. The board consists of seven members from diverse community groups — across racial, social, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds — that aim to promote cultural diversity throughout Garden City. They hold an annual Diversity Breakfast & Multicultural Summit and organize events like World Refugee Day.
Members of the Garden City Cultural Relations Board in Garden City, Kansas. The Board promotes cultural diversity throughout Garden City and is made up of nine members from various racial, social, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds. From left to right: Amy Longa, Vinh Nguyen, M’Lynn Swartz, and Allie Medina. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Board member M’Lynn Swartz grew up a few counties over in Elkhart, Kansas. “Growing up in a town of 2,000, my brother and I were the only two African American kids all through school,” she says. “Living here has been very eye opening. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to get on the board, because I wanted to learn about the different cultures and see where I can make an impact in the African American community.”
Job opportunities contribute to the county’s diversification. Once one family comes, they spread the word to friends and family back home, explains Garden City’s staff liaison Allie Medina. But residents old and new have common priorities. “When we are talking to anybody in the community, they want a safe place to live,” Medina says. “A great place to work, a community, a place to be who they are, including expressing their cultures and their celebrations. And this community has been great about showcasing that.”
However, the county’s diversity is not well reflected in leadership positions. Currently, all of Garden City and Finney County commissioners are white and nine out of 10 are male. “I don’t feel that we are well-represented,” Mendoza says of the lack of women and minorities involved in decision making. “It’s important because we can bring information to the table.” She would also like to see more support for entrepreneurs in the community, particularly for those who do not speak English as a first language. Mendoza says she would love to help start a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Another persistent challenge in strengthening their diverse community, according to Medina, is a lack of translators. “We’re always searching for that, to translate documents throughout the city and school,” Medina says. Vinh Nguyen, a board member who immigrated from Vietnam and has worked for the Garden City School District for 26 years, is a go-to resource for translations on the fly. He regularly receives calls from the police or the school asking for translation help; they all have his business card or cell phone number. “They call, I am ready to work with them,” he says.
Longa says access to information and the ability to participate should be a right of all community members. “If you’ve been in Garden City for ten years, you are around the table, if you have been in Garden City for a day, you are around the table,” Longa says. “So that we all walk together and continue to make this place what we all want it to be. Nobody is going to make it for us.”
Economics and Local Businesses
The county’s median household income is $54,500, lower than the state’s median income of $56,400, but significantly higher than the median for Hispanic Centers ($46,200).
Although employment rates are high, a significant portion of Finney residents live in poverty, particularly residents of color. About 11% of the white population live in poverty, compared to 33% of the African American population and 22% of the Hispanic population. Likewise, 18% of white children live in poverty compared to 31% of African American children and 24% of Hispanic/Latino children. Around 71% of children qualify for free or reduced lunch.
The county has focused on economic growth and attracting big name retailers and chain restaurants such as Sam’s Club, Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Still, Finney has that small-town feel where you cannot go to the grocery without seeing someone you know.
Piñatas hang in Garcia Carnicería and Restaurant. Photo by Megan Jula.
The largest employer in the county, Tyson Fresh Meats, employs approximately 3,000 people in its meatpacking plant and wages start at $16.60 an hour. Local schools, St. Catherine’s Hospital and retail outlets are also major employers. People come from all over to shop at the stores in Garden City. “On the weekends here, you would think we are twice our size,” Dougherty-O’Hara says.
The small business sector highlights the county’s diversity. In 1990, local business owner Luz Garcia came to Kansas for what she calls the “Mexican dream,” the opportunity to earn a living and care for her family. Her brother was already in Garden City, working at Tyson. She met her husband here; she worked at Tyson for seven years and he worked there for 22. The Garcias always planned to open businesses in Mexico, but when Luz’s mom passed away and a friend offered a chance to take over a local carnicería (butcher shop), they decided to take the opportunity.
The big stores like Sam’s Club don’t bring down her business. In fact, they come and scout how her shop operates and check her prices, she says. And on pay day, her shop is always full.
Luz Garcia, owner of Garcia Carniceria and Restaurant, serves customers in Garden City, Kansas. Originally from Jalisco, Mexico, she has lived in Kansas for 25 years. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
A Need for More Housing
Housing shortages and affordability are significant concerns in Finney County. The median value of an owner-occupied home is about $126,000. A quarter of Finney County residents spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
Dougherty-O’Hara moved here a year and a half ago to work as a planner for Garden City Neighborhood & Development Services. There is a misconception that as incomes grow, people will move into new homes, freeing up starter homes, she says. That has not happened as frequently or quickly as needed in Finney County.
A mobile home at East Village Garden in Garden City, Kansas. The mobile home park was developed in the early 1980s to create low-cost housing for the influx of people coming to work at the IBP Inc. meatpacking plant (now Tyson Fresh Meats). Many of the park’s residents are Southeast Asian and Hispanic immigrants. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
The percentage of units occupied by owners in Finney County dropped from 72% in 2000 to 62% in 2015, according to a 2017 community housing assessment. Local leaders also contend that, based on indicators such as utility bills and employment, an undercount occurred in the 2010 census; they adjust projected housing needs higher.
Barriers to accessing housing are disproportionately impacting minorities. A survey of county residents conducted in 2016 found that white respondents were twice as likely to own their homes as non-white respondents. Housing issues hit immigrants in Finney particularly hard. The county’s lack of affordable housing, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “results in newly arrived families living in cramped housing or large apartment complexes, which can separate them from the larger community.”
One tool being used to address housing shortages: a tax rebate program called the Rural Housing Incentive District, or RHID. In 2019, developers are estimated to build 170 units with the RHID program. This incentive has helped add more lots for housing developments, but not necessarily income appropriate housing.
“It’s been very difficult to build a house here in Garden City for less than $200,000, just due to labor shortages, getting the supplies out here,” Dougherty-O’Hara says. “It’s all more costly.” One of the biggest needs is affordable housing between $90,000 and $150,000.
Only 50 to 60 units may be for sale at any given point. “I think a lot of people are just staying in a home they can afford,” Dougherty-O’Hara says. Nearby Holcomb, which also has a young, but much smaller population than Garden City, has been able to meet most of its demand according to the 2019 Community Housing Assessment.
Nicole Hahn, vice president of community development at the Finney County Economic Development Corporation (FCEDC), sees movement in the right directions. “We’ve finally gotten to the point where we have been able to attract big developers and have local builders on board to build apartment complexes and duplexes,” she says.
That partnership is crucial because the competitive housing market has already deterred potential employers and employees. “People move here and say, ‘I can’t afford that house,’” Hahn says. The Tyson meatpacking plant has felt the effects of insufficient affordable housing. “While the community has been focusing on new housing developments, the value of new houses is beyond the price range for many hourly workers,” says Pat Sanders, Tyson Fresh Meats community liaison. “It is critical for employees to have access to affordable housing to support attendance and overall health and well-being, which supports their ability to be successful at work.”
FCEDC is also working on partnerships with local builders to go in on buying their materials all together, in hopes of getting a better bulk rate. “We are building houses faster than we ever have,” says Dick, who is a strategic analyst for FCEDC. “It’s just not fast enough.”
Child Care Is a Challenge
Finney County faces a shortage of licensed child care — about 700 slots worth. The shortage means that people, not by choice, are staying home with kids or turning down jobs because they can’t find reliable child care, Hahn says. Businesses recognize it’s a problem.
Tyson employees may not have family or neighbors to help with child care, Sanders says. Finding child care is especially a challenge for those who work second or third shift. “Current local community child care opportunities are stretched beyond their means to meet the community’s needs,” she says. “The local child-care shortage and limited child care availability outside of normal business hours has contributed to business challenges, such as turnover.”
Regulations make it difficult to run a child care facility as a business, and FCEDC is helping existing entities become licensed. FCEDC also works with organizations like the Garden City School District to help offset some of the costs. “I think in the last year or so we have been turning the tide on getting the private businesses to buy in, to make this all work,” Hahn says. FCEDC has made strides toward setting up an early childhood education program at Garden City Community College, with a partial program starting this fall and the full program slated to roll out in 2020. Garden City High School is also helping train students to fill teacher slots in child care centers as they open.
The plan is to create a Finney County Early Learning and Childcare Network, which will involve building small centers (59 children each) around the county, with a central administrative center that will be able to hold about 90 children. Tuition would be affordable at about $165 per week.
Health and Wellness in Finney County
The county employs a community-oriented approach to tackle its health challenges. The LiveWell Finney County Health Coalition formed in 1995 with sponsorship from St. Catherine’s Hospital. The mission of the Coalition is to improve the health, well-being, and safety of the people of Finney County by collaborating to build a better community.
The Siena Medical Clinic at St. Catherine Hospital in Garden City, Kansas. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Access to care and getting to appointments are top health needs for immigrants in the community. It’s now second nature for the health coalition to bring translators to outreach events. “Imagine if you had something really wrong with you and you could not communicate one-on-one with your provider,” says LiveWell Finney County Community Health Director Beth Koksal. “I think the health-care system is confusing for everybody and more confusing if you are new to America and new to the system and don’t speak English.”
LiveWell offers help as needs arise, such as taking someone for a driver’s license test and helping translate materials or conversations. “One of the great things about rural America is you take care of each other,” Koksal says. “Everyone is our neighbor here.”
Since 2013, LiveWell has managed the Neighborhood Learning Center, which provides education and health services at the Garden Spot Rentals, an apartment complex largely inhabited by immigrants. The center has been a “bridge to the health care system” for these residents, says Birgit Lemke, who manages the center and oversees a community health worker program. It has also helped reduce domestic violence in the area by nearly 40%, according to LiveWell. However, the center’s funding, which came through a violence prevention grant, has ended and the center will close if funds cannot be secured.
Local Schools Offer Education in More Ways Than One
One sector in Finney County where everyone intermixes: the Garden City School District. From a young age, students learn alongside classmates of different races and ethnicities. Students at Garden City High School were born in 29 different countries and speak 28 languages.
“We encourage them to keep their family identity, their culture,” Garden City High School Principal Steve Nordby says. “But we also set a tone of respect for everyone else’s point of view.”
In the documentary Strangers in Town filmmakers Steve Lerner and Reuben Aaronson share the story of Garden City’s diversity through the eyes of the people who live there, particularly youth at Garden City High School. Watch the Strangers in Town trailer:
“I think Garden City is still trying to get used to the fact that we are super diverse,” student Alondra Fuentes says in the film. “And that we are trying to mesh together in this tiny city.”
The school has English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for students who have lower levels of English. The state has even recommended that surrounding districts with changing student demographics come observe Garden City’s ESL program, Nordby says.
Recruiting teachers can be a challenge due to location, Nordby explains. It also takes a special kind of teacher to teach at the high school. “You are going to work with an extremely diverse group of kids with tons of different life experiences,” Nordby says. Some students have experienced trauma and adverse life experiences; just a year ago they may have been living in a refugee camp. Garden City High School is emphasizing social-emotional learning and recently implemented a social-emotional screening three times a year.
The school is organized into four different academies, each with its own principal, counselor, and secretary; one just for freshmen, a school of public service, a school of arts and communications, and a school of trade and health science. “We do a lot of career exploration,” Nordby explains. “They pick an academy based on what electives they want to be in.” The trade and health sciences academy is one of the fastest growing, with more than 800 students currently. Students in this academy are building a miniature house that they will sell and use the profits to build another one.
Garden City High School also emphasizes community service and leadership. The students recently pushed, successfully, to raise the minimum age for local tobacco sales to 21.“What gives me the most hope is seeing the kids here being the future leaders of the community,” Nordby says. “We are developing kids who are used to knowing what is to serve somebody and make community connections.”
Retention and education are important issues in the county. Nearly one-fifth (19%) of Finney residents do not have a high school education and only 50% have attended some college.
Nordby says about two-thirds of Garden City High School students go on to a two or four-year college. Garden City Community College is a crucial asset for Finney County, and the high school maximizes this with a dual-credit program.
Upward Academy, a potential program at the Tyson meat packing plant in partnership with the Garden City Career Connection Academy, could also help improve education in the community. Though a launch date has not yet been set, the program would include free ESL and GED classes for Tyson employees.
A Threat to the Community
Despite the values of acceptance and empathy in the county, prejudice and racism still exist in pockets. Garden City made national news in 2016 when three white men plotted to blow up a mosque and an apartment complex housing dozens of Muslim refugees, including children. The FBI foiled the terrorist attack by the group, which called itself the Crusaders.
Finney County rallied in support of its immigrants and refugees following the threat. A strong relationship between the police department and the community was integral. “I remember talking to a lot of the people in the complex and they just wanted to know, ‘Why me?’” says Deborah Oyler, executive director of Finney County United Way. “This wasn’t an attack on the Somali community, this was an attack on Garden City.”
A few weeks after the plot was foiled, the city held a candlelight vigil to support the Muslim community. “I was amazed at how many different cultures came together,” Oyler says. “Together it was unbelievable.”
Rooted in Agriculture
Garden City may boast a Target with a Starbucks, but it is a rural place, residents say. Across the county, population density is low, at 28 people per square mile.
“It has a rural town isolation because we are not off an interstate,” Dougherty-O’Hara says. “You talk in hours about the time it takes to get someplace, you don’t talk about miles here. With that isolation we have a unique identity to work and build together. We can’t shun any one part of our populace without it really hurting all of us as a whole.”
Agriculture and food businesses employ roughly 4,776 people in the county, including Shane Knoll, a fourth-generation farmer and a board member of the Finney County Farm Bureau. With his brother, Zach, and help from his wife, Andrea, he runs a 3,000-acre family farm on the border of Holcomb and Garden City. They grow wheat, corn, soybeans, and milo.
Shane and Andrea Knoll pose with their children Taylor, 10, Jake, 7 and Adam, 5 at their family farm in Garden City, Kansas. Shane and his brother, Zach, inherited the farm when they were in their mid-20s after their father died in 2011. They grow wheat, corn, soybeans, and sorghum. The kids raise goats to show in 4-H competitions. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) Annabel Clark 2019 and (c) Josh Kohanek 2019.
Nowadays, fewer farmers are farming more ground. As of 2017, 450 farms were operating in Finney County, down from 516 farms in 2007. In that decade, the average size of a farm grew from 1,473 acres to 1,757 acres. “We are very agriculture-based,” Andrea Knoll says of the county. “But we do not have a lot of farmers in the area.”
The barriers to entry are so high that most of the current small- or medium-sized farms have been passed down through generations. While he inherited the farm from his parents, Shane Knoll says it was his decision to farm after earning an agriculture degree at Garden City Community College. “You grew up doing it and that’s what you’re used to,” he says. “I wanted to come back.”
It’s not an easy occupation. “The most stressful part of farming is the amount of money you get built up and then you only have one chance for a harvest,” he says. Dealing with drought is another major challenge. The Knolls use moisture sensors in their corn fields to conserve water.
Even though surrounding farmers are competitors, they will drop everything to help each other. “You know, just neighbors helping neighbors,” Shane Knoll says.
Embracing Diversity and Looking Forward
Finney County has grown in leaps and bounds since it began welcoming an influx of immigrants in the 1980s. “That was the first kind of learning curve for us, that we need to teach English, help people adapt to our community and celebrate their culture,” Hahn says. “These people wanted to live here, so we are going to welcome them.”
“Our children don’t know how blessed they are,” she adds.
This diversity and acceptance have drawn some young residents back and will continue to shape the county, Dougherty-O’Hara says.
“If we have a strong foothold of embracing other cultures and communities here that’s going to help us build our next generation,” Dougherty-O’Hara says. “We are growing America, we are growing a diverse America, and to discredit immigrants to our communities, especially in rural towns, that’ll be the death of you.”
Megan Jula was a graduate assistant with the American Communities Project from October 2018 through June 2019.
The halls of Wheatland High School are marked by rows of empty lockers. In fact, the majority are empty, signs of a time when the classrooms were more crowded. Today some 35 students, grades 9-12, and 11 faculty members wander the halls here. Those numbers are on the minds of a lot of people in Gove County.
Many rural communities are getting smaller, but the population declines are palpable in Gove County, an Aging Farmlands community in western Kansas. In Gove, population 2,600, every loss is felt because each brings up questions about what the future will look like here. How long can these declines continue? Industrial Tech teacher Mark Heier, who graduated from Wheatland 35 years ago, wonders about the question.
“When I was in high school here we had 26 in our class,” Heier says. “We are now in a cooperative agreement with Grinnell, a nearby community, and our biggest class size is what, 16, 17. So I mean it just, you take that number over 35 years, our enrollment has dwindled that much.”
The school does a lot with its small staff and student body. There is a robotics program. There’s a laser engraving machine and a plasma cutter to work within the school’s shop department.
Science teacher Steve Reed works with students, Andrew Taylor (middle) and Harrison Stephens (right), to make a wind turbine for an Applied Technology class at Wheatland High School. Reed, a geologist and chemist, became a teacher through the Transition to Teaching program at Fort Hays University. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) 2019 Annabel Clark and (c) 2019 Josh Kohanek
“I’m trying to show these kids that they can do something with these two machines. And do it here in Gove County and not leave,” Heier says. “Because our population is dwindling, we’re doing such a great job of feeding Kansas City and Wichita and places like that, but we got to start talking our own into coming back here.”
The drop in population is about more than empty lockers. It means a different kind of economy and different way of life for people who live in Gove. Fewer people means fewer stores on Main Street and less money circulating through the community. It also means fewer jobs to keep young people from moving away.
The hope is that the community eventually will find its new population equilibrium. Most people here acknowledge that multiple elements factor into the Gove’s changing face, but the farm-based economy may play the biggest role. Agriculture defines the community’s economy, culture, and daily life.
Using a long list of measures, Gove County is a typical Aging Farmlands community. The county’s population is overwhelmingly white, non-Hispanic, 94.6%, which is nearly identical with the median for the larger type as a whole, 94%. Overall, the median for rural America as defined in this report is 88%. In terms of population numbers, Gove’s 2,631 people are close to the Aging Farmlands median of 2,850. And at 24%, the county’s senior citizen population lines up perfectly with the Aging Farmlands number of 24% over the age of 65.
On the basic economic measures, Gove looks to be doing fairly well. The median household income for the county is $47,000, under the overall median for the Aging Farmlands, which clocks in at $48,600, but in line with the larger rural America figure of $46,600. There is no housing crisis here – no overcrowding or high housing costs.
And this spring the unemployment rate was a remarkably low 2.7 percent – more than a point under the national average. More than three quarters of the people in the county own their own homes, a number slightly higher than 76% for the Aging Farmlands overall.
But Gove also sees some of the same challenges as other Aging Farmlands communities. Since 2010, the county has lost about 3% of its population, continuing a long-term decline. Overall, more than 76% of the Aging Farmlands communities have seen a decline in population since 2010. It was the highest number for any type in rural America, other than the African American South, which saw 79% of its rural counties lose population. And there is not a lot of economic diversity in the area. It’s driven by agriculture and ag-related sectors that employ 776 people and essentially produce 100 percent of the area’s Gross Regional Product, according to the State of Kansas.
Daily Life
The impact of agriculture is omnipresent in Gove and its largest community, Quinter, where the skyline is dominated by a massive, multi-silo grain elevator. Just around the corner on Main Street is New Age Feed, which specializes in cattle nutrition, and just down the street is the local Farm Bureau. Beyond that, the town has all the hallmarks of a small rural village. There are a few banks, a grocery store, and Ray’s Pharmacy, where locals can get their prescription filled, pick up a greeting card, or have a soda or a cup of coffee at the counter.
Ericka Nicholson, a volunteer for the Quinter Ambulance Service, which is owned and operated by its volunteers, in Quinter, Kansas. Nicholson is also the Gove County Economic Development director. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) 2019 Annabel Clark and (c) 2019 Josh Kohanek
The people in Gove rarely do just one thing. Most wear several hats, a function of the work ethic of the community and of need. Ericka Nicholson isn’t just Gove County Economic Development Director, she is also president of the local EMS service and team. Her husband, Steve Nicholson, isn’t just a science teacher at the high school, he also co-owns and runs the Center Pivot Restaurant and Brewery. Mark Heier, the teacher at Wheatland High School, also works on a farm.
Life revolves around family in the community and often around the family farm, where the roots usually run deep.
Gordon Jamison’s farm sits about three miles outside of Quinter’s Main Street on a dirt road leading to the ranch that has been in his family since the 1890s when his father moved here from Virginia. The main house on the property was purchased from a Montgomery Ward catalogue in the early 1900s. Jamison’s father was born on the ranch in 1924, and he was born in a nearby hospital in 1949.
But even if the ranch is rooted in the past, it isn’t stuck there. Jamison, who raises cattle and horses, has developed a strong internet presence. With the help of one of his tech-savvy sons, he conducts auctions to sell livestock online as well as on his ranch, and his website, jamisonranch.com, has photos and videos of the animals for sale.
Gordon Jamison and his herd. Photo by Dante Chinni
“Our horse sales have grown to become a recreational market, it’s become almost global. We’ve sold horses in Colombia, Mexico, the UK, and Canada,” he says. For him, the horse sales were a form of diversification, something that he thinks is critical in farming.
“[It’s] more and more critical in rural America that there be an outside income from another source; you either diversify or get an outside in category or all of the above, because it is hard to sustain,” Jamison says. “Agriculture has evolved into something that my grandfather would not comprehend. It takes a lot of financing. It takes a lot of different kinds of planning, takes a lot of money. And there’s never enough of it. So it almost takes a full-time businessman all year, so to speak.”
The Quinter grain elevator. Photo by Dante Chinni.
The economics of agriculture and its natural challenges weigh on the minds of many people in Gove County. The long-term trends in agriculture – higher land prices, farm industrialization – have led to fewer people tending to larger plots of land, which ultimately means smaller population. The land simply needs and has fewer people to work it.
“A lot of young people want to get into farming, but they just can’t,” says Kassie Remington, the Gove County Farm Bureau Board president. “Land prices are still high; input prices are crazy, really high.”
While farmers often tend to be independent by nature, their profession is subject to more outside forces than most others, ranging from weather to trade disputes. So conversations here can revolve around the price of a bushel of grain – wheat or corn. Many have that kind of information on the tip of their tongue or are happy to quickly check their smartphones to see where the number is at that particular moment.
And times have been hard in Gove lately between tough weather and the agricultural tariffs that have hit the farmers here. “We spend the bare minimum,” Remington says. “We raise our own cows. We butcher our own cows. We eat our own beef. We have our own chickens. We have our own gardens. We raise our own crops. I mean, we come to town for the bare minimum at the grocery store. … The grocery store has laid off a lot of employees because they can’t pay them because people aren’t spending what they used to spend.”
A Quiet Conservative Life
For many people in Gove, a quieter life away from the noise and action of the big city is a plus. Remote is a fair way to describe the county. Hays (pop. 21,000) is the nearest big city to Quinter and it sits an hour east on I-70. Garden City (pop. 27,000) is about two hours to the southwest. But bigger metropolitan areas, such as Denver and Kansas City, are more than four hours away.
Other than the interstate running through the county, Gove feels somewhat isolated. The landscape is largely a patchwork quilt of farmlands – from grain fields to animal pastures. And other than nearby Castle Rock, a smaller version of the geological formation that can be found in Badlands National Park, the horizon is largely a flat line far in the distance.
The train tracks through Quinter. Photo by Dante Chinni.
That environment leads to a different kind of mindset for the area, particularly in terms of seeking aid, says Ericka Nicholson, the county economic development director. “I wrote the ball field grant for the city Quinter; they have a brand new ball field. And there were people that didn’t want to have anything to do with that project, because it was grant money. And we don’t need handouts in Gove County, and I’m like, ‘Guys, those are your tax dollars. That’s a Department of Commerce grant, $226,000. That’s your money? Why do you want to be a part of this?’” It took work to convince the community.
And Gove’s setting leads to a conservatism that is less than comfortable with the cultural changes that have reshaped the country in last few decades. People in the county are not overtly hostile to issues like gay marriage, according to those in and around the LGBT community here, but people who are part of the LGBT community in Gove say overt acceptance can be hard to find as well. Some feel they have to leave to be comfortable, and note the challenges Sandra Stenzel, an openly gay woman, experienced in Trego County, an Aging Farmlands community just east. Stenzel was the director of Economic Development in Trego, and was fired in 2005 shortly after speaking out against a proposed amendment to ban gay marriage.
The incident was nearly 15 years ago, but it still carries weight in the area.
Health in Gove
By most standard health measures, Gove looks a lot like an Aging Farmlands community. The number of fair or poor physical and mental health days per month sits almost even with the medians for the type (3.2 for Gove versus 3.0 and 3.1 respectively for the type). On numbers such as food insecurity and diabetes, Gove is right in line with the Aging Farmlands. Gove does slightly better on adult obesity: Only 28% of residents are obese versus 33% for the type. The uninsured rate is a bit higher than the number for the type, but not far off, 13% versus 11%. And life expectancy in the county, at 77.8 years, is slightly under the 79.1 for the Aging Farmlands overall.
One area where Gove breaks the mold of rural America is in health care providers. It is a county of 2,600 that has access to five general practice physicians, all of whom are also obstetricians – and all of whom live near and practice at Quinter at the Gove County Medical Center, which is home to the Bluestem Medical practice. Two MDs started in September.
The center is not just an urgent care clinic, but a full family medicine clinic. The Bluestem doctors perform ultrasounds, radiology, mammography, and obstetrics services. At a time when rural hospitals are struggling or closing, Gove County Medical and Bluestem Medical keep adding physicians. Dr. Michael Machen has built a relationship with the University of Kansas Medical School to bring interns out to Quinter on a rotation to see what rural medicine is like and sometimes they stay.
From left to right: Michael Machen, MD, Heather Mauck, APRN, Shelly Gruenbacher, MD and Douglas Gruenbacher, MD treat patients at Bluestem Medical in Quinter, Kansas. Photo courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (c) 2019 Annabel Clark and (c) 2019 Josh Kohanek
“We have medical students here all the time,” says Dr. Doug Gruenbacher. “I was a medical student here. And that’s how I ended up here. … Twenty-three years ago, I came out and spent a summer with Mike, and then I came back two years and I dragged Shelly along after we got married.”
Shelly is Dr. Shelly Gruenbacher, another physician on the team.
“Doug and Shelley brought in a young, aggressive good work ethic, and they’re good at what they do, and they’re good people,” Machen says. “And they’ve been very, very successful. And if you can perpetuate that, it sells itself. Students want to come here. We’ve got a waiting list of students to come to our practice to talk with us for their third year, fourth year.”
Drs. Michael Machen and Douglas Gruenbacher at Bluestem Medical in Gove describe why students like their rotations in the county.
For some medical students the draw is the opportunity to raise a family in a rural setting and to be a part of people’s lives in a direct way. The doctors know the kids they help bring into the world and they can work closely with older patients to try to better understand the health challenges they are facing.
A card for the Kansas WIC Program. Photo by Megan Jula.
“We do virtually everything,” Machen says. “And it’s unusual to see that anywhere except in the rural areas. Yeah. You know, and I like what I do, and hopefully, you know, that that trickles down to their students.”
One big challenge in the area is mental health care. The center has two mental health professionals that come two days per week, but it’s not enough to meet demand. Telemedicine helps fill some of the holes, but Shelly Gruenbacher says it is at best a stopgap measure. “It always sounds better on paper than it really is because nothing takes the place of actually having a human being one-on-one with patient.” And that is especially true in a more rural setting where patients are still used to having a connection with their physicians.
Keeping Up With a Changing World
While many people in Gove like the insular aspects of the community, its remote nature has left it behind some of the larger changes that have remade commerce in the past decade or so. Gordon Jamison’s ranch may be on the internet, but most other area businesses are not. That means internet use habits and skills tend to be different for people here, and Gove doesn’t exist in the same way on Google as its more urban counterparts. As more and more of the world moves online that’s a challenge.
In Grainfield, Nicole Godek is trying to do something about that concern with a website and idea that she hopes will link Gove’s business (and those in other rural communities) to the outside world in a broader way: www.lovesmalltownamerica.com.
Godek’s model sets out to do that in two ways.
First, it aims to help local businesses and organizations build a web presence and expand online reach at an affordable price.
Second, it offers a single resource on many rural communities to help families and businesses find the right fit if they are looking to relocate.
Godek grew up in the area and was living in Omaha, Nebraska, with her family, when her husband suggested they move back after her father passed away. Godek is a graphic designer who could bring her job with her back to Gove. Her husband came with her, and they bought the local grocery store. But when she arrived home, after spending stints in California and Colorado as well as Omaha, she noticed something.
“When I moved back to Grainfield, we had an older house, and we wanted to make renovations, and I wasn’t familiar with those that did construction, and I figured ‘oh, I’ll just look online’ like everybody does, there was no information, valuable information, upto-date information about Grainfield or Gove county or anywhere close.”
Castle Rock Badlands near Quinter, Kansas. Photo by Megan Jula.
Godeck and her sister, Kay Haffner, brainstormed and came up with the idea for Love Small Town America. The point, she says, isn’t just helping rural communities and businesses build websites, it’s helping them in a broader sense. “It’s not just having a website, it’s making sure you’re promoted, it’s making sure that it’s kept updated. And then being affordable, because a lot of small towns don’t have the bank accounts to be able to afford a huge full blown website,” she says.
She says there are 14,000 communities in the United States with 5,000 or fewer people, her target group.
And offline, Haffner co-chairs the Grainfield Community Development Committee, which uses fundraisers and grants to help build and rebuild the community. The GCDC has helped restore an old building and turn it into a new Post Office. They’ve worked to rehab buildings for a satellite clinic for Bluestem Medical and won grants to knock down dilapidated housing and build a tri-plex of new homes.
They are small changes, but ones that can make a big difference in an Aging Farmland community like Gove. And the work of the GCDC shows how a few energized people can make a difference in rural America.
But the long-term concerns for Gove and other Aging Farmlands are clear. Even as they do fairly well economically, they are getting smaller. The teachers at Wheatland High School know the empty lockers aren’t likely to be filled with more books and backpacks anytime soon.
How you view St. Francis County, Arkansas, depends, in part, on where you stand. It is 634 square miles of terrain heavily defined by divisions. The most obvious split is the one that follows Interstate 40, which bisects the county from the northeast to the southwest. The highway brings an urban element to a community that is firmly planted in rural America.
Forrest City near the I-40 exit. Photo by Dante Chinni
But the other major divide is subtler and only surfaces when you talk to the people here about the county’s history and its current challenges. It centers on race and how white and African-American citizens interact — and don’t interact — in the county.
You can see the way both splits impact St. Francis in the county seat, Forrest City. Near the interstate, the city’s skyline is a collection of elevated gas stations and fast food signs. But drive a few blocks and you
A farm just outside of Forrest City. Photo by Dante Chinni.
are on a small-town main street, a few blocks farther and you are in neatly plowed field.
The county is more than 50% African American, but the vast majority of that population is packed into Forrest City. Outside the city, the county is majority white and most people will tell you there isn’t a lot of mingling between the races.
“You can see it. It’s upfront. It’s not hidden. And it’s a shame, but it’s still here,” says Steve Smith, the local health unit administrator in the county, who is African American. “There’s just a separation.… There’s just a feeling that this is the way things are supposed to be.”
St. Francis County Within the African American South
In the American Communities Project typology, St. Francis is an African American South community, and it looks like many of rural communities in that type.
The life expectancy here is 74.7 years, just under the rural African American South median of 75. And the percentage of people with at least some college, 43%, is close to the broader category number of 49%. Both those numbers are under the overall rural median of 56%. Income inequality here matches the overall number for the rural African American South.
But St. Francis faces some specific challenges. Nearly half of the residents are obese, 47%, compared to a median of 35% in the rural African American South communities overall. People are more likely to smoke as well. Home ownership, 59%, lags far behind the number for the rural African American South, 70%, and further behind rural America overall, 73%. It struggles as a persistent poverty county.
As a rural community, St. Francis faces some familiar challenges: the need to hold on to young people and bring in more jobs and employers. But as the county tries to move forward, the people here understand the area’s deeply-rooted racial divide may represent its most complicated hurdle.
The white and black populations here live in different worlds, as their incomes illustrate. The median household income in St. Francis is about $31,500. That’s well under the median for the type, $39,000. But the number worsens when you factor in race. The median household income for African-Americans in the county is only $28,300.
African-Americans in St. Francis are also much more likely to have babies with low birth weights. Additionally, their life expectancy is three years less than their white counterparts.
The Racial Climate, Past and Present
The history of the racial divides runs deep. Forrest City was named for Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the city’s founder and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. As in much of the African American South, the civil rights era was especially painful here.
Weston Lewey, who grew up in the city and for 32 years was the owner and publisher of the local daily newspaper, the Times Herald, recalls the racial tensions when Forrest City High School school integrated. Her father was the owner and publisher of the paper at the time.
Weston Lewey in her office. Photo by Dante Chinni
“My father wrote an editorial that basically said, black people are citizens and the federal government is telling us that they are going to go to school with white kids, and we’re not going to refer to them as negroes in the paper anymore,” she says. “He got threatened with his life and we had to go stay at a hotel in Memphis. … It was a tough time, but we weathered it. And to me that was the worst time in Forrest City’s history.”
The divides still exist today, albeit in a much quieter way. It’s apparent in the limited interactions between whites and blacks day-to-day. People say it’s particularly palpable on Sunday during religious services, mentioning how Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had called it “the most segregated hour” in America. Community leaders acknowledge that in the past it’s been difficult to get the whole community on board to tackle its larger challenges.
Agriculture’s Dominant Role in the Local Economy
The divides are even more remarkable in St. Francis because in the broader sense, the county holds a small-town feel.
Rob Johnson, station manager at KXJK/KBFC. Photo by Ari Pinkus.
The community is still “farm driven,” says Rob Johnson, manager of the local radio station KXJK AM & KBFC FM. “It’s a rural community, a very friendly community,” he says. And his station is a prototypical local news outlet, with a focus on local.
“We still cover school board meetings and city council meetings to let people know what’s going on in our community,” Johnson says. “You’re not going to get on satellite radio, you’re not going to get on Pandora. We still broadcast high school football games every Friday night.”
The last few years have brought economic challenges to the community, Johnson says. Agriculture has taken a hit with dropping grain prices and harsh weather. “If farming doesn’t turn around, I think that’s the biggest concern for not just the county but the city as well. I’ve talked to local business owners that say, you know, even though they’re not a farm business, they still rely on farm dollars.”
St. Francis doesn’t rely wholly on agriculture. There is small manufacturing in the county — a Boar’s Head plant that produces deli meat — and a federal correctional facility sits just outside Forrest City. But even with those elements of diversification, employment opportunities are not easy to come by here. In March 2019, the unemployment rate for the county was 5.4%, 1.5 points above the national average. And those harder economic times likely have something to do with the county losing residents — St. Francis has seen its population drop by about 10% since 2010.
The old television plant sits empty. Photo by Dante Chinni.
Recently, hopes were high that a long-vacant factory might come back to life, but those plans have hit a roadblock. The plant, on the corner of Sanyo and Commerce roads, made televisions from 1977 to 2007, but has been empty since then. In 2017, the city learned that the Shandong Ruyi Technology Group planned to spend $410 million to convert the space into a spinning yarn mill that would employ about 800 people. The renovation work had begun.
Then, the U.S.-China trade fight tariffs hit and workers went home. And the sprawling facility went back to sitting untended on the edge of the city.
“There are various factors that have gone into the delay, but the main factor is the tariffs,” says Forrest City Mayor Cedric Williams. “When the tariffs hit, they don’t know what their costs would be to ship back to China.… We’re at a standstill until they get that resolved.”
Resurrecting the plant would be huge here. The 800 jobs there would make the new plant the biggest employer in the county. The nearby federal prison employs about 650 people.
Mayor Cedric Williams describes why residents are slow to embrace technology.
Health Challenges Around Inactivity and Teen Pregnancy
When you add those economic challenges with the community’s divided nature, you find impacts on health. Generally speaking, the rural communities of the African American South score below the median for rural communities overall on a number of health measures. However, St. Francis often underperforms against those numbers.
On poor physical health days, St. Francis scored 4.8 per month compared to 4.4 days for the rural African American South communities and 3.9 days for rural communities overall. On poor mental health days, St. Francis scored 4.9 days compared to 4.3 for the rural African American South counties and 4.0 for rural communities overall.
St. Francis specifically struggles with fitness and obesity. A high number of adults report physical inactivity, 37%, compared with 30% for the rural African American South and 26% for rural communities overall. And 47% of adults in St. Francis are obese, compared with 35% in the African American South and 33% in rural America overall.
The county’s teen pregnancy problem is particularly serious. The 2019 County Health Rankings reports that 80 out of every 1,000 15- to 19-year-old females in St. Francis gave birth. The number is 42.7 out of every 1,000 in rural African American South counties. In rural America overall, the number is 32 out of 1,000.
Making those teen pregnancy numbers more remarkable is the racial breakdown. Among African American females in St. Francis County, ages 15 to 19, the number is 89 for every 1,000. Among white 15- to 19-year-old girls in St. Francis, the number is 63 for every 1,000.
Smith, the local health unit administrator, says those are the dominant issues he sees day-to-day in his work. In addition, the lack of transportation in the county is a real problem. People are unable to make their doctor’s appointments or visit the county health office.
Those numbers show how basic measures of health can be deceptive. If one were to judge St. Francis by its uninsured rate, there would be reason to be pleased. It’s below the number for similar communities in the African American South.
But those data mask the more complicated story of how hard it can be to deliver health care in rural communities.
Building Social Capital and Bridging Divides
With the low incomes and sprawling area, it’s difficult to create and maintain programs for children that will encourage them to be active and start out on the right life path.
In the absence of funding for a formal system, individuals have stepped in. Jim Bailey, a local man who grew up in the area, created his own sports program for kids, JB Sports. Close to 200 children play baseball, basketball, and football in his league. Sponsors cover the costs, and there are no registration fees.
“He bought a bus and a huge plot of land, and you go out down highway 79 on the left hand side, you’ll see a big sign that says Bailey’s Field,” Smith says. “He put some sod down, had some football fields and baseball fields. It was all him doing it and just recently he just got it as a 501(c)(3) and started to, you know, do things the right way.”
It’s a start at building the social capital the community has long needed and that has been lacking because the different parts of the community didn’t really trust each other, Forrest City Mayor Williams says. Williams, who only moved to the community six years ago, says he made his newness a selling point in his winning campaign last year.
Forrest City Mayor Cedric Williams in his office. Photo by Ari Pinkus.
“I feel a lot of that division was from people who actually had grown up here all their lives, but were holding grudges against each other. In my campaign, I always joked that my not being from here was a positive because I didn’t pull anybody’s hair back in the sixth grade,” he says. “I was involved in different aspects of the chamber, rotary, different things as far as trying to move the community forward. And I found the leadership of these organizations not working together but really trying to work around each other.”
Williams’ election is one aspect that seems to have united the community — blacks and whites alike. Across the area, people cited Williams as a hope for the city’s and the county’s future. The community recently held a summit on race to bring people together and try to address some of the concerns around that thorny issue.
“If we say racism doesn’t exist, we put our head in the sand, we just need to be honest on that aspect,” Williams says. “We have to acknowledge that, but this is how we work together and move forward from that standpoint.”
Seeing White Flight and Academic Triumphs in Education
Williams notes that the kids in the community are not the problem. Racial differences don’t concern them. It’s the parents who create a lot of the challenges and you can see how in the local schools. St. Francis may be a rural community, but it’s facing an urban problem of white flight in its public schools.
Empty buildings in downtown Forrest City. Photo by Dante Chinni.
Forrest City Schools Superintendent Tiffany Hardrick grew up in area and attended the schools she now oversees. She moved back to the area in 2014 and sees a different school system today.
When she attended school 20 years ago, she says the composition was roughly 50% white and 50% African American. Today, it is about 95% African American. Many of the county’s white students, Hardrick says, have used the state’s law allowing school choice to attend the nearby and much-smaller Palestine-Wheatley School District, also in the county, where the student body is more than 80% white.
Forrest City schools have had some notable successes in recent years. The schools received an award from the governor for investing in computer science with classes in computer coding. And after years of declining enrollment, Hardrick says the schools have turned the tide in the last few years and have started to attract more students again. A local charter school recently closed, and its students have begun to stream back into the public school system.
But challenges remain. Like many rural districts, Hardrick says hers has a hard time attracting young teachers. And ultimately, only about 20% of the graduating class will go on to four-year or community college. The cost of post-secondary education is a difficult burden for many of her students as is shaking the small-town mindset and heading off to a university.
For those who don’t want to leave home – or who can’t afford it – East Arkansas Community College (EACC) offers a chance to move on past a high school diploma. People across the city say the school is one of the community’s gems; it offers general two-year associates degrees as well as specialized training in radiology, nursing, and commercial truck driving. The school proudly notes that 70% of its associate degree graduates have a job within one year.
Cathie Cline took the helm as president of EACC in 2017 and has been working at growing the school. This past summer EACC signed an agreement with John Brown University, a Christian school on the western side of the state, to allow EACC students to enroll in JBU classes and work toward a bachelor’s degree online.
Cline served as a journalist for the local newspaper and has deep ties to the county. She, Hardrick, and Mayor Williams all say they regularly text each other to discuss issues that surface in the community, serving as a kind of unofficial coordinated leadership team for St. Francis.
One County, Different Identities
Outside of Forrest City, St. Francis County is only about 32% African American, still high compared to the United States overall and to rural America, but lower than the county in general. And some parts of the county have very different identities.
The Hurd Family in their store the Boondocks Down South. Photo by Ari Pinkus.
Palestine, for instance, is home to about 730 people, but it is more than 80% white and feels decidedly different from much of the county. It has a small downtown block with unique character because one family, the Hurds, bought buildings and developed them into a restaurant, furniture boutique, and clothing/sporting goods store.
The family owns the Crazy Donkey Grill, a gas station that has been turned into a moderately-priced trendy Tex-Mex establishment, and next to it, the Boondocks Down South, which features everything from fishing equipment to high-end clothing. The adjoining building holds an upscale furniture boutique that deals in handmade reclaimed tables and bedroom furniture than runs into the thousands of dollars.
The family says their businesses employ 30 people and have attracted visitors from 26 states. They plan to keep expanding the complex, with a new amphitheater and a firing range.
Could it be a larger recipe for success for the area, or at least an opportunity for something new? Forrest City business leaders have reached out to the family about expanding there, closer to the interstate and in a bigger population center. But Randy Hurd, the father of the family, says the path isn’t that simple. The key to the family’s success has been more organic. “You can’t just make something like this happen, because you duplicate it. It has to be a labor of love. It can’t be, ‘Well if they can do it, we can do it.’ It has to come from the heart.”
For the Hurd family, that heartfelt connection is tied to Palestine.
The challenge now is creating those warmhearted feelings for the whole of St. Francis — all its pieces and people. The divides that have defined this place and other communities in the African American South are not easy to overcome — black and white, small town and farmland. But with new leadership, the community seems committed to facing these obstacles. A few years ago, people say that wasn’t happening here. Now the door is open to change, new partnerships, and a desire to plan for a more cohesive future.
Your community is more than your home; it defines your life, from job opportunities and consumer choices, to the quality of education, to air quality and exercise options. And just a few miles can make a dramatic difference.
The chart below is interactive. You can choose the indicator you want to explore, from uninsured rates to premature death, by scrolling through the options in the box in the top left. The black line within each type represents its median value. You can also search for any county in the country by entering its name in the “Find a County” box. The chart shows not only the differences in the community type medians but also how communities are clustered in some types and spread across the line in others.
by Dante Chinni and Ari PinkusOctober 03, 2018Print
Downtown Willoughby in Lake County, Ohio. Photo credits: Elizabeth Sherwood
In a time of technological, economic and cultural change, Lake County, Ohio, is not struggling to define itself. It is very comfortable with its identity as a blue-collar, manufacturing center.
“I think we’re growing into manufacturing,” says Mark Rantala, executive director of the Lake County Ohio Port and Economic Development Authority. “Where there might have been a fear 20 years ago that manufacturing will dry up and leave, now we think whatever happens in manufacturing will happen here.”
There’s good reason for that viewpoint. Lake, which sits just east of Cleveland, was built on manufacturing and that sector remains its economic heartbeat. Nearly 19% of the employment in the county comes in manufacturing, above the state (15%) and national (10%) averages. Lake’s residents will tell you there are good jobs to be had here in the factories of today, no college degree required. In fact, some local leaders say that too many local kids are going to college — and not coming home.
Lake Erie lakefront path at Painesville Township Park in Lake County, Ohio.
Lake County as a Middle Suburb
In many ways, including those mentioned above, Lake fits the profile of a Middle Suburb, one in a collection of aging, largely white communities located in the inner ring of metro areas through the Industrial Midwest. It’s been slower to diversify, ethnically and racially, than other urban areas. It’s also been slower to add population, with a number that’s been flat since 2010. And like other Middle Suburbs, Lake seems to be more comfortable holding onto its past than embracing change.
The Middle Suburbs hold some advantages in the County Health Rankings data – and Lake does as well. People in the Middle Suburbs are the most likely of any communities in the American Communities Project to have health insurance; only 7% lack insurance, in part due to union retirement plans. And the Middle Suburbs are less likely than other major urban community types to have severe housing problems, 14% versus 21% in the Big Cities. But communities like Lake also have the highest drug overdose rates, 26 per 100,000 people. They are also aging faster than other urban areas: 17% are 65 or older. They tend to have below average rates for four-year college degrees, particularly when compared with other urban locales.
Lake offers an insight into these strengths and challenges, and it has taken some unique approaches to the concerns it faces. Some highlights:
Lake County General Health District generated an idea that uses Geographical Information Systems to tackle the opioid crisis.
The Better Flip is an initiative by the Lake County Ohio Port & Economic Development Authority to make post-World War II homes on the west end of the county more attractive to young potential homeowners.
Leadership Lake County started a program two years ago to help millennials see their place in the county. The organization encourages other groups in the county to diversify their boards, including appointing two millennials at a time because the buddy system works.
Lay of the Land
Driving through Lake County, one can sense how greater Cleveland developed. On the western edge of the county are streets lined by small post-WWII construction homes, little Levittown bungalows. Further east are small towns that have been absorbed by suburban sprawl and eventually areas where suburbia transitions into tree-filled, almost rural territory. But much of the population is clustered near the Cleveland border and along the shore of Lake Erie to the north.
If there is one word to describe the scene it’s probably stability. Lake looks and feels like a place that hasn’t changed much in recent decades. In fact, the county’s flat population growth has real-world impacts.
Jerry Cirino, Lake County Commissioner
“One of the challenges we have is our population has been stagnant for about 15 years now. That stagnation has cost us the highest bond rating with Moody’s,” says Jerry Cirino, a county commissioner. “It’s like a company getting a bond rating. If there’s a ceiling to how many customers you have, you’re going to be deemed as not-so-credit-worthy.” And the population is aging rapidly. If nothing changes, by 2030 a third of the population will be seniors, Cirino says.
The net result, he says, is actually a shortage of employees for local businesses. “We’re sending too many kids to college, OK? … I haven’t had one employer tell me they can’t find a marketing manager or an accounting manager.” What they need, he says, are employees to work in the high-tech, floor jobs of modern manufacturing.
Part of the issue is young people who go away to college and don’t come home and another part is the ones who stay behind increasingly have other problems, such as drug addiction. Most conversations about the health of the community turn to the topic of opioids.
Facing the Opioid Crisis
Lake County’s drug overdose rate in the County Health Rankings — 31 per 100,000 people — is higher than the median value for Middle Suburb counties overall. Moreover, the Middle Suburb number — 26 per 100,000 — is the highest of any type in the ACP. The overall opioid caseload in the Lake County crime lab jumped from 1,161 in 2013 to 1,502 in 2017.
From left to right: Diane Szabo, Signature Health; Spence Kline, Crossroads/Beacon Health; Ron Graham, Lake County General Health District (LCGHD); Joe Tomsick, Lake County Council on Aging; Matthew Nichols, LCGHD; Richard Bennett, YMCA; Robert Diak, YMCA; Joe Popely, Lake Health
Those kinds of stats grab people’s attention. In Lake, that attention is leading to a different approach — one that treats opioid addiction as a chronic condition as opposed to an acute one. The Lake County General Health District has developed a framework to help it model opioid addiction.
“People map disease; we’re wondering if we can map behaviors. We call it behavioral epidemiology,” says Ron Graham, the health district’s commissioner. “We have a narcotics crime lab that does high-end testing, so we have that data. We work with the coroner’s office, so we are starting an overdose fatality review board, so we’ll have that data.”
The group plans to use data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to look at co-mingling factors, ranging from smoking to depression to social support networks, to help where its affected population is and where it could be moving. Mapping the population can help the public health team figure out where it needs to stock life-saving naloxone, which can reverse an overdose.
Kimberly Fraser, executive director of the Lake County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Services Board
At the same time, Lake is trying to address the opioid issue before it becomes a problem for young people by working with schools. The opioid crisis largely centers on adults, but many of them are also parents. That means children experience the problem as well, often in their daily personal lives. They need early in-school intervention and different kinds of services, says Kimberly Fraser, executive director of the Lake County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Services Board.
“We need to get more into early childhood and elementary schools. We want to talk about how we get into and deliver services in schools,” Fraser says. “It’s no longer ‘OK, Joey’s struggling, have Joey’s parents come into our agency and sign up for services and bring Joey for counseling.’ It just doesn’t happen. They can’t get the parents to sign a release form. So how can we put behavioral health professionals into the school.”
A decade ago, the county’s schools wouldn’t have wanted those services, she says. Rather, their administrations would have argued they didn’t have a drug problem. But times have changed — and that’s a hopeful sign for Lake, she says. “If we can stop the 8-year-olds from ever going down that road, that’s how we’re going to stop this,” she adds.
A Growing Senior Population
Headlands Beach State Park in Lake County, Ohio, offers visitors a tranquil place to take in views of Lake Erie.
Currently, the aging of the community is the primary focus. The aging population needs specialized services and different ways of thinking about health. The county must also consider what comes next for its health infrastructure and its housing.
A park in Painesville, the county seat of Lake County, Ohio, managed by Lake Metroparks, which aims to preserve the county’s natural resources and provide educational and recreational programs.
“From a health standpoint the aging of the community certainly creates a lot of opportunity for people to pursue wellness activities, but it definitely creates more challenges for the providers in the county,” says Bob Diak, the chief operations officer of the Lake County YMCA.
The Silver Sneakers program, which provides free gym memberships to seniors at participating facilities, has mushroomed in Lake, Diak says. The exercise facilities are reimbursed by Medicare Advantage and Medigap providers.
That time at the gym is crucial, Diak says, to stave off another challenge that comes along with the aging population in Lake, diabetes. The goal, he says, is to help people to understand if they are pre-diabetic so they can be treated and act before the disease fully takes root. The Y has a diabetes-prevention program. However, the program only qualifies for federal government reimbursement if people enroll when they are pre-diabetic. The Y’s leaders says it can be difficult to get people to buy into the program early enough.
One obstacle is seniors often don’t get to know the health system until they need it — and that’s too late. County health experts estimate that 20% to 25% of the population does not have a primary care physician, which makes it difficult for them to engage with the system when they need help.
The Lake County Council on Aging, a nonprofit, community organization serving Lake County’s seniors, their families and caregivers, has intervened by performing in-home checkups on citizens — mental and physical. Intervention often starts with a visit from Meals on Wheels, which then leads to a larger in-home assessment with licensed social workers. And the council is reaching into more homes as the population ages. From 2016 to 2017, the Council on Aging saw an 18% increase in the number of meals requested and served in the county.
Much of the success Lake County has had with the senior population comes from knowing the population, talking to residents and planning. In 2016, the Council on Aging produced a strategic plan for the near future, Vision 2020, that outlined a list of 10 goals it hopes to address. It’s following this blueprint now.
The growing senior population and lack of population growth have also spurred questions about Lake’s next generation of leaders. “I don’t know if millennials see their place yet in the county,” says Jessie Baginski, CEO and president of Leadership Lake County, an educational nonprofit whose mission is to develop and engage current and future leaders in the community. “When you’re in a suburb like this and you’re a young professional and you don’t know a lot of other young professionals, you don’t know where you fit in.” Nearby Cleveland has nightly events for young workers to meet and mix, but those opportunities are rarer in Lake.
When people feel isolated, they are less likely to engage, Baginski says. And even if a young person wants to get involved, it’s not always easy in Lake and communities like it. New blood can get discouraged by an old-guard that doesn’t take to new ideas well. Baginski says the key is to make sure those younger people aren’t alone. “We tell nonprofits to not get one millennial on their board, but get two, because they need a buddy to be able to float that idea and feel like they are not that new kid on the block challenging all the wise elders.”
It’s important, she says, because strong institutions like those in Lake need succession plans. It’s impossible to carry on a healthy business or organization with a next generation that’s unprepared.
Aging Homes
Other facets of Lake’s aging problem are more complicated, such as the buildings that line its streets. Like many near-in Middle Suburb communities, Lake’s biggest period of expansion came after World War II. Between 1948 and 1956, Lake County grew by an astonishing 200%, says Rantala, the executive director of the Port and Economic Development Authority.
“We have four suburbs on the west end of the county that added 15,000 bungalows in less than 10 years,” he says. “It’s three bedrooms, one bath, 1,100 square feet. If you go to another suburb, it’s 900 square feet. If you go to another suburb, it’s a brick bungalow.”
Those bungalows were heaven on earth to the young families who moved into them 60 years ago, but for today’s first-time homebuyers they look hopelessly out of date. Their small spaces are divided into too many little rooms, and their interiors don’t offer the marble/stainless kitchen and subway-tiled bathrooms.
Listen to Mark Rantala, executive director of Lake County Ohio Port and Economic Development Authority, discuss the Better Flip initiative to encourage millennials to make their homes in Lake County, Ohio.
The development authority purchased one of the old homes and is completely renovating it to show what’s possible with a little work — and some money for a good contractor.
It’s a specific design that removes one of the bedrooms, creates a larger living/entertaining space, including a kitchen with an island, as well as a master bedroom with a walk-in closet. A small, white home in the Lake County town of Willowick was chosen for the experiment and interior demolition began this past summer.
The Lake County home that officials are remodeling under their “Better Flip” initiative.
The neighborhoods have much of what young people say they crave: sidewalks, retail and nearby neighborhood schools, Rantala argues. The total cost, purchase and remodel, he estimates, will cost around $150,000. With individual choices, it could run a bit more, but the price is still low by the standards of a large metro area.
“Economic development for us is not about just recruiting companies. It’s about recruiting workforce. Finding a way to get the people we need here,” he says. “If the companies run out of workers, then they’re candidates to leave. We’re trying to change the future.”
Lake County, like other Middle Suburbs, is comfortable leaning on the manufacturing jobs that built its growth in the past. But in the future, the community’s broader economic and social health may hinge on how much it can change.
In Kirtland, Ohio, a small city in Lake County, sits The Holden Arboretum, one of the largest arboreta and botanical gardens in the U.S., with some 3,500 acres.
by Ari Pinkus and Dante ChinniOctober 03, 2018Print
The county seat of Gray in Jones County, Georgia, is filled with history. Photo credits: Elizabeth Sherwood
History is a presence in Jones County, an African American South community in middle Georgia (pop. 28,623). Many residents’ ancestors were slaves or slave owners. Civil War battle markers sit on street corners and country back roads. People remember the Ku Klux Klan marching through the county seat of Gray, and black children getting books discarded from white schools with epithets scrawled inside.
A watershed moment came in the early 1970s when the county’s public schools integrated; by all accounts, it was a smooth transition. But more than 40 years later, daily life is still tacitly segregated in Jones, where African Americans make up 25 percent of the population. Feelings run deep about the impact of the racial and economic divides and efforts to close them. All the while, educational institutions are seen as a force for progress. And residents here demonstrate how their learning together can build the foundation for community well-being.
Jones County as an African American South Community
Jones County’s health factors stand out from the African American South counties overall, the County Health Rankings show. Its median household income is $54,200; the African American South median is $37,500. Similarly, Jones County’s income inequality, defined as ratio of household income at the 80th percentile to income at the 20th percentile, is 4.2 compared with 5.2 for the African American South. Residential segregation between blacks and whites is 31 in Jones, slightly better than the African American South median of 32.
Particular challenges emerge in access to care, physical inactivity and obesity.
The ratio of population to primary care physicians is 4,750:1 in Jones compared with 2,622:1 for the African American South overall.
Jones’s physical inactivity rate of 33% is higher than the African American South rate of 30%.
Adult obesity is 32% in Jones; the African American South posts a median of 35%.
In general, children in Jones fare better than those in the African American South: 29% are in single-family homes; whereas the median rate in the African American South climbs to 40%. In Jones, children in poverty stands at 19%; the African American South rate reaches 34%. In Jones, 51% of children are eligible for free or reduced lunch; in the African American South, 75% qualify.
Programs and practices are underway to address the county’s challenges. Here are a few:
The initiative Live Healthy Jones aims for residents to better attend to their health, including choices about diet and exercise.
To provide for residents without health insurance, Community Health Care Systems opened in Jones County about five years ago.
To bridge the divides between whites and African Americans, a group of pastors of both races meets regularly and discusses sensitive issues, including politics and racial profiling. African American and white churches worship together over holidays.
A Standout in Health
District Nursing and Program Director Anita Barkin and Director of Epidemiology and Assessment Amber Erickson of the North Central Health District, which represents 13 counties in middle Georgia.
“Jones is one of our shining communities in terms of the [County Health] Rankings,” says Anita Barkin, district nursing and program director of North Central Health District, part of the 13-county region of middle Georgia that works with the local boards of health. On the boards, community members, local government members and a public education system representative identify key community concerns and work with their county’s health department to ensure support for services.
“The nurse manager of [Jones] County Health Department has enjoyed a very strong and positive relationship with local government, with the education system, with other community partners, like Family Connections. And so when you get all of those folks in the room, and they’re all contributing and interested, obviously, you build on each other’s efforts, and you create a positive climate for effecting change,” Barkin says.
Work to reduce smoking, obesity, physical inactivity and increase primary care access is ongoing, says North Central Health District’s Director of Epidemiology and Assessment Amber Erickson. A registered dietitian is available for individual consultation and provides outreach education for the counties.
Jones County’s health factors contribute to its position in the middle Georgia region. In addition to its higher median household income, the county also has a higher high school graduation rate and more people with college degrees than other counties, Erickson says. “Because of their educational attainment and income levels, they’re able to access care easier than some of our poorer communities,” Erickson says. “The school system is strong, and it attracts young families,” Barkin adds.
Education’s Impact in a Close-Knit Community
The Board of Education is the largest employer in the county, and much activity revolves around the school district’s one high school, two middle schools, four elementary schools and a pre-K school. The high school of some 1,500 students and school sports are seen as the great unifiers here. Friday night football is always a crowd pleaser.
The next generation is a rallying point for residents at county meetings and online. “If it has to do with our kids, people show up,” says Haley Watson, executive director of the Gray-Jones County Chamber of Commerce.
This past summer, the Jones County School System teamed with Jones County Parks & Recreation to feed healthy lunch to children who are food insecure, and provided transportation to and from the two participating elementary schools. The program came about after the school nutrition director studied the statistics of students on free or reduced lunch. They applied for funding from the Seamless Summer Option through the National School Lunch Program — and received it.
Donald Black, a retired educator, lives in the house where he grew up in Jones County, Georgia.
Another example is Operation Early Intervention, a program aimed at keeping children out of the juvenile justice system by engaging the whole family. Donald Black, a retired educator, was a program leader for 12 years after it was created in 1999. Leaders are known to recognize patterns of struggle by keeping a close eye on students who are tardy or absent from school, and perhaps coping with family strife. Lunchroom workers and bus drivers have relayed details about students’ home lives, including leaky roofs and food insecurity.
Where neighboring counties’ programs fell away, Jones County’s is still going strong; Black says the community’s close-knit nature and the firm, personal touch of members set Jones apart. “Growing up in a small Southern town, you know everybody….If I don’t know you, I know who you favor. So give me five minutes and I can trace you back,” he says.
Listen to Donald Black, a retired educator, share his family’s history and the deep-seated separation between African Americans and whites in Jones County, Georgia.
The County’s Origins and Contours
Founded in 1807, Jones County is named after James Jones, a U.S. Congressman from Georgia who died in 1801. Today it’s primarily a bedroom community with about one-fourth composed of national forest under federal ownership. Much of Jones is rural, with pockets of poverty particularly in the southern part.
The largest city is Gray (pop. 3,281). County residents affectionally call it “Grayberry,” a play on Mayberry, the fictional community in the TV sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show.” No Barney Fife here, but the police department comes to check on businesses every night, Watson says.
In town, there’s an Ace of Gray; a Walgreens; and two southern-chain supermarkets across the street from one another. Ingles, housing a Starbucks with seating inside, is the more upscale of the two. On a late spring morning, racial separation was evident: Customers in Ingles were generally white while Harveys shoppers tended to be black.
Ingles market in downtown Gray, the county seat of Jones County, Georgia. Residents have nicknamed Gray “Grayberry” after Mayberry from “The Andy Griffith Show.”
Harveys Supermarket is one of two supermarkets in Gray, Georgia.
Railroad tracks flank the edge of the downtown, but no passenger trains run through. Visitors sometimes gather at the musical tribute to Otis Redding of “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay” fame, whose family still lives in the county. In close proximity to the marker are the county courthouse, The Jones County News headquarters, a law firm, a hair salon, an antique shop, among other small businesses.
Gray, the county seat of Jones County, Georgia, is home to small businesses.Railroad tracks run through Gray, the county seat and largest city of Jones County, Georgia.
Of the 12,000 county residents who are employed, 9,000 work outside the county. Commuters typically head in one of a few directions: 20 minutes northeast to college-rich Milledgeville in Baldwin County, 15 minutes south to industry-filled Macon in Bibb County, 45 minutes south to the Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga., or an hour and a half north to Atlanta.
Haley Watson, Executive Director, Gray-Jones County Chamber of Commerce.
Gray-Jones County Chamber of Commerce is working with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs to figure out how to close the economic divide between the area around Gray and the side on the 49 highway that associates with Macon or Milledgeville, Watson says. In Gray, there’s a three-to-five-year plan for mixed-use development, including retail shops and lofts, she adds. County Commissioner Jonathan Pitts admits that economic development in Jones is a continuing challenge.
To hold onto graduates and meet future needs, the county has partnered with neighboring Jasper County to open the College and Career Academy in Gray in the 2019-2020 academic year. Its mission is “to create a career pipeline that contributes to the economic development and quality of life in the central Georgia region through innovative academic rigor, technical, and employability skills training.” The Academy is a point of pride — and hope.
Churches’ Influence on Culture and Health
Bridging racial divides is a focus for pastors in Jones County, Georgia.
If educational institutions are one pillar of Jones, churches are the other. Churches are where the county’s racial segregation comes clearly into view. Blacks and whites worship separately save for fellowshipping a couple of times a year before Thanksgiving and on Easter.
At the same time, about 15 pastors are part of the group PULL, Pastors United in Loving the Lord, where they bring up sensitive issues, like profiling and politics, and try to bridge the racial divide. One of them, Wilbur Greene of New Damascus Baptist Church, shared what happened when both races joined together in choir. “There’s still a degree of unconscious separation because blacks sit with blacks and whites sit with whites… someone in the choir said, ‘Let’s mix up.’” The audience didn’t follow, Greene says.
Pastor Wilbur Greene of New Damascus Baptist Church; Cassandra Ridley, a nurse whose father is a pastor; and Pastor Lequint Caswell of Turner Chapel and St. James churches in Jones County, Georgia.
Can faith connect the groups? “Government-wise, there’s no rules or regulations or laws or anything that can be set in place that would bridge that gap… We do still have a love for God in common… it gives us an opportunity to at least acknowledge that we have a common place to begin, regardless of our political or social beliefs or practices,” says Pastor Lequint Caswell of Turner Chapel and St. James churches.
Cassandra Ridley, daughter of The Body of Christ Church Pastor Joe Ridley, says there are now more white churches in the combined fellowship gatherings; her church still participates. “A lot of people question the legitimacy of certain things,” she says. “They feel like it’s a fake action… It’s easy to come together at one meeting twice a year for two hours and clap our hands and smile at each other, say, ‘Nice to see you.’ Then, when you get out, are you going to be the same person, or are we just putting on a mask?”
The three point to the ways people of color feel overlooked in the community. Caswell says he hears from his elderly congregants: “We know what they’re about and how they treat us on a daily basis.” For instance, they don’t have the opportunity to own businesses or sit on the board of trustees of a prominent community bank, Greene and Caswell say.
When it comes to health, the pastors describe how intentionally they approach the issue in their congregations. Greene elevates the expertise of nurses in his congregation by giving them time to speak to everyone. Turner Chapel hosts a free health fair on the first Saturday of every month. The church pays a registered nurse to take attendees’ blood pressure, glucose levels and Body Mass Index. She recommends seeing a physician if needed, and keeps a record of her exams, Caswell says. He notes he’s started offering more food options at church gatherings besides fried chicken — and finds baked chicken going faster than fried.
Ridley, who is also a nurse, stresses that it’s important to take care of your body. “Faith and health — you can’t divide the two,” she says.
The Journey to Living Healthier in Jones
Along the main highway in Jones County, Georgia, Southern-style food is plentiful.
Along the main drag — Gray Highway that becomes West Clinton St. — sit Southern-style restaurants: Old Clinton BBQ House, 107 Smokehouse and Chevy’s Pizza. The Dairy Queen, with its outdoor seating, draws people from neighboring counties.
County Commissioner Jonathan Pitts is the brainchild and steward of the county’s Live Healthy Jones initiative on healthy eating and living.
While these Southern foods are deeply ingrained in the culture, the community is trying to instill new habits. Besides the district’s dietitian, a partnership with the 4-H extension agency teaches children how to prepare healthy meals for their families for $20. It’s part of the Live Healthy Jones initiative to promote healthy living, which Commissioner Pitts spearheaded three years ago after attending a conference by the National Association of Counties.
Other Live Healthy Jones partners include Jones County Family Connection, Community Health Care Systems, Jones County Parks & Recreation and Jones County School System’s nutrition director. In collaboration with Community Health Care Systems, the county had a health fair in Haddock, a rural town in Jones, with a mobile medical unit and provided physicals to 20 people. They’ve partnered with the school district on its summer feeding program and a back-to-school drive. Monthly posts on Facebook promote wellness initiatives at area hospitals outside the county.
Although Live Healthy Jones hasn’t been a sustained effort, it has brought key people to the table, forged relationships and made new projects possible, Barkin says.
Meanwhile, Jones County’s nurse practitioner is booked every week for contraception, hypertension and diabetes services, Barkin says. “It has a lot to do with sharing that these services are available and being a welcoming staff.” Sometimes people with health challenges can’t make it in because transportation access is uneven in the county’s rural parts.
Kay Lawrence, Director of Marketing and Outreach, Community Health Care Systems with Joy Carr, Coordinator, Jones County Family Connection.
Addressing mental health is a regular collaborative practice, says Joy Carr, coordinator of Jones County Family Connection. The health department, mental health providers and the school system gather every month to consider children and families with mental health issues. Referrals typically come from the school or the court system. Licensed therapists practice in two schools.
An option for residents without any health insurance is Community Health Care Systems, which set up in Jones about five years ago. “Our greatest concern is that everyone has access to healthcare, regardless of their ability to pay,” says Kay Lawrence, director of marketing and outreach. Located in Gray, it houses family medicine; an OBGYN; a therapist; the county’s only pediatrician, and offers free school physicals. Referrals often come from the school system. The office has expanded as Family Connection has made residents aware of its existence.
Data helps community leaders zero in on parts of the county in the most need. Georgia Family Connection Partnership created a tool that looks at nine specific indicators in each census tract in Jones County. In one case, the team realized that a low number of children in the south end of the county did not have health insurance. Family Connection collaborated with the insurance registration representative to determine whether people qualified for state or federal coverage and helped people register. “We saw our numbers shoot up significantly in the number of children with healthcare coverage,” says Carr.
Health Costs Bring New Scrutiny
Debbie Lurie-Smith, Managing Editor, The Jones County News.
On June 6, new urgency about the county’s health surfaced in The Jones County News’s lead headline: “BOC works to cut health insurance – Without another plan, expense could go up $450K”
According to Debbie Lurie-Smith’s article, the county’s insurance broker explained “the reason for the 21 percent increase from [Blue Cross/Blue Shield] was the company lost money on the county in 2017 and 2018. He stated that $595,000 in claims in the past year was because of lifestyle related conditions. The biggest of those are tobacco use and obesity, followed closely by poor nutrition.”
The broker suggested a wellness program as an answer.
by Ari Pinkus and Dante ChinniOctober 03, 2018Print
Mt. Hood in the distance along the Hood River County Fruit Loop, a 35-mile stretch of farm stands, in Oregon’s Hood River Valley. Photo credits: Elizabeth Sherwood
Nestled in the Columbia Gorge region, Hood River County, Oregon, is a gem of beauty and resources between two compass points: Mt. Hood to the south in Oregon and Mt. Adams to the north in Washington. When the wind and sun play along the mountainous, verdant landscape, it is almost hypnotic, initially obscuring the hardships and rifts in this Hispanic Center (pop. 23,232), where Latinos make up 31% of the population.
Upon closer view, Hood River County shows how an interdependent culture facilitates partnerships and lays bare tensions— between ethnic groups, the affluent and underprivileged, out-of-town owners and full-time residents, rural character and increased density. The place’s relative isolation has pushed people to come together and join surrounding counties in novel ways.
Hood River County as a Hispanic Center
Hood River County scores well in the County Health Rankings compared to other Hispanic Center communities. Especially noteworthy are its low adult uninsured rates (only 13%) and physical inactivity rates (only 16% of adults report more leisure time physical activity, placing it with some of the best counties in the Rankings). But other numbers reveal more of the challenges the community faces as a Hispanic Center. The community’s segregation index score from whites and non-whites, 32, is high for a community that is so rural and evidence of the two communities that exist within the county. And the relatively high number of residents who are not proficient in English (9%) places it exactly in line with the Hispanic Centers overall, and high above the other community types.
In Hood River County, programs, policies and practices have been adopted to foster more inclusion. Here is a snapshot:
Community health workers have long facilitated residents’ connections with healthcare and social service providers. The successful model is now helping Latinos launch businesses.
The county health department’s staff is bicultural, and a few nurses speak Spanish.
Community health meetings are being structured to encourage people of different backgrounds to participate.
Latinos are leading the design of a farmers’ market with food and activities they enjoy.
The school district has hired a director of equity and family partnerships.
Elements of a Healthful Culture
Trish Elliott, Director, Hood River County Health Department
Health is a finely connected, regional endeavor in Hood River; it begins with the Columbia Gorge Coordinated Care Organization predicated on the Oregon model. The CCO is “a network of all types of health care providers (physical health care, addictions and mental health care and dental care providers) who work together in their local communities to serve people who receive health care coverage under the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid),” according to the Oregon Health Authority.
In January, Oregon voters affirmed continuing to fund Medicaid expansion, which the Hood River County Health Department credits with improving insurance rates. However, some residents don’t qualify because they lack documentation, and the county health department provides services, especially women’s care, to fill in the gap.
The Columbia Gorge Region, Oregon and Washington, composed of Hood River and four other counties, earned the Culture of Health Prize from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2016 — and has since adopted the Foundation’s culture of health action framework to communicate its work. The area’s strength partly stems from the Community Advisory Council in which community members create and shape health and healthcare issues in the region.
Paul Lindberg, Consultant/ Grant Writer, Hat Creek Consulting
Community leaders in Hood River County also cite two particular impacts working toward a healthful culture: trusted community health workers who help residents, particularly Latinos, navigate the healthcare system and a grant writer who connects programs, providers, needs, and funders. Collective Impact Health Specialist Paul Lindberg is supported by Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital and works through the United Way of Columbia Gorge. Since 2014, he’s helped bring in $9.5 million in public and private grants, and brings together advocates through this role and as council chair.
The next frontier is identifying what success looks like in the Community Health Improvement Plan. This means setting metrics, employing research and data gathering methods, and analyzing data to make evidence-based decisions, Lindberg says. It also involves identifying service gaps. “Part of my job…is to pull partners together, design programs to fill those gaps,” he adds.
For this high-cost-of-living community where the median income is $53,900, improving access to food, transportation, and housing — key social determinants of health — is progressing. Gorge Grown Food Network’s Veggie Rx program giving vouchers to community members for fresh fruits and vegetables has expanded to women in the WIC program in collaboration with the health department; Gorge Grown also runs a mobile farmers’ market. In June, Columbia Area Transit expanded bus services, including fixed routes. Housing remains a wicked problem in the county, requiring the kind of resourceful, collaborative mindset that has long defined the region.
The Lure of Hood River — Beauty and Reinvention
The U.S.A.’s story in the Columbia River Gorge officially opened when pioneers U.S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark charted this new territory in 1805-1806. History highlights continuous reinvention — the early fur trade was supplanted by the timber industry, which fell off in the 1990s. A painful chapter was written in World War II with the evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans, a sizable population in the region.
In the 1980s, windsurfers put Hood River on the map as a vacation destination. Outdoor adventurers flock here for the kiteboarding, wind and kitesurfing, mountain biking and more. In 1986, the U.S. designated 292,000 acres as the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area to protect the local environment and spur the economy.
Kite and windsurfers enjoy ideal conditions on the Columbia River in Hood River, Oregon.
A Diversity of Industry
Tourism and hospitality have flourished in Hood River County. Mom-and-pops — charming coffee shops, trendy restaurants and breweries — are plentiful in the downtown area.
Hood River also ranks among the top 10 small communities for the arts, particularly for its independent artists, arts and culture organizations, and dollars contributed, according to the 2018 NCAR Arts Vibrancy Index.
Tech entrepreneurs harnessed the wind resource in the late 1990s to catapult a thriving drone industry. Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing that develops and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems, is stationed in the county. In September 2017, its ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle helped firefighters battle the Eagle Creek Fire, which consumed nearly 50,000 acres of the Gorge. A year later, parts that had turned black are green again.
That burgeoning tech industry is growing along an agricultural economy that has been the constant through the years. A microclimate makes the Hood River Valley fertile ground for many fruits. It’s top in pear production; cherries, apples, and grapes aren’t far behind. A popular tourist attraction, the 35-mile Hood River County Fruit Loop is dotted with farm stands selling fruits, vegetables, wines, ciders, etc. Many family orchards date from the 1800s, though agribusiness, tariffs and worker shortages now threaten. Seasonal migrant workers play an instrumental role by picking crops; many are housed on farms they work for, as defined in Oregon law.
Orchards abound in the Hood River Valley.
Trina McAlexander purchased Mt. View Orchards from her parents a few years ago, and considers the 50-acre orchard a treasure. A third-generation female farmer, she grew up on this farm in Parkdale, Oregon, a town of 311 in Hood River County, according to the 2010 Census.
How Latinos and Whites Coexist
While segregation persists and the charged national political climate is a serious setback, meeting Latino needs and strengthening relations between whites and Latinos are priorities for many here. Because state-issued IDs have become harder for immigrants and others to obtain, Hood River County approved a community ID card in June, becoming “the first jurisdiction in the Pacific Northwest to formally adopt a government identification card under a three-year pilot program funded by private grants and card fees that will involve ‘virtually no taxpayer funds or county staff time,’” according to The Dalles Chronicle. Once in effect, the card will allow county residents to connect with civic, public safety, and other community services, Hood River County School Superintendent Dan Goldman told the publication.
The Columbia Gorge’s largest nonprofit social service provider with a large population of Latino clients, The Next Door has been training community health workers, who draw on their life experience to serve their community. The nonprofit is now using its successful model to help Latinos launch businesses, says Elizur Bello, director of programs at The Next Door.
Janet Hamada, Executive Director, The Next Door and Elizur Bello, Director of Programs, The Next Door
Listen to Janet Hamada and Elizur Bello of The Next Door, a social services nonprofit in Hood River County, Oregon, detail the community’s holistic mindset about health.
The health department has made cultural competency a focus. The support staffers are bicultural; a few nurses speak Spanish. A working group has formed to decrease the stigma around mental health access for Latinos, says Trish Elliott, director of the Hood River County Health Department.
Sarah Sullivan, Executive Director, Gorge Grown Food Network
Cultural competency takes other forms, too, such as ensuring materials are written in plain language and translated into Spanish as well as countering hidden bias and assumptions. Lindberg describes reorganizing the structure of community meetings for inclusivity and elevating individuals’ lived experiences in the design and implementation of programs. “One example of those assumptions came out of a realization that when we design cooking classes or programs, we need to understand that some people do not have all of the same cooking utensils to use, so we need to adjust,” he says. Another effort enlists Latinos to lead the design of farmers’ markets that include hot food, like tamales, and music to dance to, says Sarah Sullivan, executive director of Gorge Grown Food Network.
Moreover, the old boys’ club of leaders is turning over here. Hood River’s mayor is a non-native Spanish speaker and formed the Latino Advisory Council a few years ago; Goldman, the superintendent, named an equity and family partnerships director this year, as Latinos compose 46% of the local school population.
Ricardo Lopez, who sits on the advisory council and the Hood River Chamber of Commerce, is a successful business owner. In 2015, Lopez opened the food truck El Cuate Burgers & Tacos. Previously, he worked at the local restaurant Nora’s Table, starting out as a dishwasher, then advancing to cook. He’s found people very supportive at work, and is friends with whites in the community, he says.
Lopez’s small business advisor friend, Israel Ayala, says they sometimes experience racism. Ayala recalls a time when Google Maps took him the wrong way, and an elderly man rudely said he didn’t want him going through his road. A few months ago, armed homeowners warned Lopez after he stepped on their property.
Ricardo Lopez, Owner, El Cuate Food Truck
Israel Ayala, Small Business Counseling Specialist, Columbia Gorge Community College
Misunderstanding surfaces in other circumstances. “When white people listen to others speaking Spanish and laughing, most of the time they think we’re talking bad things about them and they get mad,” Lopez says. Ayala adds, “In our culture, we joke a lot… but if you’re close by, you might perceive it as we’re making fun of you.”
Lopez says about 80% of his customers are white because downtown is so expensive. Some have followed him from Nora’s Table. He values what they’ve taught him about appetizing cuisine. Now he includes a mix of greens, not just iceberg lettuce, and offers gluten-free, vegan and vegetarian options—which are not popular in Mexican culture.
Customers encourage Lopez to open a restaurant. Yet he knows the overhead for a brick-and-mortar establishment would be much more than the $200 per month he pays now, and he and his wife want to buy a house. They currently live with their children in a mobile home in Odell, a Latino community in the county about eight miles south of Hood River.
Confronting a Wicked Problem
The availability and affordability of housing are long-running challenges in Hood River County. To address them, Mid-Columbia Housing Authority, which represents the five-county region, works with community partners, including The Next Door. Residents describe homelessness and the risk for homelessness as major problems. Elliott, who has spent time as part of the county health department connecting people with housing, says some rental waitlists are years long and people’s HUD vouchers expire while waiting.
When residents were asked in a spring 2017 survey about the affordability of $1,200 rent for a two-bedroom house, “participants said that was barely what they know the average family earns a month, leaving no funds to pay for anything else,” according to a report by the City of Hood River and Oregon’s Kitchen Table, composed of a group of nonpartisan, nonprofit community organizations, helping to give Oregon residents a voice. The American Community Survey shows that 39.4% of people pay 35% or more of their household income toward gross rent in the Hood River zip code 97031.
Hood River Crossing, an affordable housing development in Hood River County, Oregon.
With changing demographics, there’s widespread recognition that Hood River needs to diversify beyond single family homes, says Joel Madsen, executive director of the housing authority. For example, the county sold the housing authority land below market value, enabling the development of Hood River Crossing in 2011, containing 40 one-, two-, and three-bedroom units. More affordable housing is in the works. In addition to developing and managing properties, the housing authority provides rental assistance and supports homeowners with down payments, financial literacy, accessibility upgrades to keep people in their homes and foreclosure assistance.
Joel Madsen, Executive Director, Mid-Columbia Housing Authority
Meanwhile, the number of vacation rental homes has skyrocketed in the past 10 years, helping to drive up housing prices. The median home value for the 97031 zip code is $330,600. It’s common for neighborhood blocks to be dark in the winter; short-term rentals (STR) are also a serious issue, residents say. In August, the County Board of Commissioners voted to require STR dwelling owners to provide proof that Hood River County is their primary residence.
When it comes to the future of housing, community leaders are taking a visionary approach within the constraints, Madsen says. An effort is underway to develop the majority of undeveloped land in Hood River — with regular public hearings. The Westside Area Concept Plan, established in September 2016, is an “integrated land-use and transportation plan” for 450 acres within Hood River County that also “addresses parks, schools, utilities, and infrastructure funding,” according to hrwestsideplan.com.
Downtown Hood River, Oregon, is full of boutiques, coffee shops, and restaurants.
It’s true that many families can trace their roots back generations, and a comforting sense of home envelops today’s residents from bankers to educators. Fulton County boasts solid schools in the state with dedicated, well-trained teachers; its 20-plus churches stand as a rock for the community. A Christian mindset, including a deep faith and caring for your fellow man, shines through in conversations, even in a sidewalk “blessing box” display to “Take what you need” and “Give what you can.”
Now many electric cooperatives, including North Arkansas Electric, have expanded their focus to provide broadband Internet for the same reasons. “We’re at a point with broadband we were at years ago with electricity. For the folks at the communications companies, the cable companies, their business model does not fit rural America….That is exactly the reason my coop is investing $130 million for fiber-delivered high-speed broadband,” says Mel Coleman, CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, which serves Fulton, Baxter, Sharp, Izard, and parts of Lawrence and Stone counties, counting 31,000 members. A $4 million pilot project in the region was completed last year. North Arkansas Electric has been partnering with others, including Como Electric Cooperative in Missouri, which has been in broadband for more than six years.
