Tuesday, January 11, 2011
 
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Logan County Board members express interests and concerns on new economic development plan

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[January 11, 2011]  When the Logan County Board held its first meeting of the fiscal year, the agenda included discussion of an important new document, the Logan County Economic Development Master Plan.

A few of the new board members were unfamiliar with the plan that was released in September, prior to the start of their term. For other board members this was the first group discussion and they had a lot of questions and important observations, such as how it would work with other like documents and plans, and how recommendations in it would be deployed.

The plan, hosted by the Lincoln & Logan County Development Partnership, is the first of its kind. It is described as a living document that will change with needs and opportunities. And, it is intended to serve as a guide that would bring participating entities together, strengthening the effort toward economic growth.

Vandewalle & Associates of Madison, Wis., was contracted to create the plan. Scott Harrington of Vandewalle has been present to facilitate community discussions and led the board's discussion in December.

Harrington began with these points:

  • The goal of the plan is to look at what economic development in this county could be, what opportunities are out there and what steps could be taken to advance toward those.

  • The initiatives are what's important, and the action items are figured out on a case-by-case basis and how those get structured.

  • This is best described as a framework, as a guide to what is out there and what you could achieve if you took certain steps.

  • "It is by no means exclusive. There clearly are, and will be other things that come up."

  • This plan's focus is on the big or whole picture.

Harrington said the need for a plan begins with the question: "If you've got limited resources in terms of personnel and funds that you're going to put toward economic development in a proactive basis, where are those resources best spent?"

Some of the foundation of the plan includes a broad range of information and analysis of federal, state and local government statistical data.

But, "it isn't until we really meet with the community (that) we can understand what the trends mean," Harrington said.

This was accomplished by culling information from community business, agriculture, education and government leader task forces that were organized for this purpose, and when a Vandewalle team toured and conducted interviews of key community leaders last spring.

Also incorporated in the plan's creation is the company's knowledge of and experience with other communities.

Harrington explained that the plan has two primary action parts:

  • 5 strategic initiatives -- These are fairly large items with a broad framework that the planning team believes the community should really focus on.

  • 39 action initiatives -- These items, located in the back of the document, help activate the strategic initiatives. These are divided into three priority levels:

    • Level 1: most important to do.

    • Level 2: have a timing component.

    • Level 3: important, not as time-sensitive, but to be done as resources become available.

Why have an economic development plan?

Harrington said the plan is a framework and guide for the development partnership to work on with various participating entities: the city of Lincoln, Main Street, tourism bureau and the county. It enhances limited resources.

"Where others are already working on the same things, it pulls everyone together under one umbrella to leverage what each brings to the table -- a situation that makes 1 + 1 = 3 and gains efficiency," Harrington explained.

There is nothing in the plan that requires anybody to do anything. It has suggestions and recommendations that each entity will need to decide on as the development partnership would advance the plan, he said.

Board input

Harrington opened the floor to the board.

Chuck Ruben, finance chairman and farmer, opened with a couple of comments. He noted that the plan identified money from wind farms as possible revenue for initiatives.

"No money would be available from that," he said. "The county currently has $1.3 million less than last year for its general operation and needs all that money."

Ruben also pointed out that under agriculture, the document uses the words "farmland preservation."

"You don't want to use that terminology," he said. "It has legal use in the courts that would take the right of sale away from the farmer."

Harrington said it was intended to identify agriculture as important.

Ruben suggested other terms to substitute.

Board member Gene Rohlfs initiated questions, which other board members expanded, that stimulated much discussion and hard examination of the county voting on the plan, any liability it would carry, potential misinterpretation by future boards, and how and if changes would be made to the plan.

Harrington emphasized that the plan:

  1. Is a guide that provides direction that various entities can choose to participate in as the initiatives are brought forward.

  2. The plan belongs to the partnership. The county could ask the partnership to take something out.

  3. The county's vote shows agreement with the general framework of the plan and that these are things you think are important and want to do.

  4. The document belongs to the development partnership, and they could make any changes they would want to make to it.

Terry Carlton, board member and partnership liaison, clarified the participation and support from the county.

"For years the Logan County Board has been part of the Lincoln & Logan County Partnership," he said. Representatives of the county helped choose to do the plan and who was to do it, he said.

Carlton clarified that there was county board input and that there were many different committees representing sectors of our communities during the development of the plan.

Not everyone was in agreement on all points. "Some of these points we argued very strongly -- 'STRONGLY' should be in all capital letters," he said.

He illustrated his point by saying, "There was a recommendation to add a big block of school representatives." He could agree to having a couple of school representatives.

Carlton added that this document does not hold any legal stance for zoning. "The county has authority over land use through zoning," he said. "We choose how that gets that done."

Ruben remained concerned about what future boards might interpret from this plan. "Once you vote yes for this, you're giving tacit approval to everything in it," he said. "And that's going to come back without a memory of the board. That document is probably going to outlast probably everyone on this board."

He said that future boards may not understand the intent of accepting the plan and may think, "Apparently this is what we ought to do."

Moving on to other concerns, David Hepler, board vice chairman, said, "I'm not going to vote for a document without evidence, such as footnotes."

He said that one asset listed was a skilled work force. "I'd like to see more specifics: what are the skills, age categories and genders; as well as comparisons to surrounding areas."

Terms should have definitions, such as what Ruben brought up about the farm preservation, using the terminology "best practices for farming." Terms should be footnoted and referenced for understanding, he said.

He noted that a lot of the data seemed to be from the 2000 census data but was not identified. It would be important to know the source and the date; then when new information becomes available, it could be updated, he said.

He also thought that there needed to be more said about keeping on the cutting edge of technology, particularly at this time broadband initiatives.

Higher education

On another subject that concerned him, Hepler observed demographic information that showed 10 percent of Lincoln Community High School students are at a poverty level that qualifies them for free or reduced lunches, "when it's actually closer to 35 percent," he said.

And, he noted that the data showed about 52 percent of Lincoln Elementary School District students qualify for the food program.

Combined with the statistics that roughly 16 percent of Logan County residents have an attainment level of a baccalaureate degree, compared with 30 percent in the 10 counties around us, this shows two reasons local kids are not going on to college.

"It (the plan) leans more toward vocational education rather than a college attainment," Hepler said.

He felt that the plan did not take economic need sufficiently into consideration and argued for more emphasis on affordable college access.

"We have a community college network. Kids can get a two-year education in some discipline, start to finish, here in Lincoln," he said.

Harrington said the plan does talk quite a bit about education, recognizes its importance and suggests some strategies, but given the complexity of the issue did not go into a great amount of detail on any one thing.

He said the plan calls for representatives from all levels of education and from the business community who would make decisions along the way on:

  • How to create a path for those who do want to go to college.

  • How to prepare those who do not want a college education to attain marketable skills that will earn them a living wage.

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Tourism

Jan Schumacher felt tourism was recognized in the plan but that it was "given short-shift."

"Our potential for tourism is vastly unrecognized in this county," she said. "I would like to see (us) build a compelling place, not just for residents, but for visitors as well. We need to envision ourselves as a real destination. The potential is incredible and a real economic driver," Schumacher added, and then observed the following:

  • We're ideally located.

  • We have great historic sites.

  • Tourism brings in sales tax.

In summary:

Both Harrington and development partnership director Joel Smiley emphasized that this is a "living document" that would change as it is worked out now and in the future according to needs and opportunities.

Bill Martin, who serves as the other county board representative to the partnership, thanked everyone for their input.

Concerning ag terminology he said, "I think, Chuck, you presented your case very well." He said he would take the recommendations back to the partnership board.

Harrington also encouraged board members to submit any requests written as specifically and succinctly as possible for the partnership to review.

In his summary Harrington said:

  • I'm glad you are passionate about the things that you are, because that is really what it (the plan) is intended to capture.

  • This kind of input and discussion is really critical. There are opportunities, there are some real issues here, that do need to be addressed. I strongly appreciate that.

  • My company doesn't like writing plans that a community finds to be meaningless or ends up on a shelf. Our success is whether something positive happens as a result of it. That's the important part of it. That's how we measure success.

  • He urged getting the plan completed and moving on to the tasks. In waiting, there could be opportunities missed.

  • The faster, collectively, we get there, the better off we're going to be.

The partnership retained Harrington for an additional five months to help get the plan into action.

A bit of history on the development of the master plan

The Lincoln & Logan County Development Partnership sought and gained grant funding to create a master plan.

Vandewalle & Associates of Madison, Wis., specializes in helping geographic areas such as Logan County refocus theirs economic strengths to compete in a global economy.

Last spring the development partnership invited community participation to launch local research that would go into the plan. A broad cross section of people from the community attended and were split into 10 focus groups.

Local elected officials, community businesses and economic development professionals addressed such matters as manufacturing, agriculture, high-tech industry, broadband, health care, elementary education, high school education and higher education.

The Vandewalle team made visits to the community and also gathered U.S. and state government statistical data.

During the process, the team used its knowledge of other communities, analysis of local data and responses from focus groups and personal meetings to identify some of the challenges, and then formulated initiatives that might move our communities forward.

In September, Vandewalle planner Scott Harrington returned to present the drafted plan to the public.

The Logan County Board is the last of three entities to approve the plan. The city of Lincoln and the Lincoln/Logan County Chamber of Commerce approved the document in November.

[By JAN YOUNGQUIST]

Related links

Related past articles

Information to help you understand the who, what, how, when and why of Logan County’s economic growth planning

How the Logan County Comprehensive Plan was developed

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