Leaders at the Kansas Center for Community Economic Development practice what they preach.

What they preach is a message of cooperation to small, struggling Kansas communities. The center’s economic development professionals will tell a room of downtrodden rural residents that the best hope for their community’s survival is working with the small town next door. That isn’t easy for many rural residents who tend to think of that nearby town as a rival  either on the high school football field or in an informal competition of community pride.

The center is a joint project between Kansas University’s Policy Research Institute and Kansas State University’s Kansas Center for Rural Initiatives. Charles Krider, a professor and the KU center’s project director, said it served as a good example of what’s possible.

“We tell communities that if Jayhawks and Wildcats can work together, so can they,” Krider said. “It’s been a real good demonstration that it is possible for rivals to work together to their mutual advantage.”

Now in its 15th year of operation, the center in late July received a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce that will help ensure the organization is around for a 16th year.

The center is an excellent way for the state’s two largest universities to help Kansas communities with real-life problems, Krider said.

“We want communities to know there are people at these universities who they can call,” he said.

Many challenges

And the center expects to be called upon as rural Kansas faces a host of economic challenges.

“The fundamental problem for the rural areas is production agriculture is not a growing source of employment anymore,” Krider said. “Rural communities have to understand that. Waiting for the price of wheat to go up to fix your problems is not a strategy. It is just dreaming.”

The changes in agriculture production have wide-reaching effects in many communities.

“Our rural areas are losing population and our small communities are becoming older and older,” said Carol Gould, co-director of the center and a director of the Kansas Center for Rural Initiatives. “That brings with it a whole set of challenges.

“What we most often hear from communities is that they need help keeping their businesses open and in creating jobs. They want to keep their young people, but young people won’t stay if they don’t have a job.”

Luke Middleton, a research economist for KU’s Policy Research Institute and one of the main researchers for the center, said many Kansas communities are fighting a long-term battle.

“The small, small rural communities face what seem to them to be almost insurmountable odds,” Middleton said. “There are counties out there that have been losing population since 1910. That’s a bleak outlook, and honestly there are no easy answers.”

Fighting back

But there are communities searching for solutions. Genna Hurd, co-director of the center and a staff member with KU’s Policy Research Institute, said many communities had taken to the idea of working together and creating “regional economies.” Sometimes that means sharing a city administrator or the cost of new road-maintenance equipment. It also can mean banding together for economic development projects, such as regional industrial parks.

The center, though, doesn’t always recommend that smaller communities focus on traditional economic development.

“We talk a lot about community development instead of economic development,” Middleton said. “That means making it an attractive place to live. If you can do that, some jobs will follow.”

As communities grow they are able to add basic services, such as grocery stores and gas stations, and the jobs needed to run the services, center officials said.

Middleton said making a community more livable sometimes seems like a less daunting task for residents to tackle.

“Quality of life may be something they have more direct control over than whether a Cessna plant comes to town or not,” Middleton said.

Because it is difficult for small communities to lure large employers, center officials tell communities to not put all their efforts into wooing new businesses.

“Economic development used to mean attracting a small plant into town,” Gould said. “That’s great, but it is really hard to do. What’s more important is maintaining the businesses that are there and helping them grow.

“But people have to realize that in small towns success is growing one job at a time. You don’t necessarily shoot to develop 30 or 40 jobs at a time.”

There are some signs of success, Gould said. She said 10 years ago many people were making dire predictions about the future of rural Kansas. Several experts were projecting that all but a handful of the state’s 105 counties would experience a decline in population.

The 2000 census, however, showed half of the counties either grew or maintained their population levels, Gould said.

“The predictions haven’t come true,” Gould said. “That’s not to say there is prosperity everywhere, but I think the really good news is that there are quite a few communities that have learned about trying to make a difference and not just letting it happen to them.”

The future

The news has center leaders generally upbeat about the future of rural Kansas.

“I’m optimistic,” Hurd said. “The communities that are taking steps right now and thinking about their futures will survive. They’ll still be around years from now.”

But Krider said state government could do more to help. He said the state had done an inadequate job in investing in ways to bring broadband Internet access to rural areas. That technology would allow businesses that don’t rely on people to physically walk through their doors to locate in rural Kansas, he said.

He also said rural issues need more attention from the next governor.

“The state needs an overall rural development strategy,” Krider said. “I hope whoever is the next governor will take that issue very seriously.”

Gould said urban residents of the state also need to better understand what is at stake if rural Kansas suffers through a major economic decline. She said that if large geographical areas of the state decline, it would likely affect the urban areas as well.

“The vision of Kansas without rural communities would be pretty bleak,” Gould said. “People in urban areas have to realize their success is tied to the success of our rural areas. They (urban areas) can’t be islands unto themselves.”

How to contact

For more information about the Kansas Center for Community Economic Development, call:

 The Policy Research Institute at 864-3701

 The Kansas Center for Rural Initiatives at (785) 532-6868

 Click on www.ku.edu/pri/kcced