Developing Rural Industry

I've heard Jack speak, read his book "Boomtown USA: The 7 1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns" and followed his blog for several years now. It's nice to see an advocate for small towns.

Press Release

Jack Schultz, founder and CEO of Agracel, Inc., a company specializing in rural industrial development, was recently invited to speak at the National Lieutenant Governors Association's Winter Meeting in Washington D.C. on March 13, 2008. The session is entitled "Making Rural Areas Competitive and Viable". Mr. Schultz' message of small town success stems from his extensive research that led to the publishing of his book, Boomtown USA: The 7 ½ Keys to Big Success in Small Towns. Since publishing the book, Jack has been invited to speak in over 300 communities across the U.S. in 44 states. The NLGA Winter Meeting will include nearly 100 guests, including lieutenant governors, staff and lobbyists.

This invitation comes on the heels of a keynote address Mr. Schultz conducted for the State Agriculture and Rural Leaders (SARL) Summit held in St. Louis on January 19, 2008. Members of SARL represent the leadership of state House and Senate legislative committees that oversee agriculture and rural development. Jack's message offered examples of community successes, and encouraged those present to continue economic development efforts in their home state. Invited guests included agriculture and rural development leaders from 48 states, 5 Canadian Provinces and 3 US territories.

For more information about Jack Schultz, Agracel and Boomtown USA, visit www.agracel.com and www.boomtowninstitute.com, or call 217.342.4443.

We, The Power

Well, the snow is gone mostly and everyone is getting out and about. Today was a big day—the Electric Co-op Annual Meeting was held at the new high school. I’ve never been to an Annual meeting of a co-op. In fact, I didn’t know that much about co-op’s until I moved to more rural places.

A co-op is a member owned organization. Yes, we the people who use and pay for the electricity actually own the company. What a concept. So of course we are interested in what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and how much money they will be using.

There were around 750 of us—509 members and some guests. We listened to the talented teen singers, took a tour of the biomass boiler that is now saving the school $100,000 a year in heating costs, ate great rolls provided by a local baker and filled the gym to find out how we’re doing.

For a rural place, we are quite progressive. Take the biomass boiler for example. The boiler uses scrap wood that comes from cleaning the forest. The same wood that becomes a huge fuel issue when the forest catches on fire. Dead trees, buggy trees and the like are chipped and hauled to the school where they become feed for the boiler. The fire burns so hot that it leaves minimal ash and little particulate matter so with filtering it is a very a clean burn.

The total project cost was around $500,000 so with a $240,000 ‘Fuels to Schools’ grant the school saved a big chunk of change. One passionate bystander let us know that even with the use of 45 tons of fuel a year, the school would only be keeping 15-20 acres clean. So, we need more schools in the mountains to get their biomass generator projects going…there’s still grant money I’ve been told.

The rest of the meeting was also interesting. We are aggressively pursuing alternative energy sources in our mountains. The Co-op just put up the first net-metering project for someone who built a solar panel array on his house. Now he’s selling electricity back to the company. Wow. The last small town where we even talked about net metering we were darn near run out of town. “We will never put electricity back on the wire!” they said, somewhat heatedly.

It’s nice to live in a place that is not only beautiful, but smart too.

Ready Set Go!

Urban centers cannot compete with the sanity of small town living. Of course there are some odd, shall we say unique, life styles. For instance, our valley is a tourism magnet...in the summer. So in the winter we have many businesses that simply close and the owners head south. ( I assume they are running some warm weather shop for the other 6 months.)
The locals hunker down until the snow melts and then the civic festivities begin. Rounds and rounds of meetings, luncheons, fund-raisers, events...everything it takes a metropolis 12 months to accomplish we will achieve between now and when winter arrives again. Whew, off to take my vitamins.
Here's an article I found on a business fair for home-based businesses. What a great idea. I think this would be a wonderful way for small towns to celebrate this sector of their businesses.

Bearspaw small biz’s to strut their stuff