2005 Rural Partners Forum
Remarks by Anita Brown-Graham
Good morning and welcome to this first session of the second day of what I consider to be much more of a fellowship than a forum. If I seem a little disoriented, forgive me. I recently got back, in fact in less than 48 hours, from a trip to South Africa, and I have to say as I sat yesterday in the audience, listening to Billy Ray talk about the outcomes and learnings from the forum, it struck me how similar the challenges are for this global community. He could well have been talking about the differences between urban provinces and rural provinces in South Africa. He could well, as he talked about the challenges facing small towns, have been talking about the differences between cities and between townships, and so, recognizing how similar the challenges are but also recognizing the power of the people behind the need for change.
I want to spend some time setting up context for this morningıs session, introducing you to our two very esteemed panelists, and perhaps motivating you from the very beginning of this day and this session to emerge from here feeling that much more prepared, oriented, committed, capable of going back to your communities and making the changes necessary. This session is a daunting one. The title is ³New Perspectives; Fresh Approaches,² which means that our challenge is to present to you today something that is new, innovative, something that allows you to feel as though your orientation to these issues, these very common issues that we spoke of, is different. And so, let me just start off by introducing the people who will be sharing with you this morning. Iım really pleased to introduce to some of you, Iım sure others of you know her, Nancy Stark, who serves as the director of the Rural Governments Initiative, a research and best practices program of the Rural Policy Research Institute. This institute seeks to understand how rural people and institutions make decisions about their collective well-being. By focusing on how decisions are made and who has a voice, the institute identifies systems that build communities. Nancy has a lot of experience with small towns. Before her current position, she directed Community and Economic Development at the National Center for Small Communities for more than 20 years. There she led practical research, wrote technical and how-to guide books, and provided technical assistance to small town leaders and rural development practitioners. Our second panelist is probably no stranger to most people in the room. He is our own Rick Carlisle, managing partner at Dogwood Equity, which serves as the general partner and manager of the North Carolina Economic Opportunities Fund. The Fund invests in high growth companies located outside the major urban areas of the state. As most of us know, Rick served as the Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Commerce from 1998 to 2001. As secretary, Rick was responsible for making rural development a priority for the Department of Commerce. He was instrumental in the creation of the Rural Prosperity Task Force, worked to revamp the stateıs industrial recruitment programs and created new entrepreneurial development initiatives. In keeping with the saying, ³Good people come from good places,² Rick is a former Vice President of the Rural Center.
Before we hear from the panelists, Iıd like to share a couple of thoughts with you as you think about the challenges facing small towns and the opportunities to respond. As you gleaned from yesterdayıs presentation by Billy Ray, there really are three primary issues confronting us as people who want to see the transformation of small town economies in North Carolina. The first is the importance of a commitment or a political, with a little p, will to change. When we think about those communities that flourish and compare them to those communities that flounder, the almost immediate recognition is one that in those communities that flourish, there are people and institutions who believe that they have the capacity to manage economic changes. It doesnıt mean that these are communities without profound losses. We heard Jeff Morse talk yesterday about the losses of industry in Valdese, but we also heard Mayor Don Hill talk about despite those losses going forward and creating a new vision for Snow Hill. Ultimately, in this group, I probably donıt need to do much preaching about commitment to change, but I will tell you that in my work at the School of Government as I go into communities, almost immediately you can tell the difference between those communities where people say, ³Yes, we can create a common understanding of where we are and we can also create a unifying vision of where we want to be. In those communities where people say, as one woman said to me in the midst of a community visioning strategy, ³This community is the same place as it was 20 years ago and it ainıt gonna be no different 20 years from now.² It made for a long day, but we made it through it. Itıs great to have the commitment to change but we also understand the profound implications of having a capacity in place to implement the visions and so as I listened yesterday to people talking about the demographics of small towns in North Carolina, about the human capital issues and concerns, the skills mismatch that sometimes exists between those skills that people have and those skills that are necessary for jobs in the new economy. And as I listened to the panelists yesterday afternoon talk about the importance of infrastructure, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure, I became that much more confident that what Nancy is going to talk to you about this morning, that is governance, community decision making, is in fact a new and fresh way to think about how we amass and leverage the resources in our community, the collective resources in our community, those that extend way beyond government, in a way that allows us to move forward. Ultimately, we donıt have any choice but to do so, so Iım really appreciative of the remarks that Nancy will make to you this morning. Finally, youıve got commitment, youıve got capacity, but all of us sitting in this room know that none of that makes a difference if you donıt have some money. And so the idea of focusing on capital, both in terms of how you leverage or access capital, to do the kind of work that Nancy is going to talk to you about and how you access capital to do the more traditional things that absolutely have to be done as a precursor to economic development is what weıll hear from Rick Carlisle on. And ultimately my sense is that as you leave this room, you will be that much more committed, that much more capable and youıll know how to get the money which is an important thing. And if you canıt figure that out, you can always talk to Tom Lambeth, because he is the money guy. Finally, Rick is going to spend a little time talking to us about a compact. It was not coincidental, I donıt think, that Jeff Morse talked a little bit about the struggles of local governments in finding the resources necessary to meet federal and state mandates. Indeed, as I woke up this morning and looked at the newspaper, the front page story many of you may have seen, is a story from my own home state of Louisiana, a state that struggled in its good times to pay its bills and certainly is now devastated in ways that are beyond our comprehension. And so the question of how a state like that finds $3.7 billion to support the recovery from hurricane Katrina demonstrates to us the importance of reexamining the social compact between the federal government and the state government and certainly local governments. And so Rick, youıve got a huge challenge ahead of you in helping us to think in new ways about the social compact, but I guarantee you it is a challenge that everyone in this audience is looking forward to. Without further ado, Iıd like to introduce you to Nancy, who is going to talk to you for about 20 minutes. Rick is going to use the remaining amount of time. I want to assure you that we did not plan to allow you to ask questions, so therefore itıs not a failing of the moderator to get them to finish on time so that you can ask your questions. We actually just figured that there would not be enough time, given the substance that they need to cover with you today. They will, however, Nancy and Rick and certainly myself, be here during the 15 minute break that we will take between presentations this morning and I absolutely encourage you to approach us at the podium with any questions that you may have. Thank you.
