Leaders and officials in Wisconsin’s rural communities must be creative and work together to turn around decades of decline and build sustainable local economies, experts said at a WisPolitics event held in La Crosse on Tuesday. The results of Wisconsin’s 2020 census show declining populations in many rural areas and a 4% decrease in the number of children in the state as Wisconsinites increasingly cluster near urban areas such as Madison or the Twin Cities suburbs. Meanwhile agriculture, long the backbone of the state’s rural economy, is declining as family farms are forced out of business and those who remain expand to survive.
But there is opportunity, speakers at the event held at Western Technical College said. Billions of dollars are set to flow into rural communities as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal COVID-19 relief bill passed earlier this year, and potentially through a $1 trillion infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate....
Ken Notes: There is a lot of potential but we need to be creative and remember what we do best. Factory farms are replacing our family operations, we have been slow to embrace organics and farm to table, our grads are leaving the state not to mention the rural communities they came from. We are only scratching the surface of apprenticeship and school to work options. We do not have any real rural entrepreneurial programs or rural co-working space or mentorship programs. We believe houses can not be modular and must be 2400 sq feet. There are few shared community amenities and no arts, theatre, or gathering spaces. Our state parks are full yet we are not building more. Finally we want to point fingers (not to mention throw money at) schools, broadband, health care and other things that require density not money to fix. If our rural communities worked together we could solve much of the problem.
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- - Volume: 9 - WEEK: 38 Date: 9/16/2021 7:31:30 AM -