Shrinking small-town Iowa economies beg question: Should we care?

Barber Craig Kanneberg, in business 40 years.

The feel of the people is different, there's a different character. Peoople take more time for people. You're more at to know your neighbor two houses down, not just your neighbor next door.

It's not a popular thing to say here in Olin. People like to say that if the school goes away, the town will die. I think the town's died, and now the school's going away.

Won't affect business a lot.

A lot of it (clientele) is older, those who've been out of high school.

Today business is different. My shop is in my home. It's helped minimize buziness expenses and it's chanbed my business. I was on Main Street and now I'm on the outskirs of town. People have to drive here. Main Street's changed totally. When I first moved to town, you couldn't find a place to park on Main Street.

When I moved here , there were two groceries, at least two restaurants, a car dealership, a legion, and the tavern. People would come to town and fill it up.

A lot of it is older. Th

University of Iowa Prof of Sociology Kevin Licht

Social capital refers to the social ties in the community of friendship networks and public participation in civic events, as wlel as church memberships.

There is a question about whether social capital is in decline nthroughout the country. People today tend to have fewer friends, fewer invitations over to the neighbor's house.

You know a lot of people. A lot of peopI think it's a valuable thing. Most of my family is from rural backgrouns that make Atlantic, Iowa, look like Manhattan.

I agree that small towns foster more sense of opportunity and possibility.

People who grow up in small towns are not under any illusion that they live in the center of the plante. You can instill a desire to learn about the world that is harder to learn in urban environments.

It's very hard in towns that size to produce big class differences between people. It's culturally affronting to do so.

You can't live in a segregated gated community in a small town. Yet such communites hide incredibly desperate levels of poverty because nobody displays economic status very much.

Rural towns have been dissapearing for a long time. I drove my 95-year-old grandfather all over the county, and he pointed out many different places where towns had been.

In more recent years it's gotten worse, but it is part of a long-term shift. On a global level, more of the world's population now lies in cities than in small communites.

I'm not really sure most Midwestern politicans care about this enough to stop it.

The demise of local banking has really hurt small towns, where local banks get bought up by reasonal and local consortiums.

Where cretive people congregate is in places that are culturally interesting. If low living costs and low taxes create movement, Mississippi would look like Silicon Valley. It doesn't

There was once a school of thought that once we had a globalized economy linked by the Internet, we would see deurbanization. Things just have not worked out that way.

There's some critical synergies that come from the ability to share the same space with other people who are creative and educated that people don't get through video conferencing or Internet communicaton.

Jim Johnson, newspaper publisher.

Like rural co-ops got electricity to the small towns, and you've now got the need for broadbant connections. People can actually work from their if their corporate headquarters are in Chicago, Omaha, whever. You can work in Olin.

In a free market society, communities need to support themselve.s The problems is the jobs move to population centers, and people in the towns still have to pay taxes to support everything.

I see that eventually they'll be moved back. People want simpler lives, as long as they can live in that communities that meet their basic needs.

You need a good bank, a good grocery store, a good newspaper and a good high school. Iowa is consolidating a lot of high schools. When you take one of those pilalars away, it really hurts the community.

Mayor Greg Gerdes,

Losing young people

We keep trying to get families to come to Olin, but they're looking at, are we going to lose our grade school? Are we going to lose our high school? It's kind of a tumble effect.

I own a business downtown.It's hard to get businesses in the storefront. Restaurants - everybody's struggling because everybody's gone during the day, and at

mayor and owned Greg's Pit Stop for 16 years.

It's definitely going to affect the town. The school board is separate from the city and has not been upfront for a long time about the school.

If they'd been more upfront in the beginning maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we are now.

It seems like the small towns are kind of going by the wayside. They live here and they work other places. It's become hard to support.

We have all the amenities of the big cities, but it's in a smaller portion.

I surrive, but it's not like it used to be. I've had the thing for 16 years, and it's not like it used to be. I think we're doing better than wyoming. they're about the same size as us, and they don't have as many businesses.

We're holding our own, but it's a struggle.

The small town houses are a little cheaper and you consider a lot of people would rather be living in a small town. They feel safe. It's less expensive.

If you look at Cedar Rapids, every day, there's something going on.

DNR made us put a new sewer lagoon in which was $2.2 million.

That was a big expense for us and will be a big expense for the next 15 years until we goet it paid off. It's got to be sewer rates, water rates or taxes.

Peter Orazem, ISU labor economist.

If people are making choices on their own in general economists are predisposed to support the choices people make.

We gave away 160 acres at one time and when we ran out of land to gibve away, that's when the rural population began to decline as a fraction of the total.

Increase in the productivity of agriculture. Less people preoduce more food, and in general that's a good thing. All of the industrial economies have seena reduction in the fraction of the work force in agriculture, and generally a population shift from rural to urban. It's not so much jobs in a rural community, but access to a urban labor market.

Jobs pay more in urban centers, but the cost of living is lower in rural towns.

Iowa's rural communities are doing better than those in Nebraska. They hae counties that supporess information on poulation trends. The rural towns in Iowa have managed to survive better than those in Nebraska because mof of them are in easy proximity to urban centers, Within 45 minutes of a town of 20,000.

Roger Kistler, chair, economic development committee of Olin, and substitute science teacher at Olin HS.

It's remained at 700 since 920.

Population is not the reason it's died over theyears.

Was founded in 1835 as Walnut Fork. Oldest settlement in Jones County.

In 1892, the West side of the main street burned down. The whole area was cleared and rebuilt, and there was very little insurance ivnolved.

The key to what's happening now is to ask, "why they had the money."

Olin printed their own National Currency in 1863. One of the currencies was the Wapsipinicon Land Co.

Olin, Wyoming and Anamosa had banks that issued their own money. It's encouraged trade in the towns and could be used throughout the US>

Only 90 percent would be issued. Banks couldn't fail.

This was true from the civil war through 1913 (?)

That's why so many businesses have failed in the small town. Currency has inflated beyond our capacity to produce.

They could keep a clothign store, shoe store, grocery store and lumber yard open.

We've got to work with the Federal Reserve Currency.

If we changed the currency, the towns would spring back up.

We're working with what we've got, but it's slowly moving away.

Several barbers and stylists, including the Buzz Shack, Lisa's Hair

four to fivebarbers and hairstylists. The reason there's prices have kept up with inflation.

If gaosline had kept up with inflation since 1958, we'd be paying $12.79 per gallon.

The town had four full-service gas stations when they were selling it at 26 cents per gallon.

The reason we don't have business in town is that it's cheap, relative to 1958, to drive to shop in Cedar Rapids.

Barbers kept pace with inflation. Gas didn't.

Corn hasn't kept up. Farmers must have more acres.

When you're in a small town, you don't learn that you can't do something.

If you're in a slarge town, there are things you don't even try to do because you know you cnan't do it. You don't even thing about being on the football team, because you know you won't be picked. In a small town, if you even go out for football, you're going to be on the team.

The adults here don't set out to be leaders.

It brings out the potential in people who otherwise don't know they can't do something like that.

We had an Internatioal Harvester and Minneapolis Moline dealership.

We had a GM dealership.

Kim Bixler's Buzz Shack recently added a consignment shop.

Chiropractor's building abaondned, the economic development comission decided to clean it up and put it back in service.

OLIN ED Commission.

Dec. 11, 2010, opened the Spear Buidling Massage therapist comes in by appointment. They rent it on a daily basis. You get it every Monday or Tuesday, rent is $20 day. The first year we forgive the rent, the second year you pay half, the third year you pay full rent.

They wer eprosperous rigyht up through the 1950s. It wasn't until the 0s that we took a hit.

Taylor MOtors Chevrolet-GM wa salso donated to the city.

Something Else consignment shop opened up.

Cavey has a vacant restaurant, 319-521-3213.

Greg's Pit Stop opwner is the mayor.

We had two theaters where American Legion is now located.

Two churches for sale - Eventually it's going to fall into disrepair if somebody doesn't buy 'em.

Olin Consolidated Independent Schools is entering a 28-E agreement subcontracting grades 7-12 to Anamosa.

There were 23 in the 2011 graduating class.

35 in high school now, and four are foreign exchange students. Class size is 8.

2004 the superintendent announced the shcool was going to close and it spurred a rash of school switching under open enrollments.

This is the firs tyear that the upstairs is empty.

For half day, the students in high school are going to Anamosa.

Since 1952, we were able to maintain a school with no more students. The numbers are the same.

in the 70s we had 40-45 students in a class.

Our currnecy has inflated beyond our capacity to produce.

Nathan Sawyer, part-time custodian, and college students.

I usually do things in Cedar Rapids before I come home. I don't mind. I like living in a small town. That's one reason I transferred from the University of IOwa to Mount Mercy.

River Valley Co-op closed the old Purina Foods plant. The biggest employer in town was the school.

Purina sold to Land o'Lakes and River Valley leased form Land o'Lakes.

River Valey built a factory in Sunbury (sp?) and closed here around the first of the year.

Mayve a half-dozen people worked there once.

Weencourage the one or two-person operation. They're more likely to survive and bring jobs.

We're putting together a tractor pulling track.

Olin has its own ambulance service.

Frisbee golf course.

Olin Family Resource Center formed a s a nonprofit 15 years ago.

Donated cabin in park.

Erin La Barge, owner, Old Town Eats.

Wev'e got a unique thing here with the barbecue and smmoked meats. We think Olin is a nice size town. It's quiet.

People will drive for good footd. That's the truth Jason is very talented. He's

38 is a good thing. THe highway helps. You're not going out of your way and Olin is a nice town. I've got some rental property here. We're really happy here. We've been quite a bit busier than I thought we would be.

It's not too god for the town, (hiogh school closing) but I can understand why.

Greg, the mayor, suggested I call Al, who owned the building. He said, "why don't you ust call Al?

It's cozy and it's comfortable.

Jason Smith, cook, Old Town Eats. former chef at Vino's and opened Biaggi's.

80 percent take-out.

There's not a lot of peeople in town but there are a lot of people who drive through it.

This is just unique enough I hope that I can get the Sunday diners, the bikers coming through.

I'm doing full-smoke smoked meat loaf stuffed with chedder cheese

I had an 89-year-old woman who came in here because we had fresh bacon. There's some positives to a small town mentality.

There's not a lot of money in this small town to be made. The big corporations want to come in, but I'm doing stuff Pizza Ranch won't do.

Because there's no businesses in town, you won't get anybody coming from whatever factory.

Learned about it from Gretg at the Pit Stop. He's the mayor. I try to keep prices low because I don't want to be known as the "way too high" restaurant.

We were building it oursevles for the last three months.

Menup printed out on paper and taped to the wall.

Australian exchange student drops by.

Other restaurants; Selma's Kitchen, Kum 'n Go, a closed pizza shop.