Transcript
4-27-2013, Warren, MN
Morning Civic Session
Cam: We finally have a spring day so it is kind of a bummer to be inside but we’ll try to make it
as enjoyable as we can. I want like to thank especially the UND Center for Community
Engagement. They are the major player and partner in this with the city of Warren as host. I was
a participant last year in the Buffalo, ND event which was a heck of a lot of fun. Those North
Dakotan’s know how to party. [laughter] They had a heck of a turn out. Buffalo, I just asked
Liane here what the population was and I think she said 188.
Liane: We had a new baby, twins, its 190.
Cam: I believe they had over 200 people turn out for the event and so it was a good learning
experience and a lot of fun. The purpose for this meeting today is to basically try to help
communities and our friends and students that have come here from universities to learn how to,
well learn from each other and look at different ways that we can address community issues that
affect all of us. This isn’t just a Warren thing, this is an area thing and we are hoping that we
have more folks in the rural area of MN come and ND as well for that matter today. I guess I
better introduce myself, my name is Cam Fanfulik. I’m the director at the NW regional
development commission in Warren. We cover a 7 county area and our main areas of attention
are economic and community development. We have an aging program, an arts promotion
program, and we do hazard litigation planning and transportation planning. So we have a very
diverse planning organization and we’re very involved throughout the area. I want to introduce
our speakers today or our panelists today. We have with us on my left: Liane Stout. What I’m
going to do is read each person’s biography and then I’m going to make a few statements and
then these folks are going to talk about what’s happening in their communities. So Liane is a
USDA grant adviser, she’s from the city of Buffalo, ND. After 20 years in the accounting
industry in Missouri and California, Stout retired and moved back to her hometown of Buffalo.
Since her return, she’s become active in the community and serves as the coordinator for the
historic preservation commission. As a USDA grant adviser, treasurer of the Buffalo cemetery
association and event coordinator for the 1916 Buffalo High School capital campaign which is
moving along as I understand. She has a passion for sustaining rural communities, so we’re glad
to have you here.
Liane: Thank you
Cam: Next on our list is Chris May. Chris is a colleague of mine who works for the clean energy
resource teams and he lives in Waubun, MN. He graduated with an associate’s degree in
business from Santa Ana Community College in Santa Ana, CA. He’s been with the clean
energy resource team for the last nine years and he also owns the New Horizon Resort in White
Earth Lake. Chris is very active with the green steps cities program, which you probably already
heard of already, I believe you also have a display up on that as well today. So if you happen to
catch that please look and take note. Next on my left is Nikki Zinke who is the publisher of the
Independent Newspaper in Fingal, ND. Zinke is a publisher of the Independent, a free
distribution community newspaper that she launched in the fall of 2011; aimed at filling
communication gaps that can isolate people in one town from those in neighboring communities.
I think we all have some experience with that. Zinke has been a working publisher, editor and
reporter for more than 20 years at the local, state and national level. And although she has lived
in many different, mostly urban places in her career, she currently resides in Fingal which is a
population that looks like it’s less than what Warren is. [laughter] And she said she’s grown to
love the richness of small town life. So Nikki we are happy to have you here.
Nikki: Thank you
Cam: So thank you. And another colleague of mine Mike Moore who is a community and
economic development director in Thief River Falls. Mike is a, let’s see, you’re a well-rounded
individual, with lots of interests and goodness you just have a lot of things going. Mike lives at
Maple Lake, on the shores of Maple Lake, at Metra, MN and he’s lived here in the area since
1975. He’s a native of Grafton; he studied at the University of North Dakota and has a masters of
public affairs from the Humphrey Institute at the U of M. His professional career has included
education, community and economic development and publishing. Mike is the publisher of the
Kittson County enterprise newspaper in Hallock and the 13 towns in Fosten, MN. He’s also been
actively involved in the Polk country fair for many many years and currently serves on several
regional boards. And Mike also used to work at the NW Regional Development Commission so
I have a little tie there with him. So I just wanted to make a few comments about what we would
like to try to get out of this panel session today. We’re going to be talking about civil
sustainability and models of smart government and learning what works in the various towns that
these folks are from. So there’s lots of talk about sustainability, lots of talk about smart
government. Sustainability in the economic development world is considered one of the, well
when we are talking about what the panel break outs are today we’ve got economic,
environmental and civic sustainability. They’re really considered to be the triple bottom line of
economic development. I would argue that there is a forth and our speaker this morning argued
that education would be the forth, so maybe I’ll add a fifth leg for the stool and that’s health and
happiness. Those are getting to be bigger and bigger things that people are looking at for living
in their communities. They don’t want to live in a community where they don’t have a place to
walk, where they can’t get to places that they need to go. So there’s a variety of things that play
into this. What I call these, are destiny drivers. If you are sustainable it usually means you are a
pretty progressive community and you are looking to the future all the time. The way I define
sustainability is making use of resources without damaging those resources for the use by future
generations. So we’ll be talking about that. The other thing, I guess is we want to chat a little bit
about is civic leadership, how do we get people involved? What works? I would argue that civic
leadership is anybody that puts their time and effort and skills and knowledge to working
towards something to improve the community. That’s how I look at it. Pretty basic, but it works
for me. So I’m going to turn it over to these folks. We’ll give you about seven minutes and then
we’re going to cut you off because we want to have as many questions from the audience as we
can. So Liane why don’t you take it away and we’ll move from there.
Liane: Okay.
Cam: Thank you.
Liane: Well, as I was introduced, I am Liane Stout from Buffalo, ND and I am delighted to be
here to be part of the UND community connect forum. I became involved with the forum when it
had its second annual in Rugby, ND in 2009. And really part of that is because Lana Rakow is
my sister and she forced me to do it. [laughter] And so I’ve been involved ever since that point
up to the realization of having the forum being held in Buffalo last year. And that was a huge
event for us in Buffalo. And I see familiar faces today and I thank you for being in Buffalo last
year and I am glad to see you here today. Living in a small rural community like Buffalo, has its
challenges but obviously in my case it was a choice to be part of that challenge. I have lived in
Northern California, I’ve lived in Kansas City, Chicago area, and after 40 years to come back to
a community of less than 200 people was indeed a step back for a while. When you are used to 6
lanes of traffic, more people on your street than you even have in the whole town, it takes a little
while to adjust. And just having retired, I decided I was going to take my time and figure out
where I wanted to invest my precious volunteer time. Well it didn’t take long before neighbors
said gee we have an opening as treasurer on the cemetery board. Well gosh, the cemetery is
beautiful, it is one of the most beautiful ones in the state and someday I hope to be permanently
placed in that cemetery [laughter] and so I said yes, I said yes and that has been very rewarding, I
love numbers and being treasurer was just right up my alley. Well then eventually, Bill Marks,
who is from Buffalo and sitting right there said we need a coordinator on the historical
perseveration commission. And so ok, that sounded ok. Need to help preserve our historic
properties in Buffalo and write some grants, we have several buildings that are on the registrar of
historical places so I started writing some grants to bring money in to help us with these
improvements and then someone found out I could write a grant and then I was asked to do this
grant for the USDA for our grocery store. Now we’re a small town, we’re kind of 20 miles from
anywhere, we need to have a grocery store. And it took some local citizens saying we can’t let
our old store close, but it did and they said we’re going to start another one. So with 50 investors,
the old store closed and the next day the new one opened. But we also wrote a grant through our
job development authority in Buffalo for $70,000 and we matched monies and we now have a
grocery store that is beautiful. It has new equipment, new roof, and it’s been open for two years
and is still successful. We do have an exhibit down the hall and you can see some pictures of our
store and things we’re doing there. So after writing grants for our community, that’s what brings
the money in. But if you don’t have the people to help distribute that money and do the projects
that it takes because many of our grants include donated labor, not just dollars. The last grant we
had took about 5,000 man hours of donated labor. And in our small town, that’s a lot of people, a
lot of days. And what I’ve learned with my volunteering just in the past few years is that
everybody has a gift to offer their community. And you sometimes have to step back and look
and figure out what that gift is. And once you’ve learned that you also have to learn their little
idiosyncrasies like sure I’ll help you but I’m not going to a meeting. And you go oh ok, well, so
they don’t come to a meeting, but you can call them and say we’re meeting at 2 o’clock and
we’re going to clean up the school grounds, can you be there? And you’ll get 20 people to show
up and help you. And the other aspect of that is you just can’t put a sign up and say come and
meet, we’re a small town and we like each other and we meet and we pick up the phone and we
call them and say I’m going to make some bars can you help me make coffee and we’re going to
go work today. And they love that personal invitation to come and help and be a part of it. I just
had an experience a couple of weeks ago with a gentleman I went to school with and he’s quite a
few years younger, but we rode the same school bus and so we have a connection. And we were
talking about getting our annual shuffle off to Buffalo event planned and our workers are weary
and we’ve been doing this for a few years and they’re like do we have to do it this year? Let’s
not do it and all I did was go up to people and say what are you willing to do this year? Can you
still help with the car show? Sure. Can you get the daycare to make lunch? Sure. So you get
these people to say that but we needed some new blood. And this gentleman I was mentioning I
see him periodically, he is a successful business man and I said would you be willing to come to
our meeting next week and help with the shuffle? And he said I’d love to. This man has been in
our area his entire life but no one has stepped up and said can you come to a meeting and help us.
People wait to be invited to be part of what’s going on and I recommend you do that with people.
Everybody has a gift, you just have to know what it is and invite them to be part of what’s going
on. That’s how our small town can go forward and be sustainable, I believe. [Cam: thank you] I
think that’s all I’m going to say right now. Thank you. [clapping]
Cam: Thanks Liane. That’s good to know too that you have a vested interest in keeping that
cemetery in good shape. [laughter] Next, next I’d like to introduce Chris May, so Chris if you’d
like to talk about green step a little bit.
Chris: I certainly will.
Cam: What’s happening with you?
Chris: First of all I’ll give a little brief summary of how I got here. I was born and raised in Los
Angeles, CA for the first 20 years of my life. And then I ended up in northern MN. And many
people say wow, you make it straight from LA to northern MN and I don’t think anyone could
do it that way. Going straight from LA to Oftah just wouldn’t work. [laughter] So I took a 30
year apprenticeship in Nebraska to prepare myself for the land of Oftah. So I’m here now. I’ve
been here about 11 years and quite a bit of that time I’ve been involved with CERTS, and today
I’m here to talk about, among other things, our green steps cities program. Which is, I like in the
green steps cities program to raising your garden in your backyard, you can put all kinds of love
and care and work into your garden and come out with some great products that, will sustain you
through the winter time, or you can kind of neglect it and that you don’t get much out of your
garden, if anything. And green steps cities program is the same thing it is not a spectator sport. It
is designed and at its best strength when the community gets involved. In many cases your city,
your mayor, your city manager, your city council, they pretty much got their table full with
things to do. And so a program like this really needs the citizenry to get behind it and that’s
where we find the most effective use and once you get behind things, just like Leann mentioned
approaching someone and asking them to get involved. The city of Crookston has a program
called Crookston in motion they’ve had going for about two years. This year they are starting,
and if anyone is here from Crookston, I’m hoping that I don’t batch this up a little bit, correct
me, they’re starting a, I think, every two weeks they are having a block party. And this is going
to be in different block, in a different area of the community, every two weeks I believe it is. And
there’s going to be a quite a bit of variety of activities involved from dance classes to other kinds
of entertainment to information, farmers market types of situations, and it brings people together.
And maybe this person that you know, asked to speak, maybe somebody like that is going to be
there and they’ve got something to offer and then they get to meet other people and your
community comes together, your community gets to know each other. And then you start talking
about what you need to do in our community, and that’s what green steps program is kind of a
blueprint to, for you to follow, to improve and change some of the conditions in your city and
make your city much more healthier, much more people friendly and much more efficient. And
that’s a very brief summary of that. And that’s all I have for now.
Cam: Thanks Chris. And next we have Nikki Zinke. Thank you very much for being here today.
Nikki: Sure.
Cam: From Fingal.
Nikki: Yep.
Cam: Tell us what works in Fingal.
Nikki: Well, you know my name is actually Nikki Zinke but that’s okay.
Cam: Oh, I’m sorry.
Nikki: That’s fine.
Cam: I even checked on your pronunciation.
Nikki: No, it’s sort of like a tongue twister, Nikki Zinke, you kind of just want to say it but...
Cam: Sorry ‘bout that.
Nikki: No it’s okay. I live in Fingal, ND and we have less than 100 people living there. But I’m
not here today I don’t think to talk about or offer prescription, solutions for change, I think what
I want to talk about is some of my experience as a professional observer of communities. I have
been a newspaper reporter, an editor, a publisher for 20 years in MN, ND both at the community
level, the state level and the national level. And as that professional observer going into various
communities, different groups, different governments, I think you end up developing a
prospective that maybe all the other players don’t get. Here’s one of my observations that I think
is often true. I think that we have insiders versus outsiders. Whether it’s your church, whether we
are talking about your city hall, you’re talking about the state government, you’re talking about
the newspaper, to me often times you have the people who are in charge, the people who know,
the people who make things happen, versus everybody else. And everybody else, their story is
different than the stories of the people who are make things happen and vice versa. And so as a
reporter then, an editor, a story teller, one of the things you want to do is take a look at the
decisions, the activities, the events and then apply that to real life, how does that look on the
ground? And I have discovered through my many years that the prospective of the people telling
the stories are invariably different. And so I think that as we talk today I would like to challenge
everybody to think in that prospective. Are you the leader and do you think the things you think
are true? Are you sure they’re true? Are you sure that’s what the other people think are true?
Now let me give you an example. I moved to Fingal, like I said it’s a population less than 100,
and when I moved there nobody would talk to me. Okay, unlike Liane’s experience, I don’t have
family roots, okay. I was that weird person that bought a house in Fingal, with no family and
why is she driving a BMV and she must be a drug dealer. [laughter] I am not kidding.
Mike: Move away from you.
Nikki: Right.
Mike: You’re the outsider.
Nikki: Or perhaps I covered Indian country at that time and I was a traveling reporter so I would
be sent on assignment to various reservations in a three-four state region and so I would be gone
often and people couldn’t understand what my job was. But, more importantly, they didn’t try. I
was willing, I was willing to explain, to educate, to, I wanted to make friends, I’m outgoing. I
like people, that’s why I work in the business that I work in. But I didn’t find that my desire was
easily reciprocated. And so I thought well, I need to join some clubs, I like clubs, I like people.
But I couldn’t find out what the clubs were. Well the people who run the clubs, thinks everybody
knows what the clubs are and when they meet and what they do and I don’t know what that club
does, I don’t know anything about it, I don’t, how can I be in a club, I don’t even know what it
is. Thank you. I ended up resolving some of these issues, but they really stayed with me. And
I’m going to jump all the way forward now and I’ve been in the community for quite a long time
now and I did launch recently, about a year and a half ago, a new newspaper product that is
which I’ve named the Independent because I’m, I don’t work for anyone, it’s the people’s paper.
It’s a new concept perhaps and I’m not even here to promote that or talk about that either but the
point being that in my paper, what I try to do is connect the various communities that I have
discovered are really a large neighborhood that communities forget when they’re planning for
the future, they forget that people in Fingal, where I live do travel 20 miles away to the next
community. If they know about what’s going on and I think that often times community leaders
market their offerings, their activities, their events, whatever to the people that they know, right,
to the insiders. So if we all know each other, we’re going to talk about it to each other, but I’m
not going to call you ‘cuz I don’t know you about the thing that I’m doing. And um how does
one solve that problem, I’m attempting to solve it by this newspaper that I developed that’s also
available online and I guess address some of those community needs in a wide geographic area
that surpasses those of the existing newspapers I’m not attempting to push them out but you
know in my community it might be true in yours, if you’ve got a newspaper in one community,
20 miles away in another newspaper, an hour later another newspaper, pretty soon the newspaper
in this community is very heavily focused on that community, this media is focused on this
community and they’re not talking. And we need to, we need to have those communities talking
to one another, sharing resources, promoting the opportunities so that people like myself or any
of these other youngsters you are trying to keep in your town or have moved there so that they’re
aware of what the grand things you have are, so they know about your clubs. So they can come
to your church pancake benefit. So they can maybe be on the park zoning board, if they don’t
know how to do it then they’re not going to and after a while, people get frustrated and they say
forget it. So it’s a matter of that welcoming and I guess that’s what I want to talk about today. Or
answer questions or anything like that. So I’m not going to offer prescriptions per se I’m just
going to highlight challenges that I’ve identified.
Cam: Thanks Nikki.
Nikki: Yeah.
Cam: You know another thing pops to mind with a lot of our little towns in 8, 10, 15 miles apart
is a lot of them still do the rivalry thing.
Nikki: Mhmm. Precisely.
Cam: And there’s too much and they don’t recognize that what’s good for one is good for
everybody, it’s more I’ve got to get that because I don’t want them to get it type thing.
Nikki: Right.
Cam: So Mr. Moore. How ‘bout you?
Mike: Yeah. Let me expand on that a little bit. In 1986, I lived in Fertile, MN for 25 years. I
basically still call it home, even though I live in a town on Maple Lake that my mailing address
is Mentor but Fertile is where my, really really have the roots. My wife has been a speech
therapist there in the school system there for 37 years, all my kids graduated there. I own the
newspaper, I was mayor, I was city council mayor, so forth and so on, so I’ve been heavily
involved in this community. Years ago, I found that I was somewhat different and I found out
that basically the average American moves 90 miles away from their hometown. Grafton, ND
my hometown which I dearly love and I visit often and so forth is exactly 90 miles from Fertile.
[laughter] So here we are. Well in 1986, for a number of reasons, I helped create a program
called Polk County central cities. It included Fertile, it included the communities or Erskine and
Mentor, and Winger and if you’re from Winger, it’s Wing-er. Not Winger, Wing-er. And these
four towns all were somewhat depressed economically and the farm economy was really tough at
that time and stores were closing, people were leaving. And there was a new foundation in the
area then called the Initiation Fund, now it’s called the Northwest MN Foundation and they had
money and one of my best friends when I worked at the regional development commission
through a series of political events he decided to no longer work there, he needed a job and so we
were at a meeting and I sketched out this little thing with water involved with all four
communities, there was going to be a new dam built in Winger, Erskine has Lake Cameron and
Oak Lake, Mentor of course has Maple Lake and the gateway to Union and Sarah. And Fertile
was looking at creating and recreating a mill pond on the Sand Hill River and we were also in the
throes of creating what is called the Aggasiz Environmental Learning Center, which I’m the
founder and chair of that first chair of that. And so we had all of these water things that were
going to go on and looked like tourism and economic development could work from that. And so
we wrote the grant and we got the communities to come together and put together a memo of
agreement and Polk Country central cities was born. It lasted for a long time until basically I
left, resigned and I went to work for the city of Thief River Falls. I never anticipated working for
a large community and I had a number of people who were really upset with me leaving because
who is going to work with the small towns now and I wasn’t sure but you also have to take care
of yourself and a nice salary, paid vacation, retirement, all those kinds of things. I worked like
the devil to create one or two jobs in these towns a year and I go to Thief River Falls and they’re
creating hundreds of jobs this year, this year alone. Right now a company called Digi-Key and a
company called Artic Cat, that’s something you probably know more about than Digi-Key,
between those two there’s going to be a thousand new jobs in Thief River Falls this year, a
thousand new jobs. It’s amazing, well-paid jobs, not crap stuff, good stuff. You know, stuff you
could build a future on. One of the things when I talk about sustainability I talk about longevity, I
think that’s a real key to this. When I left, when I resigned from the Polk County Cities the
communities went back to the rivalry concepts and you know, nobody picked up the pace, the
city clerks and the mayors and the councils they said well I guess it’s over. And so it was over.
And nobody has replaced me. This morning before I came here, I was at a meeting, for the Polk
County Fair, I’ve been the secretary manager of the Polk County Fair for 27 years. The person
that I replaced held the position for 33 so I’ve got to go a little longer before I can retire
[laughter]. The Polk County Fair is in Fertile, a town of 900 people and I’m exaggerating a little
bit but last year we drew between forty-eight and fifty-two thousand people to the fair in Fertile,
okay. It’s certainly a big deal, it’s a big deal and this morning we had the superintendents, all of
the people that are in charge of the various classes, the flowers and the crafts and so forth and so
on. And a lot of those people don’t normally get together except for the fair. So we have a little
get together, serve coffee and rolls and we go through all the changes and so forth and we put
together what is called the premium list, it’s like the Bible for the fair. It allows the people that
are interested in entries to know what things are, when they’re due, advertisements regarding all
of the events of the fair and so on and so forth. We’re just in throes of putting that all together.
So this sustainability this will be the 114th Polk County Fair. We’re in Warren, MN. One of the
real keys to Warren, MN is the Marshall County Fair. I can list names that if you are from
Warren, well there’s no sense, but here’s an event that brings this community together every
year, its county wide. Marshall County is an elongated country it goes for about 70 miles to the
east. And so people way out in, Grygla and Gatzke and Newfolden and so forth, they don’t
normally come to Warren. Warren is sitting way down here kind of in the little pimple down here
[laughter] almost it’s not a part of the county for the most part in many respects but it’s a county
seat. And, but they come to the fair. The residents of Marshall County come to the Marshall
County Fair. It’s something that you just do. When I grew up in Grafton, I didn’t know anything
about country fairs. I realized later on that Park River had the country fair. But it wasn’t like the
fair that I’m used to with carnivals and the so forth and so on, it’s more of an agricultural kind of
an event. And since I’m not involved in Ag, I’m not involved in what when on there as a child,
4H and all those things. Anyways, sustainability is really the benchmark, you know, I mean most
of us sitting here are Scandinavian heritage or you’re close to somebody that has that heritage
and that really is the basis for the really the Red River valley. If you are a valley person it is an
interesting conundrum. Because the Red River Valley has what I call old money, there hasn’t
been, you know, an economic downturn of any significance for the Red River Valley ever really.
Even in the ‘30s there was certainly some issues there, but for the most part the Red River Valley
has existed, with floods, without floods and dust storms and droughts and so forth, but it’s
existed. And it’s because of that underlying conservative yet civic nature that has pulled these
people together that they continue to do so. When, am I supposed to end [laughter], um no, I
guess I’ll end. [laughter]
Cam: It’s fun to talk about history.
Nikki: I want to know what you were going to say. You were getting into that.
Cam: Well, there’s a question I wanted to ask before I open it up to the audience and I hope we
don’t have a lot of that Scandinavian heritage.
Mike: Yeah you big Czechoslovakians
Cam: about talking and stuff [laughter] like that
Audience #3: I’m German.
Cam: I’m Czech so we don’t ever get bound up in that not talking thing. [laughter]. I’d like to
ask you guys and gals how do you’re communities promote that engagement? You talked about
calling on the phone and personally going up and asking, but what do you do when you have a
problem that Nikki had when she originally moved to Fingal and had a hard time reaching out or
getting people to reach out to her. Can any of you comment on that at all?
Mike: Well personally I think it’s, even though I live in Fertile or in the area for, well, since
1975 when I first became a teacher there, I’m far from any kind of a native, I mean, even though
I know the history as well as anybody. I was with three other couples last night, and they were all
natives, they were all born and raised in Fertile and well, I’m not. And you know, there’s a
different comradely with those people than there is with me and my wife. My wife grew up in
Reynolds, Reynolds Thomson area, she’s a Thomson Tommie, you know, a UND grad, had great
marks until she met me and then it all went to hell [laughter] but anyway, there’s a sense Nikki
you’ll really never be from Fingal.
Nikki: Oh I’m sure.
Audience #3: You come here.
Mike: And I can imagine, you just scared the hell out of those people. I can just imagine.
Nikki: I imagine so.
Mike: Oh my goodness.
Cam: You don’t appear to be a shrinking violence. [laughter]
Audience #1: I am a very very recent transplant to the Red River Valley but one of the things
that I found really helpful I was empathizing with your story very much. [laughter] is that the
community I live in is Crookston and they have what is called the Crookston Leadership
Program which is very pointedly targeting new young professionals that are coming into the
community and equating us with what the resources are and what the key industries are, who
some of those people are, what are they working on, also gives us an opportunity and also
connected to each other and different counties and topics and it’s been really helpful in that so
I’m putting a little promotion in for the chamber.
Liane: Is it a state program that the chamber does? Or is it something Crookston came up with
on their own?
Audience #1: The chamber, I think they were doing it in the past and there’s been a change in
the chamber’s leadership so it’s not been happening for a few years. But it’s starting to become a
popular program again and it is self-funded. There is a registration fee for members, for chamber
members, its different for non-members but it goes for about I think it’s been 6, 8 weeks maybe.
But I mean, we meet every couple of weeks for like a morning out, like on Wednesday and we
go through a book on leadership and it’s been great to get to know those folks.
Cam: So was that of your own making to get to those meeting, did they call and invite you?
Audience #1: They recruited me.
Cam: They did, good.
Audience #1: Yes, because they knew that I was a new person in town.
Cam: Ok great.
Audience #2: I’m not from here either I’ve been here ten years and I will never be from here,
you’re right. Can anyone explain what the Scandinavian don’t talk don’t you know [laughter]
because I really I was thinking about the state fair and how many people you’ve brought to the
state fair and what is the state fair and what does it actually do, what does it highlight, what does
it show? It’s about people, it’s about community, it’s about what we do every day of their lives.
And there is, I am a professor and I deal with the deer in the headlights stare a lot but I’ve gotten
ways to get around that and get students to try to talk, what is it about the Scandinavian
prospective if that really exists that makes people not want to engage because I think that’s part
of the problem. If you can explain it to yourselves maybe if?
Liane: I think it is a defective gene [laughter] I don’t know it goes way back.
Audience #2: Okay so you have to then, we have to bring in, we have to cross pollinate.
Liane: Right I’m only half Scandinavian, my French and German comes out.
Nikki: It is definitely it is definitely a hindrance though in a really surreal manner I think for all
of the leaders in the pick your category, church, community, civic, it doesn’t matter, you know
clubs, you know in another life I was the editor and then publisher of the Valley City Times
Record which is a daily newspaper in eastern ND and I would bring in hires, you know
newspaper reporters and we did journalism, journalism in the sense of some type of controversial
stuff, so I didn’t want beginners, you know and I had a hard time keeping them in Valley City.
They would move there and all though Valley City is larger than where I am living or Buffalo or
what not, 6,000 some people with most of the general things, no 24-hour general express in you
know Wal-Mart but most of the things that one might wish to have in their life for a happy,
fulfilling life, those folks didn’t stick. And one would think that a newspaper reporter, whose
business it is to find information would be able to find the information for the clubs that I knew
existed that might meet their needs or the activities but that conversation wasn’t there and that’s
a problem if you’re in the newspaper business and the community is not sharing the information
with the newspaper and the newspaper has to dig like crazy to find, which is what I did, I would
personally as an employer sit down with my new hires and find out what their interests were and
make calls to everyone that I could think of and reach out to try to find the connections so that
these employees would perhaps meet people that they might have common interests with and
maybe they would stay and I hate to say tell you but 75% don’t last more than 15 months. And
you know.
Audience #2: What I notice is the cities that seem to or the small towns that seem to grow once
they reach a certain population then you start to get enough diversity and then diversity brings in
the capacity for change so there’s something about isolation, small town, almost provincial
maybe it’s not just Scandinavian maybe it’s just the fact that you’re a small town, I don’t know,
but I really am trying to understand how difficult is it to get to know people and then to also feel
like you are a part of the community there’s been many survey’s done that show people say yeah
lets go to have coffee but they’ll never invite you to their home. You know and it’s like a really,
if you’re not from here and you experience that you know what that feels like it’s really odd. So
I’m all ears.
Audience #3: In defense of small towns, I lived in Baltimore, I grew up in a small town in ND
and I lived in Baltimore for almost forty years and every one of my friends but one was from
somewhere else because the Baltimore society, they were, we weren’t them so it’s not just the
small town ND. One of the other things around here though is ND in particular is a very
egalitarian place, everybody is equal, nobody is better than anybody else and if you say anything
about yourself, you’re bragging. We grew up with that, you don’t talk about yourself ‘cuz you’re
bragging. And that’s something I’m sure that’s something that will change, maybe. But that is
one of the things that is behind that is you don’t brag about yourself, you don’t brag about your
kids, if you do there’s something wrong with you. That’s you know.
Audience #4: As you alluded to earlier, I’ve just relocated from Phoenix so and I grew up here
so I am from here, and got my college degree, relocated to a large metropolitan area and then
have returned. And what I have found really interesting is in the return, a lot of the things that
used to be bothersome to me when I first lived here, don’t exist. Some of the limitations and
barriers that I found living in small-town America has shifted somewhat and I think that’s a real
positive thing, I think the university has a large influence there being from Grand Forks, you see
that again for the diversity but coming from a large metro, I’ll have to say it’s as isolationist in a
big metropolitan area most people don’t know their neighbors. I lived in a neighborhood for
multiple years and they didn’t know who each other was and really didn’t care to know either. So
I’m not necessarily, and granted, I’m not Scandinavian too so I get that but I have more people
welcoming upon my return or questioning my return why would you leave to come back, but I
think the thing I find interesting is there has been a little bit of a shift, but I’m wondering if
perhaps culturally a lot of my Grand Forks friends that I went to high school and college with I
know electronically, I think media has had a role in that. I worked in media in Phoenix as well as
I did here and I think the pendulum shift has begun. I think it’s less isolationist than it used to be,
but I still agree with you as far as and I’ve been back a couple of weeks and granted people are
very nice but I have, other than looking for work and that’s one of the things I’m currently trying
to do and I went to a job fair and people were very nice but it was interesting I was at a job fair
and a lot of people wouldn’t even acknowledge me standing there. Well that’s that same feeling
that some of the guests that come to ND that aren’t from here who can say I grew up here so treat
me like an insider, still have some way to go.
Chris: Well, I’d like to go back to the comment over here that the chamber of commerce in
Crookston reached out to you. To me, that’s what, that’s one of the things a chamber of
commerce can do. And it’s that reaching out and then you get a chance to, they’ll tell you to go
or we’ve got this event or that event or connect you to what they did and that starts opening some
doors and that’s a big part of connecting and getting involved in the community and that’s a
chamber of commerce is a probably one of the key facilitators of something like that.
Participant #1: Something else I’d like to add based on some of the other discussions that we’ve
had is that my other side is Scandinavian very much so. [laughter] And I actually have a very
large sense of pride in that because I think being from MN and actually traveling the world quite
a bit in my testing the mountain phase I think that it’s the Scandinavian side that it actually
enforced my sense of civic responsibility and I think the MN nice and that kind of wait and see
attitude that a lot of rural communities have in this state and in the Midwest in general comes
from a very strong sense of we don’t want to offend you with some of our held beliefs but at the
same time if you are going to be here, what are you bringing to the community? So it’s a very
walk the talk kind of expectation and when I was growing up I really resented it [laughter] but
looking back on some of the values of some of the communities I served internationally as well
as nationally it was something that I learned from that Scandinavian side of my family so. I don’t
want to say that the Scandinavian gene is necessarily [laughter] defunked.
Cam: I think it’s difficult though getting back to your question I’ve got 54 different communities
that are in my region and I can point to you which ones are going to be welcoming and which
one’s aren’t. And I can point to you which ones invest in their communities and which one’s
don’t. And the difference can be as short as 10 miles away from each other, I’ll have one
community that’s so progressive that its almost taken to be offensive because they want to get
after it, they want parks and trails, they want business to come to town, they want to build an
industrial park. They want to do this, they want to do that. 10 miles down the road, the banks
won’t even invest in their own community. They’re tough on lending and the excuse is of course
with the economy being what it’s being but that same economy is 10 miles down the road and
they’re doing it.
Audience # 2: So what’s the difference between what is good and what is bad, what’s the
difference that makes one progressive and another not?
Cam: I think part of it is that people are afraid of change. If you have a community like what
Mike is saying and he’s turning into one of those old guys the thing with Mike is he’s forward
looking, I think you’ll be 80 years old and you’ll still be thinking in a forward manner. I mean..
Mike: I hope so.
Cam: Chobovette
Mike: You better be checking out that cemetery. [laughter]
Cam: Well we’ll put a forward sign on your marker, but I think it’s attitude and I think it’s
people that want their communities to be great. And if you don’t want to change, there’s an old
saying if you don’t like change, well you’re not going to like being irrelevant either ‘cuz that’s
what you’re going to be. So and those of us that don’t like change it’s gonna happen anyways so
you might as well just get over it and go with it.
Audience #5: You’ve got to get the right leaders, well that’s common about being the newbie. I
can recall years ago we had all the old folks at a meeting and we record it because we talk about
the old days and it was really wonderful. There was an older lady that lived in Buffalo 50-60
years and another gal that lived there 20-30 years longer than her she was quite elderly and she
said well you’re still a newbie. [laughter] But anyway, it takes the leaders. Year, many years ago
when I was mayor we used to have a welcome wagon committee. When someone new came to
town we would have a nice basket listing all the businesses, gift certificates, etc. etc. and the
committee would go over and meet the people which was very nice, that has fallen by the
wayside, we’ve got some new people in Buffalo, 188 people; some couples have lived there a
year or two, and there’s people that don’t even know them. That’s bad. But they don’t get
involved in anything either. They work and come home and that’s it. And they leave in the
morning.
Liane: But maybe they don’t know what we have to offer.
Audience #5: I know.
Liane: And like for our sided town, Fingal, Buffalo, we don’t have chambers of commerce and
so I’m not sure how we can step forward and be that welcoming because even like our city
government is all volunteer and they meet once a month, then they all go to work and I mean it’s
hard to have that core that can be that. So any ideas Mike?
Mike: Yeah. Well in the small towns that I worked with it was simply the business community
and volunteers and somebody has to say hey we’re going to have, let’s get together at noon and
talk about this, your events are really, I think, the catalyst that bring people together. And as long
as that event can be sustainable year after year and you can bring these people into it and involve
them in some way that’s I think you have to have something to do you just can’t simply sit there
and talk about the weather or the deteriorating buildings or the fact that other people keep
moving out and nobody is moving in, or everybody is getting older. You have to have some sort
of an event that is going to draw the excitement that is going to happen.
Audience #5: In the smaller communities it involves the church and food, everybody knew
about it.
Mike: Exactly exactly.
Liane: And businesses.
Nikki: If they know about it.
Audience #2: And that’s the key, they have to know about it
Nikki: And you know Liane is familiar with this story because I tell people it all the time. When
I moved, well you know every Monday, it’s part of the reason I started this newspaper that I did,
every single Monday I’ll run into somebody that I know and I’ll say hey how was your
weekend? Right you’ve had that conversation and oh I had a great weekend I went to fill in the
blank, Sheldon Wildlife Club, Wildlife Feed, whatever I went to, Lutheran church whatever
thing, literally fill in the blank and I say wow, and they tell me all about it and they had a
wonderful time at this activity or event that I had no idea was going on because of course I don’t
go rushing to the Bulletin Board in the grocery store you know, every, once a week and stand
there with my notebook and go oh gosh what could possibly be going on this week, I mean do
you? And that is a lot of what our community groups do to promote their events. That’s what
they do, they make a flier, they hang it up at the gas station, and the grocery store and wherever
they think is a good place to hang up a poster and I certainly don’t fault them for on the effort
I’m glad their attempting to promote, I just challenge the effectiveness of that and challenge
really the leaders of these communities to start talking to one another. And use your websites
maybe. Make a newsletter, make a ten town website, not just this town and then have this town
over here so that all of us can see what each other are doing. There are solutions but start
thinking beyond the bulletin board in the grocery store, please. Right?
Audience #5: To give you some positive feedback, I’m kinda getting to be an old timer in
Buffalo but I’m very involved in many things. But when the Independent comes out, when I’ve
get time, I go through and look at what’s happening in the area and I put things in my
appointment book.
Nikki: Good.
Audience #5: It’s helpful.
Nikki: Great.
Audience #5: And I’m an old guy. [laughter]
Cam: There again we can get into things like social media.
Nikki: You bet.
Cam: And using that type of thing to advertise. I’d like to shift it just a little bit with the time we
have left.
Liane: There was a question right there
Cam: Oh I’m sorry, go right ahead.
Audience #6: Hi. I don’t know I guess like I’ve been listening for a while and I’m obviously not
at all on like your guys’ level like experience wise, I’m a student at UND, but this whole thing,
this aversion to reaching out, you guys are talking about, I don’t think that’s necessarily a
Scandinavian thing, like no offense. Everyone talking over there was talking about how they take
pride in their Scandinavian thing, I’m from New York, I moved to Plymouth, MN a couple years
ago and then I came here to school ‘cuz you know cheap. And um..
Cam: But you’re getting a great education.
Audience #6: I know [laughter] and um like neighborhood in Brooklyn we weren’t very social
you know and I don’t think it’s just a MN thing, it’s also a worldwide thing and you can blame it
on social media personally I’m a big fan of social media, it’s a way to get the news out fast.
Cam: Absolutely.
Audience #6: It’s a way to communicate with people all over the world. I have a YouTube
channel, I have a lot of subscribers, I look up to a lot of other YouTubers, they also have a way
of campaigning for the stuff that they believe in, twitter, Facebook all that stuff. But I would say
it’s mostly a worldwide version, like I really don’t want to talk to you, like in my neighborhood
in Plymouth like we had a bunch of neighbors and we knew them for a couple of years and I
hardly said a word to them because I really didn’t want to put in the effort because these days
you want things to be fast, you want to know Kim Jung Yu just died 30 seconds ago it’s on
Twitter. Oh Boston Bombing, it was terrible it happened a minute ago I found it on Facebook. I
don’t want to have to go through the whole thing of meeting somebody and going through the hi
how are you? I’m Molly, I’m majoring in communications like on the first week of college, it’s
basically my resume just introducing myself, I’m from Wayzata High School, blah blah blah,
like what Mr. Moore is saying you need like a big thing to bring everybody together ‘cuz people
are lazy they’re not going want to put in the effort, but when somebody else puts in the effort
then people you know come together. Like free food, what he said [laughter] you know, it’s not,
I don’t think it’s like a gene thing, or whatever I know that was a joke, I don’t think it’s a
stereotype, I think we’re just getting lazy.
Cam: I think you could be right.
Audience #7: To add just a thought to that, that’s part of it, but that if we all think back to high
school what groups did we hang with? We self-select into different socio-cultural groups. And as
an observer of human behavior I’ll say that I think that those patterns persisted into adulthood.
We just naturally self-select into these different groups and you could call it biological evolution,
safety, there’s lots of different reasons why. But we dress a certain way, we talk a certain way,
we hang out with certain people, who do similar type things that we do, so it’s a personal
challenge, I think for people to step outside that way of thinking and hang with different types of
people who don’t necessarily think the same ways that we do, so.
Audience #6: I totally agree with that, like my senior year of high school, I literally hung with
this group of girls all throughout high school and then one of turns into a butt-head, [laughter] so
we all dispersed and so I’m left hanging like you know just this random floater by and I don’t
really have another group to work my way in with but I’ve always been buddy buddy with
everyone like I never had like a close relationship with anybody except that butt-head [laughter]
and so now I’m like I’m screwed for the rest of high school ‘cuz it’s too late now and I was too
lazy. You know so.
Audience #3: That’s what’s nice about a small school, everybody was in everything or we
didn’t have anything so we couldn’t have any clicks because if there was 12 of us in the class all
12 of us had to be in the senior play. [laughter]
Nikki: Well, I think that our small communities have so much to offer and this conversation
hopefully isn’t one of criticism and downgrading the small towns, I mean I choose to live in
Fingal purposefully because of the benefits of the relationships and the depths of the
relationships that I’ve been able to develop with the people that I’ve gotten to know. But I think
that our small towns do have the challenge of keeping people and getting people like me to get to
the point where I can strive there and I think that for me that’s the only reason that I that
mention that I do think it’s a challenge. And a severe one for the small towns only because if the
people move out the town is going to die. Opposed to New York City if someone moves out of
your neighborhood in Brooklyn someone else is going to move in because there is a job around
the corner. So it is a problem, that even if it’s a worldwide problem we small-towners gotta
figure out a way you know to make those community connections. The solutions are probably
individuals but I think we need to always have that at our forefront.
Cam: The communities are getting older, the people are older and the youth aren’t embracing
the significance of small town living the way that maybe they did before. Farmers, farms are
getting huge. It’s not uncommon to see a farm in the valley that’s 10,000 acres, 15,000 acres and
the equipment is so large and becoming so sophisticated that employees aren’t necessary on the
farm so you need to have some other entity that will provide that job to bring that young family
or to keep that family into the community and it’s becoming really really difficult to do that.
We’re finding, we talked about Crookston and Thief River Falls towns of eight nine thousand,
right now in MN those are exciting places to be because there’s growth. Ronnie was talking
about the Crookston motivation thing, well Thief River the same way. They all stem from
something called the community stewardship program that started from another regional
development commission over in Bemidji and there program was Bemidji Leads and then for
Thief Rivers it was TRF Forward and Crookston was, it’s like if you don’t do it and don’t get
engaged you’re going to be behind all of the other communities in your region that are, you
know, moving forward and so it falls back to the schools and the mentors and those communities
as well. I wrote editorials about the chamber of commerce in Fertile it was called the Community
Club, I was president for nine years. No one else wanted to do it. You know, you needed to
someone to grab hold of it and do something and it brings people to town and it brings them
together and most of it was centered around food as well. You have to feed people. It’s just a
way of understanding that. At one point, the leadership of Fertile, MN was from people that
weren’t born there, they all came there because they married somebody or bought a business or
something, but they are all people from out of town. Not natives. Now more recently, that’s
changing again. The natives are kind of taking over again and that’s good, it’s good. They need
to have that. You need to have that history, you need to understand who those people are and
why and so forth and to be able to carry that forward and I always thought what the strength of
the community was based on the study club. Study club was a group of ladies that read books
and so forth and their husbands were all city councilmembers and postmasters and school board
superintendents, but all these men thought they ran the community. [laughter] No no. It’s the
study club. It’s the ladies that ran the community and if you didn’t get it past those ladies, it just
wasn’t going to get done. It didn’t matter what the hell it was, it wasn’t going to get done and
that’s all there was to it. And the men thought that they were in control, but far from it. But every
town has those kinds of study clubs. More recently, they’ve become wine clubs, [laughter] so
anyways whatever the case is, you know, they’re still getting together. They’re still talking and
they’re still directing traffic sort of speak. It’s coming together here, it’s coming together.
Audience #4: I was just going to piggyback on your statement when I left ND in 1995 after
getting my undergraduate degree at UND, part of it was economics. There weren’t enough jobs
for those of us leaving the university to stay and remain. If you wanted to work in a restaurant or
that type of job there was that type of work, but for any of us who had a college degree being
able to remain in the state was a real challenge at that time. And I think the exciting part of
looking through the paper and I have friends of mine who are living in Phoenix right now who
are formed Digi-Key employees who had worked in those companies and to be able to see the
kind of full page ads that had been running at least in the Herald for those types of opportunities
and I think that’s a real lynch pin for smaller communities is being able to demonstrate that not
only could you live here but you’ll work here and you’ll build your life there. And at the time
when I left there really wasn’t that opportunity. I hit the ceiling pretty hard after I leaving my
undergraduate and really wanted to see at least what else there was, out especially in the media
field where I came from. But coming back, I think the one thing that is really exciting for me is
as a returning resident is to see those full page ads for companies that have that kind of growth
that people are reinvesting back into the state which when I left here really wasn’t the case. And
I think the fact that you are starting to get more professionals involved in communities and civics
and being able to share that we have a little bit more of an opportunity to go out and not have a
hesitation to pick up the phone and say not only will you come, but you will come because we
need you and really put people into those positions of service.
Mike: The sophistication is here too and it wasn’t for a while, but the broadband, the ability to
deal with the high speed internet, you talk about Digi-Key, $1.5 billion in gross sales, 80% of it
from the internet last year. 80% of it internet worldwide. They used to have a catalog that was
seven pounds that’s how much each catalog weighed and they sent out millions of them. Now
everything is internet based and it’s all, they’re worldwide.
Audience #4: Well, even just see Amazon in Grand Forks
Mike: Yep.
Audience #4: you know, and companies that are reinvesting back into the community and being
able to bring opportunity and coming from Phoenix, the first thing they said, oh you’re going to
go work in the oil field. Um, no I’m going to Grand Forks which is the other side of the state
[laughter] but again that’s what people know. Relocating here, people would say, most people
would know Grand Forks in ND by Marilyn Hagerty and the floods and
Mike: UND hockey.
Audience #4: UND hockey. And so I think a lot of that economic development and being able to
attract and retain and I think even in big cities they have the same challenge and issues, one of
the largest institutions for colleges and there four years and then they’re gone. And what I think
it is, from the friends of mine who’ve stayed here, still kept me in touch with what was
happening and again it’s very community based. They wanted to stay because this is where home
is. When I dream of places, home is where I lived when I lived in Grand Forks, and so even
when I lived in Phoenix and worked there, most of it was economic. But my roots were still here.
Audience #2: It seems to me like what you were saying earlier when you began to talk today is
also about leadership. What leadership seems to be, I oversee a lot of different student
organizations and work on a lot of committees, there’s always two or three people who kind of
take the lead and others kind of do stuff, but it’s those two or three people who seem to kind of
drive the ship. And I just wanted to point that out because I think that’s really important. So
instead of waiting for others to do it, maybe we should try to be one of those leaders. The other
thing is having the chamber of commerce, and the research coder and so forth, the incentive for
the state to actually want to bring in large corporations which is sort of epithetical to the notion
of not wanting growth and wanting to keep the rift raft out. So we have to kind of like keep that
open and continue to grow. And then of course with growth, then you have the problems that
come with growth, which can also be disassociation and the destruction of a community. So it
seems like community is also at risk if it’s really small or at risk if it’s really big. And I’m just
putting things together in my head that I’m hearing you all talk about and I’m still really
interested in what it takes to make the people in some of those smaller communities really want
to have something happen. What is it about those people that is different than other
communities…
Cam: I can give you an example of my own town right here. I live on a block where we have a
block party every year. And it’s basically the instigation of two people. If those two people
weren’t there, it probably wouldn’t happen. But the way those two people are is that if someone
doesn’t show up to the party they go and get them [laughter]. They want them there, we have a
couple of migrant population on our street, they’re included and we won’t take no for an answer
type thing. We’re having ice cream and you like ice cream don’t you, so come to this party? You
know, it’s great. Without those two women, I don’t know if it would happen. So I think it’s an
attitude thing and I think it’s a thing that we want to be inclusive. And that’s our attitude here,
whereas in the town next door well we’re old, our city council hasn’t changed in 20 years, we’ve
got old ideas, we don’t want to change and that’s the way it is so like it or lump it. But anyways,
I’ve only got three minutes here, so we’re talking about reattracting alumni which you’ve been
very open about, what about keeping our youth here? Sustainability to me is having succession.
Having business leaders being successed, have our population and our community leaders with
succession. I want the Ashley’s of the world and I don’t see your nametag but I want you from
Brooklyn to stay here in ND or MN. That might not be what’s going to happen, but we’ll
convince you so don’t worry about that. [laughter] Do any of you have any ideas of how we can
better do that?
Audience #8: Just to kind of add, there’s always a second side of it. I’m originally from Arthur,
ND so I kind of know all the ND side and coming to Moorhead that’s what was attractive was
because it’s similar to my hometown. On the other side, it’s tough to get involved only because
it’s not oh I’m from here, and so I’m gonna leave anyways. And so you deal with that and so
you’re trying to fit in and as a business leader for the hospital, those are things that I am getting
involved in, but then you have the, you’re not from here, you’re going to leave and so that’s why
it’s tougher to make those relationships off the bat so I don’t know if you guys have experienced
that or if you want to tie it up?
Liane: No I agree with you that as soon as someone new comes to town, you want to know what
their connection is. Why did they pick Buffalo, was their great-grandmother from here? Or there
has to be a reason, and if they just came here to buy a house what kind of reason is that, you
know? [laughter] The natives question that and that is something that has to be addressed and
looked at and changed and I’m really glad to hear these thoughts.
Nikki: That’s an interesting observation Liane because think about that as a community, the
small, all of our rural communities are saying please move here we have all these assets, we
spend time as leaders and groups identifying our assets and trying to tell our story and celebrate
ourselves and hope we come in but then when they do you can’t believe they would. Why are
you here? [laughter]
Audience #4: The looks I’ve gotten, you came from Phoenix? What? You lost your mind.
Nikki: Maybe we don’t believe our own stories.
Liane: Well even being from Buffalo and leaving for 40 years and coming back it was why
would you come back?
Audience #4: Yeah and they almost question your sanity.
Liane: Right. You stop and think maybe I should wonder why I’m here, but that’s wrong.
Audience #4: But somebody raised a great point earlier about the speaker or about how you
can’t be too good at things, you can’t really toot your own horn. And no one should be tooting it
louder than this state or in this region, when I have left here and worked in major corporations,
I’ve worked for two major fortune 500 companies and they are eager for our people to come
work for them because they know what work ethic is, they know what a full day’s work is and
then some, they have an incredible amount of loyalty and bring skills with them, and all sorts of
things that we don’t toot our horn about that. I came from Medina and I’m kind of obnoxious and
so I did that on my own but it’s not a cultural thing here. And it’s too bad because I think if
people really knew what it was to live here and work here and have your communities here,
there’s a reason why people don’t.
Mike: You need to have a well-rounded community as well. Cam talked about healthcare, you’re
talking about healthcare, years ago I used to work for the office of rural health at the UND
school of medicine and I recruited doctors for rural areas of western ND and honestly, it was a
real challenge. Most of the docs that I was getting were coming from the Denver area and their
biggest concern was about the skiing. So it was obvious we had to be concerned with this, so we
did ski ND [laughter] and we had this rope and this thing on the video that you know the skiers
are going and then we panned it back and they were being pulled by a jeep down the road. The
point was the docs could make so much money they could ski anywhere in the world. And you
got their attention, you got their attention. And something unique and we were able to recruit
doctors for underserved areas. I’m on the board of directors for the hospital in Crookston and it’s
generally the biggest employer in the area. Warren’s building a new hospital. Why is Warren,
MN building a new hospital? Well, you know, they’ve analyzed their situation, they feel that
that’s the right thing to do. You know you’ve got the Stanford’s of the world, you’ve got Altru’s
of the world, it’s just becoming a major major consideration with the new healthcare law and so
forth and so on. And the fact that you’re going to have to partner with someone larger or you’re
not going to make any money and be able to exist. It’s a big deal, it’s a big deal. The crooks of it
is there has to be a job somewhere around, it has to be sustainable, it has to have existence, and
longevity. And the ability to make a living. And you don’t go there for shits and giggles and say
I’m gonna live here but what am I going to do? You have to have something that is going to pave
the way. One of the real cool things about small towns is that there’s really a lot of beautiful
homes that you can buy relativity cheap and so you get a leg up in that way, you can have a nice
home that you can come to and enjoy and raise your family and it’s affordable.
Audience #8: I do want to add one last thing and Warren is fabulous at it, but again it does come
to leadership. You have to have those individuals that are motivated to be making a difference in
your community to push through some of that stuff.
Cam: Go ahead Linda.
Linda: What you said earlier Ashley, sort of this assumption that you might leave and some of
the research that has been done with the brain game, and people in more urban communities
people expect the population to be really fluid, coming and going, coming and going. So I think
there’s sort of both the challenge to say that’s okay if you’re here for three years, we want it to
be a great three years. If you are hear for thirty-five years, eighty-five, whatever it is we want to
be open to that whether it’s a flux and people are coming and going or not.
Cam: We’ll take one more comment, but then we’ve got to head to dinner.
Linda: I’ve got just got one more thing.
Cam: I’m sorry just one second.
Linda: I want you to all come back at 1:30 and we’re going to continue this discussion in the
World Café right over here on this side.
Cam: Okay.
Participant #6: I kinda wanna go back to what you were saying, I can’t believe how much I’m
agreeing with you. Like actually, but I’m going into media, I want to become a film maker and I
only just realized this a couple months ago, but then originally I was going to go into journalism
and then I really liked filming more. And then but when I’m telling people in high school like
they’re like oh I’m going to USC or I’m going to NYU and I tell them I’m going to UND,
they’re like why and I was just like, and at first I didn’t know why I was just like it’s cheap but
then [laughter] I’m sorry, I’m really poor, but like I get here and at first, no offense like I really
didn’t like it at all, I really hated it here and I was like my butt’s constantly frozen, I don’t know
any of these people and I feel really out of place, but then it really was like, I can’t remember
who said it, it’s the people who make it a great place here and it is like a sense of community
and now I really don’t want to leave at all and people are like if you are going into film making,
shouldn’t you head out west and I’m like well yeah, but I really like it here where we are, you
know my dad has always said it’s not about where you go, it’s about what you do with where
you are, and I’m like amen dad preach it, and I’m like you know and people might look at us like
hick town, or you know like hockey, or don’t-cha-know [laughter] you know whatever, but you
know it’s a bit more than that and people are kind of starting to recognize the Midwest as like
you said, a place of hard work, blah blah blah, and we are really awesome and we should toot our
own horn about that a bit more, I’m just saying.
Cam: Thank you.
Mike: Lots of people laughed about skiing behind the jeep, trust me it was really fun…
[laughter]
Cam: Okay well, we’ve been talking about food in this deal too and it’s time for food I guess so
I want to thank our panelists, Liane Stout, Chris May, Nikki Zinke, Mike Moore, and thanks to
you guys. [clapping]