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T he P ori land O bserver • A ugust 21,1996
Wife
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Rural midwest disapearing
Bank president John Bryant re
m em bers to the month when it began:
M arch, 1982.
T h a t’s w hen th e oil bust hit
Cushing, a Payne County town o f
about 7,600.
“ We got hit right at the front end o f
it,” Bryant said. “ 1 was charting it.
It’s been pretty flat these last few
years. It’s hard to grow a bank when
your com m unity’s not grow ing,” he
said.
But since the beginning o f 1996,
B ryant’s bank has grow n — by m ore
than $2 m illion in assets. Local m an
ufacturing business are continuing to
expand, and a new private prison
planned in the town should bring
m ore than 200 new jo b s — and more
grow th for the Bank o f Cushing.
“ W e’re doing pretty good right
now ,” he said.
B ryant’s experience in C ushing is
an exam ple o f w h at’s happening in
several rural O klahom a towns.
D uring the bust years o f the 1980s
O k lah o m a's rural population fell by
m ore than 29,000, w hile the O klaho
m a City and T ulsa m etropolitan a r
eas grew by alm ost 150,000.
Incom es in rural O klahom a fell as
well. Total personal income earned
by rural O klahom ans, adjusted for
inflation, dropped by 22 percent be-
; tw een 1979 and 1989.
B ut much o f those declines seem
to have been reversed in the first h alf
* o f this decade. B etw een 1990 and
1995, O k lah o m a’s rural population
grew by m ore than 38,000, accord-
in g to U S. C ensus B ureau Estim ates.
T otal personal incom e, adjusted
for inflation, grew in rural counties
by m ore than 40 percent betw een
1990 and 1993, according to the fed
eral B ureau o f E conom ic A nalysis.
This rural turnaround has been
spotty, how ever, and m any rural
counties have not shared in the eco
nomic revival, said U niversity o f
O k la h o m a e c o n o m is t R o b e rt
Dauffenbach. And for the m ost^iart,
rural O klahom a has not kept pace
with the growth seen in the sta te’s
m ajor m etropolitan areas.
D auffenbach is director o f O U ’s
Center for E conom ic and M anage
ment Research.
“ I’m seeing som e im provem ent
for rural counties, but I'm seeing a lot
o f disparity too,” he said. “ T here are
pockets o f im provem ent, but I think
that there is also a desperate kind o f
situation out there am ong many coun
ties.”
Counties along the Arkansas bor
der and the eastern half o f the Texas
border, as well as counties near major
metropo I itan areas, are doing we 11 or at
least holding their own, he said. Most
o f the counties in Western Oklahoma,
however, are still suffering.
Harper County, where the panhan
dle attaches to the body o f the state, is
one o f those suffering counties.
W hile taxable sales in O klahom a
grew by 37.5 percent betw een 1980
and 1989 and by 23.1 percent b e
tw een 1990 and 1995, sales in H arp
er county grew by less than I percent
in the 1980s and by less than 5 per
cent since 1990.
M erle S w ineford runs a radiator
shop, an autom obile air conditioner
repair shop and a glass shop in the
H arper C ounty tow n o f Laverne. He
is also chairm an o f the local eco n o m
ic developm ent com m ittee.
Laverne d o e s n ’t have a high un
em ploym ent rate, he said.
“ E ith ery o u have a jo b here, o ry o u
leave.”
And in the past 15 years, about
900 H arper County residents took
the second option, leaving only about
3,800 behind to populate the the coun
ty ’s 1,034 square miles.
“Young people graduate from high
school here and a large percentage
go to college. But they never com e
back There isn 't anything here for
them ," Sw ineford said.
Among the 900 who left w ere two
o f Sw ineford’s three children. They
▲
com bination o f floating trails and
dirt trails, with an island feature near
O M SI,” he said.
“The east side has 20,000 jobs to
day,” Siegel said, "that’s supposed to
double over the next 20 years. Trans
portation will be a central issue.”
In addition to the infrastructure
im provem ent there is a recom m en
dation to extend SE W ater Avenue
from O M SI to SE C a ru lh ers/S E
Grand Avenue.
A lso on the table are plans to fix
up the M artin Luther King Jr. Boule
vard and G rand A venue facades;
enhancing the general look o f those
streets with additional lighting and
street improvements.
In the U niversity D istrict, which
encom passes Portland State U niver
sity, the issue is “expanding housing
and jo b capacity,” Siegel said.
The task force recom m ends bu i Id-
ing 1,500 new housing units, con
structing an U rban C enter for P SU ’s
departm ent o f urban and public af
fairs, building a U niversity Plaza,
acquiring the old US W est building
to house P S U ’s school o f engineer
ing, extending the transit mall south
to University Plaza and building an
problem s.
N ow ata County lost 13 percent o f
its population betw een 1980 and
1990.
But N ancy Shipley, m anager o f
the city o f N ow ata, said she believes
that has turned around since 1990.
N ow ata has becom e an attractive
unsure how the tow n will cope.
"Y o u ’re w orking w ith a budget
here w here we c a n ’t rep air a street,”
she said. “ I need revenue bad for
streets and for infrastructure."
Shipley has placed her hopes on a
com m itm ent from a start-up b ee f
packing com pany to build a new pack
ing plant and feedlot in N ow ata. If
every thing goes as planned, the plant
will be com pleted early next year and
will eventually em ploy ab o u t 1,000
people.
She said officials w ith the new
com pany, w hich is not yet incorpo
rated. have prom ised to help the town.
" I f we c a n ’t com e up w ith som e
industry,” she said, “ I d o n ’t know
w h at's going to happen to us.”
In C hickasha, the C h am b er o f
C om m erce has organized a task force
to address a local labor shortage.
Ken Myers, human resources m an
ager for the Delta Faucet plant in
C hickasha, said he co u ld hire 40
people tom orrow if he could find
qualified applicants.
They are tem porary jo b s that pay
about $5.25 an hour and offer no
benelits. But M yers said tem porary
w orkers have first shot at perm anent
jo b s when they com e open.
home for retirees escaping I u lsa’s
urban atm osphere, she said
“ W e’ve got good hunting, w e ’ve
got good fishing and the taxes are
cheap," she said.
But grow th has placed dem ands
on city services that leave Shipley
M yers said finding tem p o rary
w orkers becam e m ore difficult two
years ago, when a new m anufactur
ing plant opened and hired an all
tem porary work force.
“Until they cam e to tow n, that was
250 m ore people for us to draw o n,”
“ And as the young move away
and the elderly die off,
Swineford wonders what can
be done to keep his town from
disappearing from the map.“
now live and work in O klahom a C ity .
A third son stayed in Laverne to work
in the family business.
And as the young move away and
the elderly die off, Swineford wonders
what can be done to keep his town
from disappearing from the map.
His town has good schools, he
said. T here is little crime. T h e re ’s a
decent highw ay and an air strip. And
as o f a few m onths ago, Laverne has
local Internet access. Before, you
had to dial a long-distance num ber.
“ So w e ’re not isolated,” he said.
"Y ou could com e to rural O klahom a
he said.
And in Vinita, a housing shortage
has raised housing costs P eople now
drive to jo b s in V inita from up to 40
m iles aw ay, said bank president Don
Y arger.
“ 1 alw ays thought o f V inita as a
place w here people drive som eplace
else to w ork,” he said.
S till, Y a rg e r sa id , h e a d a c h e s
brought by grow th are m uch p refer
able to the fight for survival o f the
previous decade.
“ T h ese are g o o d p ro b le m s to
have,” he said.
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and start up a business in your hom e
and work by telephone,” he said.
And Sw ineford said there is now a
possibility that a large agricultural
business, w hich w ould em ploy about
150 people, may com e to L averne
before the end o f the year. A bout 80
miles west in the panhandle tow n o f
Guymon, grow th o f a hog producing
industry has created som ething o f a
boom town.
Bu, grow th has brought its own
SAVED A LOT
for a home,
elem entary school.
“ W e’re trying to be m ore than ju st
a university with this additional hous
ing,” PSU director o f facilities Brian
C hase said.
“M ost cities are dead after 5 p.m.
P ortland’s m ade a com m itm ent to
change that by incorporating all types
o f housing into the dow ntow n area,”
he said.
Other m ajor improvements to Port
land’s infrastructure recom m ended
in the plan include constructing a
C entral City Street Car that would
connect N orthw est Portland, the Riv
er D istrict and U niversity District.
Thoughts on the likelihood o f the
overall success o f the recom m enda
tions vary.
“These are good solid recom m en
dations,” Siegel said. “ It’s likely most
ofthem will succeed as long as th ere’s
a good serious attem pt m ade to do
it.”
PSU professor o f econom ics Tom
Potiow sky had a different opinion.
He was skeptical o f the city ’s ability
to inco rp o rate 75,000 new jo b s.
“T h ere’s not a lot o f land available
for businesses to locate," Potiow sky
said, “ it’s hard for me to imagine
th ey ’re going to have that kind o f
em ploym ent here.”
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