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Driving home from my final appointment yesterday, I happened to have NPR on the radio, listening to the evening’s "All Things Considered" Segment. Much to my surprise, reporter Adam Davidson was doing a story on Maine—not Portland, or some “touristy” area of the state, either—the feature was on Skowhegan and how the former mill town was struggling to stay afloat. Immediately, my ears perked up and I even called my wife to listen to the feature, on her way home.
Since last August, when I began my current workforce training gig, I’ve spent more than my fair share of work time, in this community. While I recognize the challenges faced by a town that had hitched its wagon to Maine’s papermaking industry, as well as old-style manufacturing, I still felt a sense of hope, at least from the people I've met and been working with. Maybe its because I had the opportunity to spend some time with some of the members of the community that hadn’t thrown in the towel yet. People very different than Mary Jane Clifford, the woman that Davidson interviewed, who heads up the town’s general assistance office. Maybe it’s the nature of Clifford’s job and hence, all she sees are the folks that made her paint the future in such negative terms. She came across as the typical small-town rube that reporters from the big city try to find, to set up and “plant” the kind of quotes they are looking for—like Clifford talking about some of the young people that come to her—the one’s that she sees as having no future; the ones she gave such a ringing endorsement with the following quote:
“I'm dealing with a lot of young people who really seem unemployable," Clifford says. "They've dropped out of school. Their families have thrown them out. They have no plan. Many of them are heavily tattooed, heavily pierced.”
One of these “heavily tattooed, heavily pierced” folks recently completed the first pilot of a new training initiative that I’ve been part of. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time doing some of the ground work for and helping members of the community put together an employer advisory group that will oversee the program. In my opinion, our first time through was a success and we saw some people that Clifford would deem “hopeless” complete the training and a number of them have been employed after graduating from our three week soft skills training initiative. By the way; our young graduate, who removed her piercings, covered up her tattoos and cut the red coloring out of her hair, recently got hired by a local employer to perform a customer-service role. Unfortunately, Davidson didn’t talk to any of the local employers, or other community-based people that were responsible for the success of this program, called WorkReady.
Interestingly, Davidson interviewed the interim chamber director, who was bemoaning cuts in town that are putting a crimp on tourist-friendly amenities that Skowhegan had. As if all that matters for the future of the town are fireworks, balloon festivals and public restrooms. One interview, with a member of the business community, with something positive to say would have helped to lend a bit of balance to the story. In my opinion, a chamber director ought to be looking to create some positive energy from his membership. Our local workforce development committee has tried to solicit support for our training program from the chamber and for whatever reason, the chamber has chosen to not attend any meetings, or the subsequent graduation of WorkReady, as we focused on upgrading the skills of the local workforce. I guess he doesn’t see the correlation that exists between workforce skills and economic development, which is too bad, given his function of marshaling the area's business community.
One person that does understand the connection and who was noticeably absent from the parade of negative interview subjects and hand-ringers in Davidson’s piece, was Jim Batey, who heads up Somerset Economic Development Corporation.
Batey is someone who I’ve come to respect a great deal in the community. He was a major catalyst for WorkReady and commands respect among the business community, which by the way, also impressed me and appears committed to the future of Skowhegan.
It was Batey who held a series of public forums, one of which I drove up to attend, where he solicited input from members of the community, as he was formulating a five-year plan of economic development. The forum I attended was engaging, many positive ideas were put forth and unlike Davidson, I came away from this meeting with a sense that Skowhegan and Somerset County was on the verge of something positive. Silly me, with my love of rural America and small town economies. Better to be a cynical big city journalist and portray rural Maine as a bunch of benighted hicks in a post-manufacturing backwater, than a place where hope still flickers.
I suppose that to some, like realtor Amy McLellan and Main Street Skowhegan’s Audrey Lovering, the future of the town rests with rich folks from away coming in and buying up the town and tossing a few scraps to the locals. Apparently that’s what Davidson and other visitors to Maine must think when they come here for their requisite lobster dinners and drives along the state’s idyllic coastline, with occasional forays inland, to places like Skowhegan. To some extent, why should we expect anything else? We've placed many of our eggs in the basket of tourism for far too long. It is Maine's tourism-based economic model that fuels the caricature of Maine that the Adam Davidsons of the world enjoy perpetuating.
Somerset County and Skowhegan have challenges. Anyone with any sense would be foolish not to acknowledge that. At the same time, there are people with a positive vision still active in the community, who see the possibilities of economic growth, are working towards raising the requisite skills employers need and will be the ones who ultimately determine the future of the town.
Interestingly, neighboring Franklin County, a county with some of the same challenges as Somerset County and Skowhegan, exudes confidence for the future. Rather than wringing their hands, they are moving forward, increasing educational opportunities, attracting businesses to the county and facing the future with optimism, rather than the pessimism of people like Clifford and others.
Sometimes it all comes down to perspective, I guess. Sadly, in Skowhegan, the perspective of many appears to be negative and the NPR feature won't do much to change that view.
Showing posts with label Maine economy; rural development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maine economy; rural development. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Is manufacturing still a viable economic option?
Manufacturing’s death has been predicted by the media, economic experts and government bean counters for more than twenty years. While the U.S. has seen the number of manufacturing jobs decline since their peak in the mid-1970s, American manufacturing continues to keep its head above water and in some cases, is experiencing significant growth in sales, burgeoning export figures and upward trending capitalization numbers.
As we sail forward in the “flat world” of Friedman, rather than fall off the edge the earth, we seem to be finding new market frontiers for U.S.-manufactured products. In the June 25, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek, in their Business Outlook section, there is a brief about upward trends in global capacity, tight overseas job markets, combining with the weaker dollar, which should translate into higher U.S. export activity. This could help close our nation’s trade gap and boost U.S. economic growth for the first time in decade.
So, as we surge into the 21st century, should Maine build economic growth around the tried and true manufacturing model? The state certainly has some precision manufacturing firms that are increasing capacity, while paying very well. CNC machinists can pull down in excess of $50K/year and skilled metal fabricators can make in excess of $60,000. Rather than hitch our state’s economic wagon to big-box development, maybe someone in Augusta should at least lend an ear to advocates of manufacturing in the state, since manufacturing firms in Maine supply the aircraft, aerospace and aviation industries, to name a few and also provide cutting edge components for biotechnology and healthcare.
Michael Porter, the “guru” who leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, based at Harvard Business School, has written extensively on the ability of states and regions of the U.S. to compete globally. Porter’s work, which centers on clusters—geographically concentrated groups of interconnected companies, universities, and related institutions that arise out of linkages or externalities across industries.
In addition to Porter’s work on clusters, is the research that he has led in the area of competitiveness in rural regions of the U.S., of which very little research has been done.
While much of our policy, particularly at the national level, but unfortunately, also at the state government level, is concerned with urban economies, or worse, not much more than the small world that exists between their office and parking garage, rural economies need attention beyond giving away the farm to the next Wal-Mart that wants to come to town.
From ISC’s report released in 2004, on rural economies, Porter and his researchers write,
“Current policies to improve the disappointing economic performance of rural regions are, by and large, not working. This is increasingly the consensus among policy makers across political parties, not only in the United States but also in many other countries around the globe. Not only is the performance of rural regions lagging, but the gap in performance levels between rural and urban areas seems to be widening. This state of affairs exists despite significant efforts to boost rural regions through a wide variety of policies with budgets of billions of dollars in the United States alone.
The failure of current policies for rural regions has many costs: First, it draws on limited government resources at a time of budget deficits and cuts in spending. With many other competing demands on public sector funds, policies that fail to generate results are getting increasingly hard to defend.
Second, rural counties account for 80% of land area, and 20% of U.S. population. Weak performance in rural regions retards national productivity and national prosperity, and fails to effectively utilize the nation’s resources. As the growth of the U.S. workforce slows, making all parts of the economy productive is an important priority.
Third, the inability of rural areas to achieve their potential leads to an inefficient spatial distribution of economic activity in the United States. Activities that could be performed more efficiently in rural areas either migrate offshore or add to the congestion of urban
centers.
Fourth, weak rural performance creates demands for interventions that threaten to erode the incentives for productive economic activity. The lack of competitiveness of rural economies has been a prominent cause of agricultural subsidies as well as import barriers that hurt the U.S. position in the international trading system without addressing the underlying challenges rural regions face.”
These broad conclusions about rural economic development are , by and large, not surprising. The United States has the need and the opportunity to lead in this field. Advances in thinking on competitiveness and regional economic development over the last decade provide an opportunity to now examine rural regions in new ways.”
Since most of Maine would fall into Porter’s classification of rural, his work takes on added importance for the long term economic well-being and seems worthy of at least some consideration by those in charge of economic development in the state.
From Porter's work at the ISC, to some of the findings of the Brookings Report, it's obvious to many that one-size-fits-all economic develoment models won't work. We need to find areas of strength, particularly areas where Maine and other rural areas can compete in a global economy. Regardless of your views on globalization, it's here to stay and we've got to find ways to adapt. Strengthening and adding needed skills to the workforce is a start and supporting clusters that can remain competitive, or find new markets for their products is another.
As we sail forward in the “flat world” of Friedman, rather than fall off the edge the earth, we seem to be finding new market frontiers for U.S.-manufactured products. In the June 25, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek, in their Business Outlook section, there is a brief about upward trends in global capacity, tight overseas job markets, combining with the weaker dollar, which should translate into higher U.S. export activity. This could help close our nation’s trade gap and boost U.S. economic growth for the first time in decade.
So, as we surge into the 21st century, should Maine build economic growth around the tried and true manufacturing model? The state certainly has some precision manufacturing firms that are increasing capacity, while paying very well. CNC machinists can pull down in excess of $50K/year and skilled metal fabricators can make in excess of $60,000. Rather than hitch our state’s economic wagon to big-box development, maybe someone in Augusta should at least lend an ear to advocates of manufacturing in the state, since manufacturing firms in Maine supply the aircraft, aerospace and aviation industries, to name a few and also provide cutting edge components for biotechnology and healthcare.
Michael Porter, the “guru” who leads the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, based at Harvard Business School, has written extensively on the ability of states and regions of the U.S. to compete globally. Porter’s work, which centers on clusters—geographically concentrated groups of interconnected companies, universities, and related institutions that arise out of linkages or externalities across industries.
In addition to Porter’s work on clusters, is the research that he has led in the area of competitiveness in rural regions of the U.S., of which very little research has been done.
While much of our policy, particularly at the national level, but unfortunately, also at the state government level, is concerned with urban economies, or worse, not much more than the small world that exists between their office and parking garage, rural economies need attention beyond giving away the farm to the next Wal-Mart that wants to come to town.
From ISC’s report released in 2004, on rural economies, Porter and his researchers write,
“Current policies to improve the disappointing economic performance of rural regions are, by and large, not working. This is increasingly the consensus among policy makers across political parties, not only in the United States but also in many other countries around the globe. Not only is the performance of rural regions lagging, but the gap in performance levels between rural and urban areas seems to be widening. This state of affairs exists despite significant efforts to boost rural regions through a wide variety of policies with budgets of billions of dollars in the United States alone.
The failure of current policies for rural regions has many costs: First, it draws on limited government resources at a time of budget deficits and cuts in spending. With many other competing demands on public sector funds, policies that fail to generate results are getting increasingly hard to defend.
Second, rural counties account for 80% of land area, and 20% of U.S. population. Weak performance in rural regions retards national productivity and national prosperity, and fails to effectively utilize the nation’s resources. As the growth of the U.S. workforce slows, making all parts of the economy productive is an important priority.
Third, the inability of rural areas to achieve their potential leads to an inefficient spatial distribution of economic activity in the United States. Activities that could be performed more efficiently in rural areas either migrate offshore or add to the congestion of urban
centers.
Fourth, weak rural performance creates demands for interventions that threaten to erode the incentives for productive economic activity. The lack of competitiveness of rural economies has been a prominent cause of agricultural subsidies as well as import barriers that hurt the U.S. position in the international trading system without addressing the underlying challenges rural regions face.”
These broad conclusions about rural economic development are , by and large, not surprising. The United States has the need and the opportunity to lead in this field. Advances in thinking on competitiveness and regional economic development over the last decade provide an opportunity to now examine rural regions in new ways.”
Since most of Maine would fall into Porter’s classification of rural, his work takes on added importance for the long term economic well-being and seems worthy of at least some consideration by those in charge of economic development in the state.
From Porter's work at the ISC, to some of the findings of the Brookings Report, it's obvious to many that one-size-fits-all economic develoment models won't work. We need to find areas of strength, particularly areas where Maine and other rural areas can compete in a global economy. Regardless of your views on globalization, it's here to stay and we've got to find ways to adapt. Strengthening and adding needed skills to the workforce is a start and supporting clusters that can remain competitive, or find new markets for their products is another.
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