Small-town blues

POMEROY, Wash. – Mayor Alan Gould can sit at City Hall and point out the window to his house. And to the house he lived in before that.

It’s not too far from one place to another in Pomeroy, and it’s not getting any farther. Like scores of small towns in the rural West, Pomeroy has seen a slow but steady drain of population, as its farming economy – like the timber and mining economies in other small towns – supports fewer and fewer people.

“All of us old people are the ones that are left,” the 63-year-old Gould said, half jesting.

Pomeroy is the only town in Garfield County, which is Washington’s least populated county and shrinking. The most recent census estimates put the county population for 2006 at 2,223.

That’s 70 fewer people than the previous year, and 170 fewer than in 2000.

It’s the sharpest population drop in Eastern Washington, though almost every rural county showed either a decrease or a gain of less than 1 percent. Population in North Idaho’s rural counties grew somewhat more – between 1 percent and 2 percent, generally, and more in booming places such as Kootenai County.

John Allen, director of the Western Rural Development Center at Utah State University, said population trends in the Inland Northwest mirror those around the West – steady growth in cities and metropolitan areas, big growth in “high-amenity” areas such as Coeur d’Alene or McCall, Idaho, and stagnation in rural communities.

Most small towns are either stable with an aging population or losing residents, Allen said.

“There is a pattern out there,” he said.

Garfield County, in the heart of Palouse wheat-farming country, has seen the same trends as many other agricultural areas nationwide – bigger farms but fewer people who earn a living on them. Farmers have put more land into the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays them to leave land untilled. Agricultural technology has become ever more efficient, and fewer workers can farm many more acres than would have been possible in past generations.

Beyond farming, there’s not much else to keep young people in town after they graduate from high school – or to attract the kinds of young families that residents say are needed to help drive the town’s economy.

Beverly Adams-Gordon, who is renovating a Main Street hotel with her husband, John Gordon, summed up the lack of opportunities by using the example of a young woman they knew who aspired to be a television sportscaster.

“How are you going to do that in Pomeroy?” she asked.

Schools suffer

Gould is part of another pattern – that of retirees returning to small towns, lured by the low cost of living and the slower, friendlier pace. He and his wife, who grew up in Pomeroy, returned after he retired from Darigold in Oregon five years ago. He’s since started a contracting business and become the town’s chief executive.

Plenty of little towns find a ray of hope in the influx of baby boomer retirees. Allen said such residents benefit small towns by bringing in their own wealth without needing a job, and often by becoming involved in renovation projects or historic restorations.

But underneath that trend lies the steady loss of young people. A clear-cut sign of that loss is the Pomeroy School District’s enrollments, which are down 19 percent in the past six years to 348 students.

That kind of change ripples through the entire school system. State funding, which is provided on a per-student basis, drops each year enrollments drop – and that means fewer teachers, principals and programs, said Superintendent Jim Kowalkowski.

“It’s – I don’t want to say ‘devastating’ – but you could say devastating to lose that many kids,” he said. “It reverberates through the whole system.”

Six years ago, the district had 33 teachers and administrators. Now, it has 28 full-time positions, and the district is being put to the test in maintaining special classes such as Advanced Placement courses for college-bound students.

This year, there’s only one student in the AP calculus class, prompting officials to ask, “Do we have to cut our AP program?” Kowalkowski said.

If the quality of the schools deteriorates, that’s just one more thing that makes it tough to attract young families. Another is the scarcity of good jobs, Gould said. Pomeroy is investigating ways of attracting light industry, perhaps building facilities at the county port district to attract a tenant.

Others hope to help drive the economy by appealing to visitors – taking inspiration from nearby Dayton, which has capitalized on its history and proximity to Walla Walla wine country. Dayton’s population grew about 2 percent between 2000 and 2005, and its median income and home prices are higher than Pomeroy’s.

‘Do a little shopping’

John Gordon and Beverly Adams-Gordon moved to Pomeroy in 1999 and bought the historic Hotel Revere on Main Street. They have turned the hotel’s first floor into a bookstore and tearoom, and they also run their publishing business, Castlemoyle Books, and live in the hotel.

They’d like to see Pomeroy develop more commercial enterprises on Main Street that might waylay day-trippers and travelers. A lot of that kind of business, such as antique shops, has faded there in recent years, the Gordons said.

“Our biggest concern is making downtown look interesting to tourists,” John Gordon said.

They’re hopeful about the possibilities, based on their own experiences. Since their tearoom opened two days a week, it has done steady business and attracted customers from around the region, they say.

“They were looking at it more as a hobby restaurant, and it turned out to be a work restaurant,” John said of his wife and mother-in-law, who work the tearoom.

Gould says the city is looking at building a small Main Street park as another way of getting tourists to stop.

“The idea is to have restrooms, get people to stop, spend a dollar or two, do a little shopping,” he said.

A lot of small towns are hoping to go the same route, but Allen said that tourist economies, based on historic districts, antiques and arts, are not generally going to be the saving grace for the region’s small towns. It’s difficult to develop a critical mass of attractions to bring in visitors, and the growth can be slow. Tourism also isn’t likely to provide the kinds of good-paying jobs that towns like Pomeroy hunger for, he said.

‘New personalities’

One root problem for small towns is the lack of people buying businesses or investing in projects.

Even if small towns create favorable opportunities through business incubators or help bring in an employer or two, towns won’t really take off until more people invest in their futures, Allen said.

“Venture capital in rural communities is one of the biggest barriers we have,” Allen said.

Allen, who researches economic development and revitalization around the West, is often asked why people who live in urban areas should care about dwindling populations in small towns.

He said there’s an overall social benefit to having vibrant small towns. Having land ownership spread across the states helps get more people involved in their respective communities, he said, and increases the overall number of people engaged in the governments and social networks of their towns.

“It’s an equity issue. Do we want to have all of our resources, our wealth, concentrated in just a few urban locations? Or do we want to see it distributed across the landscape?”

Despite the trends, Allen is optimistic that smart people can make their small towns work.

An example often cited in the Northwest is Idaho’s Silver Valley, which suffered punishing economic times during the 1980s and relatively flat ones in the 1990s, as local officials worked to establish a new kind of community. The county has developed its tourism and recreation industry – but also has an economy that’s diversified by other kinds of jobs.

Now, Shoshone County has shown slight population growth for two years running, new construction is sprouting all over, and plans are under way for a new golf course. Allen said every community can’t follow the same model, but each can find its own approach to defining a new future.

“Every day, just about, I find communities that are finding new personalities and identities,” he said.