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Red Lodge looks to the future – A new economic development group in Red Lodge is on its feet and organizing efforts to chart a future for the Montana town.
Economic development group secures grants, hires consultant to produce report
People in Red Lodge have tried to get the ball rolling on economic development before, but this time it’s different.
By Dave Burgess
And experienced people are involved in a series of steps that should produce an independent economic development entity, instead of relying on the work of volunteers as in past initiatives. Grants have been won, another is in the works and there appears to be broad community support.
The first week of February saw a flurry of activity with economic development professionals in town interviewing residents and collecting data. Their objective was to craft a set of recommendations called a CEDS document, short for Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, that the community can use as it sees fit.
Denise Parsons, executive director of the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce, said "I think it will be a great tool for us to use." Like any community, she said, there are things to work on, and this report will help the community look at both its strengths and weaknesses.
This is the most recent attempt to direct economic development in Red Lodge, said Susan Hovde, an architect who has been in Red Lodge for 12 years. Hovde is co-leader of the group spearheading the drive along with Estelle Tafoya. The group originated from discussions in the Beartooth Community Forum, Hovde said.
The group is not part of city government, although "We’ve been getting good cooperation and response with the city," she said. "We are still just the Economic Development Subcommittee of the Beartooth Front Community Forum."
The subcommittee is intended to become a stand-alone economic development organization independent of the forum and of the city, Tafoya said. Its first step was incorporation. Next is obtaining nonprofit status. Tafoya completed the paperwork for the tax-exempt 501(c)3 status, but expects the application to take months to be processed.
"Until we get the 501(c)3, the federal tax-exempt status, we operate under the tax-exempt status of the forum," Tafoya explained.
The committee is permanent, but interested parties, such as Tafoya, Hovde, Stauffer, Betsy Scanlin and Mary Fitzgerald, who are both on the City Council, are unpaid volunteers. Eventually, as a fully formed organization with a board of directors and a paid staff person, economic development activities will not have to rely solely on volunteers.
"A purely volunteer effort only lasts as long as the volunteers are there," Hovde said.
The most recent previous push started about three years ago and then fizzled out, according to Tafoya.
"The volunteers worked really hard, but it is a big job," she said.
Funding to help hire a professional economic development planner could come in the form of a Rural Community Development Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To get the grant, it has to be matched locally. Red Lodge City Council and other businesses have committed to supply the matching funds.
The application was written by the Beartooth Resource Conservation and Development in Joliet and it could come through in April or May.
In the meantime, other grants and assistance from the allowed the economic development subcommittee to bring in experts. Tafoya won a $15,000 Community Development Block Grant, and another grant, a Rural Community Assistance Grant of $5,000 from the U.S. Forest Service, was matched by the city. The money is being used to develop the CEDS report.
A consultant firm, Hingston Roach Group of Boise, Idaho, was hired. Hingston Roach developed a questionnaire and e-mailed it to over 250 Red Lodge business leaders including members of the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce. Denise Parsons of the chamber said the response rate was an encouraging 44 percent.
And that was just the beginning. In February, the consultant’s crew and other professionals in the economic development field from Montana and Wyoming converged on Red Lodge to collect data, to hold public meetings and to listen. A team from the Montana Economic Development Association brought did a community assessment, something that has been done in many cities in Montana and Wyoming over past couple of years, according to David Stauffer, Red Lodge’s part-time city planner.
"There’s lots of talk up here about what Red Lodge needs," Stauffer said.
Some say the city needs to spruce up, some say the city relies too heavily on tourism, while others say a convention center is needed, he said.
There were dozens of one-hour meetings, and anybody interested could get an hour of the consultant’s time to express an opinion privately, he said.
Local businesses provided the team of consultants with food and lodging while they were in town, which showed the community’s support of the process, Hovde said,
"The consultant has done a great job so far," Tafoya said.
In March, CEDS workshops will be held to distill what the community told the experts and assist the community in development of long- and short-term priorities and timelines, she said. Those then will become the work plan for the economic development staff person to be hired.
Mayor Richard Gessling, a dentist in Red Lodge who has also served on the City Council for 10 years, said the process will work.
"Being done by an outsider helps, I think, having an outside point of view," he said. "It can’t be totally outside — it has to reflect our values and what we would like to see ourselves in 10, 20, 30 years from now. One of our issues is that we don’t want to get real big.
"We have tried a couple of times to have some economic planning. But this time it’s going to be different because we are going to get a plan that we can follow."
The CEDS report is critical in getting an economic development plan and a staff, Hovde said.
"Once we have the CEDS document then we have a road map to keep the ball rolling," she said.
"A lot of cities our size on the high plains are getting to be ghost towns because they don’t have an economic plan," Gessling said.
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