Report outlines negative impacts of growth on Ravalli County’s economy

Without proper growth management Ravalli County’s economic future is in jeopardy, said economist Larry Swanson, who completed an economic needs assessment on the valley.

By KODI HIRST Staff Reporter

"The greatest potential threat to the valley’s economic future may be that the very qualities drawing more and more people to the valley are being degraded and lost as the number of new residents grows under current patterns of development," Swanson wrote in the assessment.

Swanson stresses the need to condition economic growth to protect the valley’s picturesque surroundings, one of the county’s key economic assets.

"Sometimes, people think you have forever to make these decisions but at the pace of change you don’t have forever," said Swanson who was contracted by the Ravalli County Economic Development Authority.

Along with the EDA, Swanson will be presenting the final draft of the Ravalli County Needs Assessment Tuesday to the commissioners and discussing what the next steps will be for plotting economic growth in the valley.

The document provides information about the county’s economic trends and assets.

It provides another tool to evaluate growth in the valley, said Betty Davis, director of the EDA.

"We felt the need to have this needs assessment done so we have a good handle on what was happening in the valley," Davis said.

And what is happening is the valley is people are migrating in at a high rate. This does translate into a higher employment rates, Swanson said, but it isn’t leading to higher quality jobs.

Although Ravalli County ranked number one in its rate of population growth and total employment growth out of 24 comparable counties in the nation, it ranked 23rd in per capita income.

The statistics haven’t gone unnoticed.

"That is a challenge and we are trying to address it," Davis said.

Along with growth management and attracting higher-end jobs to the valley, Swanson suggests building leadership links and working relationship with Missoula’s business community.

Conducted by the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, the needs assessment focuses solely on Ravalli County and was funded by a $22,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service to the EDA, who hired the Missoula-based, but regionally-focused, organization in the fall of 2001.

Utilizing a special database housed at the center, Swanson said the performance of Ravalli County’s economy was gauged regionally, in the context of a variety of local economic factors across the 22-state region.

Swanson said the county was ranked, across a broad set of indicators, with between 20 and 30 carefully selected peer counties, mostly from across the Rocky Mountain West.

Suitable peer counties were chosen, he said, according to concrete similarities with Ravalli County, such as population, but also according to like circumstances, such as high proportions of land in federal forest.

Side by side rankings, according to Swanson, provided a way for the local EDA to gauge the counties’ economic strengths and weaknesses.

Swanson will be meeting with the commissioners at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in the commissioners conference room.

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