County of Complacency

Ten years ago I was interviewed for an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Why? Because I was a young business owner in the oldest municipality in the state, Sister Bay. The 2000 census illustrated that Door County was trending older at a rapid pace, and as Steve Grutzmacher shows in his latest column, that tide has not been turned.

Almost a quarter of our county’s population is now over the age of 65, Grutzmacher writes, and the impact of that generational imbalance is rippling through our economy.

The census data is not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. We’ve done precious little to reverse the aging trend. As our Brain Drain series revealed last year, our schools are increasingly focused on earning accolades for college prep (they’re judged on the number AP classes offered and ACT scores, not on job preparation. Awards aren’t given for producing skilled tradesmen or young entrepreneurs who stay in our community).

The much-discussed affordable housing problem has only recently been meaningfully addressed (though a slumping economy and a glut of condos may address that in coming years). Adding insult to industry is the fact that our tourism trade is in decline (tourism spending, when adjusted for inflation, is a far cry from its late 1990s peak).

That leaves us going to referendum to find funds to make up for funds lost due to declining enrollment in every Door County school district. It leaves our restaurants and hotels suffering from a dearth of local kids to supplement their labor needs (high school kids who start at age 14 and work seasonally through their early 20s). And it leaves our local economy fracturing under the strain produced when there aren’t many young families circulating their income around the community.

The ripples extend further each year, even to those more fortunate in our midst. We are a community flooded with non-profits, many of which provide basic services that our private economy no longer does. The wealthy among us are hit up repeatedly for contributions, and as the non-profit community has seen in recent years, those pocketbooks are increasingly closed, or if they’re open, there’s not as much there to beg for.

In my 16 years, first as a businessman, then as a reporter, I’ve participated in dozens of forums, brainstorm sessions, and community meetings where we’ve produced a laundry list of issues our peninsula faces. Yet we’ve had little success creating meaningful ways to combat them. Unfortunately, we are often a community of complacency.

We live here to relax, not to drive change. Part of that is simply a demographic problem. The retirees I talk to are more than willing to contribute money to projects, but want a limited role in doing the heavy lifting (as they’ve lifted all their lives). As Grutzmacher details, the population of people who traditionally perform the heavy lifting in a community, those age 20 – 54, is rapidly declining in Door County. Those who remain are working long hours to hold onto their piece of the peninsula, leaving little time for driving big-picture ideas.

What is conspicuously absent in all of this is leadership. In 16 years of attending these forums, community discussions, and brainstorm sessions, our representatives – Garey Bies, Alan Lasee, Steve Kagen, Frank Lasee, Reid Ribble – at the state and federal levels have been conspicuously absent from the table.

Our largest efforts have often been focused on the economy of previous decades (the Sturgeon Bay shipbuilding cluster, big box retail, housing subsidies) and not on the jobs of tomorrow, or even today (new energy technology, local agriculture, tourism).

The change we’ve seen has been organic, a testament to the persistence of those willing to find new ways to make a life here. Our local farmers have built a network of markets and connected to an increasing number of restaurants willing to source locally. Our business community rose up to promote the tourism industry when the established leadership would not, first raising money to commission a study and then selling a county-wide room tax. Parental groups have formed to support school referendums when declining enrollment has left budgets short.

Those efforts are inspiring to witness, but they could use a bigger hand from those at the top of the power structure. Though innovation and job creation is driven by individual entrepreneurs and small businesses, we gear tax incentives and lending to large, mature corporations whose goals have shifted to increasing worker productivity and trimming staff.

And what our community needs goes far beyond a hand reaching down, responding to their cries for help. We need a leader driving the discussion, seeking ideas, raising challenging questions. We need someone to become a voice not of politics, but of the community. In 16 years spent in the trenches of our local economy, I haven’t seen the representatives tied most closely to us willing to do that.

The 2010 census figures don’t bode well for Door County’s future. But the complacency at the top is what scares me most.