Annual Meeting Highlights Partnerships as Key to Success

Continued strong partnerships are the key to economic growth in Phelps County. That was a central message of the PCDC annual meeting on Tuesday, March 26.

PCDC Executive Director Ron Tillery opened the meeting by touting the growing popularity of small communities like Phelps County.

“Across the nation, technology is reinforcing an important message: America wants and needs small towns like ours more than ever,” Tillery said. “Our challenge is to become a preferred choice – to stand out among the rest, we must be scrappy, determined, and show up every single day.”

He thanked PCDC investors for helping to strengthen local economic development efforts.

PCDC Board President Shane Westcott reflected on the positive economic activity in the past year and the importance of partnerships in making that growth happen.

“As our logo symbolizes, it’s a partnership between all of us. And with that partnership, we will accomplish great things,” Westcott said.

Westcott shared some of PCDC’s 2023 accomplishments:

• Securing a $600,000 Rural Workforce Housing grant to support Northern Meadows and three new houses in Bertrand (in partnership with Bertrand Community Builders, the City of Holdrege, and the Nebraska Department of Economic Development).
• Awarding $70,000 in GO DREAM grants to renovate downtown Holdrege businesses, resulting in $3.8 million of private investment.
• Investing $50,000 in GO HOME down payment assistance that generated $2.24 million in housing sales and attracted 36 new residents.

Westcott said that LB840 sales taxes grew to $692,000 in 2023. With that revenue, PCDC funds GO programs, loans, and community improvement programs in the entire county. In 2023, those funds helped with ballfield construction, downtown façade renovations, business startup assistance, home down payment assistance, and workforce development initiatives.

Westcott introduced keynote speaker KC Belitz, who is the new director of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. 

Belitz praised the economic work being done in Phelps County, including the support from local investors.

“Without the resources on front end, you won’t have resources on the back end to make things happen,” Belitz said.

He told attendees that in this new era of economic development, workers are choosing where they want to live equally to where they want to work.

Belitz said when Nebraska students were asked what is most important in considering where they want to live in the future, they cited safety, good schools, and strong family connections.

“This is good for towns like Holdrege,” Belitz said. “You hit the trifecta. Those things matter when you talk about the future of the workforce.”

Another positive sign for Nebraska is that its workforce has grown in the past few years, including in Phelps County.

Belitz said Nebraska has the third highest percentage of people 18 and younger of any state, and it has the sixth highest birth rate.

“We have more students coming to Nebraska for their first year of college than we have Nebraska students going somewhere else for their first year,” he said.

Belitz said placemaking will be important to keep those youth in Nebraska and small towns. 

“Downtown amenities and all the work that you’ve done in that space is a great model of the kind of things that are going to make a difference,” Belitz said. “If you are trying to attract a family to come here to take a job, they have other options. So why are they going to choose Holdrege and Phelps County over some other options?”

Belitz said the NDED will continue to focus on housing and childcare solutions across the state as there is a shortage of both in nearly every town and city.

He sees tremendous opportunities in the bio-economy sector.

“The number of companies and businesses who are coming to us with an idea of something else to do with corn, or do with ethanol, or do what we’ve never dreamed of before are absolutely extraordinary,” Belitz said.

Those types of businesses are a natural growth opportunity for rural areas.

“By its nature, those things are going to happen in rural Nebraska, not the metros,” Belitz said. ”That dynamic is going to shift pretty dramatically in the next 10 years. And those places that are ready to take advantage of that are going to have the opportunity to for extraordinary wins.”