When Ken Paxton, executive director of Greene County Development Corporation, gives his quarterly update to the county board of supervisors, he’s usually very upbeat. But Monday, as he, Rick Morain and Sid Jones presented their annual budget request Monday morning, his rhythms were different. “We’ve got some serious problems in the county,” he said. “I think the past six months we’ve decided that we’ve achieved everything we need to achieve and we’re done, we’re finished.”
He named the casino, the new Hy-Vee store, expansions at Greene County Medical Center and Scranton Manufacturing, and the new Bauer facility in Paton. “I think everybody has stepped back and said, ‘Congratulations. Great job. Well done, and we’re finished’,” he said.
According to Paxton, the interest in economic development is disappearing. He called housing “a disaster, a significant problem.” “Carroll County jokes with me about the number of new residents they’ve gotten because they don’t live here,” he said.
He named a wait list of 20 children for the Greene County Early Learning Center and the failed school bond proposal, and the unemployment rate of 2.6 percent as problems. “People hear 2.6 and think that’s a great thing. It’s a terrible thing. Employers won’t come to a community that has a 2.6 unemployment rate because there’s nobody for jobs.
“We’ve got nobody for jobs, we’ve got no housing, we’ve got no daycare and we can’t even improve our school,” he said.
He said the growth in jobs hasn’t helped retailers because people haven’t been able to find housing and move to the community. “All those 800 to 1,000 jobs should have helped our community enormously, but most of those people aren’t living here,” Paxton said.
He said the management team at Wild Rose is concerned they’ll lose employees during the winter months because of needing to commute to Jefferson, and that they’re “questioning the kind of support we’re giving them. They thought when they came in we’d have some projects in place to be able to provide some housing.”
“I’m not attacking you guys. I’m just talking about things in general. It’s my job. It’s my job to try to grow the community, push projects, try to get things done. I’m having a hard time. It’s not where it was two or three years ago. There’s not the community support, the level of interest there was,” he said.
Morain made a brief presentation on the budget and asked the supervisors to consider restoring the $50,000 annual allocation to GCDC. That allocation was reduced to $47,500 a few years ago. He said the request is justified by increased activity and the end of a relationship with the Greene County Chamber that provided partial funding for Paxton’s salary. He noted that the added $2,500 would be about 2 percent of the funds the county receives from Wild Rose Casino.
Supervisor Guy Richardson said the county funds to GCDC have been worthwhile. “That’s an investment that I think has paid off in spades. It’s very obvious of all the things that have been done in the last several years in Greene County that a lot of them would not have happened without GCDC,” Richardson said.
Sid Jones asked the supervisors to be open to considering additional funds for special projects as they arise.
