Without KRM, Racine could become another Kanawha

By Jay Warner

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 4:29 PM CST

Independent consultant

I believe Racine County needs the KRM Commuter Link, and to explain why I need to show Kanawha, Iowa. The farms near this north central Iowa town are very well off, with dark fertile soil that practically pushes corn into the sky every spring.

But Kanawha is dying. Larger, more efficient farms mean fewer farmers, fewer farm families, and fewer people to shop in town. Fewer grocery shoppers, fewer church-goers, fewer car owners. Fewer Realtors, fewer doctors, fewer investment bankers, fewer newspaper readers and fewer advertisers.

The railroad stopped coming long ago.

When a farm equipment repair shop could not continue in Kanawha, IA, my relatives who farm there recognized that the town would not recover from its decline. The grocery store struggles, but in time there will be little reason for anyone under 60 to continue living there. The rest home population might outpace the school's.

This is not the situation in Racine. Not yet. But those who refuse to look at the economics of our region are flirting dangerously with the decline that beset Kanawha and other small towns in the Midwest. "We don't need it [KRM}" means that we have enough economic activity to continue "well enough."

S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc. has stated publicly that transportation links to Milwaukee and Chicago are crucial to their recruitment and retention of key knowledge workers. CNH has already moved their senior managers to Illinois. RAMAC supports YPR - Young Professionals of Racine - in an effort to make this area more desirable for all our new employees, including our own children and their families.

Most companies in this area know full well that they are competing on a national and world stage for sales, plus the materials, investment loans and other resources they need to make those sales.

One of the needed resources is labor � people to run and improve their operations. The competition for employees is also on a national and world stage.

If companies can only retain local people, then those local people with gumption � the ones companies want most � will see the writing on the wall and seek better opportunities elsewhere.

Certainly Racine looks forward to a better economic future than Kanawha faced when the repair shop folded. But failure to build reliable, convenient links to our two major neighboring cities along the lakeshore points us down that long slope of decline. The KRM Commuter Link will pull our economy up, lack of KRM will let us slide down.

With the "manageable" size of cities and towns in Racine County, plus the ready access to Milwaukee and Chicago we will offer new employees, and ourselves, a phenomenal place to live and work. Hobbling Racine County by keeping its transportation links back in the 1960s is a ticket to economic decline.

Mind you, "local people" are our children. Do you really want to drive them away because your county is in economic decline? Do you really want your children to stay where the wages and business activity can't support them?

We need to show our commitment for a growing, vibrant county to our elected officials.

Contact Racine County executive Bill McReynolds [(262) 636-3273 or RCExecutive@goracine.org], and your county board representative [listed at http://www.racineco.com/countyboard/index.aspx].

Remind them that we need KRM Commuter Link; we need an economically successful Racine county, for now and the long term.

We need to improve our transportation links with the rest of the Lake shore region - to Milwaukee and Chicago. We need the KRM Commuter Link, for ourselves and our future. And especially we need KRM for our children and grandchildren.

Jay Warner is an independent consultant for company operations and is a resident of Caledonia.

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