Workshop revitalizes passion to strengthen rural communities

Rural communities across the United States are currently facing a multitude of problems: how to grow, attract more individuals to the workforce, improve infrastructure and compete in the global market.

Eastern Washington communities are not the exception, and the annual Reviving Rural Downtowns Workshop helped a group of like-minded and passionate small town residents brainstorm ideas to improve their communities.

The event kicked off in historic downtown Ritzville on Sept. 20, welcoming individuals from across the state and neighboring communities to the workshop.

Based around the theme “Building a Foundation for Revitalization,” workshop attendees attended forums to learn about solutions and share issues found in rural communities.

The workshop began with a presentation by Keynote Speaker Deb Brown entitled “Big Ideas You Can Use in Your Small Town.” Brown is the co-founder of Save Your.Town and has an extensive background working with chamber of commerces, as well as living in rural communities.

Brown presented three key ideas to revitalizing and maintaining a strong rural community. The keys are to gather a crowd, build connections and take small steps.

For gathering a crowd, Brown recommended creating lists, sharing creative ideas, involving younger generations, new activities, utilizing online applications like Pinterest, and hosting events like street painting and coffee and calendars.

With each of her points, Brown shared a story from a rural community she had worked with in the past. She recommended those in attendance use ideas from the stories in order to help boost the success of their town.

For building connections, Brown highly recommended locals utilize the services of organizations like the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), as they assist with business creation and creating a business plan.

Brown said finding shared interest between a group of individuals can be a benefit, including a maker space for artists, coffee club, or a career and activity fair.

Brown advised small towns to take small steps to finding successful ideas within their individual community. She shared ideas like a Junk Fest event, artist opportunities or a Pokemon Go event.

She reminded the group the ideas have to be small town friendly, and can focus around being tiny, temporary, together and traveling. Ideas Brown recommended were shared space, mobile trucks, traveling art, artistic pop-ups and garden sheds to create a mini business district.

The primary question posed during the presentation was focused on what steps a community can take to eliminate the amount of vacant and neglected buildings within a business district. Brown recommended the group approach their local city council about adjusting the ordinance were a penalty scale will be establish for those who are not actively attempting to fill the building with a business.

Wednesday’s presentations moved into a panel discussion with participants Linda Haglund, Amy McGuffin, Jim Fletcher and Representative Mary Dye.

The panel first focused on ideas for combating those individuals who are negative about projects or ideas towards change within the community.

Recommendations from the panel included hosting a brainstorming session for the community, approaching the situation with a “yes” attitude, gather a crowd of dedicated and like-minded individuals, and always encourage people to participate.

They also discussed ways to overcome the “us versus them” mentality and ways to encourage those with negativity to participate in community projects.

The ideas included balancing the scale of weaknesses between the generations, asking advice from those opposing your idea, find a balance of value and engagement for those individuals, having a vision and fighting for what you believe in, hosting a tour for all to participate in and creating a demonstration project.

The Wednesday activities concluded with a walk-through of downtown Ritzville, followed by a networking event.

On Thursday morning, attendees returned to downtown Ritzville to participate in a series of workshops. The first of the day were Community-Driven Revitalization and Rural Digital Transformations: Why Broadband Matters to Rural Businesses and Communities.

Chaitra Dutt of Ignite Washington led the rural digital transformation workshop, sharing ideas of how rural communities can work towards the implementation of broadband and also discussing the future of technology.

Dutt explained the technology megatrends like the cloud, mobility, social media, ecommerce and big data create a $6.7 trillion opportunity. She stated small businesses do not have to become bigger, they only need to work at attracting the right customer.

The only way to tap into the technology trend is with broadband, Dutt stated. Businesses have to be able to attract people with the basics, including technology.

Ignite Washington was created to help small businesses advocate for broadband connectivity and technological improvements with the community. This includes creating public and private partnerships with businesses like Microsoft and helping small towns have a voice.

Dutt recommended that small towns are precise about their needs, and to identify those areas and work towards completion of a smaller project first. Dutt said most small communities have a disconnect between the skills and the workforce, because the talent of the individual does not match the opportunity of the job.

Digital transformation allows the businesses to empower employees, engage with customers, transform projects and optimize operations. Currently, Dutt stated, 90 percent of businesses in Washington are not mobile ready or have not been discovered, creating an issue for consumers and producers.

Dutt said Ignite Washington is dedicated to equity for rural communities, and is focused on creating digital skills, Adopt a City partnerships, accelerator programs, tourism and creating smart cities. Solutions to helping overcome the digital divide including being dig-ready, have a dig scale up program and growing businesses online.

The next workshops of the day included Main Street – A Comprehensive Approach and Navigating the Lodging Tax.

The Lodging Tax discussion was led by McGuffin, who addressed the limitations of using lodging taxes, as well as potential ideas for towns. The Department of Revenue regularly updates the amount of lodging taxes collected within a city and county, and RCW 67.28 displays the laws surrounding the use of the taxes, commonly referred to as the hotel/motel tax.

The primary use for the tax is for tourism marketing, McGuffin explained. She shared advise and ideas for those using the lodging tax funds, like investing in photography, creating concept designs and paying writers to visit the communities.

She shared there are ways to use the funds for capital programs, as long as the program is tourism-based. McGuffin said this does not mean the entire project will be funded through lodging tax, but a portion could be paid with the funds.

Additional uses for the funds include operating tourism promotion agencies, and funding the marketing or operations of special events and festivals. McGuffin reminded those in attendance the lodging tax cannot be used to pay an employee’s salary.

McGuffin said there is a broad range for those who can apply for the funds, but all have restrictions. It is important for the cities to have an application and for those applying to show how much tourism it will bring to the community.

After lunch, all attendees gathered to participate in the RevivingX: Exploring the Possibilities workshop. The hands-on activities focused on topics about starting new businesses, encouraging others within the community to start a business, improving technology, bringing networking events to town, attracting volunteers, creating a welcoming environment, community partnerships and filling empty spaces.

The final workshops of the day were Marketing in a Small Town and Using Digital Marketing to Get Rural Projects Worldwide.

Aziz Makhani from SBDC presented about Digital Marketing and showing ways for businesses to make themselves more marketable online. He also provided examples of businesses, organizations and museums in Ritzville that needed to increase their online presence for improved accessibility and accurate information.

In today’s society, the most important thing for a business is to be on Google Maps, Makhani explained. It is easy to establish, but does need to be maintained, he explained.

The first step is to claim the business and update the information on Google. He also encouraged businesses to create or update their website to allow others to easily find information about the business.

Makhani’s recommendations for Ritzville were to establish a Google Maps expert, create a Google Map Audit Team, adjust businesses information for accuracy, create maps for potential tours in town, and run Google “Test My Site” to find potential issues or areas for improvement.

He advised businesses and cities to consider utilizing the talents of students to assist with these recommendations.