Rural Economic Development

The next New Mexico First Town Hall will attack rural economic development. See: www.nmfirst.org for more information. Rural New Mexico, by population, isn't quite half the state. And sometimes communities that are statistically urban in some sense are really very rural. My favorite example is Counselors, just inside "Albuquerque" by virtue of being just inside Sandoval County, one of the four counties in metro Albuquerque, but also 100 miles from Bernalillo. Cuba, also, is in the Albuquerque metro area.

The Town Hall will be March 27 - 29 at the Inn of the Mountain Gods, just outside Ruidoso. Town Halls are intense, structured discussions among a hundred or so folks (in smaller groups) that seek consensus policy recommendations. 

Economic development discussions can get unreal. I remember a recent pitch for Internet connectivity everywhere in New Mexico. Hmm.... In Counselors, a metro community? Or Claunch? Or Nutt?

Yet the rural challenges are large. Start with Harding County which has fewer than 800 people. If Harding County merged with Union County, the combo would still have a population under 5,000. Economic development in such places is not some new manufacturing, it is something like fixing a bridge.

Something like ten New Mexico counties are among the nation's poorest 250. About the same number are losing population. Three others besides Harding and Union have populations under 5,000, which raises the question of merger partners.  Northern New Mexico is a rural ghetto, idealized by rich Anglos and aging hippies who sell real estate. But, oh no, don't affect my culture, as was said by a Northern New Mexico native in an economic development meeting.

Positive things do happen. Ganados del Valle and Tierra Wools in Los Ojos remain a model. There is the arts colony in Silver City. And good stuff in Mora, which has long since shed its mantle of the state's lowest per capita income county. Larger rural communities such as Roswell and Clovis are a different challenge. Then there is Hobbs, where the main problem is to somehow find about 3,000 new folks to work.