Determining McCook's future begins today

Will Andreson speaks at this week's Rotary Club meeting.

Courtesy photo

Earlier this week, Will Andreson spoke at the McCook Rotary Club’s weekly meeting and also met with a variety of people in McCook to learn more about the community.

But the visit wasn’t a relaxing vacation for the retired University of Wisconsin professor. Rather, he left after his 48-hour visit with a notebook filled with notes from his conversations, specifically trying to learn what people honestly think about their community, how they really feel about their hometown and if they truly think they can make a difference.

While Andreson will likely provide a summary of the responses he received and his reflections on those ideas, his time in McCook was already enlightening.

Nothing that was said was anything we didn’t already know but it helps to actually say these thoughts out loud and to get them down on paper. The comments made during his visit apply not just to McCook, but to any community grappling to “sell” itself in this new digital, mobile era where people can choose to live just about anywhere. Jobs are no longer the sole deciding factor in where someone decides to live. Instead, quality of life plays just about - if not more - of an important role in choosing where to put down roots, especially with the younger generation.

If we want our community to reverse its 40-year population decline, we need to find our “focus.” In other words, our community needs to find what we are good at and what we want to be known for. We don’t have to be the best at everything, but we have to be good - and aim to be the best - at something. Is it arts and culture? Is it hunting and fishing? Is it the open landscape and bright starry skies?

To think of it another way, if you had to tell the story of McCook (or insert your own hometown), what would it be? Like many businesses, what is McCook’s “brand” or image? If you had to do an “elevator pitch” (a 30-second summary) about McCook, what would you say?

Would it be positive or negative? Would you lament what we don’t have or would you highlight everything already in place? Would you say there is nothing going on or would you run out of fingers to count all the things that are happening?

For our community to survive and thrive, we need to find what we want to be known for and be the best at that. But that is just a starting point.

Even if the community could find a story or an image to rally behind, that reimagining of our community doesn’t end there.

Other issues need to be part of the conversation, including encouraging young people to return to their hometown, as well as getting them and others to truly be invested in their community. A statement that Andreson made during the Rotary meeting leaped out at me:

If we want to attract young people in our community, we need to get them involved.

If we want to keep young people in our community, we need to get them engaged.

And how to do we get them engaged? By letting them come up with their own projects, by encouraging them to pursue an idea that is important to them, by working with them on something that is important to them.

Each and every one of us will devote time to what gets us excited. We will be dedicated to what we have a passion for…regardless of age. We need to let - and encourage - our young people to speak up and create the future they want to see in their community.

This leads to yet another aspect of changing how our community moves forward. We need to rethink our idea about who the leaders are in a community. Is it simply an elected official or a worker in the corner office? Are they the ones who control the tax dollars? Yes, but leaders are also those who organize an event for their neighborhood, who work to install Christmas lights in their downtown, or who volunteer to serve on a board in their community.

We need to change our mindset about who a leader is and who can get involved. The conversation needs to include how to move from thinking a person can’t make a difference in their community to giving him or her the confidence to get things done.

As you can tell, these are complex issues and there are no easy or simple answers. But to shift the way of thinking, we need to start addressing these issues with intentionality. Time and resources need to be spent on thinking about the future of the community. What do we want our community to look like in 10, 20, 50 years from now, even knowing many of us will be gone? We can’t wait until then to make the changes. We have to start today…knowing it won’t be easy but knowing it will be worth it.