(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a letter that was sent to the Brown County Democrat and the Washington Post.)

I live in a small community – Brown County, Indiana. We are lucky in that we benefit a bit from tourism. But I have noticed that over the years (I’m 71) we continue to lose the things that helped us become a community.

We still have a weekly paper, but it’s no longer owned and published by someone local. We still have a local grocery but it’s no longer owned by a local person. We still have a county school district, but it can be argued that it’s at risk of being swallowed by some other school system. We eventually may not have enough students to justify to the state that it should be a separate entity.

Our population hasn’t changed, but we no longer have the younger population coming in and suffer from the lack of service workers seen in lots of places. We do see retirees that are only sufficient to offset that number.

We are unique, possibly, in our loss of community although I think the loss of “the sense of community” is a problem nationwide. Here in Indiana and other states that I’ve traveled in, it’s easy to see the towns that are shrinking away. I have seen this in Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas to name a few. In industry, growth comes from small businesses as a feeder and idea generator for the large corporations. Do small communities perform a similar function?

In our case, the loss of community is because we don’t have industry like a lot of counties with high growth and yet we survive. By survive, though, I mean that we maintain a steady population. The loss of community in other rural areas is a result of the economic times and the value placed on things like big box stores and growth. In many cases, the small towns are actually shrinking.

I think it’s important to bring this perspective in front of a broader audience. To what extent does the loss of growth and vitality in small towns across the United States affect us all? To what extent does this matter to your readers in the Washington area – the U.S. capital.

Bill Austin

CEO

Bill Austin & Associates, Inc.