Home Upcoming Events Membership Forums
Outlook 2005 Summary
|
“OUTLOOK 2005” Forum An Event of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation
May 10, 2005 Parkway Plaza – Casper Wyoming
Conference Report
Publication Edited by Bill Schilling – President Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation
Introduction
Since 1996, the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation has organized the annual OUTLOOK forum to keep the Wyoming business community informed on the latest business and economic trends and focus on timely, business-related topics. Over 200 people attended this year’s OUTLOOK Forum on May 10. This year’s forum featured two components; 1.) Community Appearance and 2.) Economic Outlook. Wyoming is increasingly aware of how important community appearance is for business success and economic development. The state’s renewed efforts are important and supported by the Wyoming Business Alliance. Thomas Hylton –Keynote Speaker on Community Appearance, Pottstown Pennsylvania Author “Save Our Land, Save Our Towns” In 1973 we bought our house in Pottstown because of its location near the Mercury Newspaper where I worked for 22 years. I had a very short commute from my home to my office where I had my finger on the pulse of 22,000 people living in this thriving metropolis. We weren’t just buying a
house. We were buying a community, a tradition and a traditional way of
life. The intermediate school had originally been the Pottstown High School
built in 1923. It was very compact - 100,000 square feet; four stories on
just an acre of land. It was missing something that every modern education
institution needs in abundance: a parking lot. Because of declining
enrollment, Pottstown tore it down and replaced it with a parking lot. That
is kind of a micro-cosm of what we are doing across America. For much of
the last 30 years, it’s not just that we have been tearing down buildings,
but we have been abandoning a way of life. They tore down several homes as
well with the high school. But when they tore it down in 1982 to create a
parking lot, instead of creating something better we were trading-down. In years past, when we went into town to do our shopping and socializing on main street, we had our most beautiful buildings there. Where do we shop now? We shop in these ugly new structures on the edge of town with vast acreages of parking. Instead of being uplifted by our structures in town, we are actually degraded by our surroundings. When we got the idea of abandoning our traditional past after the Second World War, we started this new development path pattern called sprawl. We have to ask ourselves were we trading up or are we actually trading down? Does it make a difference if we put the stores over in one place and the houses in another and the other buildings elsewhere? The obvious thing is to drive to it. There is a growing recognition in this country that it does make a difference. If we build in the right way, we can have real communities. If we build them right we can save people time and money. When Word War II came to an end, we spread out into the countryside where we can have a spacious yard and a reasonable cost home. We can do so because everyone can afford a car. It wasn’t long before millions of Americans moved out into the countryside, and the retailers followed. We have strip malls and regional shopping centers along the highway. We can’t walk anywhere so we have to drive everywhere. Our highways fill up with cars and we continue to build more highways. We’ve been doing this for five decades this lifestyle may not be sustainable. We are rooting out many of our traditional downtown buildings. A car takes up a hundred square feet of space. When we take our car to reach a destination, we’ve got to put it somewhere, since it would be a sin to go somewhere and not have a parking space. We have five to six parking spaces for every car, mostly empty most of the time. That’s basically how we turn landscapes in this country to junk-scapes. We have retailers along every highway, and parking lots with room to park your car and a giant sign. We need to look at going back to that traditional and time tested design. As a kindergartner in my town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, I could easily walk to my school or library from my home. This is the way our cities were in the 1930’s. The homes and jobs were all close by. We all know what real community’s look like. They’re on the cover of Christmas cards. We just don’t build them anymore. A real community has a sense of place. You can tell where it starts and where it stops. It allows people to live within walking distance of their place of work and children can walk to school. It is well-maintained. Sidewalks are clean with lots of shade trees close to the streets because beauty if vital. I’ve concluded that most problems in the country - - like crime, welfare, poverty, wasted land, and the loss of farmland - - are solved or alleviated by building real communities. When zoning, we ask, how can we make things look better over time? We need to make our streets more pedestrian-friendly. Diagonal parking narrows a street and provides more parking. Trees make an enormous difference and make a poor town look rich. Gateways are important. “Better Models for Commercial Development” from the Conservation Fund is a publication that talks about how chain stores and retailers like Wal-Mart can be persuaded to make their appearances look better. We adopted our new zoning ordinance to make it attractive to look at and user and reader friendly. We based our zoning ordinance on Reader‘s Digest “Complete Do it Yourself Manual,” with pictures and charts explaining how to do everything making it easy to do things. That’s how we began to control the appearance of buildings with zoning rules. You have to make it short and readable. We like the old way Pottstown looked and encourage traditional development. The first 15 pages of the guide is basic zoning stuff with a 50-page appendix with all the technical stuff. The zoning ordinance has important information, and the appendix has other reference information. We got a grant to hire a design professional who can meet property owners who want to make their property look better. When people want to do build, we encourage them to come in for some free suggestions to help them out. The ordinance requires one tree for every 30 feet and one tree for every two parking spaces. We like to have trees in vacant lots. It looks better and contributes to the environment. It’s a matter of putting in trees and making it healthy. We don’t allow the demolition of old buildings unless it’s not feasible to re-use the building. We have easy to use charts that give suggestions for what to do on existing buildings boiled down to one page to make it interesting and show them what to use with pictures showing the elements of an old building and the kinds of construction on new buildings that look nice. We try to persuade people to do things the way we want them to with old buildings and the construction of new ones. Make it look like a real building that won’t be torn down in 10 years. We want parking to be at the side of a building or in back. Parking lots are hard to make look nice. Signage is often too big. Businesses get into competitions to see who can make theirs larger and higher. Using the Reader’s Digest book style, we give guidelines for the kinds they can do and restrictions. We regulate the outside of our historic buildings and have a booklet of do’s and don’ts on appearance. Visually, it needs to look good. People will usually do the right thing if you show them what to do. They can do it economically, and they can do the right thing explaining our philosophy. Parking lots are an opportunity to make an improvement. Put the parking in the back of new development so you’re not overwhelmed with parked cars and people can walk more easily to stores. It’s much more attractive. Green belts are the idea to have an open space that surrounds a city area that’s undeveloped. They allow certain delineated areas to allow walking places and to preserve land outside of town. Greenbelts help preserve business in downtowns. Sprawl is expensive. If you are a good fiscal conservative, putting things out in sprawled development doesn’t make economic sense, so build in what you already have. The environment is another reason to prevent sprawl. Sprawl is the number one reason of pollution because of dependence on cars and asphalt and carbon dioxide. Main Street Economics: Awareness and Commitment Moderated by Tom Kinnison, Whitney Benefits, Sheridan The importance and responsibility of maintaining and improving the appearances of Wyoming’s downtowns and main streets is being both recognized and assumed by our business and community leaders. Action is being taken on this issue in many communities through public-private partnerships, cooperation and assistance from the Legislature and the efforts of business leaders, as well as local and state officials.
Ky Dixon – Sheridan County Commissioner, Sheridan In the past five years, in downtown Sheridan, millions of dollars have been invested in private investment and the main street has been re-done with a private-public partnership. There are new trees and benches and parks. Whitney Benefits just announced an urban renewal project that will provide more business opportunities in downtown.
Tom Forslund – Casper City Manager Some of the things going on right now in Wyoming are public improvements and local governments are investing funds in infrastructure. Some communities are doing streetscapes, which are things on the surface of a street like brickwork, lamp lights and aesthetic improvements. They greatly enhance the community. Another is preservation of historic structures. Too often older buildings are being torn down because they are old or in the way. Two old buildings put back into use are the Old Cheyenne Depot and the Plaza and in Casper, the Nicolaysen Art Museum. Seventy-five to 100 years ago a lot of interesting buildings were being built. Those designs and buildings stood the test of time. In the last 50 years there has was less emphasis on good design and more on utilitarian design. They haven’t stood the test of time. Two examples in Casper are Natrona County High School built 70-plus years ago and Kelly Walsh was build 30 years ago. Kelly Walsh may be torn town and rebuilt while Natrona won’t. What are barriers to beautification? People’s resistance to government regulation is one. There’s an inherent mistrust and opposition to government oversight and regulation. There is opposition to regulations in place for buildings, landscaping and signage. Streetscape added to a project can drive cost up 10-14%. Is it worth it? Another is consensus on appearance being important. A fourth consideration is economy – our boom bust economy. Many are fearful that the economy will change and that revenues will not be flowing as they have been. They want to minimize investment risk. Another problem is in engineering. I think students go into engineering school and then they go to a program, the program is to make it wide, black and functional but don’t think about aesthetics. There needs to be a course on aesthetics required in engineering. Lastly, there’s lack of political will to take on some of these issues because it’s not real popular. Dave Reetz – Powell Valley Economic Development, Powell Our American City odyssey started with an empty downtown and we wound up in the Rose Garden with the President. You are evaluated on 12 aspects in your town. Necessity: Why does this all happen? One fourth of or our stores were empty while valuations dropped 30% and Wal-Mart was coming. Downtown was in tough shape. The lights were bad, no trees and side walks were a mess. We had 38 empty commercial buildings and having a hard time understanding what was happening. Honest self-appraisal: The community assessments are doing this all throughout Wyoming. It caused us to think about where we wanted to be. Downtown became an incubator and added 60 new jobs to the town. It became an excellent vehicle for people to come back to Wyoming. Planning: We did three years of planning. There were 318 people involved, young and old. We were inclusive and worked to build consensus. The best way to build consensus is to listen. We conducted five public meetings. Accept Responsibility and Dedicated Implementation: We started with a core of people who accept the issue and worked together to find out we can do things together. We need a core of people willing to accept responsibility and work together. We added trees, colored sidewalks, bike racks and lights. Preserving the past is very important. It is terribly important to see the value in our historic buildings and to help owners and merchants see what they have and to improve themselves and their storefronts. We are trying to build a sense of community. You have to have a willingness to invest but before that needed to have a plan. Rosie Berger - State Representative, Big Horn The Legislature passed 14 bills that had to do with historic preservation, community readiness and economic development. We had a severance tax distribution with a one time bonus that turned out to be $33 million in this past session that we invested in multilane highways, and also in planning and infrastructure to get to your communities to make it easier to travel. Our Wyoming Community Facilities bill provided $7.5 million for community facilities. It has to do with restoration of old school buildings. The school is the heartbeat of our town. If we tear it down, we don’t have a place to go to for events and activities. Small towns are so important to the state. Some don’t have funds to hire someone to work for grant money or funds. Looking at the bigger picture is Business Ready Communities. The Historic Preservation Bill takes the public and private to restore and enhance our communities, making our old buildings viable. Mary Cunningham – Owner, Kaycee General Store, Kaycee A flood in August of 2002 wiped out several homes and businesses in Kaycee. My husband and I who have been involved in agriculture and ranching were hit by the flood too. We lost old buildings and there are not many to restore in Kaycee. We were pretty much stuck with nothing. The community was able to come together and assess what it had and wanted. My husband and I were at a point in our lives where we decided to diversify. So we sold part of the land and some cows to help fund this. We went to the bank and they looked at us like we were crazy. Small communities don’t have a good reputation for supporting small businesses because people want to go to Wal-Mart. We had a belief and commitment to the community. You have to want it, and feel the need of the community. So we embarked on a plan to build a general store. We worked with the Small Business Council, found a good grocery supplier, but wanted to do more. People couldn’t buy gifts, clothing or feed. We tried to think of the things the community needed and put it into our store. We asked people what they wanted. It’s amazing when you don’t know anything and ask questions how much help you get. We offer a wide variety of items. Our building is designed to be attractive, and we have mounts from local hunters. We created a western environment. We offer service and give a reason not to go to Wal-Mart. We understand and accept that people will go to other communities to shop. If you can get a little part of it, that helps make their life a little better and makes them proud of the community, maybe this would work. Everyone is greeted with a “hello” and a “thank you.” We take orders for things if we don’t have them. We get in special sized boots and order down feed from Buffalo as well so people don’t need to make the drive. People love to come in and have a cup of coffee and just visit. We made something people wanted and they are proud of it and they take ownership in it. It is not just our store, it belongs to the community. Leadership Wyoming Class 2005 Project Presentations When Leadership Wyoming’s 2005 class met in Laramie last August they were charged with selecting class projects to take on for the next eight months. Two ideas on community appearance were suggested, indicating that a number of individuals in the class recognized and wanted to address this topic. This topic may not have surfaced two to four years ago, but today, Wyoming’s communities have taken strides to address their appearances through the efforts of economic development groups, public-private partnerships, the Main Street Program and other efforts. First Leadership Wyoming Class Project Presented “Community Appearance – A Priority for Wyoming?” · Moderated by Diane Hulme – Assistant Director, University of Wyoming Institute of Environment and Natural Resources, Laramie · Pam Ivey – Warren Federal Credit Union, Cheyenne · Patrick Ellbogen, Ellbogen Property Management, Casper · Tom Forslund, City Manager, Casper · Janet Hartford, Green River Chamber of Commerce · Mike Huston, First Interstate Bank, Casper · Linda Jennings, Campbell County 21st Century Project, Gillette Each Leadership Wyoming class is required to join five groups of eight to do class projects. Each project is done on own time outside of jobs and Leadership Wyoming. It’s a lot of work and is done in various parts of the state. The first project is “Community Appearance…A Priority for Wyoming?” We traveled the state and took pictures of different communities. We found good and bad in each community. Our program was called “The Good the Bad the Ugly…For Community Betterment.” We identified different characteristics that make a community attractive. Some key characteristics are: Gateways: as you drive into a community for the first time, what kind of impression do you give visitors, a positive or negative impression? Public Improvement: Signage: are they a positive or negative addition to the community? Private Improvements: Historic Re-development: Have buildings been restored or torn down? Public art is another. Public Improvements provide the opportunity to positively impact community appearance. Cheyenne’s new parking garage blends in so well, people have a hard time knowing its there. Street improvements add approximately 10% to the total cost of the job. Businesses take the lead to make things more pleasing and can pull together as partners in the community. When Cheyenne saw its depot being abandoned by the Union Pacific, they realized it was a valuable source of history in their community. Buildings can remove their old facades that were popular in the 70’s and restore the old flavor. In Casper, they’ve restored the old fire hall to a useable building and kept the beauty of the architecture. Evanston’s depot is a focal point of the community where there is something going on every weekend in the summer. A lot of communities are getting on board with public art. Sheridan had some public private partnerships to do bronzes. Gillette and Casper has a serious of bronzes through the community. Economic Development: According to Liz Becher of CAEDA in Casper, “There is a direct connection between a community appearance and attracting prospects.” Susan Bigelow of Gillette economic development says “A company is not going to choose a community because it is not visually attractive, but they can eliminate a community because it is not.” Requirements for Change: · Passion and Commitment. You don’t have a difficult time finding people. A vast majority of those representing communities have a love and pride for their community. · Partnership. It requires partnership between public and private. Some of the initial improvements can come from private or public. The partnership comes from various private foundations. · Planning and Regulation. You need to have some structure, long term focus and consistency. The long term focus is critical. Consistency is important. Money doesn’t always come at once. When we have an improved economy it happens at an accelerated rate. The more people you have involved the better off you will be in planning and implementation. The more people involved, the more smoothly it will go. · Flexibility. In Sheridan’s downtown improvement area, and in some of their work on Gould Street, they found that the sidewalk buffers came out about six feet wide, and they had to be flexible and reduce them. Second Leadership Wyoming Class Project Presentation “How to Prevent Encampment from Becoming a Jeffery City” · Moderated by Diane Noton, M.D., Encampment · Scott Estep, Bank of the West, Sheridan · Kathy Ellsworth, Holland & Hart, Jackson · Chris Jones, National Weather Service, Riverton · Jared Kail, Image Resolution, Cheyenne · Tom Pagel, Police Chief, Casper Encampment is a 100 year old town, not unlike many small towns in Wyoming. Why do some towns fail while others prosper? Why do some struggle while others don’t? We compared Encampment to Jeffery City. We remember it being a thriving mining town, with 4,500 people. We know now how desolate it is. There are many tools to rural community’s survival. 1. Help Is for Those Who Help Themselves. Small towns succeed because they are communities not just collections of people living in the same area. 2. Social Capital. Identify the leaders and skills in the community and take time recruit those local skills. You have established leaders, business people, elected officials, service people, and overlooked leaders such as teachers, minorities, students and ranchers. 3. A Community Taking an Idea and Moving it Forward. One example is the Merc in Powell and Worland followed a year later, with Rawlins and Torrington wanting to do the same thing. 4. Successful communities show History and Heritage. 5. A Large Resource of Public Land. The Medicine Bow National Forest and Sierra Madres are very close. This can lead to increased recreational opportunities. 6. Twin Towns in Wyoming, such as Riverside and Encampment are right next to each other and have separate infrastructure. They can work jointly under the Wyoming Joint Powers Act that will allow small entities, towns, school districts to cooperate and assist each other. 7. Emphasis on Quality of Business and Community Life. Having a core group of committed citizens with emphasis on quality of business and community for developing or recruiting compatible new business. 8. Broadband Technology. Realistic appraisal of future opportunities. One promise of the internet is allowing people to work anywhere, and more people are able to work from their homes. 9. Sell Your Assets. If you have people in Encampment who can do network marketing, then sell it. If your school is great, sell it! 10. Minimize Weakness. They did an assessment in 2004, and asked the people what do we have and what are we missing? A gas station, grocery store and bank. Plugging the leaks…there’s an example in Kaycee, population 243. Why not do that in a community of 450 in Encampment? Lunch Speakers Moderated by Hank True, Chairman of Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation Michael Swanson, PhD Senior Economist Wells Fargo Bank, Minneapolis, MN
What you need to know about economic forecasts is they are wrong…there’s never been one completely right. Why listen? Some economic forecasts are useful. You only forecast the economy to help guess what the Fed will do, because they control interest rates. GDP is consumption plus investments plus government spending plus net exports. Look at how it’s distributed. The biggest part or our economy is personal consumption. The Federal Reserve is reacting to the economy. The part of the economy that really matters is consumption. Sometimes factors in the economy are helping and sometimes hurting. For example, employment growth, rising household wealth, rising technology offerings are helping while wage growth is below inflation growth. Higher interest rates and a weaker U.S dollar are factors that are hurting. The Fed is going to look at one thing: investment. The last two recessions were led by business cycles. The business cycle is when investment slows down or reverses. This last recession was caused by weak investment. We’ve seen business investment pick up with bullish cash flow and seen better economic growth and we’ve seen better economic outlook and better employment. The things helping are record profitability in the business segment, inventory growth and favorable tax environment. Look back on distribution for GDP. The government accounts for only 16% of the economy, despite how much we pay in taxes on state, local and federal. A lot of what we pay is called transfer payments. Money out of one pocket and into another. That does not count as government spending, so even though you see record amounts of Medicare and Medicaid going out the door, that’s not considered government spending. Actually government spending has been tapering off as result of budget shortfalls and federal tax incentives. Trade is a disaster. We didn’t get to have a 6% smaller GDP because of trade over night. We have had a deteriorating trade situation for over a decade and a half. It’s something that has reached a critical point. Helping net exports is a weaker dollar and above U.S. productivity gains relative to other countries around the world. Other countries aren’t necessarily interested in importing our goods and we don’t have good trade agreements. The Federal Reserve is fighting inflation and they manage our money supply and interest rates because of inflation. The Fed maintains short term interest rates, or fed funds as we call them. Inflation holds the key to the yields and mortgages. Why would the Fed raise interest rates? We have to look at the environment that they are working in. The other thing they worry about are recessions. In the 1970’s and 80’s there were different people at the helm of the Federal Reserve dealing with the Cold War, high interest rates, energy shocks and rising monetary policy. Since then and in the 80’s there is a different world. Financial markets are huge markets. People who need to offset their risks like to trade their futures to help them hedge. These are billion dollar markets with money being bet by people who are really concerned about what happens. Fed funds matter because they set the base for the prime rate. Prime rate is always 300 basis points over Fed funds. At the middle of last year when Fed funds were at one, prime rate was at 4. Today the Fed rate is at 3 and prime rate at 6. When we get to the end of this year we’ll be at 4% at fed funds and prime rate at 7%. We are repeating what we did in ‘94 and ‘95 following that recession and that recovery. When the Fed raises the rates they send a signal to the rest of the interest rate market. The Treasury yield curve is important because a ten year Treasury is the benchmark for mortgage interest rates in the country and is important because one of the strongest things going in the country right now is the construction market. You can’t find a hotter sector in the country than housing. When you look at the ten year drop on Treasuries yield and conventional mortgage rates, they move together. This has allowed interest rates to come down. People have invested their money into houses with the low mortgage rates. Right now mortgages are still a bargain. Over the last decade, the amount of that debt held by foreign investors has come up. Back in the early 1990’s, only about 15% of the treasuries were held by foreign entities, and today about 25% is. That’s a big increase. While Canada is our largest trading partner, the largest holder of U.S. debt is Japan. It’s because they have been running huge trade surpluses with us and have been managing their currency against the U.S. dollar for decades. That has forced them to take a huge position themselves in Treasuries. The Republic of China is number two. They’ve gone from about $60 billion in 2001 to almost $200 billion in 2005. Why do they hold so many US treasuries and what is the risk for them holding so many? They have their own issues, a huge trade imbalance and they have to maintain that fixed exchange rate to do that. They want to do that in the most secure way possible. That trade imbalance is huge and a lot of that is coming from China. They have bought a lot of assets to invest in the United States. What has happened though is this investment has cooled radically in recent years, which has allowed the U.S. trade dollar to weaken considerably. What hasn’t changed is the U.S. and Chinese exchange rate. It is flat as a table top. They want to manage their trade relationships very carefully. To do that, you take the central bank of the country and demand that all exporters and importers come to you when they do trades and give you their dollars for exchange, and you end up with lots of extra dollars – billions of dollars. You take those dollars out of your country to the U.S. to the New York Federal Reserve and buy lots of U.S. Treasuries and leave them there. If you don’t do that and leave the U.S. dollar in your economy, that tends to strengthen your currency which the Chinese don’t want to have happen. The treasuries and interest rates have a big impact on the U.S. housing market. If the Chinese, Japanese and Europeans decided they didn’t want to hold so many treasuries, the yield on Treasuries would go up and the price would fall, which could raise mortgage rates and really hurt the economy. There has been an incredible explosion in housing prices. In the early 1990’s we were at $90,000 a house and now we are almost at $200,000 today. As prices rise, mortgage rates fell, but now they are staying flat. Every time we raise the price of a home and keep same interest rates, we see that affordability of housing in the country is deteriorating. We are concerned that if they were to spike, they could derail the housing markets. We see personal consumption staying strong. GDP Growth in 2004 was a strong 4.4% and 2006 moderate 3%. 2005 personal consumption is above 3%. We think business investment will stay on the expansion path. They aren’t going to slow down investments. Trade is going to stabilize. Employment growth is going to continue.
Buck McVeigh – Director, Wyoming Division of Economic Analysis, Cheyenne
When I spoke in 2003, the national news was on rising natural gas and the likelihood for sustained prices for the future. The new threshold would be $4.05 dollar MCF gas. Wyoming’s dependence on mineral income had ingrained our concern for boom and bust trends. The fundamental supply and demand climate will keep our demand at an elevated level for some time. State revenues are driven primarily by mineral revenues. Employment has had growth. Year over year growth from 2004 to March 2004 has had net gain of 5400 jobs. 2500 jobs, 46% of the direct jobs, were in mining and natural resources. Unemployment was 3.1% versus the nation of 5.2%. Construction continued to be very strong and the state is infusing a lot of money in capital construction. The energy boom does not spread the wealth equitably across the state. We have a very undiversified employment base. Workforce availability is a problem, with competition in construction to these high paying mining jobs. The drought continues to impact farms and ranches. We continue to outpace the rest to the nation with our inflation with the energy development just a little above the national inflation rate. Our general fund revenues are coming in extremely strong. It is just one indictor, but we are 9% ahead of forecast, about $67 million. That puts us on pace to break the present projected amount of $700 million to over $800 million. In the last three bieniums, the growth has been about 35% and the fiscal year 05 versus the fiscal year 03-04 has been over 50%. We forecast net employment to grow at a rate of 1 percent. Natural gas is driving this boom. Coal mining has remained relatively stable. Over the last four years the percent change in population has been greatest in the areas of mineral growth. The rate of growth has been a half a percent over time. The boom in the 70’s and 80’s had an impact. We expect it to continue to grow at just under a half a percent which will put population at 523,500 in 2012. The proportion of baby boomers is significantly higher in Wyoming than the rest of the country. Many baby boomers want to continue to work or need to continue and that will affect our labor force, but it will be a challenge to replace them. Wyoming is 15th in the country for personal income. Our per-capita income is much higher than our average wage. Outside of mining, we have a lack of value-added industry. On per capita basis Wyoming ranks very high in government, local and state expenditures. Residents pay the lowest taxes in the country and the reason is mineral taxes offsetting that burden. How much so? A four person family income of $50,000 with home of $140,000 typically pays yearly taxes around $3400 in comparison to public services costs of $26,000. That $23,000 offset is made up by mineral taxes. The good times will continue for energy production. In the services sector, health and education are expected to be some of the fastest growing. They are pretty good jobs. Fifty-nine percent of businesses in Wyoming employ less than five employees. Business and Industry Perspective and Outlook Moderated by Tucker Fagan, CEO of Wyoming Business Council AGRICULUTRE - Philip Ellis, President of Wyoming Stock Growers Association, Chugwater
MINING - Bret Clayton, President & CEO Kennecott Energy, Gillette
MANUFACTURING - Bill Britz, Vice President, Britz-Heidebrink, Wheatland
OIL and GAS - John Schopp, Vice President, Northern Rockies, Encana, Denver
TOURISM - Trudy McKraken, Owner, Howard Johnson Inn, Laramie
Wyoming’s Front Line: Regional Assessments and Outlook
“OUTLOOK” 2005 was the second consecutive time there has been a regional bankers forecast and report. These bankers represent the grass roots pulse of local communities, bringing first-hand and timely knowledge of regional economic trends in our state. NORTHEAST - Ron Bailey, President - Security State Bank
Assessed Valuation 1. Economy of the area demonstrates the diversity between Campbell and Weston Counties. 2. Campbell County leads the state at $3.259 billion; 3. Sheridan is at $385 million; 4. Johnson at $155 million; 5. Crook $98 million; and 6. Weston at $86 million. Employment Unemployment rates:
Housing Cost and Availability - Average home sale price at end of 2003 1. Campbell: $170,000; 2. Johnson $149,000; 3. Sheridan: $147,000; 4. Crook: $109,000; and 5. Weston: $73,000. · Affordable housing is a problem, especially for younger age work force. · Wyoming Community Development Authority is developing data that points to a housing shortage in Wyoming due to the baby boomers retiring and moving to Wyoming because they can have lower taxes. Cities and counties in the state are going to be forced into doing more to make affordable housing available. We may not have to worry about our growth, but how to find housing for it.
Economic Development
Minerals
CENTRAL WYOMING - Gordon Jenkins, President - First Interstate Bank, Riverton Assessed Valuation
Employment
Housing Cost and Availability
Economic Development
Minerals
Agriculture
SOUTHEAST - Rob Marwick, President - Bank of the West, Cheyenne
2004 Assessed Valuation
Employment
Housing Cost and Availability
Economic Development
SOUTHWEST - Mike Seppala, President - First National Bank West, Evanston
Housing Cost and Availability
Economic Development / Employment
Population Forecast
Minerals
Agriculture
NORTHWEST - Jim Moses, President - First Interstate Bank, Jackson
Employment · Adjusted growth income is about three times what it is for the rest of the state at $130,000 a year. 35% of that is dependent on wages. Most comes from capital gains and other assets. · Virtually no unemployment – extensive want ads daily.
Housing Cost and Availability · Housing cost is an issue. Average house is $1 million and median is $615,000. There’s a $385 thousand gap between what the people make and what the lowest price house is. · About 4,500 rooms available for visitors. Visitor count peaked in 1998 at 2.8 million people and since leveled around 2.5 million. · Total acreage in Teton County is 2.7 million acres. 76,560 acres are private. Jackson could be two and a half times the size that it is now. · Land scarcity issue from a development standpoint is real.
Economic Development · Economy used to be driven by tourism. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s it switched to construction. It is now pretty balanced between tourism, construction, professional and financial services and the medical field. · Teton County and Jackson is a better community from an economic standpoint than it ever has been. · Strong non-profit world with 190 in Jackson. Before capital campaigns on an annual basis, $20 million is raised annually for non profits in Teton County. · The development process is now a minimum of eight months and generally a year and a half. · There are about a billion dollars worth of real estate transactions on an annual basis. Growth and real estate is what make Jackson what it is today. · Challenged to balance preservation and growth.
Population · Jackson is a community of 18,000 people with a population of about 4,000 Latinos. Latino population is very important to the community. From 1990 to 2000, that community grew 650%. · Just less than 12,000 homes in the community. Summer time: about 53,000 people in Teton County.
CENTRAL WYOMING - Bob Sutter, President - Hilltop National Bank, Casper
Employment · Labor is short. · Challenged to find new workers in extractive industries. · Wages are going up rapidly, particularly in the extractive industries.
Housing Cost and Availability · The average house sale was $147,000 in December last year and has jumped to $160,000 in Casper today.
Economic Development · Wal-Mart on the west side of town and the Sportsman’s Warehouse present labor issues · Interest rates are much better today than 25 years ago. · Casper is better diversified and less reliant on energy. · A lot of smaller businesses have come to town.
Minerals · We are doing a little more as far as training people to work in the oil field. · No question extraction of minerals have raised the tide in central Wyoming. · Challenged to meet workforce demand.
|