Miner County Lessons

Lesson 1: Value All People

“One of the reasons we’ve been successful is that we’ve valued diverse planning input,” notes Mads Andenas, a Miner County farmer who served as Miner County Community Revitalization (MCCR) Board Chairman, 2000-2005. “People asked a lot of questions and we valued those, too. The exchange of ideas and questions at public planning meetings fostered a lot of good decision making.”

About 2,800 people live in Miner County . It’s easy for outsiders to embrace rural stereotypes and assume residents all hold basically the same values. Not remotely true.

“We have lots of perspectives,” stresses Mads. “With a population as small as ours, we may not have local expertise in all areas, but when we put all those perspectives together we cook up some pretty good wisdom.” A perspective especially valuable was that of people in poverty. “They offered views that may not have been apparent to those who haven’t been there, and they were an important part of the process,” Mads recalls. So important, in fact, that a commitment to poverty reduction was quickly established as central to how Miner County defines revitalization.

While it’s true, as Mads states, that a place of 2,800 can’t be expected to have all areas of expertise covered, Miner County learned it claims deep expertise in some fields. Any farmer who survived the farm crisis of the late 20 th century, for example, knows plenty about business operations. The high school yielded expertise, including Randy Parry’s. Parry, a longtime economics/business teacher, became MCCR’s president.

Still, interest and a willingness to learn have proven more significant than professional resumes. “We had a structure that brought people together in interest groups,” explains Mads. “Then they worked together in housing, economic development, assistance programs, and other fields. As people learned their strengths, leadership emerged in each area. It was quite intentional. We believed from the start that would happen.”