Miner County Lessons

Lesson 2: Help Residents Improve Their Hometown Economy

Teresa Poppen grew up near Argonne , a Miner County town that died. “It’s completely gone, a place where tumbleweeds literally blow down the street,” she says. Her children grew up with Howard as their hometown. Howard is Miner County ’s biggest town with a population a bit over a thousand. “What motivates me,” Teresa continues, “is that I’d like my children as adults to have the option, if they desire, to live in Miner County . I don’t know if they will or even if they’ll want to, but I want it to be an option. I didn’t have that with Argonne .”

Teresa and her husband lived away from Miner County a few years and she entered a banking career in another rural South Dakota community, “hard and heavy into loans—ag loans, car, installment loans.” She had no way of guessing how valuable that experience would later prove to herself and Miner County . The family moved back to Miner County to farm and Teresa took a school secretarial job, but the community revitalization effort meant a fresh career opportunity. She found herself not only motivated but professionally qualified to join the MCCR staff, specializing in gap financing for business startups.

“Gap financing means finding ways to make up the difference between what an entrepreneur has at hand and can obtain through conventional loans, and the dollars it will actually take to open their business,” says Teresa. She’s made 27 business loans in the past five years, tapping MCCR’s own Intermediary Relending Program, and a Rural Business Enterprise Grant loan fund—both backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program (the connection with the Agriculture Department doesn’t mean the businesses have to be ag ones).

But all the gap financing on earth falls flat without area banks willing to think differently and, of course, entrepreneurs hoping to turn profits locally. More than anyone thought possible a decade ago, Teresa says, banks who once viewed each other only as competitors have found ways to join forces to make business development happen, as well as new homes and community enhancements. There’s no doubt the activity has attracted attention from would-be entrepreneurs who weren’t looking Miner County ’s way before. Some of them know MCCR has successfully encouraged residents to buy as many goods and services as possible locally. Yearly sales tax revenues have climbed steadily since the “shop close to home” campaign began in 1996.

“People from the outside, for the most part, aren’t going to drive in to shop unless we give them a reason to,” says Teresa. “As of now, if someone in Miner County wants to start a business, the community has to support it. Our residents are aware of the importance of local spending and the money cycle that results. But even here, where that commitment has made a big difference, it doesn’t hurt to remind people again once in a while.”