Chamber Speech 2008

You’ve heard people say it…they’ll be telling a story, usually about some event that happened in their lives, and they’ll say “it was a milestone”, meaning it was a turning point and after that event, things were somehow different, usually better.

We’ve all had moments that we would consider milestones. Something you accomplished or something that happened that was significant, possibly because you weren’t sure you’d succeed and then you did. Or possibly it was something that you had to overcome when the odds were against you.

An event that becomes a milestone isn’t always expected, often not planned and sometimes not welcomed. What makes something a milestone is not just the event itself, but it’s how we deal with it and what happens next as a result.

Here in Carthage with the recent announcements of layoffs at Methode Electronics we are at a turning point for our community. We can either let this be an event that does us in, where we give up on all the things we’ve been working at, or we can re-group, amend our plan and move ahead.

I’m up here tonight to tell you that we have the opportunity and the ability to make this a milestone event. And with the help of all of you, we’ll come out on top.

I want to tell you first what’s been happening so far and then where we can go in the future.

Almost immediately when the announcement was made by Methode, we began getting calls and visits at the city hall from legislators, state agencies and people from throughout the region offering to help in any way they could. Both the mayor and I got calls from Tim Glandon, the vice president at Methode. And those were followed by calls from Senator Durbin, Senator Obama’s office and Congressman Hare’s office. And we’re very glad to have Congressman Hare with us tonight. He met with a group of folks earlier before dinner and has offered the help of his staff as we start on the next steps. And we’re very grateful. And then we received calls from Representative Myers and Senator Sullivan, and they have both been here in the last week. It has been a great show of support to let us know that in times like this we are not alone.

There are several state agencies, which are already in place, to give help and support when a company lays off workers. Two of those have been particularly helpful to us so far. The first is the Dept. of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. And we’re glad to have Tom Carper here tonight. He’s been here many times in the last several days. And the other is the Workforce Investment Office, whose mandate it is to work with displaced workers when there are layoffs or closures. I have had many reasons in the past to appreciate the excellent work that Blanche Shoup, the director of the Workforce Investment Office of Western Illinois has done in other projects. But in the last several days, she has been the resource and the rock on which we have leaned most heavily. She and her staff will coordinate the services to the workers as the layoffs begin. She has already begun meeting with Methode staff and will be meeting with the employees in the near future to help them look at what next steps they might take, either in looking for new jobs or going back to school for retraining. Eventually Blanche and her staff will have a local office here where the laid off employees will be able to go for services. And it is possible that that office could be open for as long as two years.

I can say without hesitation that we could not have any better people helping us thru this situation than Blanche Shoup and Tom Carper.

When we look at these layoffs, there are three main areas that we HERE can be concerned about.

1. Obviously, the workers themselves, and how they can be helped thru this situation

2. The impact that this will have on our community in general

3. The future uses for any part of the Methode buildings when/if they become available.

As we move thru the next several weeks and months we will begin to see ways that our community can be helpful to those individuals who will be loosing their jobs, i.e. things that can be done in cooperation with and in addition to the services that Blanche’s office will provide and those provided by the private agency that Methode has hired to assist the workers. Just a few of the ideas that have been suggested so far have been a job fair, a social services fair, entrepreneurship workshops, tutoring help and possibly providing a website where employees can go with questions. When the time comes your ideas and help will be needed.

In Galesburg when they had the layoffs of 1600 people from Maytag, they formed community task forces. These were suggested from a community planning and brainstorming session that they had. And these task forces were made up of community folks who then addressed issues, such as services to families, employees, local businesses and other community needs they had identified. We have gotten offers of help from folks in Galesburg who are willing to share their learnings with us and help us thru a similar process. You’ll be hearing more about this as the weeks progress.

Tim Glandon has told us that it will be at least a year till they know what, if any, physical building space might be available to another business. That gives Methode time to see how this restructuring proceeds and whether they will find other uses for the building, machinery and trained staff. And it gives us time to think and plan for options too. One upside is that having a large quality workforce and a large available building would make our community more attractive to some potential developers. And Tom Carper and the DCEO staff will be here to work with us to search for possible tenants.

Staff from the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs have offered to work with us to do a community impact analysis using worker surveys and other information that can give us a better idea of what we might expect an economic impact to be on our businesses and then to suggest ways to mitigate that impact.

Suzan Nash and Shannon Duncan from the Western Illinois Regional Council have offered to work with us to find financial resources, especially through the federal Economic Development Administration, that are available to communities who loose 200 or more jobs. This money would go toward specific projects that could help us bring in new jobs to this area.

We have the beginnings of a plan to work on the three impact areas: helping the displaced workers, determining the impact on our community and finding some uses for those buildings.

But in addition to letting you know what’s already happening, the other thing I want to leave with you tonight are some thoughts on what our attitude needs to be as we go ahead.

Several people have asked me this past week whether I thought that the events happening at Methode would influence the plans for building a new hospital. Or more accurately what most said was, “Don’t you think that they should reconsider or cancel the hospital project now that Methode is loosing so many jobs?”. And my answer is a resounding NO!

This past year in Carthage has been a good one. Many of the plans and projects that have been started are making great progress. The hospital is just one of those projects which will have a huge positive impact on our community. Great things are happening. Let me remind you of some of them.

- The evolution and growth of the Carthage Family Fitness Center

- The convergence into Illini West high school, which brings so many new opportunities to our children

- The final plan is complete for the Carthage Community trail, which you can see up on one of the easels in the back

- The finalization of the Tax Increment Financing District, and the exploration of a possible Enterprise Zone , both of which will give incentives to businesses locating here

- The plans are progressing for new zoning districts in the newly annexed property around the highway interchange. Those are also up on a map in the back. This gets us one step closer to being able to market that property for development.

- The senior apartment complex funded by our HUD grant is finally going up

- We have just received a second grant to rehab the homes of more low income homeowners in our community.

- The application is in and we have hopes of receiving a no-interest loan that will make it easier to run water and sewer and roads to the new hospital site

- We had a second successful “Christmas Wish” concert and a wonderful “Home for the Holidays” performance.

- And we had the most successful and well attended Christmas open house yet

- We had a very positive secret shopper experience that helped us learn a lot about the customer service we have been providing and what we can do to make that even better.

- We got a beautiful new city hall and will soon have a much larger Kibbe museum and historical society

- We will be receiving grant funds to do six Looking for Lincoln Wayside Exhibits that will bring in even more visitors.

And last but not least…The college campus was finally sold to the Prairieland Investment Group! The look of that campus has changed from an eyesore into something of which we can be proud. And plans are progressing for many business opportunities to go into those buildings.

And one more thing which we have to celebrate…YOU are all still here and doing business! And we have an active Chamber of Commerce to support you. We have a lot of good things going for us.

Now of course when you loose jobs you want to look at how you could replace those jobs. If you look at the projections for the thirty fastest growing jobs from now till 2014, sixteen of those are in healthcare. Many of those are jobs that can be done by getting an associates degree thru our own Carl Sandburg College. And that could be some of the re-training opportunities offered for our Methode workers. So we need that new hospital now more than ever so that we can grow our health care services even more and become the place of choice for health care in this region! And I don’t want to forget when I’m listing people who have offered support this past couple weeks that Tom Schmidt, Deb Miller and Carl Sandburg College have also stepped up and are ready to offer training courses in just about anything you can think of. We are very lucky to have them here in Carthage, and that they are ready and willing to grow their program here.

Two other of the fastest growing jobs are veterinary technologist, which also requires an associate’s degree, and veterinarians, for which we also have jobs here in a business that is growing rapidly. And then there are a slew of computer jobs on the list, which could be done here if someone might want to consider, for example, opening up a small technology center as they’ve done in Monmouth.

We are very well situated for job growth, some of which is only limited by our own vision.

The layoffs at Methode are more than just a bump in the road, but we need to remain positive about what our community is already doing and could be doing in the future. Carthage has had these milestones before when Carthage College left in the 1960’s, and again when Robert Morris closed in the 1980’s. We’ve weathered those transitions and we can again.

When I first came here, I spent considerable time the first few months talking to people about Carthage, learning how they felt and what they wanted. I interviewed 75 people. And one event that people talked about consistently was the WOW Park project. There was such pride in how they worked together, raised the money, and then built the whole park in a week’s time. And almost each time the person would end by saying, “Boy I wish that we had another project like that to bring the community together.”

I don’t think that the Methode layoffs was the kind of project that they had in mind. But I firmly believe that we have the will, and the energy, and the commitment to join together again in a community effort that will let us look back on our response to this with pride.

I’m not saying that we won’t have some tough times, but I know that there isn’t any community out there who could deal with this as well as we can and we will. And we’ll do it while keeping up with all those other plans and projects that are moving along so well.

When I’m long gone from here, and the person who has this job is interviewing a much older John Huston, he’ll be asked about past events that made this community what it is. And John will say, “I remember when our big manufacturing plant laid off all those workers. That was about the time we built the first section of the new hospital out in the middle of that field down by Ray Rendleman’s house. The community pulled together, helped the workers, kept other businesses from closing, and raised millions of dollars to build that hospital, all at the same time. We really showed ‘em then what Carthage is made of. It was a milestone!”

Thank you!