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Glowing in the Fall air
In the higher altitudes however, the lower ones are beginning to get colorful…now 90 degree weather, next week cold again.
Time for planting winter crops, planting trees and hauling out our sweaters for the cooler weather. I always look forward to the changes in weather. It’s a celebration of color.
Take a drive into the colorful mountains of rural Nevada and smell the clean air. Come and take part in the various fall festivals. See you out there!
Mineral County residents have a chance to share their thoughts on their communities June 21-24. OR if they don’t have time to attend any of the listening sessions they can go to: http://mineralcountynevada.snappages.com/Mineral%20County%20Community%20Assessment.htm
How does a Community Assessment work?
A trained resource team schedules listening sessions for one hour each over a three– or four-day period and asks you, community residents, to answer the three questions listed on the others side of this flyer. Your answers will reflect your community’s issues and concerns, and help identify its priorities for the future. Your and your neighbors’ participation determines the success of the assessment.
What are the results of the Community Assessment?
On the last day of the Community Assessment, the resource team presents a Preliminary Report at a Town Hall meeting. The report summarizes what the team saw and heard during their time in the community and identifies major themes arising from the listening sessions. Within a matter of weeks, the resource team returns to the community to present a Draft Report to a second Town Hall meeting. The Draft Report identifies major themes, makes recommendations that address the issues and concerns under those themes, and provides a list of resources that may help implement the recommendations.
Is it easy for someone to participate in the Community Assessment?
Yes! Just come to one of the scheduled listening sessions and bring your clear, concise answers to the three questions listed on the other side of this flyer. There is no debate, discussion, or partisanship during the listening sessions. Everyone can speak without being judged. All we ask is that your responses be brief so that everyone can speak.
June 21 , 2010 Activity Location
1:45 – 3:00 Schurz Listening Session Schurz Community Center
4:00 – 5:30 Walker Lake Listening Session Community Center
June 22, 2010 Activity Location
9:45 – 10:45 MC Student Listening MCEDA
10:45-11:45 General Listening Session MCEDA
1:00-2:00 Seniors LS Senior Center
3:00-4:00 General Public Listening MCEDA
6:45-7:45 Listening Session /Mina Luning Mule Town
June 23, 2010 Activity Location
9:00 -10:00 Mineral Co Government Court House
10:30 – 11:30 NonProfit/Faith Based MCEDA
1:15 -2:30 General Listening Session El Capitan
3:00 – 4:00 School Admin Listening MCHS
5:45 – 6:45 Dinner @ VFW Post 19 American Legion
7:00 – 8:00 Listening Session Post 19 American Legion
June 24, 2010 Activity Location
7:30 – 9:00 Breakfast/Listening Session Maggie’s
Community/Business leaders
9:45 – 11:45 General Listening Session MCEDA
6:00 PM TO 8:00 PM County Wide Meeting El Capitan
Don’t forget that we have Armed Forces Day coming up in Hawthorne, Nevada it will be our best EVER! The entire event is now focused downtown, you can find anything you want to participate within walking distance. Come celebrate our military with America’s Patriotic Home!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=113328605365486&ref=ts
Now that our land sale is complete, homes like this will soon be manufactured in Hawthorne. Mineral County did as they promised and got the land sale done so that MCEDA could continue holding up our side of the bargain by providing land to Stone Creek Homes.
While urban areas have surplus housing rural Nevada is not in the same situation, there is need in every community that is growing with either mining or renewable energy projects. 
The company proposes homes for every budget, from moderate to higher income homes. Custom homes will eventually be offered, however the focus of the Hawthorne plant will be workforce housing.
Watch here and at http://www.mineralcountynevada.com for updates and news flashes.
Tomorrow we finalize the land sale for 150 jobs. If we do our BEST we should be 5 months away from these badly needed jobs.
Keep your fingers crossed and remember us in your prayers as our commissioners tackle breaking through this first land sale for actual jobs in Mineral County. The team has been pretty much cohesive and fairly quick in everything they are doing. The detractors had bad information and unless it’s just about causing problems, they will be friends not foes.
We LOVE Rural Nevada will be a much more effective blog once we can talk about a solid economy that is growing. Watch our website for job announcements and ground beaking ceremonies.
Seriously some of us get so focused on what WE do we forget others have no clue about what we are doing in our rural towns. Chambers, Economic Development offices, county government, state government, even small cities and towns…everything we do is about JOBS.
At a small county commission meeting recently in which a nonprofit is acquiring land to offer to a new company making 150 jobs–the most amazing question came up. Staff wanted to know ‘what the policy’ was for the county commission to sell land – wow, the community has lost 50% of it’s population in the past 10 years an they had to ask what the county policy is?
Really?
The chairman slapped the desk and said ‘ Our POLICY is JOBS!” YMake it happen, do whatever to make these jobs happen!
The chairman gets it. All of us need to be about jobs.
Even though I work at attracting new jobs to Nevada every day, in my sleep and on weekends as necessary. I forget that while my entire career focus is JOBS for rural Nevadans, often no one knows what I am doing. As I mentioned in the beginning sometimes the most passionate person does not tell their own story very well. We don’t always have time to let the entire world know all of the things it takes to get a new company to move to a rural town.
It’s exciting when a company can see what I see about my area, our state–the places that we love so much. It’s always gratifying when ‘one that got away’ reconnects and rethinks rural Nevada because it turns out our faults aren’t as blaring, or our quality of life has won the client over. It’s even more exciting when they see great opportunity that you have become accustomed to and no longer notice.
Consider the vast interior counties of Nevada, consider the small places–they need jobs too. It might be the best move of your life! http://www.expand2nevada.com/rural_authorities.html
Soon, the most gorgeous wild flower displays will begin across rural Nevada. Amazing expanses covered in flowers because we had a nice wet winter in some places. This is one of those short lived tenuous displays that you can’t just enjoy via a photo, the smells, the eye-popping colors and the vastness of the floral display will leave a permanent mark on your heart.
Remember several years ago in 2008 how Death Valley made national headlines with it’s display of wild flowers, look for this year to be as incredible. Remember it is just a hop and a skip to nearly any rural town you might want to visit, the added attraction this year will be the natural wild flower displays everywhere, (if the weeds are any indicator it should be a whopper).
For early reports to to these websites or even here:
Just when I have bragged on what a great place this can be, the small town politics rear up and bite. It’s funny really, since it is of no real importance, tempests in a teapot so to speak. I have to constantly remind myself that nothing is permament, politicians change, attitudes change and sometimes in spite of all of the obstacles you win anyway!
I choose to believe that no matter how anyone intends their actions towards me, God intends it for good. I can hardly wait to see how this latest nonsense turns towards the good for Rural Nevada.
In economic development we have those fans who understand what you do and why, those who hate change so automatically hate you for being the change agent, and those who can’t even spell economic development.
To the fans I am ever grateful, and to those who hate change I am sorry it is the nature of the world to change, if we don’t change we die. While those that look at our rural lives and think it is a Norman Rockwell type of life, sorry, not so. We have our setbacks, our challenges and our problems just like everyone everywhere else. I guess the difference is you actually know who the enemies are. Most of the time anyway. How we choose to deal with those enemies and their attacks defines in the end who we are.
The size and quality of an enemy is also part of your defining parameters. We have no control over what others think or say, the only control we have is over our own actions. In a small town, since there are so few of us, battles tend to be public, long lived and mostly silly. The reason people get angry is very often because of lack of communication, once time is taken to explain where the communication failed, some of the objections fall away. Sometimes they don’t, the world doesn’t end because someone is opposed to you or the work you do. It makes it more difficult and causes more time to be spent explaining your goals and in the end folks sometimes even end up being a friend. Even if they remain an enemy, they at least have facts to back up their opposition instead of rumor.
Urban or rural we cannot allow the unimaginative or petty or short sighted people stop our dreams. Dreams can be adjusted if necessary, holding on to them no matter where we live is an important part of our character.
I have chosen to be a cheerleader for rural life, I have chosen to make my home here, I have chosen to make a difference and to fight the necessary fights to make those changes.
Behind the most successful people are the naysayers who had no vision. In front of them is a future sometimes only they can envision. Put away from yourself anyone who cannot or does not want to see what you are doing, choose to do the right thing anyway and get on with making your dreams reality, I am!
Good Attitude, Shelley!
There are times in everyone’s life when they are overwhelmed by events in their day that cause them stress. The old saying “Laughter is good medicine”, is great advice. When the situation is ridiculous bordering on hopeless, look for the irony and find humor.
One such case is the story of a special client at our Hawthorne EDA/Jobconnect and her little white poodle. This woman was unemployed, frustrated to tears and stressed to the point of her blood pressure reaching the danger zone. She adopted a deaf and partially blind white toy poodle that was destined to be put down. Without realizing it the hilarious antics of this little character distracted and calmed our client, bringing her blood pressure into the safety zone. The last time we saw her she had dyed multi-colored spots on her little friend saying that she still REALLY NEEDED A JOB! We all had a good laugh, but will remember this hometown hero as she did something remarkable with her humor. Kris Waldon
Who would have guessed when our router failed that finding a replacement would become a two week trek? I laughed at a client who said ‘I would LOVE that’…really? In our office we are the only internet connection some workforce clients have and if we are down, they are out of touch with everyone including the unemployment office. Today we borrowed my husband’s blackberry and will get all of our posts up to date.
A client bringing in 150 jobs thinks it would be GREAT…wonder how he’d feel if he had orders or reports due? =D Well it’s not the end of the world, the phone lines still work.
We will begin adding rural event calendars in the next few weeks. Watch it and plan your stay-cations for rural Nevada!
We LOVE Rural Nevada 
Kris Waldon 3:40 am on September 29, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Shelley, I enjoyed reading your reminder to enjoy the colors of the change of seasons in Rural Nevada. Bundling up for wood cutting, knitting, and baking pies are a few fall activities to which I look forward. Hiking to the high country to catch the first snow of the season is a tradition in our family. I’m looking forward to those fat brown trout that are upriver in the fall and the last few weekends of camping. Don’t forget puttting the garden to bed for winter with rich mulch and manure.Thank you for the reminder!
ruralnevada 3:52 am on September 29, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks Kris. Thank You so much for your time. http://www.ectownusa.net/mineralcountynevada/mem_Shelley
‘Put Your Heart Into It!” Well done is better than ‘well said’! Benjamin Franklin
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Mineral County Economic Development Authority IT’S ABOUT JOBS!!! http://www.mineralcountynevada.com Shelley Hartmann, Executive Director Post Office Box 1635 Hawthorne, Nevada 89515 phone: 775 945 5896 fax: 775 945 1257