Mayor offers assessment of rural climate in D.C. visit

With her finger on the pulse of the climate of small-town America, Greencastle Mayor Sue Murray visited Washington, D.C., earlier this week, sharing unique perspective on both developing a rural community and navigating nasty weather.

For the second time during her tenure as mayor, Murray encountered some wild weather conditions while making a long sojourn to represent Greencastle and the state of Indiana.

Back in September 2011, while traveling to China and Japan as part of an Indiana trade mission, Mayor Murray was forced to endure a perilous plane trip through a typhoon.

Then this week, while heading to Washington to take part in a panel discussion sponsored by the Council of State Community Development Agencies, she ran smack dab into a snowstorm that shut down the federal government on Monday.

The snow started falling about 5:30 a.m. Sunday, she said, dropping about 7.5 inches on D.C. that froze all comings and goings on Capitol Hill.

Luckily for Murray, the conference at which she was appearing to represent Indiana in a discussion of rural communities was within the DuPont Hotel on DuPont Circle, where she was staying.

Indiana officials chose Mayor Murray to represent the Hoosier State to offer her perception on rural American cities and their survival. Her experience in fronting the Greencastle Stellar Community effort was central to their selection since the mayor has worked alongside agencies like HUD, OKRA and CDBG and their representatives.

"I asked how many people lived or grew up in a rural community," Murray said, explaining panelists had an opportunity to interact with some 200 people in the room.

The other people on the panel with Mayor Murray on Monday were George Hunton, senior manager of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority; Jim Tischler, community development director, Michigan State Housing Development Authority; and Mariia Zimmerman, MZ Strategies LLC.

Federal funding for communities the size of Greencastle -- just over 10,000 in population (by 326 people) via the latest census -- continues to get smaller and smaller, she told the Banner Graphic Wednesday, "while within our communities, our needs don't change."

If some of the federal programs that communities have previously relied upon are no longer in place, cities like Greencastle are going to find it more and more difficult, she said, "to answer the wants and needs of our constituents."

Communities that can successfully survive, she suggested, "will be the ones that are well funded, well positioned and lucky."

Rural communities, she explained, are ending up with fewer and fewer resources available to them as the federal government siphons fewer and fewer funds through the state.

"What can we do?" Murray asked, noting that the loss of such funds can't all be neutralized on the backs of local residents and businesses via fee increases.

"It makes it very difficult without the extra funding for us to continue to do things like put police and fire on the street or patch our streets or put on programs at the park," she added of rural communities in general.

Greencastle, as the recipient of a $19.2 million Stellar Grant in 2011, is "one of the lucky small towns," Murray assured, noting its proximity to Indianapolis and a major airport as well as the presence of DePauw University have all played major factors.

"We were able to talk about 'Stellar,'" she said of the conference, "and the fact the state vetted us and found us to be well prepared for the future. We're far better off than many, many other places with 10,000 people."

Murray noted that representatives of the agencies that contributed funding to the Stellar Community Grant program were "very, very appreciative to hear that what they do does make a difference, and what they do is not just about dotting I's and crossing T's, and that what they do can help bring about change that can be truly transformative."

While most of D.C. stood idly by in the snow, Mayor Murray pulled on her Hoosier boots and trudged over to U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelley's office to express some concerns.

One of the specific concerns was grant funding for rural fire departments to help them purchase air packs that otherwise can easily run six figures to properly outfit a unit.

Also on her hit list was a change in interpretation of the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) that has helped put Greencastle and cities like Lebanon and Martinsville behind the eight ball in their ability to access USDA programs for possible assistance in the future.

As of Oct. 1, rural communities must have a population of less than 10,000 if located in an MSA (or less than 20,000 if not) to be eligible for USDA funds. Greencastle has been lumped into the Indianapolis MSA, even though it is not in one of the doughnut counties around Indy.

The change, Mayor Murray noted, is the "direct result of congressional inaction and represents a significant modification in the definition of 'rural' and thus eligibility."

"That just reinforces the frustration of our situation," Murray added, noting that if that rural definition had been in effect in 2004, Greencastle never would have qualified inclusion in the Cinergy Metronet project that brought long-awaited high-speed Internet to the area.

And that doesn't even get into the whole water plant rules change that accompanied the city topping 10,000 in population. Bond issues and major expenses seem to loom in Greencastle's future to address that concern and Indiana Departmental of Environmental Management edicts.

Weathering that storm is among the challenges ahead for Mayor Murray and the City of Greencastle.