Forum Editorial: Small towns face shared challenges

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One of the privileges we have in our work here at The Forum is the opportunity to spend time in all of the smaller communities that make up our larger Nodaway County community.

Most of the time, it’s just a job, and we report on them like any other, giving the same weight and import to a council meeting in a town of 50 as we do to reporting on the machinations of the state legislature.

But in those small town meetings, every once in a blue moon, the stars align to remind us that there is no truer expression of our uniquely American way of life.

Mostly, small town governments are made up of people who have other full-time obligations, or they’re retired. Either way, they’re doing what they can to try and make sure their community is the best it can be. Sometimes that means six people in a room that can barely fit eight, all of them talking over each other.

You won’t find that no matter how far you look in Russia, but you can drive to any town in the United States that welcomes you with a sign along the road, and whether it’s one night a week, or one night a month, you’ll find much the same scene play out, no matter where you go.

We think that’s the way it should be: a group of people who live in the same community bringing passionate opinions to discussion.

Unfortunately, that scene gets harder and harder to play out for more and more reasons. But at the root of them all is our small towns are dying. There are too few people to gather in a room and discuss decisions that need to be made, and so many that do need more help.

We spend time in all of those rooms, and we see the struggles so many of the small towns in our county share — from trying to maintain water and wastewater infrastructure to trying to keep roads intact to trying to wrap their heads around grant programs and requirements.

Running a small town has never been more difficult.

We wish we had a grand, unifying answer to those problems and more. We don’t.

But we do believe that community doesn’t need to end at the city limits.

With so many shared problems, we encourage the leaders of our small towns to look more to each other for help in the complications that make the day-to-day running of a city too much for the understaffed operations they run separately. We think a program like one briefly attempted by former Skidmore City Clerk Meagan Morrow in 2022, when a smattering of local officials from small towns across the county met to discuss shared challenges, was a good first effort, and one well worth building on.

We in rural parts of our country are all facing new challenges, and all actively looking for solutions to keep our communities thriving. Our smallest towns are no different, but they face a steeper climb.

Whatever solutions there may be, we encourage our local leaders to get creative and find a way to move forward together while learning how to better your communities.

In the meantime, we’ll see you at the next meeting.