By Shelley Kofler, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-927251.mp3
Dallas, TX – Today we begin a new KERA series: Your Town, Texas. The stories will look more deeply at important issues through the unique experiences of individual communities.
KERA News Director Shelley Kofler is here with our first report.
Read more stories, see video and photo galleries, get recipes and more at kera.org/yourtowntexas
Shelley Kofler: During October we're going to take a look at how the economy is affecting four North Texas communities and what voters want their elected officials to do. Our first stop is in a city of about 100,000. Here's another hint.
Travel Bureau Specialist: We have the littlest skyscraper in downtown. It's, I believe, in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Kofler: That's Wichita Falls, about 150 miles Northwest of Dallas.
Sam Baker: OK. But what does the tiniest skyscraper have to do with the economy?
Kofler: The skyscraper is a reminder of one historic influence that still drives the economy. Here's the story: In 1919 oil drillers made a big strike in nearby Burkburnett. A swindler conned the overnight millionaires into investing $200,000 in a skyscraper for Wichita Falls. The investors didn't notice the blueprints were in inches instead of feet, so what they got was a skinny, four-story building instead of 40 stories.
Baker: And oil still fuels the local economy?
Kofler: It does. But even before big oil there was another big business that laid the economic foundation for Wichita Falls. Cattle.
In the 1860's grassy prairies along the Wichita River drew cattle drivers to Indian country. They brought thundering herds and laid claim to legendary Texas ranches that still stretch for hundreds of thousands of acres.
Every summer some of the historic ranches saddle up and head to Wichita Falls for the Texas Ranch Roundup. No rhinestone cowboys here. Tom Morehouse from the Tongue River Ranch is a member of the cowboy hall of fame.
Morehouse: Ten or 12 ranches get together and compete against each other. It's not typical rodeo events. They have a calf branding, and a team pinning and a cow milking and things like that. It's real ranch life. It's what we do at the ranch.
And Wichita Falls feels it when real ranch life is having a good financial year, or a bad one.
Mike Castles: It's a huge piece of our economy.
Mike Castles organizes the Ranch Roundup competition.
Castles: From wheat farming to cattle ranching there's lots and lots of folks in several counties surrounding Wichita Falls, that's their business. They shop in Wichita Falls. A lot of their doctors are in Wichita Falls. You'll have that year where it's dry. Cattle prices are down and wheat prices are down and shopping at the stores for back to school will be down.
Editors producing a weekend edition of the Wichita Falls' Times Record News still keep a close eye on agriculture and oil, but the buzz in this newsroom reflects an economy that s diversified.
The Times Record's Stacy Johnson edits a special weekly paper for Sheppard Air Force Base. The NATO training post is easily the biggest employer in Wichita Falls.
Stacy Johnson: Sheppard is a huge part of our local economy. They account for about 20 to 25 percent of it. And it is so important that we keep that and maintain a strong working relationship with them.
The air force base, a state mental hospital and a maximum security prison help make government the biggest employment sector providing nearly a quarter of the jobs. Regional healthcare facilities also hire big. And Wichita Falls is attracting new businesses.
The new WDS Global cell phone call center has already added more than 500 workers this year.
But starting pay there is about eight dollars an hour and Wichita Falls has lost a lot of $20 dollar-an-hour jobs as some manufacturing businesses cut ranks or close doors.
The layoffs are part of the reason Moody's financial service recently said Wichita Falls may suffer a double-dip recession. But with an eight-percent unemployment rate, a little better than the state average, the newspaper's city editor Lynn Walker says Wichita Falls is holding its own.
Lynn Walker: Probably the thing that saved Wichita Falls is that it did not boom during the boom therefore it did not bust during the bust when we went into the recession. We didn't have a huge influx of building or construction so we were able to maintain ourselves.
Even so the people of Wichita Falls seem a little anxious about the future.
Under a big tent at the Ranch Roundup I sat down with a group of five. I wanted to know how they've been affected by the economy and what they want from election officials.
Weldon Hawley: Everything's gone up- equipment, fuels, fertilizers- and it's getting to where our inputs are exceeding outputs.
That's Weldon Hawley. He manages all 520,000 acres of the W.T. Waggoner Ranch.
Hawley: We have 140 families working for us. So, we have to take care of them along with the rest of it.
Kofler: Tell me what you want from your government officials.
Hawley: Well, I think regulations are something that's just killing us in the agriculture world. Every time they regulate- whether it a chemical or an animal or crossing trade agreements- it affects us big time. I'd like to see some of that cut out.
Joe Parker, Jr., is a rancher who runs two banks in Wichita Falls. Parker also wants less government.
Parker: Right now as far as anything that's governmentally mandated there's not anything I'd pay more for.
Kofler: What about cuts?
Parker: I think locally it would be that there's been a good many highways and bypasses and things that have been built that I think we could have done just fine without those and we could have put money in something that would have produced jobs.
Healthcare lobbyist Colleen Mills is fed up with lawmakers who vote for legislation without reading the bills.
Mills: I think a lot of people who voted for the healthcare reform, finance reform never read the bills. And that's what we pay you to do.
Mills also wants more accountability from Texans receiving public assistance.
Mills: In order to get a job I have to submit to a drug test. Why shouldn't someone who is getting my taxpayer dollar have to submit to drug testing? If you're getting extended benefits because you can't get a job maybe they should be forced to do some volunteer work.
The other two in our group have had close encounters with poverty and unemployment. Brenda Jarrett runs a non-profit with activities for low income youth. Twenty-nine year old Samantha McMahen is president of the local Sierra Club. She's an environmental science student who is working her way through college.
Samantha McMahen: Mother and father are both jobless at this point, and it's just harder to find work than it used to be.
Kofler: How are you paying for school?
McMahen: I get financial aid because I am low income and I've also had to take loans.
Both Samantha and Brenda worry state lawmakers will cut valuable government services.
Brenda Jarrett: It seems to me that most of the time cutting is being done, for youth it's the arts. I hate that. We're there to empower kids to seek and fulfill their potential and purpose and we do that through the arts.
McMahen: The state parks are really important to me and I know they're important to a lot of people. Especially since the economy isn't as good as it used to be a lot of people are turning to the state parks for their vacations and they would like the facilities to be nice.
City Editor Lynn Walker believes the community's greatest economic threat is its declining population. Young, educated people are leaving.
Walker: We have a wonderful university here. Quite a large number of people get fine educations there, and then they move to Dallas, Fort Worth or Houston where they can find better paying jobs. I think one of the big challenges in Wichita Falls is finding a way to keep the younger generations here. To do that you have to create lucrative jobs.
It's another economic challenge for a community that's overcome a lot- gyrating oil prices, drought, bad cattle markets. And in the best tradition of the gritty, Ranch Roundup cowboys, Wichita Fall has dug in its spurs as it rides squarely into the storm.