July 5, 2003 - My hometown, Monticello, Illinois has been growing lately. In the past 10 years we have added 2000 to what had been a relatively stable 4,400 population for as long as I could remember. Farms have become housing developments, and we have to cope with spending public money to upgrade our infrastructure and keep pace with the new housing. The demographics are changing too. Monticello’s population and its economy used to be dominated by retired folks on fixed incomes and tired farmers who had leased the family farm to the kids and moved to town. The younger families were supported by good jobs at Sterling Drugs, General Cable and Ring Can Corporation.

Sterling Drugs closed in 1985, sold their factory to an out of town entrepreneur, and moved its operations elsewhere. Its big (for us) factory still stands there on the hill dominating downtown as a symbol of decay. It seems that the fellow who bought it had a vision but that was all. The city is in litigation seeking to force him to repair it or spend the 10 million it will take to tear it down and dispose of the asbestos insulation. It is a fool’s errand. The owner bought it for less than $50,000 and thought he was getting a bargain. He doesn’t have the money to tear it down, much less redevelop it.

Ring Can closed its plant in 1992. The corporation merged and the new company consolidated production, closing the Monticello plant. Our biggest employer, General Cable closed last year. Its factory sits empty. The three factory closing cost us 900 good paying jobs. Our unemployment rate is 3% above the surrounding area. At the same time the median income has gone up. The new folks who work at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana have pushed the median up and the median age down.

Housing prices are going up to the point that the retired people and the ex-factory workers are having a difficult time keeping up. Since Illinois has no local income tax all the new roads, the new schools, all the services made necessary by development have to be financed out of property taxes. Those tax bills have gone up 20% in the last 5 years and so has the number of homes lost to delinquent taxes.

We aren’t seeing an increase in sales taxes that you might expect with an expanding population. The new people who work out of town tend to shop out of town. Our last major retailer, a small chain department store, closed last year. We have a small grocery, a florist, couple of hardware stores, three gas stations and that is about it.

The Bush economic plan, cutting income taxes and shifting the cost of providing essential services to local government, is having its impact on us and it is hurting badly. We don’t know how we are going to pay to staff and operate the new elementary and middle schools we just built to house the new students moving in. We are building a new jail to replace the one that was built in 1870 and condemned last year. The Sheriff told the County Board he will need a 30% increase in his budget to staff it. The Board told him that the money wasn’t there. There is good business space around the Square. It is empty. The ‘For Rent’ signs are faded and weathered. And that is the real life economy in Main Street America.