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Transcript

Tim Sablik: Community development is one of the Federal Reserve's core functions as the nation's central bank. The Community Development team at the Richmond Fed regularly conducts research and outreach to understand economic, financial, and community conditions, particularly in underserved rural areas. These insights help inform our Bank president, Tom Barkin, as he participates in monetary policy making to fulfill the Fed's mandate of promoting maximum employment and stable prices.

Today, we're going to be talking about some of the partnerships that the Richmond Fed has cultivated with organizations in western North Carolina as part of this community development work.

This episode is a conversation in two parts. First, I'll talk to Erika Bell and Hunter Jones to get the Richmond Fed's perspective. Erika is the community development regional manager for North and South Carolina, and Hunter is a senior business analyst. Next, I'll chat with two of our partners in western North Carolina. Let's start with Erika and Hunter.

Erika, can you tell us a little bit about these partners?

Erika Bell: Councils of government, often called COGs, coordinate services and resources for local governments across multiple counties. They typically deliver services like workforce development, aging services, transportation planning, and community and economic development. The two COGs that we're talking about today are the Land of Sky Regional Council and the Southwestern Commission.

Hunter Jones: The Land of Sky region is Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties. That makes up their four parts, or their four counties that are under them. And then you've got the Southwestern Commission, which is the 11 counties to the far west of North Carolina.

Bell: We're fortunate to have existing relationships with the leaders of these organizations through outreach in their area. These relationships were formed years ago between economist Matt Martin and the dynamic leaders of these organizations.

The relationships were further developed when we partnered to co-plan the Rebounding Stronger Summit held in Cherokee, N.C., in 2022. It was one of the first gatherings we planned and participated in following the pandemic. People were eager to get out of the house and convene with colleagues with a focus on how to move forward.

Jones: I'm a native of Henderson County and have worked in economic development in Transylvania County. So, before joining the Fed, I worked with Russ and his team at Southwest Commission and very closely with Nathan and his team at Land of Sky regularly on different projects. The two together have done multiple cross collaborations in that region to begin with.

The event in 2022 I somehow missed while working in my previous role. Our great team here at the Fed did [such] an amazing job that the COGs reached back out to us for our most recent event following Hurricane Helene.

Sablik: Yeah, and we'll be hearing from Russ and Nathan a little later on in this episode.

How have these partnerships given you new insights into western North Carolina that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise?

Bell: Understanding what is happening in our communities across the district is incredibly important to us.

The most recent conference offered important insights into the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the work that they are doing as they move from recovery to rebuilding and as they continue their resiliency planning. Panelists and speakers shared their trauma and their actions in the aftermath of the hurricane. They shared what is on the horizon, their hopes, and their fears. We learned the intricacies of the systems in the area, such as the difference between municipal and regional water systems and the importance of the railway system. We learned the complexities of securing funding for recovery and rebuilding. We heard about the difficult path to reopening small businesses in the area that were destroyed by the hurricane.

Jones: To echo Erika, having trusted partners is a must for our role. These relationships have to be a two-way street. By bringing our expertise and research to the table, we're able to assemble all the insights that were mentioned previously. These insights are all used to tell a story about the economy in addition to the hard data that we have.

Having strong relationships was increasingly important during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. We not only were trying to grasp the economic impacts in real time, but also check in on the safety and well-being of our friends and partners in the region.

Sablik: How else does developing these sorts of partnerships advance the Richmond Fed's mission?

Bell: At the Richmond Fed, we're driven by our public service mission to strengthen the economy and our communities. Through connecting and convening, we gain diverse perspectives and valuable information about local economic and workforce conditions from across our region. These on-the-ground exchanges allow us to engage directly with business owners and community leaders. These dialogues provide insights that help shape policy decisions and research initiatives, and ensure our work remains relevant and responsive to community needs.

Sablik: What have you learned from this experience that might also inform the Bank's efforts to better understand other regions in our district?

Bell: These relationships have helped us understand the economies of small towns and rural areas, which is a key focus of our work. We recently launched the Center for Rural Economies. It is dedicated to addressing the unique economic challenges and opportunities facing small towns and rural communities.

From this experience and relationships, we have learned the immense value of connecting with councils of government and other regional, nonprofit economic development organizations. From these connections, we gain insight into the inner workings of regions and how they are creating innovative solutions to the challenges they face.

Jones: By being able to say that we're a trusted partner with these COGs, with Land of Sky and Southwestern, it allows more doors to open for other partnerships within the region.

Sablik: As Erika and Hunter described, two of the organizations that the Richmond Fed has built a relationship with are the Southwestern Commission Council of Governments and the Land of Sky Regional Council. The Southwestern Commission assists the local governments in seven counties in southwestern North Carolina to obtain funds from a variety of sources for development projects. Similarly, Land of Sky provides technical assistance for local projects in four counties in western North Carolina.

I talked to Russ Harris, executive director of the Southwestern Commission, and Nathan Ramsey, executive director of Land of Sky, about their work and the importance of regional collaboration.

I was wondering if you could both describe your organizations and their key focus areas. Russ, why don't we start with you?

Russ Harris: Our main areas of focus are community and economic development, workforce development, and we have the Area Agency on Aging, which provides services for older adults.

One of the things COGs do is be adaptive to what the issues of the day are. So, we also do convening when things pop up as critical issues like broadband, child care, housing.

Nathan Ramsey: Land of Sky Regional Council offers many of the same services as the organization that Russ leads. We provide economic community development support to try to help our local governments leverage additional resources to help support them.

It's really all hands on deck. It's really about the power of partnerships, how we can work together. There [are] 16 regional councils in North Carolina. Between Southwestern Commission and Land of Sky Regional Council, we serve the 11 counties in the far western part of North Carolina.

Sablik: On the topic of collaboration and partnerships, how has your partnership with the Richmond Fed been helpful in your work?

Ramsey: Our work is about addition and not subtraction. So, bringing together more partners is helpful in leveraging their networks and their capabilities.

There are not many organizations out there that are a better partner than the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. They're really focused on a lot of the things that we are. You have instant credibility when you're putting an event together and you're with them, and to have organizations like Southwestern Commission that we can partner with to focus on how to increase economic opportunity and to help grow our local economy. It aligns with the mission of the Richmond Fed, but it also aligns with our local mission. We're just grateful for the leadership of Matthew Martin and his team from the Charlotte branch and the entire Richmond Fed team.

Harris: To piggyback on that, sometimes we can get lost on the ground a little bit in our worlds. So, for us, it helps to be able to talk to them ... I remember I ran into someone from the Richmond Fed last year at an event and I said we're hearing that we're maybe heading into recession. What do you see? And they said, well, we're seeing a lot of down buying, people going to store brands increasingly, and things like that. It put numbers to what we think we're seeing locally. And, vice versa, when we see them, they say, look, the research is saying this, but what are you guys seeing? So, I think we're able to compare notes as we see things from a different view.

Nathan mentioned the credibility piece. The Richmond Fed is such a trusted, nonpartisan partner that I think it brings instant credibility. And I think the research piece, we don't always have the time to do research into some of these issues. But I know if I've got to go give a presentation on housing and how that's been impacted by Helene, I'm pulling the research that the Federal Reserve has done.

... We appreciate the focus on rural communities. We can look at aggregate economic numbers in the country and think we're doing great. But if the rural communities are getting hollowed out and falling behind, that's going to be a serious problem, and I think that's been a huge focus. That's why we've partnered for the last couple of years with the Richmond Fed. It's because they understand the importance of rural communities.

Ramsey: I've always enjoyed attending the investing in Rural [America] Conference that y'all host and the focus you've placed there. I saw not too long ago there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about President Barkin and how he goes out and visits various communities to see what they're experiencing.

Sablik: Yeah, for sure. Longtime listeners will definitely be familiar with the Richmond Fed's focus on trying to understand rural communities in our district.

On this topic of collaboration and understanding and comparing notes, Erika and Hunter mentioned earlier in the conversation that you recently partnered with the Richmond Fed to organize a meeting around the recovery from Hurricane Helene. I just wanted to hear from both of you a bit more about how your regions were impacted by the hurricane, and how that meeting was helpful in terms of looking one year on and thinking about the progress and the challenges that remain.

Ramsey: Helene inflicted almost $60 billion worth of damage in western North Carolina. It was the largest natural disaster to impact the state by over threefold. It had devastating impacts to our communities.

The way we're going to recover is [by] leaning on our partners and our friends. That is what has helped us get through this past year, as people across North Carolina, across the country, have come here to help us. The Richmond Fed helping host that summit — helping provide insight and guidance to us — is really key to our recovery.

We know there won't be enough resources out there to meet all the need. So, we hope we see more federal and state dollars and additional philanthropic dollars. We're just going to have to double down on our partnerships and do a better job of pulling ourselves back together so we can recover in a stronger, more resilient way.

That's why we're working with our regional councils around us and the Southwestern Commission. There's no better partner. Russ and his team do outstanding work.

Harris: I think my region, to some degree, has a little bit of survivor's guilt, with six of our counties having a little bit of damage but not getting hit that hard. When we went to check in with them after the storm, we heard from every one of them, "We're fine. Go check on Haywood County."

In the eastern part of our region, Haywood County definitely got a direct hit. They got hit in 2021 by Tropical Storm Fred, 2023 had a major mill closing, 2024 had Helene. So, they have certainly been hit hard. I think they have a deeper playbook of how to handle situations like this from hard-earned experience. They knew what was coming, what it was going to look like, and how you start to build out of this. But it's still a struggle.

In terms of long-term impacts — and Nathan and I have both spoken on this before — housing was a crisis before in this region and then you take a bunch of housing offline. The Richmond Fed's research on that really paints that picture. We're a service economy. People struggle to find a way to live here anyway. Now we have less housing. I think it has got a lot of long-term ramifications.

The other way we've been impacted [is] local governments being able to cash flow some of the repairs they're expected to front [while] waiting on reimbursement, and even just the amount of grant money coming into these small governments. I've got a local community that has about a $10 million budget. Right now, they're trying to manage $110 million in grant money. I heard somebody one time say, "Too much grant money will choke the engine."

Ramsey: To follow up on what Russ shared, those counties in the Southwestern Commission region that weren't impacted as much by the storm have seen economic impacts. Many people felt like they couldn't travel to western North Carolina, and a lot of our counties are really hospitality/tourism dependent. When people see on national news that Asheville and places like that were devastated, they felt like they couldn't visit places like Bryson City or Murphy or Franklin. To that extent, it shows the complexity of how a disaster can have a domino effect and why our recovery journey is going to require a larger region working together.

Sablik: One of the challenges faced by rural communities — and I think both of you alluded to this — [is] local leaders having to wear many hats and struggling to do certain things on their own. So, I was wondering if you could talk to the importance of regional collaboration, particularly in rural communities, and how you see that helping you tackle these bigger common challenges.

Harris: We don't have every resource we need, obviously, so that ability to partner is definitely important. A lot of times, our job is to bring money into the region to address issues. But we don't have the capacity to be content experts in all these different areas, so we've got nonprofits in our region. The HIGHTS deals with at-risk youth. So, when we have workforce dollars and we want to tackle that issue, that's a trusted partner. Haywood Waterways [Association] is another one. If it's stream bank restoration or flood mitigation, they're the experts in that.

Ramsey: In rural communities, it really does require us to join together. The sum of the parts can be greater than the whole. One positive that came out of Helene was to see the collaboration and how people in their neighborhoods across western North Carolina work together to pull each other up.

Regionalism sometimes isn't easy. It's sometimes hard to get beyond the focus of your local city, town, county. But that's really what this type of work takes. You want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you got to go together.

Sablik: When it comes to building those regional partnerships and maintaining them, do you feel like the convening that you held recently around Helene — and then Erika and Hunter mentioned an earlier one in 2022 in the aftermath of COVID — is that kind of a model that seems to be working or they think is helpful for building that regional collaboration?

Ramsey: I mean, I think so.

Sometimes we don't know the answer. It's like, let's have a meeting. If we knew the answer, if it was so simple, we'd just go do it. Getting all of us on the same page, all pulling in the same direction, requires government, business, education, [and] nonprofits all working together. Even in communities where they all want to work together, it's not easy.

We're blessed in western North Carolina to have a collaborative spirit. Mountain people historically have been under-resourced, so many of them had to bootstrap their way to move forward. Having the Richmond Fed as a trusted partner encourages those in our community to say, hey, this is something we need to be a part of.

Harris: A lot of times, you get together to talk about an issue and you just get a lot of people from the same bubble talking about the issue. We don't necessarily get new ideas. Bringing people from a lot of different walks of life, that's really where the value in this is. The more we can understand what other people's challenges are, the better off we are.