Recommendation Submitted by

Steve Barney, TRDC Intern

Although I was not able to attend the De Leon Resource Team meeting, Cheryl Hinckley invited me to make some suggestions. After several readings of the De Leon community's comments about the area's problems and opportunities, I would like to add the following recommendations.

1. Community-wide Planning

Involve the whole community in planning, prioritizing, and implementing goals. If all stakeholders are represented, the whole community will feel ownership of the plan. Examples of outreach methods to get broad community participation:

Distribute a one-page survey to residents to get input on specific issues: "What kind of businesses would you like to see on Main Street? How can the farmer's market be improved? How are you willing to help?" etc.
Establishing a "Vision Bulletin Board," in a school, church or some other public place. Residents could stop by to examine plans, maps, etc., as these are developed, and write down their comments and ideas.
To ensure Hispanic input, provide meeting flyers, surveys, and background information in Spanish as well as English. Hold at least one public meeting at a predominantly Hispanic church, facilitated by a leader in the Hispanic community. Get Hispanic leaders on-board in the planning process, and the Hispanic community win be more likely to give their time and energy.
Once the community has chosen a set of goals to work toward, establish Task Forces for each set of goals (for example: Infrastructure, Beautification, Master Plan, Agriculture, Economic Development -- whatever areas the community decides need attention). The responsibility of the Task Forces is to make sure that visible results are happening so that community members don't get discouraged: "Well, we wasted three months going to these dam meetings and now nothing's happening .. "

2. If Rapid Growth Begins to Happen . .

How fast is the area growing? De Leon's population gr ew 6.8 percent between 1990-1996, and Comanche County's population grew 4.4 percent during this same period¹. These numbers do not point to a population explosion in the near future.

However, this kind of growth can occur suddenly once a town is "discovered" by major businesses, retirees, and city-dwellers looking for a quieter place to live.

If rapid growth comes to De Leon, make sure this growth pays for itself. Local governments in rapidly growing areas are hard-pressed to provide infrastructure to service the new growth. Impact fees are a useful growth-management tool since they require developers to pay for new facilities such as schools, fire departments, arterial roads, sewers, sewage treatment plants, and regional parks.

3. Agriculture

Smaller farms (50-100 acres) can supplement their income by establishing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) arrangements with residents of nearby towns and cities. In CSA, residents "subscribe" to a farm by paying a yearly sum in exchange for regular shares of farm produce. This way, the farm's supporters, rather than the farmer, bear the risk of a bad growing season, but they also can reap the gains of a good harvest. For more information on CSA, write to: Bio-dynamic Farming and Gardening Association, P.O. Box 550, Kimberton PA 19442.

Consider shifting from export-crop production to diversified production for local markets. Contact Dallas/Ft. Worth grocery stores about possible arrangements; you may be able to beat the prices they are currently paying for some crops because of lower transportation costs. What crops can you grow locally that the cities are currently shipping from California and Florida?

Look for opportunities to do value-added processing. If individual farmers cannot afford processing facilities, form partnerships to split the cost. Are there processing facilities that could serve (and be paid for by) farmers in the entire region?

Growers can minimize costs by substituting "sustainable" practices for expensive inputs like pesticides and fertilizer. For example, with Integrated Pest Management, farmers replace regular pesticide sprayings with occasional, targeted sprayings and by using beneficial insects such as Lacewing and Trichogramma. Small farms may be able to replace some fertilizer use with applications of compost. Contact technical experts at ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas) with questions about low-cost, "sustainable" practices: P.O. Box 3657, Fayetteville, AR, 72702, 1-800/346-9140. Micro-irrigation can cut water costs for big water users. For a catalog of micro-irrigation supplies, write or call Dripworks at 380 Maple Street, Willits CA, 95490, 1-800/522-3747. 1 believe the catalogs cost $1.

Start thinking about how you will protect the community's farms, farmers, and farmland when De Leon begins to grow. Growth leads to higher property tax assessments, often forcing farmers to sell their land to developers in order to survive.

To combat this trend, one strategy that many communities have used is agricultural-use assessment: land that is being farmed is taxed at a lower, fixed rate. For more information on this and other farm-protection strategies, contact American Farmland Trust at 1920 "N" Street NW, Suite 400, Washington D.C., 20036, 202/659-5170.

¹Texas State Data Center, September 1996, Department of Rural Sociology, Texas A&M University.

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