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Up next, a push to attract a working age population.

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Did you consider moving to the small city of Fondelac to work?

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There's an incentive for that.

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Actually, two.

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One offers $9,500 to individuals from out of state to move to the city and maintain their

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remote jobs.

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The other helps employers recruit employees from areas at least 100 miles away and helps

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them offer prospective workers a $15,000 hiring bonus.

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Here to explain the program is Sadie Howell of Envision Greater Fondelac, and thanks

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very much for being here.

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Thanks for having me.

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So why the push to have people move to Fondelac?

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You know, Fondelac County is facing a population decline, not unlike most of Wisconsin, actually.

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And at Envision, we are a combined Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Organization.

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And we hear from our businesses over and over for the past several years that it's really

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hard to find workers.

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Oops, I'm sorry, they just told me something, that did I up-cut the lead?

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There was something happen technically, and if you guys could be sure to pull that live

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stream right away.

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Sorry, you started right out of the stream, it's great.

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So we're going to-

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No worries.

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Try it again.

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There was some technical thing that happened that we were not aware of.

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Most have been bad, folks, or we wouldn't.

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Okay.

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from areas at least 100 miles away and helps them offer prospective workers a $15,000 hiring

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bonus.

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Here to explain the program is Sadie Howell of Envision Greater Fond du Lac and thanks

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very much for being here.

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Thanks for having me.

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So why the push to help people move to Fond du Lac?

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In Fond du Lac County we're facing a population decline which isn't unlike the rest of the

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most of the state of Wisconsin and at Envision we are the combined Chamber of Commerce and

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Economic Development Organization and so we have heard from our members and businesses

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for years that it's really hard to attract talent and fine workers.

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So this has been a push at Envision and our strategic plan on talent attraction campaigns.

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The $15,000 one you referenced we've had for quite a few years and then most recently we

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launched a talent attraction with Make My Move due to a grant from the state of Wisconsin.

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So how bad is that population decline?

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I would say we're pretty stagnant right now so in Fond du Lac County it has been about

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a 1% population growth.

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We don't have a lot of natural birth but we do have net in migration and so we do an

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okay job of attracting people from different counties in Wisconsin and from out of the

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state.

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However we're facing two really big years.

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2030 is when a lot of the baby boomers will retire and in 2040 is when our population

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is really expected to start to decline quite a bit and in preparation for that we wanted

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to make sure that we were starting to attract people before 2030 into 2040.

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How many new residents and workers are you hoping to lure to your city?

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With the grant program so that was from the state legislature put $5 million into a new

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grant through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and Envision Applied we received

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$346,000 from WEDC.

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Envision's board of directors is putting about $100,000 towards it and with that money we

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are partnering with Make My Move.

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They are a national platform that helps relocate individuals that are looking for a new place

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to call home and our goal is 32 families.

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So for both programs individuals or employers have to fill out applications.

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What is interest looking like right now?

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For our Make My Move platform is pretty crazy.

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We actually just got our new statistics yesterday and 1700 people from around the country have

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expressed interest.

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900 of them have applied to move to Fondelac County and then from those it's trickled

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down a little bit.

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We have six accepted movers already.

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We launched this May 14th.

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So about a month and a half, two months almost in we have six people already moving.

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One person already purchased a home in Fondelac County.

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So it's incredible.

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It's really incredible and what Make My Move does and why they have been a great partner.

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We've been working with them for about six to nine months on creating all of the storytelling

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of why would somebody want to live in Fondelac County.

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So they sell the community first and then people apply.

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So we are resonating with an incredible number of people from around the country who want

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to come and live here.

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So if you were trying as you are to entice someone to move to Fondelac, what are its selling

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points?

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It's not a lot of different than what I think you would probably hear from other communities

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that come on.

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We have a little bit slower pace of life.

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We are a little bit smaller.

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We do have affordable homes.

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We do have a wonderful mix of private and public schools.

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We have three institutions of higher learning in our county and a plethora of careers.

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So there you will have no problem trying to find your right career here.

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It's really do you like outdoor recreation?

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Do you still like to talk to your neighbors and find a place that you call community where

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nonprofits are looking for volunteers?

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That's the kind of community that still exists in Fondelac County.

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So briefly here, this obviously really works.

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This incentive program that you've set up are other cities across the state looking at

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something similar.

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Yeah, so we were one of 17 communities that actually received this grant from WEDC.

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So our neighbors to the East Shaboygan and two of our neighbors to the North, Oshkosh

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and the city of Appleton both received similar grants.

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Now their programs look a little bit different than ours, but all of us had to follow the

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same basic guidelines when we received the grant.

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Alright, well Sadie Howell, thanks very much for joining us.

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Thank you.

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For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at pbswisconsin.org and

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then click on the news tab.

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That's our program for tonight, I'm Frederica Fryberg.

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Have a good weekend.

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I've watched you for years and I love PBS.