While I was totally enamored with Sheridan during my stay there, I saw some areas that I think that the community needs to be working on. And, from the leadership that I saw exhibited I’m confident that Sheridan will have most of the items I’m going to mention figured out on their own.
Like most small towns a key issue in a town like Sheridan is high paying jobs. Their government and mining industry pays well, but Sheridan has not built up a strong base in either manufacturing or high tech. They need to spend some time thinking of how to either recruit in or “grow their own” higher paying companies.
This agurb® has a wonderful entrepreneurial class, but needs to enhance it even more. Can you imagine what they might be able to do it their 39 local foundations jointly allocated 1% of their assets into a local venture capital or angel investor pool? Without any other contributions from the many wealthy individuals with second homes there (another untapped resource) they would have $2.5 million for new business creation.
Their lack of and cost of affordable housing is a problem. Marie Lowe, who toured the town with me, left her real estate job to join Volunteers of America to help solve this problem in Sheridan.
The town is aging in place, with a shrinking school age population. They have lost 25% (1000 students) of their school population in the past 20 years. They can’t let that trend continue.
Their land cost is very high, especially when compared to other areas of the country that I’ve seen. In my opinion this could be a limiting factor in their ability to recruit in high paying industrial and high tech jobs.
I was surprised that water wasn’t as much of an issue as I’ve seen in so many other western states. Despite being in the midst of a three year drought, Sheridan seems well positioned so that water will not be a limiting factor for them.
On balance, I was very impressed with Sheridan. I’m convinced that they are an agurb® on the rise and that you’ll be hearing a lot more of them in the national media.
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