Shari Davis joins "Diversify Nevada" to discuss her work with Nevada's rural communities. Shari is GOED's director of rural economic & community development as well as the Nevada Main Street state coordinator.
Learn more about Nevada Main Street and rural economic development:
Speaker 2 (00:00)
Welcome to Diversify Nevada, a podcast produced by the Governor's Office of Economic Development. Diversify Nevada provides insightful discussions and expert analysis on the driving forces behind our state's economic, workforce, and community development. I'm Tom Burns, the Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.
Speaker 1 (00:01)
And I'm your host, Evan Haddad. We have a great guest today, someone who does a ton of work to support Nevada's small towns and rural communities. Shari Davis is GOED's Director of Rural, Economic, and Community Development. She oversees the Community Development Block Grant and Nevada Main Street programs. Shari grew up in Tonopah and received her degree in anthropology from UNR. She returned to Tonopah later in life as the Tourism and Events Coordinator. That job soon grew to include many other duties and responsibilities.
She also ran the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, creating exhibits, giving tours, and writing grants. Sherry worked in economic development and historic preservation and even managed the community swimming pool during the summer. So when Shari says she understands the struggles and strengths of rural communities, it's because she really has been there. We have so much to talk about today, so let's just jump right into it. Shari Davis, welcome to the show. Well, great to have you. You have quite an impressive resume. ⁓
Speaker 2 (01:11)
Thank you so much, happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:17)
We were talking before recording about all the work you do serving rural Nevada. So before we get into the details of what you do here at GOED, just tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
Speaker 2 (01:27)
Okay, well, fourth generation, Nevada, grew up in Tonopah. I love outside. I love jeep rides. I love hiking around. just love being ⁓ outside. That's the only time I think that my brain stops for a little bit and can relax. But I just absolutely love Nevada and all of the things ⁓ that you can do in this beautiful state. And it brings me so much satisfaction and joy to be able to work with our rural and urban communities with various programs that we do here at GOED. But yes, I certainly spent a lot of time outside.
Speaker 1 (02:02)
Tell us about what you do do here at GOED.
Speaker 2 (02:04)
Okay, so I am the Director of Rural Economic and Community Development. So I have the CDBG Community Development Block Grant program under my purview, as well as the Nevada Main Street program. And that is the program where we're working with both rural and urban communities.
Speaker 1 (02:22)
So for those who might not know CDBG in Main Street, can you just go into a little bit more detail about what those things do and what of what kind of activity goes on from them?
Speaker 2 (02:33)
Sure. So CDBG is a grant program through HUD, through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. And that program can help with infrastructure things. We do a lot of sewer and water, a lot of... We just helped the West Wendover Firehouse, their new fire station, sidewalks, all sorts of different programs like that. Things that help build the infrastructure that can make economic development easier ⁓ in some of these rural communities.
Speaker 1 (03:04)
So I know you're very passionate about rural Nevada, as you said, fourth generation. What is it about serving rural Nevada that is really important to you?
Speaker 2 (03:14)
I think that rural Nevada really sometimes struggles with getting the things that they need. They're not big urban areas. They don't have huge tax bases, that sort of thing. so sometimes it's really difficult for them to receive the resources that they need in order to grow or to figure out how to capitalize on some of the businesses and things that come in while also mitigating the not so great stuff, right, as you're trying to grow, but then you've got infrastructure things that you need to do and all of that in order to make those things happen. And so I think it's just really important for rural Nevada to know that they have an advocate ⁓ with me, with the Governor's Office of Economic Development, as we're trying to help encourage growth in their communities while still making sure that it is sustainable growth that they're able to manage.
Speaker 1 (04:05)
Have you always been interested in serving rural Nevada, like your whole career? Was there a moment that really kind of set you off on that path where you're like, okay, I really want to dedicate my professional life to serving these communities and helping them get what they need? Was there a moment?
Speaker 2 (04:21)
I think maybe it was a buildup. So I did work for tourism, right? Well, so when I was in Tonopah, I did the tourism and events coordinator job. And when I was there, I spent a lot of time advocating for Tonopah in general and spending lots of time with Travel Nevada specifically, with that state agency promoting Tonopah and all of its assets and then starting to promote.
Nevada is divided into territories. And so all of the other organizations and towns within the Silver Trails territory at the time. And so I was learning more and more and more about Nevada, things that I already knew in many cases. But when you're in tourism, you really start to learn all of those really important bits and pieces that make a community who they are, right? Those historic assets and all of those other things. And then when a job came up to work for tourism, I thought, well, what the heck, I'll try it.
Couldn't believe when I actually got that position. And then that was that. I spent all of that time traveling through Nevada, learning more and more and more about this incredible state that we call home. And I remember talking to my mom about this job right when I started with Travel Nevada. And she said, my gosh, it's like that job was made for you.
Wow. This doesn't surprise me that you're selling Nevada, truly, because you've been selling Nevada your whole life, is what she told me. Just because I've loved this state. When you grow up in rural Nevada, I think it gives you a certain perspective. And I think that that definitely has led to this love that I have of Nevada.
Speaker 1 (05:52)
So to kind of segue off of that, we throw around these terms economic development, community development a lot, and they're kind of big phrases, and it might be hard for some people who are not in that space to really understand what that looks like. In terms of what that looks like in the rural areas, can you give us a sense of how that plays out, what that looks like, that kind of rural and economic development?
Speaker 2 (06:17)
Certainly, and I'll kind of talk about it in the way that I talk about it with our communities, because I'm not an economist, right? That is not my background. And so when you talk about rural, specifically economic and community development, we want some of these companies to be able to come into rural Nevada, to be able to provide high paying jobs so that kids don't have to leave their rural communities to go find a job where they can pay to have a family or to buy a house or all of these pieces.
And so that economic development part is very important. We need to bring new businesses in, small businesses, bigger businesses, whatever that might be.
But in rural Nevada, can get a little bit more complicated because there's so much infrastructure work that needs to happen in order to make our rural communities a place where businesses can even look at going. We need to make sure that we have places where families can go to spend time. We need to make sure that there's housing and that there's health care and that the roads aren't going to have issues. So there's just all of these other pieces. It's turned into nothing in economic and community development is simple. There's all of these moving parts.
And you can't just say, we're going to build all these houses and that's going to fix all the problems, or we're going to make sure that we bring in all these businesses and that's going to fix all the problems. All these things sort of have to happen in lockstep and the growth has to happen sort of all together between the community development piece and the economic development piece. Basically it's complicated and nothing's easy about it.
Speaker 1 (07:48)
So what are some of the most persistent challenges you're seeing in rural areas? What do they need the most? is there like, I'm sure everything's important and like you want everything, but is there like a priorities list of the top challenges that you're encountering? Something that maybe cuts across the board and maybe you're seeing them across the state or there obviously there are certain challenges that are unique to different areas. But like what are some of the top challenges you're seeing?
Speaker 2 (08:14)
Certainly housing, certainly healthcare. I actually worked for the clinic in Tonopah when the hospital closed. And so I saw firsthand the impact that a loss of hospital and healthcare can have on a community. It would take both of my hands and my toes to count all of the people that I know personally who passed away because they weren't able to get at a hospital on time. And so those sorts of things can be really detrimental to a community.
That is certainly a huge, very personal piece for me of what is necessary in our rural communities. And then there aren't always high paying jobs. Sometimes it's difficult for, ⁓ you raise your kids in a small community hoping that they'll stay, but then they can't because they don't have a place to live and they don't have a job that pays enough for them to support a family.
All of those things contribute to some of the issues that we're having in rural Nevada right now. So I would like to say there's some top things, but they just sort of all work together and you have to sort of work at solving all of them at the same time. Education is an issue, know? Workforce, how do you, if you want to bring a company in, do you even have a well-trained workforce that can do those jobs? so, and then they're trying to compete with mining, which is high paying, you know? And so it just, it's...
It's so complicated.
Speaker 1 (09:36)
Are these issues that have always been there or are we seeing just more rapid growth just because there's more people, there's more development just everywhere? I mean, are these things that have happened more in the last couple of decades or have they always been there?
Speaker 2 (09:51)
Would say little of both. Think that growing up in Tonopah, can think of not being able to get housing. Remember my parents bought our house in the 70s, so they had insane interest rates and all of those things, right? And so those were issues that have been happening for decades. I think the last few years, it's certainly exacerbated as we have lithium mining coming in and all these other good things, right, that can help these communities out, but they also come with their own set of challenges.
Speaker 1 (10:23)
So in terms of the work you do at GOED, can you talk about some of the people you partner with? I know you're very well connected in Nevada just in general. Who are some of the organizations and people that you work with and how does that work together to serve this greater mission of rural development?
Speaker 2 (10:40)
So that partner list, I'm actually, it's one of the things that I'm the proudest of because we cannot do this work in silos. It takes a village to get these things to happen. There's resources that I simply don't have. There's knowledge that I simply don't have. And so we work really closely with Travel Nevada, especially their destination development team, because they're working to build tourism assets within these communities that the communities also want. So not just coming in and saying, we're going to do this stuff.
So it's really focused on the community itself. And then we also, we work with UNR and the University Center for Economic Development. We work with all sorts of federal organizations, both of our senators' offices, several of our congresspeople. So we're in regular contact with them. We have nonprofit organizations that we're working with. We also work with like the Arts Council on Humanities and then also, ⁓ you know, NDOT.
So because sometimes it's difficult to figure out how to get things done along state highways in some of our rural communities. And so we're able to help connect people that way. So the nice thing is in our rural communities, and our urban ones as well, if there's something that they need, if I can't do it, there's a very good chance that I can at least help direct them to someone who can, which is vital. Because it's really difficult to get that information out there sometimes.
Speaker 1 (12:06)
Yeah. So for Main Street, I know one of the things that I found really interesting when I first started here, maybe a year ago, I remember working on a press release for Main Street funds and the different funding of projects in just, first of all, how many communities there are that are part of this ⁓ Main Street. Is it a network? What's the way to describe it?
Speaker 2 (12:27)
I think you could call it a network, certainly. So it's a national organization. I think there's 2,000 plus communities across the nation that are Main Street communities. And in Nevada, we have 33. It's going to be 35.
Speaker 1 (12:41)
It's always growing.
Speaker 2 (12:43)
Yes, it's certainly growing and changing. so we really have, I think it's almost more of a movement at this point. ⁓ It's so focused on our communities and what our communities want. It's never me coming in and saying, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. It's saying, okay, here I am. Let's talk about what you want and need as a community. And sometimes they don't know. Sometimes we need to do some facilitation. We need to talk about some strategic planning. We need to help them figure out what they want, and then how do I help them connect them to the resources to get those things done. And I think that's what's wonderful about this program is it's incredibly flexible. We can make it work for any community, basically. And ⁓ we can adjust and change. It's basically a very adaptable framework that helps guide them to do this community development work that will help them.
Also with economic development with small businesses, I like to say that what Main Street does is it helps create the environment, both built and cultural, in which small businesses and communities can thrive.
Speaker 1 (13:51)
What's part of the DNA of that thriving of cultures and communities? What is there that you really need to foster and what are some of the common threads?
Speaker 2 (14:02)
So I would say, Nevada's growing and we've been growing and sometimes there's a feeling of loss, like we're going to lose what makes these small towns specifically, what makes them unique and what Main Street helps do.
Really focus on that identity piece and make sure that as they continue to grow that they keep that sense of who they are. It's called ⁓ place keeping. So we have these communities that know full well who they are. How do we help them keep their sense of place as they mitigate this change and both the benefits and the positives, but how do we make sure that they can do that? And it's really important to focus on things like historic preservation and on beautification and on small businesses, small vitality, making sure that you've got a good mix of small businesses in your downtown. How do we create spaces where people can go and really interact with each other and spend their money at the small businesses and just really be together as a community?
And it sounds very like, you know, fluffy for economic development, but it's not because what that sense of community does is it brings people together and then they spend their money in the downtowns and they become a place they care. And so they make changes and they bring in flowers and they fix sidewalks and they paint and they redo windows and they do roofs. And so all of these sorts of pieces that make that.
Downtown area, specifically a place where people want to go, encourages economic development. It also encourages workforce. It encourages if communities, if a business wants to come and move into a community, and they have a vibrant downtown where those workers who might be moving in there can feel like they belong and can go and do things, that's going to help with workforce, with retaining businesses, with retaining employees. And also, it's going to make those people that are already there feel better about their community.
So I think it's really what Main Street does I think is really vital. And I love that it is coming from the communities themselves. We're empowering them to make their own changes, which I think is really vital in this.
Speaker 1 (16:09)
Can you think of like a success story that really encapsulates kind of what you're saying here of like, is there a town or I'm sure there is tons.
Speaker 2 (16:17)
There's so many, ⁓ but right now I really, I am so proud of Hawthorne, Nevada. So proud of them. And so when you go through Hawthorne, there is a bypass that was put in to make it so that they didn't have so much trailer, truck and trailer traffic through their downtown area.
But now the problem is that everybody takes the bypass and they don't go through the town itself. And so the small businesses are suffering because they're really dependent upon the community itself and not so much tourism or people coming through that would stop and eat and do all those things. They stop at the McDonald's on the edge of town or they stop at the gas station on the bypass and then that's it. They don't go through the rest of the community. And so we really wanted to figure out a way to help support those small businesses by bringing them off of that bypass.
But it needs work. That town, you know, it really needs a little bit of cosmetic work, we'll call it. And, ⁓ you know, they recognize this. And there's so many people that make that drive regularly that you're really going to get one shot to get them off that bypass. And if they don't like what they see, they're not going, they're just going to take the bypass again. so strategically thought, OK, how do we do something to this downtown that makes it look a little bit better? And so they applied for a grant for a plaza downtown and they
I can't even believe the amount of community support that they have gotten. They're very small, Hawthorne is, and there were 25 people at that first community meeting that we had, which is a really good showing for a big town and even more so for a small one. And they just hit the ground running and they have built this incredible volunteer base. Everybody cares so much and they're primarily doing the work on that.
⁓ They're working on it right now. They've poured concrete. They have a whole bunch of sod coming in on this week as well. they're going to have, they're having a stage and lighting and trees and grass and concrete. And they're going, it's going to be a place where the community can gather. They're going to do yoga classes for seniors and concerts and All of those things that bring the community together, which is fantastic because now the community will also go into their small businesses, want to be downtown and go into their small businesses and spend money. And then as people slowly come off of that bypass and go through the community, they'll have a reason to stop. They'll have a reason to go through again. They'll start seeing these positive changes and start going through and seeing what Hawthorne has to offer. But it's really been wonderful because, they're making these big changes and really working together to do so.
That working together part. There's so much community pride right now. And I think that Main Street has really helped to build that. Sometimes you have to have the right people in the right place at the right time. And then magic happens. And that right there is where Hawthorne is right now. Wow. I'm so proud of them. Like, I can't even. they're amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:11)
So how do you measure success? Like what are some of the metrics you use to just make sure that these communities are doing the things they need to do? How do you figure all that out?
Speaker 2 (19:21)
So we actually have a process that Main Street America utilizes called accreditation. And so ⁓ they can fill out, it's basically a whole big best practices ⁓ self-assessment. And they go through and it has ⁓ all of these standards that they are supposed to meet in order to meet this accreditation. so accreditation is basically like this, these people are doing a fantastic job. It is really an elite status. ⁓
And this helps you kind of put all of that information together and see where the gaps are. And it helps them see where their gaps are and it helps me see where their gaps are so that we can help fill that if there's training that they need in order to be more successful in this certain section. And it talks about fundraising and it talks about budgeting and all of those sort of organizational things, ⁓ as well as projects and all of those pieces that are important to the community. And so that's sort of a self-assessment thing that we do.
And we actually had two more. We've had an accredited community, Gardnerville, for a long time. But we actually just added Tonopah and downtown Reno as well, because they were able to meet those really high standards, which is super exciting. That's awesome. Yeah. And we'll have even more next. We'll have two more next year. And we'll be at five. We were at one for a decade. And I think we'll be at five next year.
Speaker 1 (20:40)
Amazing. what, you've kind of talked about some of this, but what excites you about the future of rural Nevada? Like if we consider where we were in the last maybe 10 or so years, where we are now, right? Obviously we went through COVID, I'm sure that was a whole interesting chapter on itself, but where are we headed now and what is it about that journey that excites you?
Speaker 2 (21:02)
Well, we've got this growth coming, right? We've got lithium mining coming in. We've got all of these other companies that are going to come along those lines, right? And so they're going to have to navigate some change. And what we are doing through GoEd and through Nevada Main Street and through...
CDBG through all of our partners is we're helping prepare them for that. For decades, rural Nevada specifically would end up being very reactive. know, this change would happen and they would have to deal with it as it came. And what I'm seeing now through these programs and through some other things that we're doing is they're becoming more proactive.
They're saying, OK, well, these things are coming. How do we adjust? What do we plan for? How do we make it so that we can capitalize on the positives and mitigate the negatives as we navigate through this? And I think that that's really important, because being reactive, you lose opportunities. But being proactive, you can plan a little bit better. And so I'm thrilled that we're sort of changing how we're approaching that change.
Speaker 1 (22:05)
Last question we try to ask everybody. It's always interesting to see different things people say. Why do you care about economic workforce and community development? We've kind of hit on this, but just why is that so important to you? Just...
Speaker 2 (22:20)
So I love Nevada and I love the people that live here. They are dynamic, interesting, funny, hearty, scrappy people who have dealt with a whole lot of things over the last 100 plus years, right? And they don't always have the things that they need and they make do. And it is, it's impressive. And they just care.
so much about their communities and being able to give them a tool that helps them to make their communities better in the ways that they want to is, can't even tell you, it's impactful. It is exciting to see their faces. I get texts all the time, guess what we finished up? Guess what? You got to come out here and check this out. You wouldn't believe what we finished. You should see how great it looks. Or I wish you were here for this event. We've got 100 plus people here and in a small community where you're doubling the
population practically sometimes. It's exciting to see the change. when people love their community, when they care, things are going to just... It makes for a better quality of life. And at the end of the day, all the things that we do as state agencies in general is it's how do we make...
quality of life better for our residents, for the residents of Nevada. And this is really one of those excellent tools to be able to do that. And if you have excellent community and ⁓ economic development within these communities, the kids can stay there and raise their families and they can get good educations and they can have good jobs. And it just really increases their quality of life in such important ways. And they deserve it.
they really do deserve it. Just because they live in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, doesn't mean that they shouldn't have those same opportunities. And it feels really good to be able to advocate for them and help those things happen for them.
Speaker 1 (24:16)
Great. Shari Davis, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (24:19)
Thank you. ⁓
This podcast was created by the Governor's Office of Economic Development with the help of our sound editor, Michelle Rubble Eddie. If you'd to learn more about our agency, you can visit our website at goed.nv.gov. And if you'd like to share feedback about the show or suggest a topic you'd like us to cover, send us an email to goed@goed.nv.gov. Thanks for joining us and we'll be back soon.