By Mitzi S. Morris for the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Capital Chronicle-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration

As Indiana anticipates slow population growth in the coming years, small cities and towns in rural Indiana are pushing forward with projects to attract residents and businesses to their communities.

Growth over the next four decades is projected to be lower than it was in the decade between 2000 and 2010, according to Matt Kinghorn, senior demographer at the Indiana Business Research Center. More than 70% of Indiana's counties are expected to lose residents over the next 30 years, many of which are rural and also lost population in the 2020 census.

"And the counties that are growing quickly are generally taking population from other areas of the state. So it's not an overall net increase," said Matt Greller, chief executive officer of Accelerate Indiana Municipalities (AIM).

But small Hoosier communities aren't going down without a fight.

Local businesses, organizations and governments are applying for grants, investing in quality-of-life projects and supporting small businesses to draw new citizens and spur economic growth.

"For a community to have the amenities that folks want these days, whether it's broadband or trails or a vibrant Main Street, you've got to have a coalescing of people to make that happen," Greller said.

Going after grants

Grants are crucial in helping small cities and towns in Indiana launch and complete initiatives. Community foundations, state entities and federal sources all play a role in funding local projects.

For example, Boonville in Warrick County is working toward Indiana Accredited Main Street (IAMS) status after completing the Aspiring IAMS 1-year Program.

"(Indiana Accredited Main Street) opens the door for more grant money, which is the key to doing just about anything that you want to do of significance. If you can't get grants, then you've got to do fundraising, and it's pretty hard to raise a million dollars in a town like Boonville," said Jim Miller, executive director of Boonville Now. His group promotes the city's downtown.

The city even hired a firm with a grant researcher dedicated to ensuring community leaders know about every possible funding opportunity.

"The idea was, 'Let's pay this company $50,000 a year, and we'll be looking at $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 grants per year.' Then it pays for itself," Miller said. "I've got spreadsheets of probably 20 things that they're working on."

Miller employs Placer.ai, a location analytics software, to track foot traffic in the city, then uses the information to apply for grants. Janelle Amy, executive director of Main Street Corydon, a Nationally Accredited Main Street community, also plans to use Placer.ai data to attract local investment.

Indiana University Southeast (IUS) is "able to send some reports for us to be able to measure and see how many pings on these phones were coming through and being able to see those heavy spikes whenever we have those larger festivals, especially in our downtown, hoping that we're able to see that data year after year to see, 'Are we seeing continued growth? Should we focus our efforts elsewhere?'" Amy said.

Another grant source, the state-funded Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI), has given hundreds of millions of dollars to economic growth projects across the state. The READI program is not in the current version of the state budget, according to Greller.

"I hate to see that go away because it's such an innovative thing that set apart Indiana, certainly in the Midwest and maybe the rest of the country. It is having a real impact on some of these rural communities," he said.

Quality of life investment

For small Hoosier cities and towns to survive, Greller said municipalities must be willing to fund projects that meet their residents' needs, particularly when it comes to quality of life.

"We live in a world where we all want lower taxes," said Greller. "But there are studies after studies that show once a government decides to make a formal investment in a community in a meaningful way, that typically has a snowball effect."

Miller said increased property tax values helped Boonville accomplish several quality-of-life projects.

"We've been able to take advantage of that and issue bonds to be able to build a new pool and to completely renovate the splash pad and the playground area and the basketball courts and things at City Lake," he said.

But property taxes are in the crosshairs at the Legislature.

Greller emphasized investment in city and town parks as a key driver of economic growth in rural Indiana.

"(Smaller parks) drive things like community events, farmers markets, summer concert series, hot rod festivals or whatever it is that wants to come to an individual community. Those kinds of investments have done well and created good returns over the years," he said.

Miller said Boonville is also focusing on historic preservation with the Mt. Liberty Baptist Church and School restoration project. In Corydon, the town is building a skate park and increasing walkability by connecting downtown to Rice Island Park.

"Being able to expand that further out ... we've opened up a whole other level for people to be able to visit our downtown and hopefully shop and support and live here as well," said Amy.

Attracting businesses and residents

When big employers leave small Hoosier cities and towns, residents often go with them. Corydon is looking to draw a new industry after Tyson Foods' closure last year affected nearly 370 employees.

New Gov. Mike Braun's campaign included a plan targeting rural Indiana, and the current state budget proposal includes a tax credit to attract qualified private sector investors to raise and invest flexible capital into rural communities and help rural businesses to sustainably expand their operations.

Greller said Gas City went through a similar situation as Corydon when the area was hit hard by the downturn in automobile manufacturing jobs.

"They pivoted. They made some strong investments in their community. They've seen an uptick in growth and population. They just built the performing arts center, which is a sign of things improving in those kinds of communities," he said.

In Boonville, two new establishments - a restaurant with catering service and a cigar lounge - recently opened in the historic district, according to Miller.


"What we're trying to concentrate on is bringing in more small businesses because we do have some empty spaces on the square and around the square," he said. "We don't have any more land to be able to give a bigger industry that wants to come in."

Thanks to city grants, Boonville entrepreneurs can apply for money to enhance building facades and revolving loan funds to make other improvements or start a business. Corydon also has a facade program funded in part by the Harrison County Community Foundation and a community collaboration fund created from a state grant.

"We were able to offer up to $5,000 to our downtown business owners for whatever initiative they needed at that time. So it could be purchasing new inventory, helping them with their marketing, Just whatever we could do to give them an additional boost to keep them here and hopefully support their initiative moving forward," Amy said.

Programs like Make My Move and Choose Southern Indiana offer remote workers incentives for relocation within the Hoosier State. However, Greller questioned how emerging return-to-office policies will affect these initiatives in the future.

"I'm interested to see what happens in some of these communities that have had success attracting those folks into their areas," he said.

Amy viewed new housing developments in Corydon and Harrison County over the past year as a sign of residential growth.

"I know of at least three additional apartment complexes within the Corydon area that are very close to downtown," she said. "And new subdivisions have been populating as well in Corydon and beyond."

Pushing past reality

Despite the efforts of small cities and towns in Indiana to remain independent, Greller said some areas that thrived on historic economic drivers may need to have some tough conversations.

"We have some small communities that were there because there was a grain elevator 150 years ago or there was a railroad stop 150 years ago. Does it make sense for the viability of the region they're in to continue to exist as an incorporated area? Maybe we ought to look at merging with other forms of government for the greater good," he said.

Federal funding cuts are also a concern regarding infrastructure projects and other initiatives in small municipalities.

"Many communities are fortunate to receive Economic Development Administration, (U.S. Department of Agriculture), Small Business Administration and other types of federal funding. I do believe that economic growth could be threatened if funding commitments from these federal agencies are halted abruptly," said Darrell Voelker, executive director of the Harrison County Economic Development Corporation.

To persist, Greller said small Hoosier cities and towns must get creative and maximize opportunities to ensure sustainability and longevity.

"We're going to have to take a close look at ourselves and make sure we're running as lean and efficiently as possible to make sure we have resources to invest in these types of programs," he said.


Mitzi S. Morris wrote this article for the Indiana Capital Chronicle.


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State officials are concerned congressional cuts to funding for public broadcasters could hurt dozens of rural communities across Utah.

House members approved a bill early Friday to claw back $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is used to fund programming on Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio stations. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill.

Gov. Spencer Cox is concerned the changes will hit rural communities the hardest.

"I worry about the impacts that will have on safety, security, broadcasting in our local areas," Cox emphasized. "As somebody who lives in rural Utah, I think about our tribal nations as well. These are resources that are really important."

PBS and NPR outlets are based at the University of Utah but rebroadcast programming across the state via remote transmitters. The bill cuts $2.5 million from Utah broadcasters. The stations must now look to other sources, mainly viewers and listeners, to make up the funding shortfall.

Republican lawmakers have long called for an end to federal government funding for public broadcasting, claiming much of the news and other programming on PBS and NPR showed a liberal bias. While he agreed the public should not fund what he calls a "forum for partisanship," Cox stressed he is unsure the move will be effective.

"One of the things I'm most worried about is that these cuts actually won't do what some members of Congress think it will do," Cox asserted. "PBS and NPR will still go on probably doing what they do. But the locals, these are the things that are going to be cut, these are the things that will fall away."

Utah public broadcasters say the cuts will likely mean fewer regular programs and less local news. Currently, most local broadcasters cover an average of about 20% of their annual budget through government funding, but in smaller states and tribal nations, it can be as much as 50%.


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By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

In southwest Colorado, a rural electric cooperative is taking a big step towards energy independence and locally driven power decisions.

La Plata Electric Association (LPEA), a rural electric co-op for parts of Southwest Colorado, is in the middle of a two-year contract termination process to leave Tri-State, the generation and transmission organization that currently provides LPEA with electricity.

Rural electric cooperatives are member-owned, not-for-profit organizations that provide electricity to more than half of the country, including most of rural America. Established in the 1930s, electric co-ops were the government-backed response to a lack of investor-owned electric utilities in rural areas.

Venturing Out on Their Own

The cooperative model means that all customers of the electric co-op are also its owners. Each co-op has a member-elected board of directors that makes strategic decisions, most of which can be made without member approval, based on the bylaws of the individual co-op.

In March 2024, LPEA provided unconditional notice to leave Tri-State, starting a two-year stopwatch for the withdrawal from its contract and membership with the not-for-profit generation and transmission organization.

Leaving Tri-State "will allow us to invest locally and it will allow us to invest in a way that helps bolster economic growth in our service territory," said Chris Hansen, CEO of LPEA in a Daily Yonder interview.

Despite the member-elected board having control over decisions like leaving Tri-State, some members feel misrepresented by their board and do not support the move away from the Tri-State contract.

Dale Ruggles, a member of LPEA, expressed concerns that the LPEA board of directors is making decisions that do not reflect the feelings of their constituents. When asked what he would have wanted to see done differently, Ruggles said he wanted "a vote of the members, if the members vote to leave Tri-State, so be it".

Local control, cheaper prices, and flexibility with sourcing are what co-ops like LPEA hope to gain by leaving contracts with their current power suppliers.

But members who are against leaving Tri-State, like Ruggles, say that they are worried about the cost that will be put onto members and the potential volatility of being on the open market instead of in a consistent contract like with Tri-State.

The withdrawal from Tri-State comes with what some of these members see as more than a $200 million price tag."It's just too much debt, and they're not being transparent," said Ruggles to the Daily Yonder.

Hansen said that the money is a contract termination payment and not anything more than they were already contractually obligated to pay during their contract with Tri-State.

"It's not a punitive fine. It is the amount of debt we would have already had to pay if we stayed there," said LPEA board member Nicole Pitcher.

The payments are calculated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and are determined through a specific calculation that helps to maintain rate stability for the rest of Tri-State's members.

Moving Towards Renewables

Lee Boughey, VP of strategic communications for Tri-State, said that reliability and affordability are Tri-State's number one priorities. Boughey emphasized that Tri-State is owned and governed by its members - the distribution co-ops like LPEA all have representatives on the Tri-State board- and decisions like contracts are also dictated by the members. But part of that is allowing members to leave if Tri-State is not serving their own needs.

Rural electric co-ops are leading the way in energy innovation because of this member-driven governance. "It's part of the co-op model to respond to local demand and to do innovation," said Gilbert Michaud, a professor of environmental policy at Loyola University Chicago.

Tri-State is going through its own transition, led by the members. In 2020, Tri-State announced their Responsible Energy Plan, which laid out their plan to move away from coal and towards renewables like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.

Boughey said that as renewable energy has become more affordable, generation and transmission co-ops like Tri-State have been able to invest in them more. "For cooperatives, reliability and affordability are critical, so it's only natural that you would see cooperatives add more renewables as those prices came down," he said.

Until recently, cooperatives haven't been on the same playing field as investor-owned utilities when it comes to developing their own utilities. As a non-profit organization, Tri-State does not have access to renewable energy tax credits that are available to for-profit companies. Rural electric co-ops are now able to take advantage of direct pay tax credits, the result of legislation passed in 2022.

"We're among the first cooperative utilities in the country to own large [scale] solar, so that's exciting," said Boughey.

However, for LPEA, leaving Tri-State is still the right option, according to Hansen. He also said that leaving will lower the co-ops cost of electricity immediately, putting less pressure on rates.

"We've got lower wholesale contracts on the day we leave. On April 1, 2026, our wholesale power costs will come down," said Hansen. Some of that power will be coming from power purchase agreements with Tri-State, different from the contract, which would have locked them into Tri-State's rates until 2050.

The total bill for members won't necessarily go down, because of other increasing costs like infrastructure, but Hansen added that "it takes the pressure off of our rate structure if your wholesale costs are flat or declining."

Boughey also said that Tri-State's wholesale contracts keep costs down for its members. He said their contracts allow for more consistency, whereas being on the open market could have more volatility. Tri-State's rates have grown 2.46% between 2017 and 2025.

A Trend Across the Country and the Region

Attempting to get out of traditional electricity contracts is not unique to Colorado.

In South Dakota, in 2023, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision by a federal judge that Dakota Energy Cooperative could not leave its contract with its wholesale power supplier, East River Electric Power Cooperative.

Dakota Energy Cooperative wanted to buy energy from Guzman Energy, a for-profit company out of Denver, Colorado, which has been a partner to many rural electric co-ops looking to leave their long-term contracts. But in South Dakota, this became a question of local vs out-of-state, with East River Electric taking the stance that local is better, even if it was coal-powered energy compared to the renewables that Guzman offered.

On June 1, 2025, Indiana electric co-op Tipmont left its contract with its power supplier, Wabash Valley Power Alliance, after multiple years of negotiations.

In the Southwest, four other electric co-ops have left contracts with Tri-State over the last decade. Kit Carson Electric Coop, in Taos County, New Mexico, was the first in 2016.

As of 2022, Kit Carson has reached 100% daytime solar energy-all generated locally-something they never could have done under the Tri-State contract.

Kit Carson CEO Luis Reyes, who has worked at the co-op for over 40 years, said starting in the early 2000s, the Kit Carson member owners were concerned about committing to long-term contracts with Tri-State, which at the time was primarily buying and producing coal-powered electricity.

"The co-op program has been great. I think it's the best model to deliver electricity to everybody with the members being the focal point," said Reyes."My opinion is we lost who the focal point was. We catered more to what Tri-State wanted than what our members wanted."

Reyes says since Kit Carson left in 2016, Tri-State has "really turned the ship," but in 2002 when Kit Carson first wanted to invest in renewables, "solar was bad," Reyes said, according to the board members of Tri-State at the time. But for Reyes, "it was good business, and it's what the members want." For Reyes and Kit Carson, leaving Tri-State was the way to accomplish their solar and renewable goals that the members wanted.

Kit Carson completed their $37 million contract termination payment in 2022 six years after formally withdrawing from Tri-State. That year, Kit Carson said their power rates were lower than any Tri-State member.

The pressures from members leaving, decreasing prices of renewables, and new voices at the table have brought Tri-State a long way from "solar was bad". Current contracts, which Boughey said have been signed by most members, increase the amount of local power that members can generate from 5% to 20%, giving members a lot more flexibility to develop their own utilities.

A lot has changed at Tri-State since Kit Carson left Tri-State in 2016, and Boughey said that any member has the ability to pursue leaving at any time, if the current policies aren't working for them. They continue to have good relationships with co-ops that have left, including LPEA which is in the process of leaving now.

"It's not a negative issue," said Boughey. "It's flexibility that our members want to have, that some members take advantage of, and we work very closely to execute those withdrawals in the spirit of the cooperative business model.


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Despite debate in Washington over ending incentives to help Alaska's smallest places move away from traditional oil and gas-based power generation in the most remote parts of Alaska, one village above the Arctic Circle has found success and plans to invest.

Kotlik, a Yupik native village nestled on the banks of the Yukon River is using alternative energy as an economic driver.

Richard Bender, president and CEO of Kotlik Village Corporation, said the village has developed a three-phase plan to move away from oil and gas-based power to generate electricity for its 600 residents.

"Phase 1 is to purchase a battery storage system and switch gear," Bender outlined. "Phase 2 of Kotlik's energy plan is to produce energy using solar panels. Phase 3 is production of electricity using wind turbines."

Despite the success of places like Kotlik, and its aggressive plans for future alternative energy development, Washington lawmakers are debating a budget bill which would eliminate tax incentives for investing in clean power in rural Alaska, which could reduce funding for the projects the village depends on.

Kotlik collaborated with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group to produce a video about the project, which Bender noted goes beyond providing sources of alternative energy to the village.

"In addition to energy sovereignty, and sustainability, this project will have a positive impacts on health education and workforce development," Bender explained.

Bender added creating stability in those areas will spill over into different parts of the community and help the village keep people working at home, rather than moving to other places.


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