Word: sac
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...many respects Sac City looks terminal. The population is down to 2,400, from 3,000 in 1980. Fister's Department Store is out of business. Iowa Public Service has trouble collecting electric bills from nearly bankrupt farmers, and the utility's Sac City office has dropped from six employees to two. Bill Brenney, the town's remaining optometrist, says, "People are spreading payments way out. Accounts receivable are way up." The town's children look elsewhere for jobs, and not even fathers can help sons. Says Ralph Youll, co-owner of Youll Plumbing and Heating: "We've only made...
...Sac City's reluctant Scrooge is Arnold Thomas, 32, who heads the local office of the Farmers Home Administration. He has the unpleasant duty, as the agent of the Federal Government's lender of last resort, to foreclose on farmers who cannot keep up their debt payments. After a two-year moratorium on foreclosures, Thomas is now sending out letters politely advising farmers on how to avoid default through loan reschedulings, reamortization, even voluntary liquidation. "It bothers me to foreclose," says Thomas. "If it didn't, you wouldn't be human. I try to leave my job at the office...
...little hope, though, is rolling into Sac City. After numerous meetings with an industrial search firm in Des Moines, the town leaders have turned up a hot prospect for new business: Fibercraft Inc., a division of Equity Automotive Corp. of Delano, Minn. The company will take over a 37,500-sq.-ft. warehouse abandoned in 1982 by Lear Siegler's Noble Division. Starting next month Fibercraft will turn out fiber-glass camping trailers and initially provide 40 precious jobs. In two years the payroll could rise to 100 people. "Everybody's excited," says Marilyn Hobbs, executive director of the Chamber...
...economically ravaged Southern towns after the Civil War to raise money to build textile mills. Residents do not feel the money is being extorted. To them, donations are an investment in their future, in an economy less dependent on farming. Too small to qualify for federal development grants, Sac City and thousands of other towns in rural America must raid residents' pockets for the money to lure companies that can provide jobs...
...Things are different out here," says Dennis Holcomb of Shive-Hattery Engineers in Des Moines, whose search helped find Fibercraft for Sac City. Says Holcomb: "Iowa is full of small towns that can't come up with tax exemptions or low-interest loans the way bigger cities can in the East. So they turn to their friends and neighbors. It's truly a heartening thing...