MANITOWOC – Even though the results from a community survey showed many people plan to live in Manitowoc County for at least the next 10 years and many are employed at a level appropriate with their training and education, the county is still seen in a negative light.
Dean Halverson, CEO of Leede Research and one of the leaders of Vision 2022, said he was happy with the surveyresultsbecause it shines a light on what people in the community want and showed a number of people want to help Manitowoc County succeed.
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"Wewant to be better," he said at the Vision 2022 Summit Wednesday. "That is not a negative. That is a wonderful place to start the conversation we are having today. We want better jobs, we want a better retail environment, we want more entertainment, we want more activities."
The survey was the first step in the Vision 2022 project, and it reached more than 2,500 people and 114 businesses.
Participants were asked to rank how likely they were to recommend Manitowoc County as a place to live. Halverson said the results give a net promoter score, a common measure of loyalty used by brands and organizations.
He said Harley-Davidson was a gold standard because they have a high net promoter score of 86. However, businesses like cable television and health insurance had low scores in the single digits. From the community survey, Manitowoc County's net promoter score is negative 29.
"I have done net promoter scores for the past 15 years across almost every industry," Halverson said."That is literally the lowest net promoterscoreI have ever seen and it just broke my heart."
Among people ages 25-34, the net promoter score was negative 49, the lowest of all the sub-categories, and 54 percent of all participants felt the quality of life in Manitowoc County has declined in the past 10 years.
However, 51 percent of people said they werelikelyto stay in Manitowoc County in the next 10 years and 71 percent said they were employed in positions appropriate for their education and training levels. The net promoter score for Manitowoc County businesses was 5 percent, close to the national average of 9 percent.
"We have a terrible, terrible image problem here. … What is interesting is when I dig into the data, I can’t find a fact that ties to it," Halverson said."We are relatively happy here. We are planning to stay here. We are in jobs that are appropriate to our training and education, but yet this is the attitude that happens."
The survey also reached 114 businesses in Manitowoc County, 65 of which said they had a total of 1,303unfilled positions. Of those 65 businesses, 33 percent said those open positions were difficult to fill.
Despite that difficulty, 34 percent of the businesses reported they had increased employment in the past year and 42 percent said they expect to increase their employment over the next two years.
Even though the survey reflects an abundance of open jobs in Manitowoc County, participants in the survey still listed a lack of quality jobs as a top concern for the area, closely followed by crime, drugs and an aging population.
Participants also listed quality jobs as one of the top opportunities for the county's growth in the next five years.
Declining population was also a trend identified in the survey. Factors included an aging workforce and a lack of retention of young adults.
Survey participants who said they have children who are unlikely to live or work in Manitowoc County indicated a lack of jobs or opportunities as the reason why.
"The problem we are having now is that they are not coming back," Halversonsaid. "The attitude is there is not a place for them to come back. They don't see an opportunity to raise a family and take care of that family and have the style of life that they like. How do we fill these gaps?"
To start that process of filling gaps in the needs and wants of the community, leaders from Vision 2022 created six work groups to address different areas of concern — Long Term Vision and Brand, Lakefront & Downtowns, Appealing Young ProfessionalCommunity for Future, Healthy 25 and Healthy 75 (a HealthiestManitowocCounty initiative), Create Positive Speak and Spirit, and Regional Collaboration. People at the summit were encouraged to volunteer to participate with any of the groups.
During the Vision 2022 Summit Wednesday, leaders from Progress Lakeshore, Healthiest Manitowoc County, Young Professionals of Manitowoc County and the Chamber of Manitowoc County presented their own efforts towardunifying the community and changing people's attitudes about the area. They were followed by a presentation by DavidBeurle, CEO of Future iQ, about how to position Manitowoc County in the global economy.
Vision 2022 was started by leaders from Holy Family Memorial, Leede Research and Silver Lake College. It is modeled after the former Vision 2011 project, which wasinitiatedfollowing the closure of Mirro.
CEO of theFranciscanSisters of Christian Charity Dan McGinty said the main goal of Vision 2022 is to create a movement among all the organizations and businesses in Manitowoc County that will push the community towarda future of growth, health and prosperity.
"We are not trying to take over the world," McGinty said. "... We are not trying to be our own economic development group. We are not trying to duplicate existing government efforts or existing organizational efforts.
"How can we bring them together around some coalescing or galvanizing themes so that the work that each of us do makes a bigger difference and compounds what we aredoing," he added.
In hopes of connecting local organizations and promoting greater communication, the leaders of Vision 2022 are also creating a community inventory tool tobetter understand the assets in Manitowoc County and to have a database for future use. The group has already sent invites to 175 organizations to be a part of the database.
For more about Vision 2022, the surveyor any of the initiatives, visitwww.v22mc.org.
