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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Oct. 27, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 110 ~ 19 of 48
Nickerson, Nebraska, outside Omaha. In those cases, each company chose a new location in the same region after resident protests.
A big part of the problem in Tonganoxie was the secrecy surrounding Tyson’s plans, which bred skepti- cism and increased residents’ anger. Reischman and others said they found out about the project on TV the night before the announcement.
Tyson and state and local of cials had been quietly working together for weeks on what was code-named “Project Sunset.” State Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Heather Lansdowne said state of cials assumed that local leaders being receptive to the project re ected residents’ view.
Gov. Sam Brownback and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer were involved in efforts to attract the plant to Kansas at least by mid-June, their of ce calendars show.
Tonganoxie-area resident Jen Peak, a leader of the anti-Tyson group, questioned whether Tyson and state of cials grasped that the community is economically strong enough to be selective about development.
It is home to an orthopedic shoe manufacturer, a rm that helps develop medical devices and an outdoor paving-stone maker.
“The entire community was just underestimated,” the 40-year-old Peak said. “I guess this is a lesson to them, going forward, to know the area that you’re trying to move into.”
Nondisclosure agreements during negotiations with local and state of cials are common for a publicly traded company such as Tyson, company spokesman Worth Sparkman said.
Brownback has since acknowledged that leaders of any Kansas community wanting to attract the plant moving forward “need to step up publicly.”
“I think that’s a better way to go at it,” the Republican said.
With Tyson examining other options, of cials in Sedgwick County in the Wichita area, in Cloud County in north-central Kansas, and in the southeastern Kansas town of Coffeyville have con rmed publicly that they’re pursuing the project.
All three of the other sites are at least 130 miles (210 kilometers) from Tonganoxie. There’s opposition in Sedgwick County, where residents have mobilized through a Facebook group.
The Tonganoxie project’s opponents mobilized quickly through social media. Within two days of the plant announcement, an anti-Tyson group on Facebook had 3,400 members — several hundred more people than the total registered voters inside the city. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people attended a town hall meeting that prompted area legislators to announce their opposition.
Opponents said because Tonganoxie is a Kansas City-area bedroom community, it’s not desperate for jobs paying $13 to $15 an hour. Leavenworth County’s median household income of nearly $64,000 is about 22 percent higher than the state’s.
Tonganoxie’s population has nearly doubled since 2000.
“Professionals live out here that have their jobs and their companies and their careers,” said Kirk Sours, 57, the longtime manager of the Red Angus cattle-raising Tailgate Ranch outside Tonganoxie. “This loca- tion is a perfect commuting distance for those folks.”
While the possibility that immigrants would ll the jobs fueled opposition in the Nebraska chicken- processing plant ght, critics of the Tonganoxie project said they weren’t concerned about who would do the work but whether their pay would be enough to justify the potential problems.
“If someone was going to come in and build a factory and pay 30 bucks an hour, I don’t think you’d have much resistance,” said Eric Thompson, director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
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