The Holler Dollar: April 2023
Greetings y'all! Welcome to The Holler Dollar, the blog that brings you the latest and greatest developments in rural community development and finance, as well as a few dalliances into all things rural, Appalachian, outdoors, or plain funny. I’m Max, your resident mountaineer, who will be driving this thing. This is the first Holler Dollar that were spending, giving you the sum-up for April 2023. Let’s hope its’ a goodin’.
The Front Porch
This is the Front Porch, where we welcome y’all to the holler and give you a quick sum-up about what’s going on in this neck of the woods. April brings a lot of great things to the holler, flowers, sun, and importantly, prime trout 🎣 fishing. That’s right, its that wonderful time of the year when the water is cool enough for the trout to come out of their deep holes and warm enough for them to bite without y’all freezing your 🍑 off. In case you don’t have enough trout streams up your way (or maybe those trout just know you well enough not to bite), we have a lot of mighty fine fishing spots around the holler. There are even some old minning ghost towns that have prime fishing spots. (More here). Now get out there catch a few solid 12 inchers that you tell your friends were at least 18.
Put it in the Poke (bag)
At the Holler Dollar, we not only want to highlight all that is going on in rural community development, we also want to help get everyone inside and outside the hills and hollers into good financial shape. One of the ways to do that is to be careful about prepaid debt cards. A lot of our friends and neighbors lack banking services and use those reloadable cards you can get at the store. Well, if you or a friend use those, be careful to read the fees for those cards. Not all cards are created the same. Those packages are required to tell you about monthly fees, transaction fees, or ATM fees — and they differ. For more tips, look here.
The Facts and Figures
Besides having a little fun, we really do get down to brass tax every once and again. Here are three developments during the month of April 2023 at the intersection of rural community development and finance.
- The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced $20 million in new funding to expand rural broadband infrastructure. This funding is part of $65 billion allocated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for expanding access and lower costs of high-speed internet. Although a trip through the mountains might take a little longer, no reason the internet access should. Source.
- The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond hosted its fourth annual conference entitled Investing In Rural America, bringing together more than 200 leaders from across the rural development landscape. The key takeaways from this year’s event, which was held in Roanoke, VA — only about 30 miles as the crow flies from the West Virginia state-line — centered on starting small, building trust, and establishing community cooperation. Not unlike raising raising kids, it takes a village to grow a community. Source.
- The White House announced that hundreds of millions of dollars will be deployed to help reinvigorate coal communities. That announcement includes $450 million for clean energy projects on mine sites, as well as $16 million to University of North Dakota and West Virginia University to finalize designs for refineries to extract rare earth minerals from existing mine waste. Source. More here.
Head of the Holler (the end)
Well folks, that's all for April’s roundup. Stay tuned for future editions of The Holler Dollar, where we'll keep you up-to-date on the latest developments about rural communities and finance. Also, be sure to check our Ridge, the digital bank that transforms your everyday financial transactions into real sustainable community revitalization, at no cost to you. Joint the waitlist now at ridge.eco. Or find us on the socials. Be good and do good y’all!
