California at a Crossroads
Manufacturing-friendly town adapts to change
At first glance, California appears to be a typical small town in the rural Midwest.
It has one stoplight, a central square with a courthouse, and a few mom-and-pop grocery stores. Downtown highlights include antique gaslight fixtures, each purchased by a community member in honor of a loved one, and a movie theater, which is being refurbished.
Then there is the usual smattering of fast-food restaurants and gas stations, surrounded by acres upon acres of cultivated farmland stretching out on all sides of the city limits.
Employment trends
Despite its rural setting, few people who work in California, the seat of Moniteau County, are employed in farm-related jobs. What this town has cultivated in the past four decades is manufacturing. Currently 40 percent of jobs in the town are in manufacturing, while only 4 percent are in agriculture. Still the two industries are connected; most of California’s manufacturing jobs are dependent, in large part, on raw materials provided by agricultural interests—mainly poultry farms in outlying areas.
A significant, and increasing, portion of California’s workforce hits the road every morning for jobs in larger towns nearby, making California something of a bedroom community for Jefferson City’s government workers or Columbia’s university employees.
Transportation changes
Affecting worker migration, manufacturing-product transportation and downtown business, the major highway through California soon will be improved and rerouted, which will shorten commutes but require the business community to adapt.
“We need to get the heavy truck traffic out of town,” said Mayor Norris Gerhart, who believes the rerouting of U.S. Highway 50 will ultimately have a positive impact, if done properly.
Many small, mostly retail, businesses have prospered along U.S. Highway 50, but legislation passed in 2004 calls for moving the road and circumventing the downtown California area to the south. The construction is scheduled for completion by the end of 2008. The bypass also will provide better access to State Route 87, which is the main route from the town to Columbia via Interstate 70.
Spec building benefits
It seems to have been a confluence of timing, ingenuity and skillful acquisition that has produced the industrial base in and around town. For example, Bud Bolinger, the founder of the Bolinger Marketing Inc. meat-marking company, said California secured its turkey processing plant because the town’s management took a leap of faith.
In the early 1960s the town’s organizers constructed an industrial building on the highway just outside town, hoping to attract a business venture. Morris Burger, chairman of Burger’s Smokehouse, remembers the day he showed the building to a Ron Lemonds, a college fraternity brother who was a grain salesman for Ralston-Purina. Lemonds told Ralston-Purina executives about the available space, and soon afterward a group of them detoured through California on their way to a meeting in St. Louis. They were in the market for a new location in which to construct a turkey processing plant, and they thought the building, with an available railroad spur, might be just what they were looking for.
They contacted the town’s mayor and president of the Chamber of Commerce, Arthur Baker, to learn more about the community. Although the building that attracted them wasn’t appropriate for their needs, they formed a relationship with the mayor and the community and determined that California was a good place to invest. The Ralston-Purina turkey processing plant officially opened on Sept. 23, 1963.
Manufacturing-agriculture partnerships
As many Midwestern farmers began to feel the pinch of sagging prices for raw farm materials, such as grain and soybeans, the impact of the decline in agricultural income was mitigated for California-based farms through partnerships with local plants.
Ralston-Purina constructed barns and paid farmers to raise company-owned turkeys on their nearby land until they were ready for slaughter. Many California farmers have seen profits well above national averages through this ongoing partnership.
After acquiring Ralston-Purina’s poultry processing division and the “Honeysuckle White” brand name in 1974, Cargill Meat Solutions has continued this relationship with local farmers.
In the late 1980s, the town was able to develop an Enterprise Zone in the area surrounding the Industrial Park, anchored by the Cargill plant. Businesses operating in the Enterprise Zone see a 100 percent abatement of their property taxes, and that was enough to convince Cargill to cancel plans to build a hatchery in another community and construct it near its California plant, securing new jobs for the town.
Since that time, the community’s ability to provide the workforce necessary to staff the plant and maintain farmlands on which to raise the turkeys have been the factors most important to retaining its largest employer.
Population changes
Part of California’s ability to provide a steady workforce comes from its recent influx of new residents. California’s population has grown to more than 4,100, about 25 percent of the total population in Moniteau County.
Most of the new residents are Latin American immigrants drawn by the Cargill turkey processing plant, which employs about 420 workers.
Bud Bolinger said he thinks a deliberate effort to help immigrant workers and their families adapt to the local culture would have a long-term, positive effect the town.
“I think it is the responsibility of the employers who are benefiting from these workers—for their work ethic, for their willingness work at a lower wage—to be responsible for their assimilation. That isn’t just about language—although it’s essential—but also about housing, religion, education and health care,” Bolinger said. “They came here to provide a better life for themselves and their families.
They want to work hard, and they want to do well.”
Festivals
During the first full week of August, California is home to the Moniteau County Fair, believed to be the oldest continually running fair west of the Mississippi River. Events include a tractor pull, a demolition derby, a horse show, country-western music and a two-night rodeo.
But the event that gets to the heart of California’s symbiotic business climate is the Ozark Ham and Turkey Festival, held annually the third Saturday in September. The California Chamber of Commerce started the festival 15 years ago to showcase two of the major industries in California and Moniteau County, Cargill Inc. and Burgers’ Smokehouse.
Highlights of the festival include a barbecue contest, an antique and classic car show, championship stock car races, six stages of live entertainment and, of course, the world’s largest turkey sub sandwich.