Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) listen to community members at an April 24 roundtable in Richland Center. (Hery Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

RICHLAND CENTER — In a 90-minute roundtable meeting at the Richland Center community center Thursday, President Donald Trump’s name was mentioned just twice. But community leaders highlighted how his administration’s policies are already wreaking havoc on the county with the sixth highest poverty rate in the state. 

About 15 area leaders representing small business owners, farmers, schools, hospitals and community advocacy groups met Thursday with state Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. Throughout the event, the attendees discussed how the policies and plans of Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to cut or diminish Medicaid, Social Security and education funding while instituting widespread tariffs on imported goods from countries around the world and making it harder for migrant workers to obtain visas could decimate their region. 

“None of this is right. Where I’m at that age in my life where I don’t get more thoughtful, I get more pissed,” Brett White, executive director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, said. “And because this is all not necessary, this is completely unnecessary, which means that it’s intentional.” 

The group noted repeatedly that a cut to programs in one area had a ripple effect across every other community institution. 

White, and Chris Frakes, the organization’s senior director, said that the cuts to Head Start early childhood education programming that have already come and are set to deepen under Trump are their biggest worry. 

There are currently about 70 kids in Richland County enrolled in Southwest CAP’s Head Start program, according to Frakes. If those programs are lost, poor kids in Richland County will never catch up, she said. 

“Because we know if you enter kindergarten already behind, there’s virtually no chance to catch up by third grade,” Frakes said. “If you’re not on grade level reading in third grade, we know your life prospects go down dramatically, right? So Head Start fills this critical, vital need to get those kiddos onto par with their middle class peers when they hit kindergarten, so that they are ready to learn, and their families have the sort of surrounding supports, whether that’s food, whether that’s access to transportation, for medical care.” 

If Head Start gets cut, the children who are affected will eventually reach Aaron Mithum, the middle and high school principal for the Kickapoo Area School District. Mithum says the district is “waiting for the other shoe to drop” on the future of the approximately $800,000 it gets annually from the federal government as Trump seeks to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. 

If Head Start leaves poor kids behind before they turn five, by the time they reach Mithum at a middle school that’s also struggling financially, there won’t be many options. 

“We’re getting them when they get into pre K or kindergarten, and now we’re trying to go from there, and now, all of a sudden, they don’t have any of that foundational aspect,” Mithum said. “It’s a building block, trickle effect, and not in a positive way. So now it’s that much harder for us to do what [Head Start wasn’t] able to do, and it continues to go up. And it’s just really hard to think about, what does that look like? What does that look like to be a parent with a special ed kid who needs speech services or reading services, or whatever. And the answer is, sorry, not our problem.” 

While the child care and education system of a community that’s already seen the closure of its local University of Wisconsin campus faces the prospect of being unable to keep poor kids from falling behind, the area’s food system is also being hit. 

Retaliatory tariffs on the area’s wheat, corn and soybean farmers are hurting their ability to find international markets for their products while tariffs imposed by Trump have made fertilizer and machinery more expensive, said Sally Leong, Wisconsin Farmers Union member and former professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison. 

Those struggles are continuing to push up the price of food, causing local families to rely on food pantries more than used to, according to Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin. 

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) paused funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which Anderson said has amounted to about a 30% cut to what food banks are able to buy. USDA has also ended a program that connected local farms with food pantries to supply fresh produce. 

“Food banks are really looking at the bottom line and saying, like, ‘How are we going to be able to get that amount of food here?’” Anderson said. 

The tariffs are also affecting the companies providing jobs in the area. Marty Richards, the county tourism director, said that Rockwell Automation has delayed and cancelled orders because of Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile it’s getting harder to find local workers and Trump’s restrictive immigration policies have made it nearly impossible to hire migrant workers. Richards said the company has had a hard time getting workers from its plant in Mexico to come to the U.S. even temporarily for technical training

Teri Richards, board member of the Greater Richland Area Chamber of Commerce, said the county desperately needs more people and she doesn’t know where to find them. 

“We’re obviously not having enough babies. We’re struggling to get that immigrant population and we can’t keep stealing from each other,” she said. “So it’s time to go into Chicago or Milwaukee, to even get a few of those folks moved out here? I don’t know.” 

With fewer people moving in and federal policies discouraging investment from the business community and cutting funds from schools and child care, the community is also facing the management of an aging population. About 30% of the population is older than 60 and 14% is disabled, according to Roxanne Klubertanz, manager of Richland County’s Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC). 

That aging population means the community is only going to become more reliant on federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Currently, the ADRC helps people in the community apply for Medicaid to pay for the services that will help them stay in their homes for as long as possible or move to an assisted living facility — currently a cost of about $3,800 per month, she said. 

Republicans in Congress are currently weighing a budget proposal that would slash Medicaid funding. Klubertanz said without the program people won’t be able to access those services and will ultimately get sicker and require a placement in a nursing home — a cost of about $10,000 per month. 

“So if that funding, that Medicaid funding, goes away, what’s going to happen?” she said. “Maybe right away, you’re going to see some decreases, but people are going to get sicker and need more services, and then they have to pay for that nursing home placement, which is almost three times the cost. So if you’re trying to fix something today, you have to think about what it’s gonna be like in five years. You’ve gotta have that long range thinking.”