Amazon delivery to one small Kansas town: gloom and anger

Doom and gloom is how one man described the feeling in Coffeyville. Others said it’s anger. Local officials say they are staying optimistic, focusing on landing new jobs.

But most in this southeast Kansas town of nearly 10,000 agreed that the pending closure of the giant Amazon warehouse – with its 634 employees and several hundred temp workers – will blow a hole in the local economy. The question of whether the local economy will sink as a result is still being debated.

The local economy and community spirit were already feeling the impact of 181 jobs lost when the Southwire plant closed in the spring and 40 or so people were laid off from the John Deere plant in August.

At a job fair held recently at the Nellis Hall gymnasium on the Coffeyville Community College campus, Amazon workers trickled in to look over what was available to them.

About 200 jobs in Montgomery County – ranging from lathe operator to fertilizer salesman – are waiting to be filled, said Stacia Meek, executive director of the Coffeyville Chamber of Commerce. And, of course, the McDonald’s on West 11th Street is hiring.

Lea Paine and Mary Ysusi are good friends and co-workers at Amazon. They inspect the umpteen different products in the Amazon warehouse to ensure they are placed in the right slots, marked correctly and not damaged.

They like their work. They take pride in it and are conscientious. They wished they were paid more than the roughly $14 per hour they earn, but they seemed content.

Both are single and said they are taking care of aging parents.

They were surprised Sept. 30 when they were called into a plant-wide meeting late in the day. A senior corporate executive from Seattle stood in front and delivered the bad news fairly quickly, then let them go home.

They said they were told that they would get eight weeks’ pay as severance, or they could take a job at another Amazon facility and receive moving assistance.

As the workers filed out, there was a lot of shock, a lot of anger and a few tears.

“I felt a lot of stress not knowing what I was going to do,” Paine said.

“How are you going to pay your bills, put food on the table, keep a roof over your head?” Ysusi added.

They had worked at Amazon for more than seven years. Now, they were at Nellis Hall looking at their options.

“I thought this was going to be my last job,” Ysusi said.

Impact

About half of the Amazon employees and contractors live in Montgomery County, according to Aaron Heckman of Montgomery County Action Council, the county’s economic development agency.

When the layoffs take place in January and February, the county unemployment rate could easily rise from 4.8 percent in October to well over 6.5 percent, making it by far the state’s highest unemployment rate by county.

And the impact will spread. Heckman estimated the loss of Amazon and Southwire would cost the county’s economy $18.6 million a year in payroll.

That will mean fewer restaurant meals, fewer car repairs and less interest in new homes. It may have already started, as worried Amazon workers hold off on spending.

Some of that business won’t be missed until next year when campers normally full of seasonal workers don’t show up at the campgrounds.

“The impact will be significant and felt over time,” Heckman said. “With so many of the workers being temporary and seasonal, that won’t be felt locally until the next holiday season.”

Mary Nyhuis, owner of Chatterbox Gifts, said losing the jobs is a bad thing, but she’s unlikely to close. She supports the store in part from her job as a medical technician.

“I don’t make any money on the store anyway,” she said.

Yet, Coffeyville and Montgomery County are more than Amazon. There are 17,500 people working in the county, which is home to the Coffeyville Refinery, the John Deere plant and the Textron Aviation piston aircraft plant, among other industries.

“We were here before Amazon; we will be here after Amazon,” said Meek, the chamber of commerce executive.

Response

Coffeyville Mayor Jim Falkner rattled off a long list of things the Montgomery County Recovery Team – a task force of local and state officials – is doing. They’re not being passive, he said.

First, they tried to prevent it. They knew that Amazon had been thinking for months of closing the warehouse, and local officials and the state made a large offer to the company, approaching $10 million.

The company’s response clearly still riles Falkner.

“They didn’t want to change their strategy of moving into big cities and abandoning rural America,” he said.

He said that 10 years ago the city gave Amazon $3.5 million after it made noises about leaving if it didn’t get financial help with an expansion.

That 10-year anniversary is now. Not surprisingly, one of the theories running around town is that Amazon took all the money and ran, Falkner said.

Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Robinson denied that the expiration of incentives was linked to the decision to leave.

“That is simply not true,” Robinson said. “We regularly evaluate our network to ensure we’re placing fulfillment centers as close to as many of our customers as possible.

“After considering all of the factors, unfortunately we no longer require a fulfillment center in Coffeyville.”

Falkner said he believes what Robinson said. He thinks it’s just Amazon moving ahead with its plan to provide one-day service to urban customers.

But, he said, the city hasn’t yet paid Amazon the last two monthly installments on the $3.5 million incentive. Since Amazon made the announcement, he said the city is looking into whether it can withhold that money, nearly $60,000.

Paying money to a company you know is about to leave makes a lot of citizens angry.

“It’s like packing your child’s suitcase for the kidnapper,” Falkner said.

On the workforce side, Coffeyville Community College has said it will provide former Amazon and Southwire employees with free tuition and books to get retraining.

On the job creation side, the city, council and state agencies are still searching for new big companies, but are particularly interested in attracting smaller companies interested in staying and growing long-term in Coffeyville, as well as helping homegrown companies expand, Falkner said.

The city recently settled a multimillion-dollar tax dispute with Coffeyville Refinery and, from that amount, placed $2.3 million into an economic development war chest. It will become loans or grants for the right companies.

He said there will be some job announcements within 30 to 90 days, with the prospect for larger projects down the road.

‘We’ll survive, but ...’

Shelly Messner has a part-time job at the Tavern on the Plaza, an upscale restaurant downtown, but she’s also head of the school district’s Parents as Teachers program.

She fears that the lost Amazon, Southwire and John Deere jobs will lead to families leaving the area, costing the school district money, endangering the free prekindergarten program she runs.

She recalled the hit the town took when the Verdigris River, which runs through town, flooded in 2007. Water, mixed with oil from the swamped refinery, flooded the town’s low-lying neighborhoods. Hundreds of people received settlements for their ruined homes. Many took the money and left.

The town’s population, like much of small-town Kansas, has slowly drifted down over the decades as agriculture and industry operate with fewer and fewer jobs.

“I’m kind of worried that Coffeyville will become a ghost town,” Messner said of the layoffs.

But, as she talked, she reconsidered that statement. It’s a bit extreme, she admitted. Coffeyville is more than 140 years old and has a lot going for it.

“Yes, we’ll survive,” she said. “But it’s not going to be the same.”

This story was originally published November 29, 2014 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Amazon delivery to one small Kansas town: gloom and anger."