You’ve heard my mantra, “Plain City - Strong Town”. Today, I will talk about some of the things that help build a strong town. Some chief components are Strong Schools and Strong Libraries; because they give us Strong Kids. I will talk less about libraries, as I am employed by our local library and don’t want to sound self-serving. It does not make them any less important.

Schools and libraries are strong attractors for new families and new businesses. Families want good schools for their children, and businesses want to attract employees who will settle down and stay. Schools and libraries are funded by both the state and by property taxes. Our schools are also funded by a modest income tax. If we can structure our growth well, those taxes can stay low.

We cannot build strong schools and libraries on the back of single family housing. The village needs to ensure that approved development provides for the needs of these entities. They have done well creating a working group of entities that are affected to seek their input. We do however need to make sure that we are not giving away too much in the way of tax abatements unnecessarily. We need to make sure that we are attracting quality jobs with pay that will allow us to keep the tax rates low while bringing in enough money to fund these gems of our community.

Growth needs to include housing options that are affordable for our professionals and for the supporting staff. It is not too big an ask that people coming to work in our community can afford to live in our community and participate in the community that they foster on a daily basis.

Our schools are a big attraction, and we need to keep it that way. In order to do so, the village has a responsibility to ensure that growth is handled in a fashion that generates income for the schools. We need to be able to not only attract young, new teachers; but have the resources to retain our best performing teachers as well. It means that our schools need to be able to keep up with rapidly advancing technology to prepare kids for college, trades, and the workforce in general.

Additionally, we should be looking to provide our schools the ability to supplement the money received from the National School Lunch Program to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. It’s well known that hungry kids don’t perform as well as their well fed peers. They also tend to have lower life outcomes in terms of health, education, and employment. This is a sound investment that will set our kids and grandkids up for success.

I would also like to see the village itself have more involvement in the Community Coalition if and when it revives. Fire, police, church, and many community groups already participate. The village has a big impact on the opportunities kids have outside of school in terms of safe places to get together and stay out of trouble. Having attended many of these meetings leading up to 2020, I can vouch for how effective they are in communicating the needs of our kids to the greater community and from many different perspectives. Having a representative from the village involved in these discussions would lead to great outcomes for our kids.

These are just some of the ways we can focus our growth to live Plain City - Strong Town.