From: Richard Gold
Columbus
For many of us, Columbus is a great place to live that we embrace as home.
Many factors go into that decision: employment, quality of life, affordability, education, and a sense that we belong.
How do we sustain this sense of “the right place to make a stand?”
The end game is retaining the next generation of local talent and attracting nonlocal folks as our current workforce ages out. Work here/live here is important. Commuting to Columbus will not sustain our economic flywheel nor our municipal assets.
The city’s 2020 priorities address several short and medium term opportunities: reducing drug abuse, mitigating railroad driven traffic tie-ups, retaining city employees who handle important jobs like public safety and public works. Attraction of new companies, economic diversification and retention of current employers is critical.
No jobs, no future.
Envision Columbus investment is focused on quality of life – making downtown broader and more vibrant, adding varied housing stock and making the city walkable. Elsewhere it’s converting liabilities to assets – repurposing an empty mall and addressing an eroding, messy riverfront.
Challenging work.
However, absent a competitive, strong public school system these improvements might not be enough if talented folks go where their kids have access to better education.
Economists say there is an indisputable correlation between education and healthy, prosperous communities. Social services tell us it takes two years post high school graduation for a new family to clear the federal poverty level of 200% and qualify as “economically mobile.” Economists tell us the way to eliminate poverty is better paying jobs and the education to fill them.
Clearly the long game is education. It starts with capable parenting, and Pre-K through 12 plus 2 years of school at a minimum. That’s at least 15 years of formal educational investment. We are fortunate to have real assets in this game – BCSC, Ivy Tech, IUPUC, Purdue Polytechnic Columbus, McDowell, The Community Education Coalition, and the IU Master’s architecture program.
At the same time local teachers are underpaid relative to nearby communities and states. The Governor and the legislature say they wish to address this, but have diverted tax dollars from public education to private schools and prefer to pay down debt. The Feds don’t help.
So it becomes a local decision to move the needle on public education. We as taxpayers (and our employers) need to school ourselves on how our legislative representatives support public schools; and how well our local school system performs. BCSC is providing plenty of opportunity to understand this as part of their referendum roadshow to increase teacher pay.
Grab a seat. One thing is clear. The value of inspired and inspiring teachers is almost priceless.
If we get this wrong our children lose; and Columbus misses out as future talents migrate where they perceive others value education more and deliver it better. And our economic momentum, our city, and our home values stall and reverse.
No one wants to raise taxes. The question is can we afford not to.
