On Friday the 19th, the Calhoun County Republicans hosted a fantastic Meet the Candidates event at the Arnoldsburg park. It was a wonderful evening where the many candidates had a chance to address the public and field questions, easy and difficult alike.
There was one recurring point, and point of disagreement, that I wanted to address more deeply than the structure of the event afforded me the opportunity to. Nearly all the candidates want to bring jobs to this county, but there’s disagreement on the first step towards that goal.
We hear time and again, “Charleston,” “roads,” “water,” “funding,” “broadband,” et cetera. The litany of the last several decades has been infrastructure.
What do we want?
Infrastructure!
Who will pay for it?
Somebody else!
Whether it’s DC, Charleston, Mexico, or the National Good Roads Association, we have to convince them that we are a good choice for funding.
It’s an odd conundrum. Businesses look for infrastructure; funding sources look for economic activity.
“If you build it, they will come” is true only in so far as you find somebody willing to foot the bill at the outset. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, this county has been trying to find just that for the four decades we’ve been on the economically distressed county list.
As big as those state and federal pools of money are, they are finite. There will always be more needs than resources and responsible and good governance means triage and triage means that there will be people who are disappointed.
Just as a triage doctor must choose, when there are more patients on death’s door than care to be provided, which patients have the best chances of survival and focus on them, the funding sources must choose the counties with the best chances for growth to receive the limited funds available.
When was the last time this county had the sort of growth in economic activity that would make us a sound and responsible choice?
If help were coming from Charleston or DC, it would have happened years ago. Until we change the status quo, the drips and dregs of aid we subsist on are all the more we could hope for. In their eyes, our county is dying. It is a foregone conclusion and those resources are better spent on counties that have a chance of living.
We must prove them wrong!
Just as the French didn’t commit to the American Revolution until the victory at Saratoga, we must have a decisive victory that shows that we can help ourselves before they will help us.
Our county line is just 4-1/8 miles from Interstate 79. If a factory were to open there, that would provide jobs only an hour from the far side of the county, and half that from the more populated region in the center of the county.
If such a factory were there, we could expect, even demand, that those 4-1/8 miles of road be improved. Though that stretch of road is in neighboring Clay County, it is not as though we do not use that road every time we travel to Charleston or points south.
And with that improvement, land deeper into our county becomes more attractive for businesses. Success builds on success and the funding sources see that we are an effective use of their limited resources.
With projects already in the works, we can entice industry, even industry especially dependent on good roads, to that part of the county. With the improvements that would follow, we can open the rest of the county to such opportunity.
The only way we are going to get such a factory is to go out and court these businesses with a solid offering. Help isn’t coming from Charleston, not until we prove our mettle and bring in some opportunity.
