Washington County Commissioners Meeting 7/01/21

MARIETTA, OH — The Washinton County Commissioners met today and had apart from their normal business, they had a few announcements.

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The first was from Charlie Schilling. Commissioner Schilling had an announcement about real estate tax bills. "The 2nd half 2020 Real Estate and 2021 Mobile Home tax bills were mailed without a due date printed on them due to a computer error at the printing company. The due date is August 13, 2021, for both real estate and mobile home tax bills. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

James Booth also prepared a statement. Commissioner Booth addressed broadband internet access in Washington County. "I would like to give my thoughts on the broadband needs of Washington County. I believe that if Washington County is to be prosperous in the future, all of the county will need to have access to reliable and dependable broadband. This has been one of my objectives ever since I began my public service.

"The approach that I believe to be effective is a step program with benchmarks. This is a plan that involves a 'checks and balances' process. As an organization, such as the Southeast Ohio Broadband Cooperative is awarded monies, benchmarks for performance and execution need to be verified. This has been in place since the first of the year. This Board of Commissioners has made it their duty to verify the work that was promised to be done for the citizens of Washington County. The cooperative has performed not only well but ahead of schedule

"My personal belief is that the time for studies is over. The time now is for 'boots on the ground.' Therefore I support this RFP (request for proposal), but I am abstaining due to my previous relationship with the cooperative. Please know this, I do not, nor ever have, received any compensation or have ever been promised anything for my role. I do know this also. The board that currently governs the cooperative does not, nor ever has received any pay nor compensation for the thousands of man-hours and resources they have donated for our county. Thank yous go out to the cooperative for they have and what will be accomplished in the near future."

Apart from the usual business and statements from the commissioners, Ari Gold owner of TLV Mediterranean Restaurant (who sponsors Patch Marietta, try their hummus) in downtown Marietta spoke about a prominent issue facing Washington County, and that is the exodus of young people.

"Basically since the 80s there has been no increase in the population. They estimate that the population will keep on decreasing and in the next 20 years we will lose another 20% of the people. Now I also noticed because I work downtown and talk to people in their 20s and 30s they say from their perspective they don't see much to do in the county, they don't seem to be connected much and they don't see much opportunity. I find it to be very sad because I honestly believe there is a lot of stuff to do in this county and the crime is very low. But if the population keeps decreasing and we don't find any solution to attract new brains into the city, eventually nothing will be left out of it.

At the end of the day looking at it business-wise if there are less people in the county who still have to pay all the taxes, they will pay more taxes. If there are more vacant properties, more crime will go into those properties. I don't know if this is the forum to speak about it, but I wonder if the commissioners are planning on creating some sort of board or task force or whatever it's defined by the law. I'm not from here I don't know, to try to and see what can we do to, first, make sure our kids stay here because the median age has went up. The number of people who are 25 and under is significantly lower than it used to be 20 years ago. I'm sure every single one of you has noticed that new younger people don't really come in here."

"Yes I do have my own hidden agenda, I am running businesses here. I've invested millions of dollars of my own money in this area for good or bad, but I do love this place and I do want to see it prosper. It's not about if this county will prosper, I do not believe in the if, this area will prosper." We just need to push it so people will come here and make it much bigger."

"As the national population increases, ours decreases so that might be a situation we want to solve...

I think there is a lot of stuff that we can do to attract more young people, educated people, not just factories, I'm talking about high tech jobs. If Amazon wanted to open up in Parkersburg why won't we contact them? They only came there because people in West Virginia and the Congress addressed them and said look what we have to offer. This place has a lot of land a lot of smart people a lot of hardworking people. If you attract those places here, you would attract more population too."

Commission President Kevin Ritter said this is the kind of conversation that the commissioners have quite often and that they're working on bringing jobs to the area.

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