I’ve lived in this community my entire life. I had a great time growing up in this city. I think that’s evidenced by how much I remember about this city and my friends, and what we used to do, and where we used to do them. I love remembering local businesses, recreational opportunities, family opportunities, local shopping opportunities and job opportunities offered in this community. I remember buildings which stood tall, with no thought of them crumbling or falling. I remember beautiful brick streets which rode so smoothly. I remember community parks/areas with a wading pool, pony rides, ball fields, sliding hills and tennis courts (which were converted to outdoor winter ice skating rinks). I remember Public, Parochial and Christian School options, and spotlights flashing across the skies during sales. As I’ve expressed many times before, this was a thriving community with strong economic industry and a bustling downtown. It was a great family community, and a great place to be a kid.

I also had an awesome career in this city. I was fortunate to have found a teaching position here, when teaching jobs were tough to come by when I graduated from college. I’m still living in the only home I bought in this city, just three blocks from the house where I grew up. I raised my three children here. I’ve seen many changes take place in this city, some I’ve liked, and some with which I’ve disagreed. I’ve tried to shop locally as much as I could, especially in my coaching, trying to get uniforms, t-shirts and certain equipment I’ve had the authority to purchase from businesses within the community. I believed in this community for a very long time.

I’ve had a good life in this city, and appreciate all this city has given me and my family. I have also tried to give back to it in whatever ways I could, but I’ve still seen a lot of the shine of this city sadly become dull, and somewhat rusted, which might cause one to become discouraged.

Life changes, people and things get older, people and businesses come and go, and nothing stays the same as it was when we were younger. Such is the case with my, and many other Jamestowners’ hometown.

As we drive around this community today, bouncing up and down because of the severe unevenness of our brick paved streets, and the “holiness” of our asphalt paved roads, we see empty storefronts, empty factories, places where buildings have fallen due to age and weather, empty lots where houses/stores/factories once stood, and deteriorated neighborhoods. We see fewer businesses, more dilapidated buildings still standing, far less new construction, and much less hustle and bustle in our downtown.

Our population has lessened considerably, our school enrollment has decreased as much, there seems to be more crime and fewer police, drugs have infested our town in greater volume and shootings and violence seem to be occurring more frequently in our community. Our library is open fewer hours, our young people are leaving as soon as they graduate from high school, and our community is rapidly becoming a retirement community, if it hasn’t already become just that. Seeing all this change in our community, it’s easy to think that, all that once glittered no longer shines gold, and for the first time in all my years here, I have pondered living somewhere else.

I’m not ready to leave quite yet, though, and I’m not giving up on this city, yet, because I don’t believe that our community needs to be flushed quite yet. At least, I certainly hope not. There have been rays of sunshine that have shone through some of the cloudiness of this decline. We sponsor events that bring outsiders to this area en masse a week or two a year. We have an athletic arena which started out bringing more to Jamestown than it does now. We’re building a Comedy Center which we hope will draw more to this area. We’re trying to maintain, maybe even increase, population with the availability of affordable housing in our city. We’re continually doing studies on how to make our downtown more attractive and alluring to outside businesses and local small businesses. We’ve brought the Arts to downtown with local theatre groups, Infinity and the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts. We’ve brought History, Education, and Entertainment programs to our area at the Robert H. Jackson Center, the Fenton Historical Society, and the Lucy/Desi Comedy Center. Our city offers an appreciation of Nature with the Jamestown Audubon Society and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, and all this is great, but, using the analogy of upcoming Holiday decorating, you need a Christmas tree to be able to hold up the “ornaments.” We don’t seem to have the base/stability, the tree, where we can display our “ornaments” and keep those things adorning our community hanging. We need more than a week or two a year of heavy traffic in this community to improve the economy, and we can’t keep relying on outsiders to keep our economy going. We need to do something for, and with, those living in this community.

We need jobs, decent paying jobs. I know this is something that’s been said oftentimes before, and I’m not trying to beat a dead horse, but we need to bring more “higher than minimum wage” employment opportunities to this area where people can earn the money necessary to spend it at the athletic arena, or the Center for the Arts, or the Comedy Center, and oh yeah, to buy a home, rent an apartment, support their families, and pay taxes which will help the city’s economy. It makes sense that you can’t make a sandwich without bread. We have plenty of peanut butter, jelly, bologna and cheese, (the possibilities to make this city shine again), but we need (no pun intended) the bread (the jobs and subsequent pay) to allow people to add to the city’s economy and be able to keep the economic cycle spinning positively. Then we need the means with which to preserve the “bread” and keep the “sandwich fixins” making sure the cupboard doesn’t go empty.

I know we have departments and agencies within our city and county governments whose main objective is to recruit outside businesses to come in and conduct business in our area, but the numbers of jobs they have brought in, and will be bringing in, are small in comparison to the huge exodus of employment opportunities that has occurred over the years. Also, I’m not saying that those departments and agencies aren’t trying hard to bring in more business, but in the words included in the script of a popular 1972 movie, we need to “make them an offer they can’t refuse.” We need to prioritize better, we need to provide good opportunities to try and keep our young people here after high school and college. We need to offer more opportunities for people to earn money, and when we’ve done that, we need to have local places for them to spend their money and keep it in the community. That means clothing stores, shoe stores, supply stores, hardware stores any types of retail stores within city limits that offer what many are travelling to other communities and cities for, and where they’re spending their money.

We need to put our efforts more into how we can strive to thrive, and not just survive. When that happens, maybe we’ll slowly begin to rub the tarnish off of those things that once glittered in our area, and maybe we’ll see hints of gold shining through once again. Hopefully it can happen sometime soon.