A New Community Center
As we continue to look at the growth occurring in our community, as someone who has covered 25 counties in Tennessee in economic development efforts, one item strikes me as missing in our community. Lately, it isn’t just me noticing this, it is visitors, new industries and individuals relocating to our community. This item has made recent news, and while it comes at a cost to the public, myself and some of the people I speak about have gotten very excited. If you haven’t figured out by now, I’m talking about the potential new community center. As business and industry grows, certain items in a community are more of an expectation of a community our size and not just a luxury. I’m always shocked to look at the surrounding communities and their size compared to us then see the facilities they have invested funding into. The health and well being of our community is in many ways just as important as the companies that call us home as the two make it difficult to exist without each other. A happy workforce is a healthy and productive workforce and if a facility like this helps to encourage our workers and community to become more active and healthy, it is hard to argue against. I think we all have a detest of taxes understandably, but as a community, it is encouraging to see our city’s long term money management strategy and how that is reflected in our tax rates today. What is even more encouraging is that with the addition of this facility and increased taxes, we still hold our spot as the 2nd lowest taxes in the region. That is a direct reflec-tion of good management of taxpayer funds. It always pains me when a new company moves to town and they call and say, “hey, we got the family moved in, what part of town is the community center?” I sincerely hope we can erase this expectation and bring our recreation opportunities in line with our eating opportunities.