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Last Wednesday morning, it fell upon Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis to discuss local government with the members of the Wells County Leadership Academy. He touched, briefly, on intergovernmental cooperation.
He had a shining example — a $25K example — from the night before. Bluffton will give $25,000 to the Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan School District to help start a culinary arts program.
“There’s not too many places where that would happen,” Ellis said.
He’s right.
Government officials often say they have the public’s best interests at heart, but they tend to define “best interests” as “things that pertain to my office.” Rare indeed are the people who think using broader horizons.
Yet in Wells County, there seems to be a rather high level of intergovernmental cooperation.
The money the city is giving to the schools comes from the city’s share of County Economic Development Income Tax (CEDIT) funds. Dr. Julie Wood, superintendent of Bluffton-Harrison, approached the Bluffton Common Council about the money. Council members had some questions, and Tuesday night Dr. Wood returned to the council with a couple of her board members and administrators. That carried the day.
Bluffton Common Council member James Phillabaum said he had been contacted by some people, “and not the type that complain about everything,” encouraging him not to give the money to the school. “They were concerned that we were opening up the flood gates for the school system to come for more money,” he said.
But when the culinary arts program was explained, more completely, to the council members, they voted 5-0 to send over the money. At the time of the vote, council member Bette Erxleben said development of such a program for students certainly fit the definition of economic development — a statement that is irrefutable.
Yet it fits into a broader context, and the point of this column, very well. Bluffton Common Council members could have said, “Our job is to run the city. The school system’s job is to educate their students. We do what we do and they do what they do.” And they would have been right. They would also have been wrong. Everybody’s job is to work together for the common good.
When school board candidates answered questions during a forum at Bluffton High School Thursday night, more than one of them talked about the need to grow the community in terms of economic development. When the community grows, the school system grows and improves.
Amazing how that works, isn’t it?
Mike Row, economic development director for Wells County, is a veteran of the political ranks himself, having served on the County Council of a, ahem, nearby county. He knows about turf wars, and he’s glad he’s not seeing them here.
“I have been very pleasantly surprised at the level of cooperation between public and private sector and the various entities in the public sector,” he said, voicing his support for the $25,000 given to the schools. “If our community is going to reach its full potential, we have to use some unique collaborative efforts.”
The city of Bluffton doesn’t differentiate between city residents and non-city residents in making some of its programs available — pool admission, for instance. It’s a city pool, but county residents are welcome, too. There are many places where that’s not the case.
Which brings us back to Ellis’s statement, the one I used at the beginning of this treatise.
I will concede I’m a newbie here. I haven’t been around long enough to see things get nasty. I don’t know who is, and who’s not, on everybody else’s Christmas card list.
But I know what I’ve seen, and what I’ve seen has been good. I have a sense that what happened last Tuesday night is the norm in Wells County. Assuming that continues to be the case, the winners will be the residents of County 90.
by DAVE SCHULTZ
daves@news-banner.com
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