For those who've been around since my days on FranklinNOW.com, I hope you'll recall a post I had that discussed Franklin's community pride, or should I say the lack thereof regarding such pride.
It recently struck a nerve in a reader, which then ended up striking a nerve in me, when they found out that Franklin High School honors students would be receiving their awards & scholarships at a dinner...in Oak Creek. Yes, that's right - FHS students are receiving awards and scholarships at the Oak Creek Community Center, which is just a couple dozen yards from Oak Creek High School, Franklin's primary rival in sporting and academic events.
One has to wonder what the heck happened to create such a void in the community where FHS students couldn't receive their awards here in Franklin. Granted, we don't have very large facilities, but we do have some space available at the Polish Center, or City Hall, or the Public Library's Fadrow Room, or even in the FHS multi-purpose room or at area restaurants like Gus'. Options are available in Franklin, but yet Franklin Public Schools decides to bump it over to Oak Creek. What a shame.
Franklin does have funds available from impact fees to help construct a community center for, well, the community. Unfortunately city leaders haven't been too gung-ho about the idea, and I've always heard in the background an option where the impact fees go back to taxpayers and nothing gets built at all. It's frustrating to hear about this in a community where things such as community investment are little-to-none. Having been involved in Franklin and its politics since April of 2007, all I've seen is the lack of such investment, and to be quite honest if something like the Franklin Public Library was proposed today or even a year ago - I don't think the council would have ever approved of its construction!
All I'm seeing is aldermen looking only at the checkbook and nothing past that when it comes to community projects. Seeing a project, such as a community center, doesn't seem to stir a lot of thought in terms of how that center would likely attract more residents and businesses to Franklin. It also would attract more events to Franklin, which would generate more traffic into the city that would feed its retail and dining venues. Community investments generally equal out to economic development and additional tax base if one looks at a bigger picture.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that with no funding going towards community projects and investments, all of it is going elsewhere for items that quite frankly perplex me. For example, at the last council meeting the aldermen approved of over $12,000 to go to PDI/Graef for their work on our Comprehensive Master Plan. Considering that PDI/Graef has been working with the City of Franklin on our CMP for quite some time, I'm afraid to see the total numbers, especially if it ends up totalling a lot more than just simply hiring an extra employee or two in the Planning Department to work on the CMP for the city. Another expenditure that I believe was an extreme waste of taxpayer monies was all the studies that were done for the city since 2000. The Ticknor Report, the Franklin First Report, the Crossroads Plan, and others that have been approved by the council for who-knows how many tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds), and for what? From what I see, the city leaders don't even follow the reports in terms of development.
When one sits down and goes through the numbers, a lot of things begin emerging that poses the question: If we didn't spend all this cash on items we don't need, how much would we have for items we do need?
In the meantime, our students and their parents have to travel across city limits for an awards ceremony in Oak Creek...and that's only the tip of that gigantic economic and social iceberg hitting our community.
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