Monday, October 18, 2021: After spending Saturday morning at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point in New York, I flew to New Orleans on Saturday afternoon and drove over to Mobile, Alabama, on Sunday afternoon. I’m in Mobile this morning along with some of my House colleagues to take part in a USA marine fisheries research program run by the University of South Alabama. Our host for the trip is my good friend, Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL). We are fishing for red snapper today to help maintain a 27-year data series on the status of offshore reef fish in coastal Alabama. The study is supported by grants from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources primarily through the U.S. Sport Fish Restoration Fund. We use a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with camera and other instruments to count fish before we fish with hook and line. The University of South Alabama School of Marine Sciences and Dauphin Island Sea Lab is a national leader in fisheries ecology research.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021: After landing in Washington, D.C. this afternoon, I head straight to the House Chamber where I speak on a suspension bill that has come through the Energy and Commerce (E&C) committee.
H.R. 4028, the Information and Communication Technology Strategy Act, is a bill that I have co-sponsored that will require the Secretary of Commerce to report on and develop a whole-of-government strategy to reduce our dependence on foreign supply chains for information and communication technology. A link to my comments can be found here. Next, I head to our weekly Whip Team meeting before heading to a meeting with the former Deputy Secretary of Energy, Mark Menezes, who, later this week, is testifying before the Select Committee on Climate Change as well as the E&C Energy Subcommittee. Afterwards, I head to the House Chamber for our first vote series of the week and remain in the Chamber afterwards to pay tribute to Jacob Davis, Jr, of Pierce County who celebrated his 100th birthday on October 6th. A link to my tribute can be found here.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021: At our weekly GOP Conference meeting this morning, we discuss the economic crisis that has been created under the Biden Administration and what we can do to stop the $4.3 trillion tax and spend package that the Democrats are trying to pass. This wish list of far-left socialist policies will lead to not only the highest tax increase in the history of our country but will also add fuel to the rising inflation making it harder for working families to put food on the table.
Afterwards, I head back to my office where I meet with representatives from Coherus BioSciences, a U.S. based company that manufactures biosimilar treatments and immune-oncology medicines. The company is a strong supporter of my Manufacturing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, Drugs and Excipients (MADE) in America Act that will ensure that the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain is less dependent on foreign countries like China. Next, I head to an E&C Health Subcommittee hearing on legislation to protect children and families. A link to my questions can be found here. One of the finest Congressman that I have had the privilege to serve with is Dr. Phil Roe from Tennessee. Dr. Roe retired last year and was the former Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee as well as the driving force in organizing the Doctors Caucus in Congress of which I am a member. Today we honored Phil with the unveiling of his portrait that will hang in the Veterans Affairs Committee room.
After this most deserving honor, I head off of Capitol Hill where I participate in a roundtable discussing the next frontier in disability employment. Once back on Capitol Hill, I head to the House Chamber where we have our first and only vote series of the day. Afterwards, I remain in the Chamber and pay tribute to Bobby Zarem from Savannah who recently passed. A link to my tribute can be found here. Next, I head to a Select Committee on Climate Change hearing on private sector perspectives on climate action. Once back in my office, I meet with representatives from Visby Medical, a leading medical diagnostic company that has been on the front line of testing for COVID. My final meeting of the day is a virtual call with the President of Lilly USA and Lilly Immunology, Patrik Jonsson, to discuss their exciting research on potential Alzheimer’s medications and efforts to lower the price of insulin products.
Thursday, October 21, 2021: My first meeting this morning is with the Doctor’s Caucus as we welcome back our former colleague and good friend, Dr. Phil Roe. Next, I have a meeting with my good friend, Ken Quinn with International Auto Logistics in Brunswick as he brings me up to date on the situation at the Brunswick Port. Afterwards, I head to the House Chamber where I pay tribute to Dr. Jay Brinson from Wayne County, Ann Ernst from Savannah, National Pharmacists Week and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) memorial ceremony. A link to my tributes can be found here, here, here, and here. Next, I head to an E&C Energy Subcommittee hearing on offshore wind energy and waive on so that I can ask questions. A link to my questions can be found here. After returning to my office, I join in on our all staff conference call before heading to the Rayburn House Office Building foyer where I film this week’s edition of Buddy’s Briefing. Next, I head to the House Chamber for our first vote series of the day and afterwards head back to the Rayburn House Office Building where I speak to the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA) that are visiting the Capitol this week. Afterwards, I head back to my office where I join in on a virtual meeting of the Select Committee on Climate Change where we hear from Dr. Jonathan Pershing, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate. After a very encouraging call with Paul Hinchey from St. Josephs/Candler Hospital in Savannah to discuss the COVID situation, I head back to the House Chamber for our second and final vote series of the day. Next, I head to a Republican member briefing on the $4.3 trillion socialist tax and spending bill that the Democrats are pushing and afterwards head back to the House Chamber where I speak on the proposal during special orders. A link to my speech can be found here.
Friday, October 22, 2021: I’m back in the House Chamber first thing this morning as I pay tribute to Darien Police officer David Horton, who recently passed. A link to my tribute can be found here. Once back in my office, I join in on a Doctors Caucus virtual call with staff from Health and Human Services (HHS), Treasury and Labor to discuss the interim final rule of the No Surprises Act. Next, I head to the Judiciary Committee room where I speak on legislation that I have before the committee during member day. A link to my presentation can be found here. Afterwards, I head to the House Chamber for our first and only vote series of the day.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Sent to me by a fellow memo reader. Malkin is also a fellow memo reader:
CTCL is a team of civic technologists, trainers, researchers, election administration and data experts working to foster a more informed and engaged democracy, and helping to modernize U.S. elections.
Tiana Epps-Johnson, Executive Director, President
Founder and Executive Director with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. She is leading a team that is doing groundbreaking work to make US elections more inclusive and secure. Prior to CTCL, she was the New Organizing Institute’s Election Administration Director from 2012 to 2015. She previously worked on the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Tiana is a recipient of the 2020 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was selected to join the inaugural cohorts of Obama Foundation Fellows (2018) and Harvard Ash Center Technology and Democracy Fellows (2015). Tiana earned a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.
Please hear what Michelle Malkin has to say about CTCL
Malkin: The Zuckerberg heist Jan. 6, 2021
In September 2020, right here in this nationally syndicated newspaper column and on a subsequent report on my Newsmax show, "Sovereign Nation," I sounded the alarm over Silicon Valley's hijacking of our election system through a private nonprofit called the Center for Technology and Civic Life.
In October, I tipped off the White House and publicly urged the FBI and Justice Department to investigate. Nothing was done. Not a single federal official objected. So, the Zuckerberg Heist will happen again and again in this farce of a constitutional republic. Free and fair elections in America are a pipe dream.
In case you were snoozing, as far too many citizens in this country are, CTCL is the deep-pocketed liberal advocacy group subsidized by Big Tech oligarchs and radical philanthropists. The center received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Election information-rigging Google is a top corporate partner. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Democracy Fund (founded by "Never Trumper" billionaire and eBay former chairman Pie,)
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Biden had turned the Defense Department into a nursery which now concerns itself with coddling radical ideas:
The Distracted Defense Department
The military should focus on strategic adversaries, not challenges like Covid and climate change.
By Nadia Schadlow
The Defense Department is in trouble under the Biden administration. It surrendered to the Taliban and has been slow in responding to the challenge posed by China. Meanwhile, Pentagon leaders wasted time and resources developing a climate strategy, which they released this month.
At the root of these blunders is a failure to distinguish between strategic challenges posed by adversaries and problems such as climate change. Unless the military refocuses on deterring and winning wars, we will likely lose more conflicts.
China is an adaptive actor—an adversary who can think and shift course. Yet the Biden administration conflates such actors with challenges like Covid-19 and climate change, lumping them together as threats. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said few threats to national security “deserve to be [called] existential,” but that climate change qualified. He ordered the Pentagon to “prioritize climate change considerations.” President Biden’s interim national-security guidance reiterates this point. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said among the top challenges facing the U.S. Navy are China, climate change, and Covid.
This is misguided. The Chinese Communist Party, unlike climate change and Covid-19, is an opponent that makes choices to advance its goals. That is why defense experts consider China a “pacing threat.” China has modernized its armed forces to deny others access to the island chain running from Japan through Taiwan down to Singapore. This makes it more difficult for the U.S. military to project power in the area. In recent months, China has sent dozens of aircraft into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone. It has developed weapons systems, such as hypersonic missiles and cyber capabilities, and is expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Climate change and Covid-19 are complex challenges with many potential consequences, including mass migration and political instability. But actors with strategic intent don’t drive these outcomes—unless the administration is willing to deem the Covid-19 outbreak a deliberate act.
The essence of strategy is competition. Good strategy must respond to actors pursuing their objectives. The military strategist Carl von Clausewitz called this a “dialectic of wills,” whereby actors take actions and counteractions against each other. Similarly, modern strategist Edward Luttwak writes of “the paradoxical logic of strategy,” in which successful actions can’t be repeated because “the other party adapts.” That’s why fighting the last war is a formula for defeat: It would be unwise to repeat the same action against an adaptive adversary.
In contrast, successful approaches to complex problems should be repeatable. Lockdowns and mask mandates were deployed 100 years ago during the Spanish flu with some success. A well-designed vaccine works against its designated target.
Certainly the U.S. military can work to reduce its carbon footprint. But meaningful shifts away from fossil fuels are limited by the need to power ships and airplanes, maneuver to and across faraway theaters, and keep the lights on in its installations. All this is critical to deter adversaries. Until scalable and sustainable advances in power generation and energy storage arrive, decarbonizing the Pentagon would undermine deterrence.
Similarly, Covid-19 affects the readiness of U.S. forces. The Pentagon can contribute to solutions—through, for instance, its scientists sharing information and its logistics capabilities. But a pandemic is not a pacing threat.
Conflating threats posed by strategic actors and those posed by operational challenges has several debilitating effects. First, it shifts Defense Department attention and resources from pressing strategic challenges. This year, senior officers called into question America’s ability to deter and defeat a possible Chinese military action against Taiwan. What is the military’s operational concept to defend Taiwan? How does it plan to counter the growing Chinese nuclear capability? How does the U.S. intend to build up its naval forces, despite shrinking defense budgets? While Pentagon leaders focus on strategies for climate change, they don’t yet have answers to these problems.
Second, misplaced priorities can result in using the military to deal with problems best handled by others. The U.S. has several agencies dedicated to public health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the Food and Drug Administration. States also have public-health capabilities. Environmental regulation and energy policy are the principal responsibilities of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department. Simply put, climate change and pandemic response are not the Pentagon’s problems to solve.
Third, such concerns take time and focus away from developing the skills needed to compete against adaptive actors like China. The toughest questions facing the Defense Department have little to do with Covid-19 or climate change. Pentagon planners need to speed up acquisition cycles to take advantage of new technologies. They need to manage the proliferation of artificial intelligence and harness emerging technologies such as hypersonic missiles and electronic warfare.
Militaries exist primarily to defeat strategic actors. As the Biden administration develops its National Security Strategy, it must distinguish between thinking, adaptive adversaries and the problems posed by Covid-19 and climate change. Improving the Pentagon’s ability to deter or win wars against pacing threats will keep it busy enough.
Ms. Schadlow is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute.
And:
John is a hawk but a realistic one:
It’ll Take More than American Military Might to Shore Up Taiwan
Team Biden needs a fuller strategy that includes international recognition and new regional alliances.
By John Bolton
China’s threat to Taiwan is real, not hypothetical, as recent incursions into the island’s air-defense zone demonstrate. To counter Beijing’s renewed belligerence, a successful strategy must go beyond eliminating the “strategic ambiguity” over whether the U.S. will come to the island’s defense. A successful strategy will require clarifying Taiwan’s status, its critical place in Indo-Pacific politics, and its economic importance globally. The U.S. military contribution to Taiwan’s security is crucial, but it requires strong political support here and abroad.
It begins by affirming that Taiwan is a sovereign, self-governing country, not a disputed Chinese province. It meets international law’s criteria of statehood, such as defined territory, stable population and the performance of normal governmental functions such as viable currency and law enforcement. Washington, Tokyo and others would be entirely justified to extend diplomatic recognition, and its attendant legitimacy, to Taipei.
The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the foundational statement of current U.S.-China relations, is effectively dead. The communiqué says that “the United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” and “doesn’t challenge that position.” Beijing warped these words to mean “one China run by Beijing,” a formulation the U.S. never accepted.
The reality the U.S. acknowledged in 1972 no longer exists. Taiwan’s National Chengchi University has polled the island’s people about their identity for 30 years. Between 1992 and 2021, those identifying as Taiwanese rose to 63.3% from 17.6%; those identifying as Chinese fell to 2.7% from 25.5%; those identifying as both Taiwanese and Chinese fell to 31.4% from 46.4%. (Some 2.7% didn’t respond, down from 10.5%.) The “silent artillery of time,” as Abraham Lincoln called it, will likely continue these trends. Taiwan’s citizens have made up their own minds: There is no longer “one China” but “one China, one Taiwan,” as Beijing has feared for decades.
Broader recognition of Taiwan’s status as an independent state would be extremely helpful in expanding politico-military alliances to buttress the island’s defenses against China. Yet Washington’s support may be insufficient to deter Beijing from attempting to subjugate Taiwan (or near-offshore islands like Quemoy and Matsu). Formal or informal alliances that include Taipei would show Beijing that the costs of belligerence toward Taiwan are significantly higher than China may expect.
One step would be forming an East Asia Quad, consisting of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and America, complementing the existing Japan-India-Australia-U.S. Quad. Japan should welcome this development. Its decision makers increasingly understand that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is an attack on Japan. Both are part of “the first island chain” separating the mainland from the broader Pacific, and their mutual security is inextricable.
It would be harder to persuade South Korea to join in such an effort due to historical animosities toward Japan and other factors, but its people are nonetheless aware of the consequences of Taiwan falling to China. The 2022 presidential election is an opportunity to debate whether to stand with its neighbors or risk eventually living under Greater China’s suzerainty. Vietnam, Singapore, Australia and Canada could join this Taiwan-centric grouping in due course.
Taipei’s residual South China Sea territorial claims could be bargaining chips for closer relations with other partners, especially littoral states like Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore. At this southern end of the first island chain, Taiwan’s navy could make material contributions to freedom-of-navigation missions. Taiwan is also developing increasingly important cyberwarfare capabilities and artificial intelligence.
Similar cooperation with Pacific island states would also enhance Taiwan’s reputation as a good neighbor. In addition, American and Taiwanese information statecraft in the Indo-Pacific and globally should expose China’s hypocritical behavior on climate change and Covid and its repression of Uyghurs, Hong Kong and religious freedom. Failure to counter Beijing’s extensive influence operations hamstrings efforts to constrain China and protect Taiwan.
Few Americans appreciate how critical an economic partner Taiwan is, especially its semiconductor manufacturing industry and its extensive trade links throughout the Indo-Pacific, all of which could support enhanced politico-military ties. Economic issues are important for regional countries and Europeans, who may be less willing to engage in military action. These countries should be reminded of China’s threat, including Beijing’s weaponizing telecommunications companies like Huawei and ZTE and its brutality in taking Canadians hostage in retaliation for the legitimate arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.
More military assets supporting Taiwan are critical but potentially futile without a fuller American strategic vision, with buy-in from citizens and other like-minded countries. That vision must be broad, persuasive and implemented without delay,to ensure the sustained popular support needed to prevail.
Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.
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When the fortunes of radicals ebb they resort to stoking the flames of anti-Semitism:
Will the Sun Ever Set on Anti-Semitism?
An organization behind the Green New Deal pulls out of a rally because it included Jewish groups.
By Elliot Kaufman
If anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, what to make of anti-Zionism? It is increasingly in vogue on the left, and throwing its weight around. Consider Sunrise DC, Washington hub of the Sunrise Movement, an activist group whose once-fringe proposal for a Green New Deal is now de rigueur on the left. On Wednesday Sunrise DC announced it would pull out of an event advocating statehood for the District of Columbia, a cause it supports, because of the involvement of three “Zionist organizations.”
All three groups are liberal. The National Council of Jewish Women gives “Israel grants” to Women Lawyers for Social Justice and a group helping Palestinian women. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs wants to “end mass incarceration,” rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and secure a two-state solution. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism represents the most liberal major Jewish denomination. It urges “immigration justice” and promises to “address our own behaviors, practices and policies through the lens of racial equity, diversity, and inclusion.”
If even these groups can be deemed toxic on the left—and Sunrise DC calls on an activist coalition to banish them—which Jews can’t? This points to an unavoidable fact: Anti-Zionism means marginalizing American Jews, some 90% of whom have positive views of Israel per Gallup’s review of studies. A token anti-Israel fringe doesn’t change that.
Take anti-Zionist logic to its conclusion. If the effort for D.C. statehood must exclude Zionists, shouldn’t the Democratic Party do the same? How about university faculties, media outlets and other major corporations? Arguing that Zionism is racism and silence is complicity, a successful American anti-Zionism would arrive at Ruth Wisse’s definition of anti-Semitism: the organization of politics against the Jews.
Justifying such a politics has always required dishonesty. In its statement, Sunrise DC asserts: “Given our commitment to racial justice, self-governance and indigenous sovereignty, we oppose Zionism.” The third plank is particularly galling, as Zionism entails the return of an indigenous people, the Jews, to sovereignty in their homeland, where they’ve had a continuous presence since biblical times.
Asked Thursday about the exclusion of Jews and about Jewish indigeneity, the national Sunrise group didn’t elaborate. It issued its own statement distancing itself from that of its affiliate: “Sunrise DC made a decision to issue this statement, and we weren’t given the chance to look at it before it became public.” On Friday, after critics noted that other pro-Zionist groups had escaped the local chapter’s notice, the national organization issued another statement: “Sunrise DC’s statement and actions are not in line with our values. Singling out Jewish organizations for removal from a coalition, despite others holding similar views, is anti-Semitic and unacceptable.”
Sunrise DC didn’t reply to questions. Its original statement denies the Jewish connection to the land by calling Israel “a colonial project.” Like so much anti-Zionism, this stuff is the dregs of Soviet “anti-imperialist” and Arab nationalist rhetoric. For 2,000 years, Jews have prayed three times a day for the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. It is crude propaganda to shunt Zionism, with its anticolonial struggle against the British, into the same category as, say, French colonization of Algeria. If Jews are interlopers in Israel, where is their home? If Israel is a colony, what is the metropole?
Next, Sunrise DC complains: “Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank cannot vote in Israel, despite the fact that these territories are occupied and effectively governed by the state.” That is untrue. Israel intervenes to protect itself, but Hamas governs Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority governs Palestinian parts of the West Bank. Neither Palestinian faction has held an election in years, but Sunrise DC doesn’t mention that. That’s another anti-Zionist tendency: Don’t get worked up about Palestinian deprivation if Israel can’t be blamed.
Sunrise DC panders to American sensibilities by condemning Israeli discrimination against “Black and brown Jewish-Israelis.” These Jews may now be useful as a cudgel against Israel, but their history illuminates the necessity of the Jewish state. In the 1980s and ’90s, Israel airlifted thousands of black Jews from Ethiopia, rescuing them from famine and violence. Mizrahim, the “brown” Jews of Sunrise DC’s taxonomy, constitute a majority of Israeli Jews. They were absorbed after violent expulsions from Arab lands. Anti-Zionists now demand their return to life as a vulnerable minority under Arab rule.
Sunrise DC ends by calling Zionism “incompatible” with “political sovereignty,” as if Israel were the only country with a minority group that makes competing national claims. Anti-Zionists portray Jewish self-determination as a unique evil, incompatible with feminism, as per former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, and racist, as per the infamous 1975 United Nations resolution and Black Lives Matter today. The Jewish state morphs into the universal obstacle to progress, the role Jews always play in the anti-Semitic imagination.
Excursions like Sunrise DC’s may succeed in chilling the already tenuous support for Israel in leftist circles. But the national Sunrise Movement’s belated damage control suggests it senses that anti-Zionism risks marginalizing the left. Americans are fair-minded, and whatever they think of statehood for the District of Columbia or the Green New Deal, they will recognize the exploitation of unrelated campaigns to dogpile on Israel and vilify Jewish groups as a sign of an ideological obsession. One handy word for this obsession is anti-Semitism.
Mr. Kaufman is the Journal’s letters editor.
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Biden Blasted Over Jaw Dropping Amount Of Americans Trapped
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Breaking: Gas Prices Continue To Skyrocket As Biden Closes Out More Domestic Production Options
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How this rust belt Ohio city avoided decline by taking politics out of city government
COLUMBIANA, Ohio — Enter the traffic circle navigating this city’s town square for the first time and it is hard not to be a bit astonished by the scene in front of you: a small town in the heart of the Rust Belt booming with the kind of vibrancy often only associated with the years following the Second World War.
Its near-perfect Norman Rockwell setting is a far cry from what we’ve come to expect from the endless stories of small towns vanishing from the American landscape.
There isn’t a vacant storefront in sight; the pedestrian traffic in and out of the coffee shops, diners, dress shop and antique shops is as brisk as the traffic going into the hardware stores, banks, beauty salon and other small businesses — and everyone you run into is really, really nice, which is probably why it was named the “nicest town in America” by Readers Digest a couple of years ago.
Most of the residents don’t live miles from the city center; instead, their homes — some stately Victorians, others more modest — line all four sides of the town in a perfect grid, and if you want a new home, well, there are four booming developments all within the city limits. The 300-home development at Firestone Farms — once the home of Harvey S. Firestone, who founded the iconic tire company over 100 years ago — has created a secondary business district for the city that includes a new medical center: The homes start at $400,000.
The America of tree-lined main streets, front porches, family Sunday dinners and familiar faces has been disappearing since the industrial revolution, a loss increasingly mourned as automation, trade deals and the lure of opportunity, education and adventure in larger cities eclipse what young people or displaced workers can find at home.
As people left small towns, they took with them their talents and community investment as well as their children, future grandchildren, the tax base and hope. Drive any highway in the country and evidence of the great exodus is palpable in too many towns with derelict factories, empty storefronts and homes on the brink of despair.
Politicians mostly have failed at stopping — or even slowing — the hemorrhage, instead becoming promise brokers who barely can manage the decline.
So how is it that Columbiana has not just bucked that trend of decline but also thrived?
It began, said the city manager, Lance Willard, after the city fathers took politics out of how the city functions in the 1970s and created the city manager position, a decision he said made the mayor more a benevolent figurehead who focuses on public relations while placing management of the city in the hands of a professional who stays on as mayors come and go.
“This approach gives the city more opportunities — not just to attract new development, but also be able to be more nimble with your ideas when politics and politicians are taken out of the equation,” Mr. Willard explained.
It also allows him to build relationships with not just the city council, but also the community, the chamber of commerce and the tourism industry.
Tom Maraffa, a Youngstown State University geography professor from nearby Salem, said that form of government gives the city manager more flexibility to think outside the box and to try things that politicians might not because they are thinking about their next election.
“Two years ago, we were suddenly faced with nine empty storefronts. We immediately made a conscious effort to find ways to fill those up before it became a cascade of empty storefronts; these things can go south very fast,” Mr. Willard said.
“We immediately started to try to create a vibrant experience for every age group by providing music downtown; we’ve also put up bistro lighting that’s up all year round, but most importantly we had heard about the concept of the pop-up shop, and we approached a local landlord with empty storefronts who was more than willing to try it out in one of the vacant buildings.”
They put a call out for people who might be interested in setting up a pop-up business that included free rent and utilities for 30 days. The good news is that they immediately got 20 candidates; the better news is the first person who went in signed a long- term lease after the first 30 days.
Mr. Willard says that within a short amount of time one lease turned into nine, “and we just started really getting momentum, and as of today we only have one open storefront.”
Mr. Maraffa said what makes Columbiana work is two-fold. First, the downtown isn’t all office space where people come to work and then leave; instead, it is a balanced mix of restaurants and personal services. The other thing is a well-balanced portfolio of small industries that employ 25 to 80 people each; there is no single, giant company that employs half the town of 6,300, making their fortunes reliant on the success of that one industry.
Like many young people who leave their hometown for college, Nick Baylor figured when he went to Milligan University in Tennessee several years ago that Columbiana might become a place for him to return to for family visits and nothing more.
Instead, the 26-year-old fourth-generation Columbianan said he found himself wanting to be part of the action two years ago when he came home for a visit and discovered more young people had decided to stay.
“I came back at a good time,” he said, “and I decided to stay around because of how much had happened — and honestly, I wanted to contribute to the growth that has been happening here.”
The really interesting thing about Columbiana is that the population does not skew older — there are plenty of Nick Baylors with young families who have come back to raise their kids in the place they called home.
Unlike the nearby cities of Youngstown, East Liverpool and Steubenville, Columbiana’s population has grown over the past decade.
Buzz is a constant around here; within the last two weeks there have been a wine festival and a beer festival. And the iconic Shaker Woods hosted its annual Christmas in the Woods festival, one of three annual events the Wilt family hosts in an enchanting village of cottages on the edge of town. The festival bustled with artisans, food vendors and holiday magic — as well as visitors from around the country.
Mr. Maraffa says the sense of community built over decades is a foundation for growth: “The current growth is adding to rather than replacing past developments.”
The town father of yesteryear isn’t so yesteryear here in Columbiana. The town manager system allows civic leaders with vision to thrive, eclipsing the messiness and bureaucracy of transactional politics.
Perhaps Columbiana can serve as a model for how a small city can avoid becoming yet another statistic portending decline.
Click here for the full story.
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