(VIDEO: GIAVASIS ON COLLABORATION BACKGROUND) STARK CO. LOCAL GOV'T HISTORY IN THE MAKING: PLAIN TWP TRUSTEES & PLAIN BD OF EDUCATION MEET IN WORK SESSION TO COLLABORATE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES. CANTON SETS A NEGATIVE EXAMPLE UNDER HEALY.

 

UPDATED AT 10:30 AM

One of a number of negatives on Stark County is the amount of rampant turfism that plagues the county.

Mayor William J. Healy, II of the Canton is the personification of turf wars going on in our county.  The SCPR ascribes to him and his Safety Director Tom Ream the notoriety of being responsible for bringing the development of an effective and efficient countywide 9-1-1 to a de facto halt or at the very least to a "snail's pace" by their insistence that Canton be the "political" dominatrix of Stark County in an attempt to hold the rest of us in Canton's control and dominance.

And Canton under Healy has larger ambitions to make Canton synonymous with the geographical confines of Stark County.  Building departments, health departments and information technology departments - you name them - if there is to be any countywide convergence of these operations into a citizen serving lean and mean operation and Canton is to be included, Mayor Healy will not allow it unless Canton comes out on top.

However, lame duck Councilman Bill Smuckler does deserve to be excluded from inclusion in the Healy-esque led drive to dominance.  For years, he has been a leading Stark County light for promotion cooperation and collaboration between the city and the rest of Stark County.  Unfortunately, he is one of the few Canton government types who sees the light.

While Canton is the worst of Stark County local governments in terms of working for the betterment of the whole of Stark County, Plain Township has to be the very best.

Last evening the Plain Township Board of Trustees and Plain Township Board of Education broke new ground in Stark County in agreeing to a series of meetings to work on common ground matters in the name of serving all of Plain Township better, to wit:

• developing the GlenOak High School campus into a community center,
• shoring up pedestrian and traffic safety in the vicinity of the campus,
• working on ways and means to provide sustained funding of a police  resource officer dedicated to rendering policing services to students in the context of their life in school,
• enhancement of the Plain Township park system by developing a collaboration between the talent rich school population and managers of the parks to put on community events using Plain Township home grown entertainers, and
• collaborating to develop communication media (e.g. Time Warner's Channel 11 and AT&T's community channels) as a joint effort of the schools and the trustees to bring school and township government into the homes of Plain Township residents.

Perhaps the most important decision of the night was the surfacing of a commitment (on the part of both boards) to develop a schedule of quarterly meetings as a follow-up to the discussions initiated last night and the joint work session.  The SCPR has seen many collaborative efforts fall through in Stark County because the ball got drop for lack of a formal structure (i.e. set meetings) to keep the matter(s) on track.

The Stark County Political Report sees the collaboration between Plain's trustees and school board members as having countywide perhaps even statewide significance in terms of creating an actual working model of how local governments can structure and formalize their local government efficiency and effectiveness efforts.

The Report spoke with Plain Township Trustee Louis Giavasis on the significance of last night's meeting.  Here is the video of the interview.