The Dream List

The Dream List

On my mind today, with the primary coming in a little bit over a month, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to see happen if I can get onto either the Village Board or the School Board. So, I’ve made a short “dream list” of what I’d like to see happen in Fall Creek, my ideal ultimate goals. Now, mind you, these goals are not my PRIORITIES. No, my priorities as I’ve stated in the past is to ensure that the boards are more accountable and transparent to their constituency, and that we continue to gradually improve over time. These are the “perfect world” goals that I have set, and I would hope that most of my fellow citizens would agree to these goals.

  1. The Fall Creek School District becoming the highest academically achieving district in the state, rather than sitting at 142 out of 420. Frankly, we haven’t broken the top third of districts for the past decade. I’d like to see that change, and for us to celebrate academic achievement more and more.
  2. The Fall Creek Pond as a swimmable recreation option. As it stands right now, it’s so full of sludge and muck, that I wouldn’t want to push my worst enemy into it. I’d love to see it one day crystal clear, and allow my kids to happily swim in it.
  3. Fall Creek having our own indoor multipurpose Recreation Center, similar to Chesterfield Virginia’s Mayes-Colbert Ettrick Recreation Center. That town has a population a little over twice as large as ours, and they have THREE different indoor recreation centers, while we have only our Village Hall. (I did have the words “dear little” in there before, which I meant sincerely, but my inlaws believed that it could be misconstrued as insulting, so I removed it from that spot), which is fine, for small meetings like the board meetings, but not so good for things like, say, small concerts, plays, art gallery exhibitions, and other such things. Come this spring, we will have THREE baseball/softball fields that sit useless for half the year during our more frigid months, while we have ZERO public indoor entertainment venues that could be used year-round.

Again, this is my “pie in the sky” list of things I’d like to see someday. But, I’m not an autocrat, nor a dictator, just the opposite. If my fellow citizens don’t want these things, then I won’t push for them. But I hope they do. These are just my hopes to help make Fall Creek a desired home, for now, and for tomorrow.

Fall Creek Village Board Trustee Ballot Order

Fall Creek Village Board Trustee Ballot Order

The names have been drawn, and below you can see the names of all of the individuals competing for three open spots on the Village Board. I have denoted incumbents with an asterisk (*) and attempted to link next to all candidates’ names either their official website(s), and/or their social media page(s), if I could find them, so that you can learn more about us.

  1. Karen Hurd* – Election Website, Business (2), 2022 Assembly Election (2), Personal Facebook (may be old/out of date)
  2. Mark Pranckus – Personal Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
  3. West Bennett – You’re on my election website, Facebook (2), LinkedIn
  4. Dusty Levasseur – Personal Facebook
  5. Karen Herbison* – Business, Facebook, LinkedIn
  6. Matt Mattoon* – Personal Facebook

If any of this information is inaccurate, please contact me and I will correct it immediately. Good luck to all those participating.

Upcoming Primary

Upcoming Primary

Due to there being more than four candidates running, Fall Creek will be having a Spring Primary for the spots on the School Board on February 21, 2023.

I hope that I can count on the support of anyone reading this to show up on that day and vote for me to continue into the general election.

I’ll go ahead and publicly state here for the record my most important priorities if I got onto the School Board:

  • Transparency – People have busy lives, yet are still interested in the happenings of their local government. And I believe that they have a right to have such knowledge at their fingertips. As such, I’ve personally attempted to attend all of the school board meetings that I could and recorded and released the video of these meetings online for anyone to view at their leisure. I would like to make it policy that the school board choose to voluntarily do this, and to release it to their website within a week of the meeting occurring.
  • Accountability – the Fall Creek School District mission is stated as being “Committed to Academic and Personal Excellence”. Yet, from what I have seen from the outside looking in, barely any time at all in the school board meetings are actually devoted to discussing academic progress. Our teachers are doing the best that they can, and I’d like to help them to do even better. I will push to have academic excellence as the Board’s top priority again, and to include at the very least a short discussion on academic progress of the District and the School at every meeting. Ideally, I’d like us to use a “big data” approach so that we can view objective progress towards these goals. I’d like everyone to be able to see where we are, and where we are going, in clear and unambiguous terms. And us taxpayers should be able to see, at all times, just how well our schools are doing.
  • Dynamism – It is important that governments have both a constant churn and influx of new ideas, as well as to still maintain the experiences of those that came before. We need both youth, enthusiasm, and wise experience to be successful. As such, and to reduce stagnation, I propose what I call the “Take a Break” Act. Rather than setting absolute term limits, this act would allow sitting board members to serve for a maximum of two consecutive terms, after which time they are forbidden from running for another term until at least one full term has passed. After which time they may choose to again run for up to two more consecutive terms, repeating this pattern indefinitely. This gives others a chance to get in and get their ideas heard, while at the same time giving those with the drive and experience the ability to keep supporting our schools.

I hope that you can agree to these goals. I dearly wish the best for our students, and want to see them given the best possible education.