It is only safe to assume that Mayor Chris Cerino’s State of the Town report will produce a collective sigh of relief by the citizens of Chestertown in knowing that their government is operating at a high level of functionality. It is a long laundry list of goals reached, objectives met, and more importantly, a quite tangible sense of a town coming out of a recession with a sense of purpose and direction.
The Mayor and Town Council should be given high marks by town residents on their freshman year. The accomplishments Mayor Cerino outlined are filled with practical decisions like ending downtown metered parking, as well as common sense improvements to the town website, a new police station, and a designated arts district. All of these are leading indicators of a municipality that has its act together.
Where one might find fault with this otherwise excellent report is the Mayor’s seemingly myopic objective to work with Washington College only on eploring “creative ways to bring more students downtown, to our commercial centers, and to increase student participation in Town activities.” While to be fair, this might be a discrete placeholder for a much more significant aspiration, but if literally read, it would seem a rather limited view on how the town and college might work together on a host of issues in the upcoming year and beyond.
While it is clearly desirable to have WC students more engaged with downtown life, it is frankly the school’s reasonably well paid administrators, faculty, and parents that represent the sweet spot for our challenged downtown retailers and restaurateurs. Indeed, there is a growing trend of schools moving a certain percentage of their non-academic personnel to downtowns to successfully stimulate local economies. Having town-gown conversations on ways to do that in Chestertown could only produce welcomed results for the commmunity as a whole.
But beyond this primary consideration, it is important to encourage the town to seek a sophisticated and long-term partnership with Washington College over the next decade. With ample evidence that such alliances are producing encouraging outcomes in other parts of the country, the need and the benefits of taking this important step for Chestertown and WC should be apparent to all.
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