Hats off to Paul James for speaking his mind at the meeting reported on in the June 21 article Tofte debates Birch Grove lease, although personally I think he held back.
In how many years will there be no children attending Birch Grove School? Enrollment has declined downward steadily to an all-time low and will continue to do so with the fact that people are leaving the area and the kids that are here are growing up.
Everyone talks about “living wages” and “affordable housing” but nobody does anything about it, nobody. Why would you expect anyone with a growing family to stay? You will not make it here with what is being paid to regular employees in this county because there is a Texas-size difference between survival wages and a “living wage” and business owners know it. They have created easy access to foreign labor and they use it.
Birch Grove should have been subdivided off long ago to attract business that would stay in the building. The reason why there is no year-round barber or accountant or anything else here is because there is no place to put them. Where is the professional planning and marketing needed to save this building?
The never-ending collection of money year after year thrown into its bottomless well to keep it afloat has made people weary. Now the handwriting is on the wall. Solid decision-making and actions are needed to move the building and its future forward, or it’s destined to sink into the abyss, and that would be a terrible waste.
Lloyd Geillinger
Schroeder
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