Five to Thrive: Keys to Fremont's success

Fremont is beloved by many in the community, but there are critical issues that must be faced to ensure it can be successful into the future.

Through interviews with community leaders, forums and general knowledge of the area, The News-Messenger identified the five most important challenges facing Fremont. The five topics are outlined below and will be individually explained in greater detail throughout 2015.

The point of the project is not to expose what is wrong or bad with Fremont, but to identify how the community can meet its challenges to become a more prosperous place. Similar efforts are being done at The News-Messenger's nine sister publications, which hopefully will present the opportunity for each of them to learn solutions from the other.

The list, however, is only a starting point. Feedback from readers is critical to ensure the project focuses on those issues most important to the community. And engagement with the community to discuss the issues is the only way they will improve.

Below are the five topics selected for focus in 2015. They are not listed in order of importance.

•Closing the skills gap

Well-paying jobs require technical skills that people in this community lack. That means hard working individuals are forced to take positions that won't feed a family and local businesses are left struggling to find qualified candidates.

Across Ohio, the state is projected to gain 1.7 million jobs by 2018 through new positions and retirements. Of those jobs, 57 percent will require postsecondary training but just 23.8 percent of Sandusky County residents have an associate's degree or higher. In Sandusky County, 1,400 people are unemployed and actively seeking work even though there are more than 11,000 unfilled positions within a 30-mile drive. Many of them, about 4,000, require a degree.

Helping those people seeking work to be qualified for available jobs is critical to the economic vitality of the area.

•Creating drug free workplaces

Employers are having a difficult time finding and retaining employees who pass drug tests. Nationally, there was a 5.7 percent increase in positive workplace drug tests in 2013, the first increase Quicken Diagnostics had reported since 2003.

That same year, Sandusky County physicians prescribed opiates at a rate of 56.8 doses per resident, up from 54.6 doses in 2010. In 2013, Seneca-Sandusky-Wyandot Mental Health and Recovery Services provided publicly funded drug treatment to 3,479 people. Most drug abusers work – 70 percent according to the National council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence – and, nationally, cost employers $81 billion each year for a variety of issues from increased medical costs to decreased productivity.

Helping employees get clean not only will benefit their lives, but also help local businesses be more productive and hopefully grow.

•Making Sandusky County primed for success

Fremont finished an Ohio EPA-mandated reservoir project in 2012 and city council members voted in November 2014 to remove the 100-year-old Ballville Dam. The reservoir was completed in December 2012, and it provides a 700 million gallon off-stream water supply, according to the city. The estimated $45 million cost (about $13 million of that cost was offset by grant funds) of constructing the reservoir and the payment of related loans has required a series of annual step increases in water rates, with residents also facing sewer rate hikes related to the city's Water Pollution Control Center project.

The dam's impoundment area had served as the main source of the city's raw water supply, with the reservoir replacing it as a primary water source for residents and businesses.

The city is also in the final phase of its $70 million sewer plant project, which will increase wastewater treatment capacity at the plant and reduce combined sewer overflows into the Sandusky River.

After the project's completion, the city will monitor the plant for two years and report to the EPA on whether the site improvements have met with the agency's clean water standards. It is possible the city would have to make additional sewer plant improvements, a move that could result in more rate increases for residential and commercial users.

The city is also putting together an inventory of its sewers, with plans for upgrades at multiple sites around Fremont.

•Develop downtown

City leaders and new investors like Tom and Shawn Kern of Discover Fremont, Ltd. have pushed to promote the Fremont downtown area and bring more visitors and businesses to main thoroughfares like Front Street.

Mayor Jim Ellis is also working with city and county economic development officials to follow through on a comprehensive Big Fremont plan released last year.

A large section of the Big Fremont plan dealt with downtown revitalization and residents' desires to see new businesses locate along Front Street and other prominent spots in the city's historic downtown district.

The Kerns purchased three properties on Front and Garrison Streets in 2014 and started revitalization efforts on the gateway corner of Front and State Street, with a broader goal of renovating upper level apartments at one of the sites to encourage more residents to live downtown.

Terra State Community College has been in discussions with Discover Fremont about possibly putting some of its students into the Front Street apartments, and city officials are still making efforts to attract a signature restaurant downtown that would remain open evenings and weekends.

•Embracing diversity

In Fremont, the city's population is largely white. But the city's nearly 1,400 Black/African American residents made up 8.3 percent of the population in 2010. This number has remained relatively static, increasing only slightly from 1,365 in 1990. A more dramatic increase has been witnessed in the Mexican population, which has grown from 1,676 people and 9.5 percent of the population in 1990 to 2,700 people and 16.1 percent in 2010, according to U.S. Census numbers.

The county's makeup is expected to change dramatically in the coming years and decades, with Sandusky County expected to become one of the most diverse in the state.

By 2060, the county is poised to be the third most diverse in Ohio and as diverse as present day Manhattan or Sacramento County in California. By 2060, Sandusky County's population is projected to be 32 percent multiracial and 17 percent Hispanic, up from 3 and 9 percent, respectively, in 2010.

How the community handles that diverse growth will play a large factor in its success into the future.