REVITALIZING CHILLICOTHE

Five to Thrive: Keys to Chillicothe's success

Chris Balusik
Reporter

CHILLICOTHE - With many things going in the right direction, it's easy to think Chillicothe's emerging turnaround is upon us.

But it's not time to be complacent. In fact, there are some critical issues to face to continue the upward trend.

In past few months, we've talked to community leaders, business owners and longtime residents of Chillicothe about the challenges they face and see in the community. From that, we focused on five topics to analyze further. We see the list as the beginning of a conversation, not the end.

We hope you will be part of that conversation.

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 many people in this community lack. That means hardworking 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 22.1 percent of Ross County residents have an associate degree or higher.

In the county, 1,800 people are unemployed and actively seeking work even though there are more than 2,900 unfilled positions within a 30-mile drive. About 900 of those jobs require a degree.

Helping those people seeking work become 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, Ross County physicians prescribed opiates at a rate of 95.7 doses per resident, compared with the state average of 64.9. Meanwhile, 77 percent of the 2,175 people who received publicly funded treatment through Paint Valley Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Board, which serves five counties including Ross, were diagnosed with an opiate addiction.

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.

Building community pride

Concerns about drugs in the community and some recent high-profile cases involving missing women have resulted in social media traffic tarnishing the luster of living in the local community and fears that it is assuming some of the problems common to more urban areas.

Since attitude can become perception, the community looks to find a way back to celebrating those things that over time have brought former residents back to Ross County and kept others from leaving in the first place.

That celebration has the opportunity to find its roots in efforts to revitalize downtown Chillicothe.

The promise of a proverbial shot in the arm for downtown Chillicothe can be found in the ongoing renovation work on the Carlisle building that, by the end of this year, should see its living quarters filled with Adena medical students looking for places to shop, eat and gather within walking distance of their new homes. That promise has spurred an influx of new downtown business owners counting on being able to capitalize on those potential new customers.

But there are still questions remaining about how best to generate traffic and interest in making downtown Chillicothe a shopping and entertainment destination. Will the answers rest with infrastructure changes, new entertainment options or a changing dynamic among the downtown business owners?

Develop the next generation of leaders

Providing opportunities that would entice talented individuals from younger generations to keep their talents in Ross County and use them for the betterment of the local community has been a challenge.

Several area service groups have indicated their membership is growing older and membership numbers are standing pat or dwindling, vacancies on area boards and councils that open up in mid-term tend to be filled by people who have served before, and participation in the political process – particularly in seeking public office – finds few newcomers entering the fray.

In this year's Chillicothe City Council election, for example, there is only one contested primary race among the available seats on the board. In two wards, the 3rd and 5th, there will not even be a contested race in the general election in November unless an independent candidate throws his or her hat into the ring.

The Chillicothe-Ross Chamber of Commerce does offer a leadership academy that helps produce a small class annually of those primarily in the business community who take on leadership roles in community organizations, and the Leader in Me programs offered in the Chillicothe and Union-Scioto school districts are working to instill leadership qualities into school-age children.

The question, however, of where the next class of community leaders will come from and how they will be developed remains relatively unanswered.

Increasing education as a priority

College attainment remains the exception rather than the rule in Ross County, where, in 2013, only 26.5 percent of the population had completed an associate degree or some college classes and only 13.7 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Surveys.

On the bright side, that same year, the average four-year high school graduation rate in Ross County was 90.3 percent, which was about 8 percent higher than the state average.

In an area facing the aforementioned skills gap, developing educational opportunities that will match programs with the needs of employers remains a challenge.

Meeting the challenge begins at home, where parents have to find the time and commitment to push their children toward success in the classroom and keeping an eye on their futures. In the schools, finding ways to balance testing requirements and the tenets of Common Core with teaching the skills employers need most will likely involve a greater reliance on partnerships between the business and educational communities.

Toward that end, some progress is already being made. For example, Ohio University-Chillicothe and Adena Health System recently celebrated their partnership in nursing programming that has resulted in many OU-C graduates of the program landing positions with the health system.

How future partnerships are developed and implemented could play a large role in what the future employment situation in southern Ohio ends up looking like.

Gannett Ohio reporters Jessie Balmert and Jona Ison contributed to this report.