Greetings Alexandrians
I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the incredible support that I have enjoyed for these past 6 years. People say that being in politics is a thankless job, that has not been my experience. The appreciation, gratitude, and support that I have received from this community has been humbling, and very much appreciated by myself and my family. I need to apologize for not getting more information out in the past year, but the fact is that the less you hear from me, the busier I am! While Intel is bringing incredible opportunities to our state it has forced us at a local level to roll up our sleeves and get busy making sure that its impact on us is as good as it can be. I don’t know if its funny or a sad admission of how my mind works, but I thought recently about how the tragic events of September 11, 2001, united our country in a way not seen before in my lifetime. Covid brought our communities together in a way never seen in my lifetime, and Intel forced us to lock arms with our neighbors and work as one for the common good of all of us. Surprisingly, possibly the best way to ensure growth comes the way you want it is to have control over how water and sewer service is provided. If there is no service available, you throw the doors open for annexation, however if its readily available everywhere you set the stage for massive growth. We have been working for over a year with Johnstown and Granville on ways to provide water and sewer service to all our townships, Granville Township, St. Albans Township, Monroe Township and Liberty Township. In our case we would service St. Albans Township only in the areas and in the capacities deemed necessary by the Townships Comprehensive Plan. This would happen initially from Alexandria’s water distribution system and sewer plant with support from Granville and Johnstown. We have developed strong relationships with our neighboring municipalities and our townships over the past six years, and it is vital for our futures that this continues. We are currently working to help Johnstown obtain grants to connect their water system to ours. This isn’t just to give us additional capacity to service our township, it ensures that neither Alexandria nor Johnstown loses water service in the event of any system failure. Our water tower was installed in 1996 after a water main between us and Granville broke, and the village had no water. At that time, the tower was designed to provide us water for at least three days, today it is barely enough for two days. Granville is connected to Newark from the East, after we connect with Johnstown to the West all our communities should be relatively guaranteed drinking water in the event of any failure to any of our water systems, ideally at some point Johnstown will connect on the other side with Southwest Licking and or Delco Water. I recently attended a M.O.R.P.C./EPA meeting where their slide presentation was mostly about the J.A.G. service area. I am not sure how our collaboration became JAG at the state level, but I like it! I will close by expressing how grateful I am to be able to pass the baton to Mayor elect Sean Barnes. He and is family have managed their farm on North Liberty Street for I believe a dozen years or so and have been great members of the community. Sean and I meet at least weekly, and Sean has attended all the recent JAG meetings and anything else I can drag him to. It is our hope that this is the smoothest transition in Alexandria history. In fact, at the end of the year this will be Seans email insuring a smooth and continuous flow of information. It has been an honor to serve the community and don’t be surprised if you see me around, I promised Sean and council to be available if I can help with anything, particularly with the water sewer service plans. I will still have the old [email protected] email if you have any questions that I can help with. A very special thank you to the amazing council and staff that in six years brought us from unincorporating, broke and getting broker by the minute as our revenue literally went down the drain at a rate of 60,000 gallons of water a day to the strong village we are today. Best wishes to our newly elected Mayor and Council members as well as our veteran council members still on board, the best is yet to come! Have a safe and Happy Christmas and New Year!
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AuthorJim Jasper, Mayor Archives
December 2023
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