{"id":57780,"date":"2014-11-15T06:51:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T11:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=57780"},"modified":"2014-11-15T06:51:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-15T11:51:56","slug":"bringing-it-all-back-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2014\/11\/15\/bringing-it-all-back-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing it all back home"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re out there. You left Van Wert County to pursue an education, maybe get a taste of the big city. You experienced frat life and the clubs and being young and reckless. You got a job and eventually met someone, got married and had a couple of kids. And you\u2019ve figured out that, once the party is over, every place is pretty much the same except that some places have traffic — and you\u2019re reminded of that every day.<\/p>\n

Now you pay outrageous fees for daycare and have to hire a babysitter to do anything in the evening. You\u2019re not too sure about the school your kids are going to. Your house is nice but costs twice as much as it would have where you grew up. You shop at chain stores, ones that have similar outlets within thirty minutes of your old hometown. You don\u2019t know your neighbors. You know why you left but wonder what it would take to get back.<\/p>\n

Your parents would like nothing more than for you to move those grandkids back. The Van Wert County Economic Development Office would like nothing more than that as well.<\/p>\n

\"By<\/a>
By Van Wert County Commissioner Todd Wolfrum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s the demographics: In Ohio, 29.3 percent of the general population is between the ages of 25 and 44. In Van Wert County, the same age group accounts for 23.6 percent. The small difference in those numbers leads to large consequences — this is the age group that raises children. It\u2019s what makes Van Wert High School Division III in basketball instead of the solid Division II it had always been. It also means there will be fewer kids that call this county \u201chome\u201d 20 years from now.<\/p>\n

This problem, perhaps more than any other, needs attention and we\u2019re giving it plenty.<\/p>\n

First, we\u2019re making it easy for employers and employees to find each other. Not just the potential workforce that is already here, but the ones that are sitting in their cars on the congested streets of Columbus or Cleveland thinking about the wide open spaces of Van Wert County. www.vanwertworks.com<\/a> is a website we created where local companies post available positions and how to apply.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a relatively new thing and not all of our companies are hooked in yet but they will be. Ridgeview Behavioral Hospital, which went through 400 hires to find 150 employees when it first opened, has told us that, for their current expansion, the website has already provided them a surprising number of qualified candidates both from here and from a few surrounding counties. Part of Mercer County\u2019s success over the past decade has been a website similar to this (OK, we ripped the idea off from them, but they don\u2019t mind and we ain\u2019t too proud to copy what has worked somewhere else).<\/p>\n

Last year, one of our local companies needed five to eight engineers. We\u2019re talking jobs that pay over $60k to start. They couldn\u2019t find them. I would bet there are five to eight Van Wert County natives abroad who would like to come home to a job like that. We hope their parents will lead them to vanwertworks.com.<\/p>\n

In the future, the indigenous population will already know about this website because of a program called \u201cRural by Choice\u201d. Our ED office, with the help of some prominent local businesspeople, will be going into schools over the next few months to start planting the idea in the minds of junior high students that whatever you want to do in life, you can do it in Van Wert County. They\u2019ll be reminded through their high school years.<\/p>\n

As part of that program, we\u2019re looking to keep track of the top ten percent or so of every graduating class in the county. I first heard this idea talking with Chris Roberts after taping a radio show. It may be nothing more than keeping a way to contact them on file and updating where they are and what they\u2019re doing every year. It could be as simple as Facebook. But when an anesthesiologist is needed at the hospital, we\u2019ll then know where to find someone that might be interested in more than just the job.<\/p>\n

A consistent problem with CEOs and doctors brought here from out of town is that their families don\u2019t want to live here — they want to live in Fort Wayne where there\u2019s more to do. People who are originally from here have a different vantage point. They know that literally everything is just a few hours away on the weekends and in the meantime your kids go to good schools, it\u2019s safe, and it\u2019s quiet. You don\u2019t need to sell them on Van Wert County and they have a natural inclination to invest themselves, and their resources, in it.<\/p>\n

The hometown always has the advantage and it\u2019s time we use that. When you\u2019re young, maybe you can\u2019t escape the lure of the bright lights. But once you start thinking about a family, you think of home, where you know people. When LeBron James went to Miami, he wasn\u2019t married. Is it any wonder he came back to Akron with a wife and three kids? I know, he never really left — he always had a home there. But so do your kids, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re out there. You left Van Wert County to pursue an education, maybe get a taste of the big city. You experienced frat life and the clubs and being young and reckless. You got a job and eventually met someone, got married and had a couple of kids. And you\u2019ve figured out that, once the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 07:23:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}