[0:00] Thank you so much, Chair Wilson, and and
County Council here. I'm Susan Caughman,
[0:04] Chair. I served as Chair
of the 1% [clears throat]
[0:09] sales tax capital sales tax project this
year, and I would like my committee to
[0:14] stand. I know Pam Temple
is here and Ginger Sharp I saw her come
[0:19] in. I don't know if any of the others
came in. We also had Eddie Raley from
[0:25] the town of Lowrys, Reverend Steve
Bishop was appointed by County Council,
[0:29] and Melvin Jackson was Vice Chair and
appointed by County Council.
[0:34] It was awfully nice, wasn't it, to have
a positive comment during our
[0:39] during our public forum for our work.
So, working on the capital sales tax
[0:45] project proved to be fun,
challenging. I didn't know how to count
[0:50] in millions.
>> [laughter]
[0:51] » Mind-boggling at times, and ultimately,
I think we produced a list of projects
[0:55] which will touch every part of our
county and will make our citizens safer,
[1:00] provide greater recreational
opportunities, and bring modernization
[1:04] and economic growth to benefit all of
our citizens.
[1:07] The process itself, I was thinking about
it's really a grassroots effort produced
[1:13] by a citizen committee. The six of us
were were citizen committee, and it will
[1:18] be ultimately voted on by all the
citizens of Chester County. So, that
[1:23] that really means that this work belongs
to the citizens of Chester County. It
[1:29] was interesting to me to see how our
six-person committee was formed. I don't
[1:33] know if you all know
quite what the process was. I was
[1:37] appointed first by the city of Chester
because we were the largest
[1:40] municipality, and then I was charged to
go out to two other municipalities and
[1:46] choose a person of those two. So, I
chose um
[1:50] Lowrys and Richburg, and that's where
Ginger Sharp and Eddie Raley came from.
[1:55] Then, you all chose three members. So so
truly we touched every part of the
[2:01] county. We represented all represented
all parts of the county. We began
[2:06] meeting on August the 25th and within a
month we had an application ready to be
[2:10] sent out.
Initially we worked on the referendum
[2:14] question and we really struggled with
the question about funding nonprofits in
[2:20] this. And so that's why it was so nice
to have a
[2:24] comment from one of our nonprofits.
You'll see in the final list there were
[2:27] five and all of these nonprofits have
operated in Chester County for a long
[2:31] long time. They have done great work
here in the community for many years. So
[2:37] I believe that their projects will will
be well done.
[2:40] On December 19th, right before
Christmas, we were asked to come to the
[2:44] county building to pick up the
applications. I thought it's going to be
[2:48] a small little package. It was a box
filled with three large notebooks. I
[2:54] think some of y'all may have seen some
of those notebooks. I could barely carry
[2:57] it to the car.
But what we did is we spent our
[3:00] Christmas and New Year's reading these
projects and then we did a yes no maybe
[3:06] from each one of us and then it was
compiled into a complete list and that
[3:10] sort of helped us see what was floating
to the top, you know, in our minds. And
[3:14] then later we did research on all of
those projects.
[3:18] In all we had 67 projects and they were
all really good projects which mostly
[3:23] involved public safety through fire and
police, recreation and rehabilitation of
[3:28] buildings to be repurposed for better
uses. And we were very conscientious
[3:33] about choosing projects from all parts
of the county so that no community was
[3:37] left out. And we were also conscientious
about choosing projects which would
[3:42] touch and benefit the most citizens.
Some of the projects will be highly
[3:48] visible like new fire stations, improved
recreation opportunities. Some you will
[3:53] never see, but they will keep us safer
because their equipment for fire and
[3:57] police.
In the end we arrived at 29 projects
[4:01] which we felt like would improve the
lives of all our citizens. We even took
[4:05] colored construction paper, created a
sheet for every section of our county
[4:09] and listed the projects under there to
make sure we had not missed any
[4:13] communities. And then we reordered our
list so as the voters go to vote, they
[4:18] will see with within a few items
something in their community or
[4:23] something that touches their lives.
So we are thankful that you have honored
[4:28] our work by approving it twice and we
hope that you'll approve it again
[4:33] tonight and ultimately that the voters
will see the value in passing the
[4:37] capital sales tax projects in November.
Again, I thank you on the behalf of our
[4:42] committee that you allowed us to do this
important work for our county.
[4:47] Thank you.