Inaugural Mayor’s Think Tank takes place at Winchester City Hall

By Matt Cizek. This piece was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by The Winchester Sun. 

Winchester City Hall, locat­ed at 32 Wall Alley, has borne wit­ness to var­i­ous meetings. 

On Friday, Feb. 2^nd, a new type of meet­ing took place. 

The Mayor’s Think Tank, fea­tur­ing a group of indi­vid­u­als through­out Clark County, gath­ered togeth­er for its first meet­ing with the goal in mind of pro­duc­ing long-term pos­i­tive growth for the city. 

Susan Bishop, one mem­ber of the Mayor’s Think Tank, was one of the first to speak. 

“What I would real­ly love for peo­ple to real­ly under­stand about Winchester is that you can do all phas­es of our life here,” Bishop said. “We have so many great oppor­tu­ni­ties right here in our hometown.” 

The idea for the Mayor’s Think Tank was inspired in part by a ques­tion posed at the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce’s rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny for JAG, or Jobs for America’s Graduates, that took place in the fall of 2022.

In atten­dance at the time, Winchester Mayor JoEllen Reed over­heard a stu­dent ask the fol­low­ing ques­tion: What efforts are being made to bring our young peo­ple back to our city after col­lege graduation?

Though Reed, now enter­ing her sec­ond year, was a few months away from being offi­cial­ly inau­gu­rat­ed, the ques­tion stayed with her – even being writ­ten down and car­ried with her on a paper nap­kin since then.

Members of the Mayor’s Think Tank are Susan Bishop, Rhonda Blythe, Christy Bush, Steve Crosby, Dickie Everman, Kelly Fithen, Ricco Floyd, Betty Jane Glasscock, Baylee King, Allison Roberts, Emmie Rose, Sue Staton and Josh Wood.

They rep­re­sent­ed a wide range of peo­ple with dif­fer­ent per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al backgrounds.

For exam­ple, while Wood is a real­tor with Freedom Realty and Property Management and Floyd has pas­tored for over 30 years, King and Rose are both stu­dents at George Rogers Clark High School, with King serv­ing as senior stu­dent body pres­i­dent and Rose a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Smoke Signals Student Media. 

With this being the first meet­ing, each mem­ber intro­duced them­selves and answered an engag­ing ques­tion gen­er­at­ed by www.random.org.  

However, a large por­tion of the meet­ing – mod­er­at­ed by Bruce Manley – would be spent talk­ing about com­mu­ni­ty strengths and concerns. 

Divided into groups of two at one point, mem­bers brain­stormed what oth­er cities might be doing that Winchester can ben­e­fit from, any weak­ness­es which could be addressed, what makes Winchester dif­fer­ent from oth­er cities, what Winchester can do to expand on new or exist­ing region­al part­ner­ships, and what skills or oppor­tu­ni­ties Winchester has that oth­ers might not. 

Among the top­ics brought up through­out the meet­ing were afford­able hous­ing, eco­nom­ic growth, oppor­tu­ni­ties for youth, ser­vices for senior cit­i­zens, home­less­ness, and more. 

GRC stu­dent Joby Mitmesser, fill­ing in for Rose – who could not be present – brought up one inter­est­ing possibility. 

“I feel like we can get a [frozen yogurt] place.” Mitmesser said, adding that find­ing ways to bring oth­er chain loca­tions such as Raising Cane’s or Chick-fil‑A could be ben­e­fi­cial and avoid oth­ers going to places like Lexington just to socialize. 

“[Affordable hous­ing] is a trag­ic, trag­ic issue going on in Clark County right now,” said Rhonda Blythe, who works as an admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant for Clark County Judge-Executive Les Yates. “The way that peo­ple have raised their rent on hous­es that have been here since I was lit­tle is just absurd.” 

“We’ve got all these won­der­ful com­pa­nies in Winchester, and I think about the indus­tri­al park.” Bishop said. “A lot of those lead­ers don’t live in Winchester. They live out­side our com­mu­ni­ty… I think it would be nice to ask our com­pa­nies for more com­mu­ni­ty support.”

While much dis­cus­sion occurred, pride in Winchester among those present was evident. 

In addi­tion to Friday’s meet­ing, three oth­er addi­tion­al meet­ings for the year are sched­uled for April 19^th, July 19^th and Oct. 18^th. 

Floyd expressed hope and enthu­si­asm that fur­ther action would be tak­en pri­or to Thursday’s meeting. 

“Given all these things that we’re talk­ing about doing, what is the plan to imple­ment some of these things,” he said. “This meet­ing wasn’t just to come and have a conversation.” 

Reed expressed grat­i­tude for those present. 

“It’s crit­i­cal that we have these kinds of talks, and we need this input,” she said. “I just real­ly appre­ci­ate you [all] and want you to know that.”