Since 1996, the Mayors Partnership for Progress and the Voinovich School have worked together to promote regional cooperation and advancement. The group was formed to give regional mayors a place to share ideas and concerns.
The group serves as a powerful learning network for local officials as well as a way to work together to identify regional and local policy issues that impact their communities.
The partnership is composed of mayors from 11 Appalachian counties who are often joined at meetings by state legislators and representatives from state agencies. Voinovich School staff help coordinate the meetings, work with the group to identify meeting topics and provide research support.
The mayors share many of the same concerns and can find creative solutions to their problems. A common concern of these small-town mayors is how to increase revenue while preventing unappealing measures such as employee cuts. Tight resources are a reality for any municipality and these mayors have found collaboration helpful in making the most of their assets. One goal of the group is to create a consortium for employee benefits. As the first step of this plan, the Voinovich School surveyed the mayors about health care costs, municipality services, employees, utilities and revenue.
The Voinovich School also provided assistance by helping the mayors draft letters to the Ohio state legislature with a unified voice in opposition to Ohio Senate Bill 117, which would take away the ability of small municipalities to franchise phone and cable services. The bill would give the state these powers and the partnership is worried that it could result in some of their small communities being underserved by large broadband providers.
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