This year’s Town Wide Yard Sale dates in Georgetown are Thursday, May 3 – Saturday, May 5; Thursday, July 5 – Saturday, July 7; and Thursday, August 30 – Saturday, September 1.
The first Neighborhood Watch meeting was well attended with over 25 people present. Discussion centered on citizen concerns. The top two voiced concerns were drugs and theft. Citizens are also concerned about the curfew and too many young people being out on the streets late at night. They voiced the appreciation for the police enforcing traffic laws and encouraged them to continue to do so. One of the big discussion topics was a need for more activities for the youths in town. The Neighborhood Watch is a citizens group and they are encouraged to address whatever topics they want at the meetings, and a desire for more businesses in town was also brought up.
Neighborhood Watch meetings are the second Sunday of each month at 5:00 P.M. in the Gaslight Theater. The next Neighborhood Watch meeting will be Sunday, March 11, 2018. The program will be 2 county dispatchers who will explain how the communication system works, how they take calls, and how callers can make anonymous reports. They will answer questions after their presentation.
Officer Jesse Green will also be organizing a National Night Out Event for Georgetown. National Night Out is an annual event to make our communities and neighborhoods safer and better places to live. The event promotes not just the police-community relationship but also the neighbor- to-neighbor relationship. National Night Out brings back a true sense of community. It provides a great opportunity to bring police and neighbors together under positive circumstances. This year’s event will be August 17. Watch for more information about this entertaining night out!
Kegs for K9’s will be taking place on the Courthouse Square on Saturday, July 14, 2018, from 2:00 P.M. until 9:00 P.M. The new event will be a fundraiser for the first Brown County dog park to be built at Kathryn Hanlon Park. Andy Clift, Councilmember, is project manager and fundraising chair. More information will be forthcoming but it promises to be a great event! Councilmember Clift is also hosting a Quarter Auction to be held at the American Legion on June 2, 2018. Cash donations are always appreciated and can be dropped off at the Village Municipal Building or mailed to the Village of Georgetown, 301 S. Main St., Georgetown, OH 45121. Please note on it that it is for the dog park.
The Community Development Committee met before the council meeting on Feb. 22, 2018. Plans and priorities were discussed for the park. An asphalt sidewalk needs to be put in from the sidewalk on E. State St. at the park entrance to the walking track. This is a safety concern to keep people from walking in the road entrance with cars coming and going. The front restroom needs to be replaced as soon as money is available. It will be a block building a little larger than the current one and include stainless steel sinks and commodes to make them more vandal resistant. Improving and adding to the children’s playground is also a priority that will be looked at in the future.
Everyone is interested in bringing business and new jobs to Georgetown. To this end, the village has hired an economic developer whose job is to match businesses with available retail space, industrial space, and vacant land. Development Strategies Group LLC (DSG) is a Cincinnati-based group that serves private businesses and governmental entities with 50 years of experience. They have a multi-prong approach to helping Georgetown. The first phase is a retention phase. They have developed a survey for our current local businesses and will be visiting these businesses to interview them. They want to know how they feel their businesses are doing, what they would like to change, and what is keeping them from changing or expanding. We care about our existing businesses and want to know what we can do to help them in their desire to grow.
DSG has surveyed our vacant properties available and will try to match businesses who are looking to relocate to Georgetown. Linking us with REDI (Regional Economic Development Initiative) Cincinnati, one of six Jobs Ohio regional partners through the Ohio Department of Commerce, connects us with new startup businesses and existing businesses wanting to grow in the region. It matches businesses to the resources they need. Tourism will be included in the marketing strategy. Besides marketing Georgetown they have government contacts and will search for grants for the village. All of the upgrades that have been completed to the village’s electric, sewer, and water systems have included increasing and expanding our capacity to handle bigger demands that may be needed by new businesses. Infrastructure is always of primary concern to businesses looking to relocate.
We are hoping to have the equipment in place to livestream the next Village Council meeting on Thursday, March 8, 2018, at 7:00 P.M. The stream will be available on the village’s Facebook page, Village of Georgetown Brown County Ohio, and on our website at georgetownohio.org. The videos will be archived on the village website.
There will also be an Emergency Services Committee meeting at 6:00 P.M. before the Council meeting in the council chamber. All Village Council meetings and committee meetings are open to the public.