How would you improve your community?

My partner wants the old train tracks that run through town to be taken out and turned into a bicycle highway. The entire track between us and a couple neighboring towns no longer runs and is in a state of disrepair. The roads around here are not really safe for bicyclists as there are no shoulders, so they would be able to bike along this track instead.

I would like to have more funding go to child enrichment activities. The library has done a very good job of trying to create more opportunities for children, so perhaps they could be given a larger budget. The schools fight for grants to keep their after school programs running, which have a lot of art options that they cannot afford in their regular curriculum. Every year they wait to hear if they will get the funding, so they can never actually plan ahead for the program to run. It is unfortunate as our community is a generally low income community where the after school program also allows for free childcare.

For some kids, this is the only way they can experience arts, music, dance, or various other activities as it is free for all the children. They even get a snack time and an optional study hall to help them keep up in school. Every year they have to wait until a month into the school year before they know if the funding will come, which is a month where the program could have been running. They could have found more people willing to commit to working at the program to allow even more kids to be able to do it.

Once that was done, it would be nice to bring more funding into the regular school days to allow for more arts programs including more supported language programs. Every school district seems to be so bare bones compared to what it used to be. It is no wonder that we are suffering so much as a country when we cannot provide for our youngest, most vulnerable resource.