Magic City Neighbors Episode 5 - Josh Gordon

This South Carolina boy somehow ended up head over heels for a Barberton girl, and then the city itself.  Josh Gordon has been involved with anything from school levies to the Barberton Community Foundation and now, the Main Street project. He's excited about the future of Barberton because he has seen the work that's gone into changing things for the better in the long term. 

We were really excited to have him on the show to share some of those insights and stories with us and we learned a ton.   Sit back, enjoy, and get excited about the future of Barberton. 

Transcript

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Hey, everyone. I am Josh. I'm Jack. And this week we've got Josh Gordon, and this is going to be fun, and I'm pretty sure interesting. Stay tuned. Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning in this week. I think we are going to have a fun show. And we were talking on the break there. Josh was a little bit offended by that, but it's just a hunch for me, so we're going to go with it. But first, I want to mention the Barberton Community Foundation's annual Game changer nominations are open Monday, May 1st through Friday, June 16th. So you still have time. We are asking the Barberton community to help us identify those individuals and organizations who deserve recognition for their accomplishments. The award is designed to recognize two entities a Barberton individual and a Barberton organization who have served as catalyst for extraordinary involvement in the Barberton community and have made a positive impact in Barberton through their leadership, vision and commitment. Nominees should be connected to the community through their work, volunteerism or residency. Our 2022 game changers were Mike Moore and the Barberton Firefighters Association, Local 329. You can submit a nomination at WWW.BarbertonCF.org As I said before I'm Josh. I'm Jack. And who are you. Also Josh. This is going to be confusing. This is this is going to be confusing is as I'll get out. I'm going to dive right into our big questions because you've been involved in one or two things in Barberton. I may have had the multiple wrong on that. How did that start for you? What? I mean, it obviously snowballed. But how did that start for you? Well, it all started in my junior year of high school in South Carolina when I fell in love, unbeknownst to me with a girl from Barberton, Ohio. I'm fortunate enough to be married into the community, and I'm here on purpose. I love it. I've moved 14 times, but Barberton was my last move because it's just the nicest, most genuine people in the community that I've ever experienced. And having those moves, I have a sample size, I think, where I can say like, I know what good looks like, I know what great looks like. This is a great community. And so getting involved with it just became, you know, that's a longer story for another podcast where I ended up here in my adopted hometown. Now. But, you know, getting involved, you know, when my wife and I moved here and start to have a family are now oldest son, He just turned 16 back when we were sort of looking at where we were going to put him in the school. We were new to the community at that point as a married couple with a child. And our son had taught himself to read like when he was three. He just figured it out. And we were like, What do we do with that? That seems different. And so we didn't know what to do from a schooling standpoint. And we were at a point where we're saying, well, let's go look at this, you know, parochial school. And this because Barberton had this history of not passing school levies. And, you know, for me at the time, I was, you know, running global marketing communications for medical device company, a global med device company. And I was in marketing communications world and had been spending all my career there. After I was a journalist and looking around, I thought, I can't leave the community and not like at least inquire about the school district and how it operates and what its challenges are. And so at the time they had a levy going on and through my wife's family connections, they knew somebody who was involved with that. And I said, Hey, I do this marketing communications stuff. Is there anything I can do to volunteer? I'm thinking, how can I help Abby? How can I learn? And I got in there and learned about a school district That was amazing. And the challenge was that the community had a lot of students there that were from households at or below the poverty line. And there's all these correlations between learning capability and performance according to state standards. Yeah, and poverty, there's a lot of correlations there. And what I found is there's a lot of communities with a lot of wealth, and those communities with wealth tend to have different household types. And because of that, the school district ends up looking better overall and great performance according to the state testing. But those teachers are good, but they're not working as hard as they are in a community where kids coming into kindergarten have never seen a book or are holding it upside down and don't know what that looks like because they haven't seen one before. And these teachers here are getting that kid to read by third grade fluently. Which is amazing. So the gap that's closed there is is amazing. And so when you look around to other communities, I'm going now, well, geez, which one maybe has great teachers, works harder, cares is passionate. I can plug into that all day. This is where I want to be. This is where my family can thrive. And it has been true up to this point six years into into Luke's life. And I have three kids after that. And we're big investors in the schools, obviously, now with humans, with four of them in there. But the district has been amazing and the community is amazing. And, you know, I couldn't be happier to be here. and then so from that I got involved with the foundation and the mayor said, Hey, we have a position that's open on the board of the foundation. Would you be interested in interviewing for that? And so I put my hat in the ring for that and for some reason they picked me and then I got to serve on that board for nine years, and I still serve on there as a friend on a couple of committees. And I was so thankful for that because it is such a privilege to have a community foundation in a city this size. And it's really hard to understand that. I think unless you have the context and perspective to understand that and you know, communities the size just flat don't have it, They just don't. And we have to be stewards of it because it's supposed to last in perpetuity by law. So we can't just like goof and liquidate it. So like, it has to be protected. Yeah. And there's laws around like you can't spend more than 5% of your original corpus, like the original moneys that began the foundation. So that's a spending policy that has to be in place, which limits the amount of money that you can spend. So when the markets have a bad downturn for a while, you got to pull back and you got to reimburse it and then you'll have a little bit more to spend later on. And you know, the challenges we all want stuff right away, but the good stuff takes time to build. And, you know, so there's lots of stuff in that nine years I'm proud of that we built that has put us in a better position. And there's stuff coming up that I'm really excited about too. Speaking of new stuff, Jack's got a question for you. Yeah, Good. Well, yeah, for the Main Street program, it's supposed to, like, revive the downtown area. Do you have, like, what capital supposed? I'm just. I'm not in character. On to the. Got it right. Yeah. Well, what are some of the things that like I should look forward to as a younger person or anybody else watching this? It's younger. That's a great question. Yeah. Well, first of all, I'd say broadly, I think Barbudans very underrated. I'd as a community were for a place for family to come and have a great Saturday or an awesome afternoon. You know, you can eat on the patio at the brewery right here and look out at a beautiful lake. You can. The library has so many amazing programs. We there's a beautiful lake park with a kettle lake there like Guyana. You can go watch a theater in the 4K 3D Cedar Lake. We're in an art gallery. You have an art gallery right across the street that's not just has resident artists in three stories. And the artists in here are so talented. Yes. And all kinds of different types of mediums and art. Some of the sculpture work is unbelievable. The murals, there's there's some amazing stuff right here. And then there's the, you know, theater for young audiences just down the road with magical theater company and a comic book shop up the way that has all this, like rare artifacts and stuff. And that's just a handful of stores right here. That you could I mean, you can throw a rock and hit them all in. A two block area of just part of our downtown. So, you know, I think that there's why I forgot the coffee shop that also has artists rotating artist show is a community convening point for everybody. I mean everyone coffee in my house is a verb, you know, how are we going to convey this morning? Yes, Saturday morning, of course. You know, so I there's so much I think, to do. And we're just scratching the surface in general. What Main Street Barberton is going to do is amplify that. And what I would want folks to know is Main Street. Barberton essentially has one job and that is to get people to downtown. Makes sense. That's it. Yeah. We don't have to build your business. We're not business builders. Our job is to get people to downtown, and the businesses will have more people to come into their businesses. Right? That's the whole point. We're an amplifying effect. So part of that is how can we create a community of events, of regular routine events that people can expect? And it's fun and it's family oriented. You come here and spend a great afternoon or evening, get a great meal and then go home and then have another reason to come back later. Right? So we want regular stuff happening every month and we're working toward that in our various committees. We want to create a great experience down here. So the Main Street Bourbon has a design committee and they're working with the planning department in the city. And you know, the Bourbon Community Foundation has two economic development programs that are amazing for people just to get grants to go fix up their businesses or to help their employees upskill. I mean, there's things that we can do here that other communities don't have that folks don't realize. So the Main Street bar, Road and program is going to be this visionary organization that brings all these people together. Crazy's routine events that everyone in town and out of town can come and enjoy. And then when we get that baseline of audience down, of people that are loving what we're doing here, we're going to start to say, Well, how do we have events that attract even more people that are maybe the different folks that come every time we have an event? Yeah, you get those different audiences that I mean that diversity to it. So, I mean, you can only go back to the same trough all the time, the same people may not be down here every Saturday night, but if we get one group down Saturday night, maybe it's families on Saturday night, the next Saturday, it's people just looking to mingle. It's business people, whatever. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. And the great example of that, if you look at other Main Street programs in the state and there's a bunch of really successful ones, one of them is Main Street Wadsworth, who's kind of our big brother, big sister, you know, in that world, like we, the bunch of the board members have gone and have meetings with them already. They're available. We call and they pick up, they answer any question we have. They really are helping us understand what it takes to be successful and they're a great resource for us. One of the things they did is they knew their baseline community was and then they decided to have an outdoor wrestling event. And that outdoor wrestling event attracted thousands of people downtown to their community. All of the businesses benefited from that and they were different type of folks and they had kids in the community like in the crowd coming up in round two were holding the signs up and walking around. So it's this great like community organization, the community event, right? And so we're talking about, well, what if we did something like that? Could we have you know, you have one event, one month, we have one event, and then the third month we have a championship and it's hosted somewhere else. They're like, Yeah, that'd be great. So already starting those collaborations, this is the kind of thing that the Main Street program can do. To answer your question, there's a lot of reasons to get excited because the world is our oyster here, you know, and we really have to think about it in terms of how do we bring people to downtown and give them a great experience when they're here. Yeah, No, that's I mean, that perfect sense. It does. And to me that gets me excited about it because I know it's about bringing businesses downtown and it's bringing people will come. You know, the people once the people are there, other stuff tends to pop up. That makes perfect sense to me, I think. Are you ready for the lightning round? I am. We're doing a lightning round. Yes. You didn't warn. Me about a lightning round. No, no, I wasn't supposed to. If you get the wrong answer, we zap your chair. No is. Obvious. He didn't see that either. I like the stakes. I like the stakes. So we're going to ask some quick questions. We want one or two sentence answers for the purple 17. The left one. The great. We're done. Yes. So four with Main Street. I mean, one of the questions someone had and I you kind of answered it. What are some family friendly things that are already in the mix? Obviously, the door is great and it brings families down. But what are some things specifically geared towards family? Well, we're in the process right now. We're brand new organization. We just got our 501 seat three, so we have four committees and they have different responsibilities. We have an Economic Vitality committee that's all about economic development programs, a design committee that's about the facade, working with the planning department to create a beautiful, you know, area when you come visit downtown that we have an organization and a promotion committee. And one of those committees, focus is on events that we talked about. And the other is on like promotion. So it's how do we promote events, how do we have a website? We have to have a logo. You know, we're kind of starting from square one. And so we've just really started this, you know, earlier this year. So we're at the point now like, for example, we're hiring an executive director, we have funding for three years and that's funded in part by the Community Foundation and the City bar, and we have funding beyond that as well. So but we're in the building block stages, which is not there's not a lightning round sort of question yet, you know. But what I would tell you, some of the stuff we're talking about is, you know, we're talking about bringing back fourth Friday. Folks pre-COVID may remember that we used to have these great Fourth Fridays and there'd be bands down here and, you know, restaurants would have discounts and there'd be specials and we'd have, you know, vendors and so forth down here. So we're talking about bringing that back. But with a little bit more organization and purpose and support too, Oh, for someone that wants to be involved in the community, where do you say simple place to start would be at. Okay, well, the first thing I'd say is I'm going to suck at the lightning round and I apologize. I'm going to have no short answers. I when when we when we said that you were coming on, we were pretty sure that was going to be the case. Yeah, the timer that we have on the wall, I was pretty sure that was going to melt. So we're good. It's it's a cute suggestion, right, for the timer. Correct. So. Okay, ways to get involved. So at different ages, I would say the foundation, the Barbecue Foundation is a great place, is a great resource that the community can tap more and understand how the Friends program works and just understand how committee structures work and the different sorts of things they work on. That's a place that I would go and learn what they do and what they support. The city is the same way. You know, a lot of people don't know that because of the relationship that the schools have with the city, they have this really unique municipal program that they've launched. It's amazing. No, no city has that. And no school district provides those kind of internships and access to like. Well, tell me how government works. Like, you could take government in 10th grade, you know, or you could do this program that's like a six or eight week thing and you're going to leave. They're going, Geez, I know every department. I know how they work. I know the different skills and positions. I know what I need to study to pass my exam, you know? So the school district is another great resource to understand how to get plugged into the community as well. Yeah. So the city wants folks to be the foundation wants folks to be, and the schools want folks to be in there all hooked into the same stuff. So those are three great areas to start and just ask questions and say, what can I do to go volunteer somewhere? I promise you there's opportunities. And the library, I actually would put in that mix as well. It's extraordinarily well-run. It's got amazing resources. Beautiful place to just go sit inside in January and look at a lake and read a book or read a magazine or, you know, whatever. You listen to an audio book, it's really peaceful. It's a really great environment. But they do a lot in the community that folks don't realize as well. Yeah. So if you just ask questions of those four places, you won't be bored. Find something. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to kneecap you with this one. Oh one word. Oh. Favorite thing about Barberton? Authenticity. Love it, love it. So now, now we've got our typical questions that we have to ask everyone. What is your favorite Barberton folklore slash tall tale slash rumor? So, Dave, Paula Check mentioned that Lake Hannah is bottomless, basically, and it has an outlet to Lake Erie. Yeah, that would be the first one that would come to mind for. Me that. That's knowing Dave he may have swam it. Yeah. I don't know. It's possible. It's possible. He's amazing. Yes. Yeah. No that I could see. That is distinctly possible. So. Okay so you're on that. There's no other ones. I mean, I'm sure there are, but like, that's. The that's your favorite. That's the main. That's the really favorite one. I think that, you know, there's also it's not really a rumor, but like, you know, there was a thriving music scene in Barberton at one time, and I would have loved to be here to participate in that when, you know, Henry Banks, now it's Black seven, but it have a jazz club upstairs. And there was a jazz club, you know, in the movie theater basement. And, you know, there was just more happening in that scene at that time. But that was a different era. And so the community. So you want to meet those ghosts? I want to meet the ghosts. I want to have a drink with them. A cafe. Okay. Share a coffee. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh. What do you see as the future for Barberton, And where do you think we're headed? And, like, what are the bright spots? So many bright spots. I mean, this story that the community can tell right now is a story of momentum. And again, my sample size of having been in a lot of communities is very rare that the people that are in charge of stuff work together. Usually what you find is there's people pushing specific agendas. But when someone needs something, the others listen with curiosity, not judgment. That is rare and worth celebrating. Agree that it is that sense of community. And that's what gives that sense of community. It doesn't matter who's on what side of what issue. If someone's having a problem, ten people are going to show up saying, What do you need? Mm hmm. Genuinely and want to help and have the means to help. So that, I think, is the the where the a lot of the pride in the community comes from. And that is a foundation that you can build so much on. And I want to give people the chance to come and experience that. You know, you grew up in it. You're lucky I married into it. I'm lucky. Yeah. You know, and so I've gotten to experience that and having the other perspective in the context of coming in from the outside and going, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. How do people not just, like, build their whole life around this idea of being around great people that want to help you? Yeah, And the momentum is there because the organizations are coming into place. that are in charge of stuff now. I give a ton of credit to and I could spend all day talking about them to people I want to highlight specifically that aren't in charge of something in Barberton right now, but had a major impact. One is Suzanne Allen. Dr. Suzanne Allen, who was the foundation executive director for years, came in and provided so much just awareness for how to run the foundation at a high level, elite level. And that has helped us kick it up a notch from a foundation standpoint, her leadership and wisdom and poise and the other person I'd mentioned at the time ahead is Patti Cleary, who is the superintendent of schools right before Jeff Rhamnosus is, and he's an amazing superintendent. Patti, also, it was an amazing superintendent and part of her vision, again, we can think strategically because we have a foundation, so we have resources that are long term resources. So she was saying when kids graduate in 15 years, some of them don't start with the access to early childhood education that others do, because all we had were, you know, we have Head Start on one side of things and then we have paid preschool on the other side of things. And there's all these kids in the middle that don't get to have access. What if we had a public preschool? And so she worked with the foundation. We went to work on it on the various committees, and lo and behold, we launched this amazing preschool with certified teachers that is transferred formative because it caters to kids with special needs and typical learners. And so it gives everybody a chance to thrive and succeed. And the reason that it's a challenge in most communities is because that is a project with a 15 year yield, right? Until that kid that preschooler walks across the stage in 15 years and feels that sense of achievement, people will go, Whoa! Which proved to me it worked. Right? No, that's a that is a long term project. It takes time and patience to do big transformative things. And it's not sometimes the superficially appealing thing that gets everybody excited in the moment, but it's the thing that's going to provide roots and foundation and to grow big things on top of later. And it's it's funny you say that, too, because it's also one of those things, too, where you don't necessarily look back and say, that kid did that because of that preschool. It it it's so distant. You don't always say that. But you realize when you look at the grades, when you look at how the school system does things, you got to say that there's a big part in that. It's just tough to see. You got to look at it to see. Well, I'm a data nerd. You know, So I've looked at a ton of the data and I've seen already the the success and impact and that like of having so much credit because she convened all these different resources, including summit education Initiative, which is an organization in Akron that studies basically how to make education work better for communities. And we learned to really important things there. One is that 36% of eligible early childhood education, you know, preschool students in Barberton were actually in a preschool. Wow. Which is well below obviously 50%, but well below averages. And so we knew there was a need there. There's also this thing called the Heckman equation. I can get really economic and nerdy. I'm like, revealing how dorky I am, but I just love this stuff. Yeah, but I just love this stuff. So this guy, the University of Chicago, study this, and it was economic development impact on when the dollars are invested in education, where is the biggest impact in economic development? So the ability for a community to thrive from a dollars and cents standpoint, when you put a dollar in, where do you get the most dollars out? And most people think it's in high school, right? And they say because that's where the most momentum is, that's where everyone's focused and paying attention and that's where, you know, needy teenagers need the most stuff. Am I right? I'm right. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you. So thanks. Thanks for giving me that one. But what it turned out there was a ten x return on dollars invested at three years old. Right At four years. And that makes sense. It's foundational. Yes. Build that foundation. And again, people aren't like, well, show me the cool data that you get all excited about. You know, it's not the thing that rolls your socks up and down unless you're dark like me. But fortunately, you know, we were able to be armed with these key pieces of information. And now I think there's 160 plus students in that preschool. And when it launched, it was at 64. And so now we're in this position where we're creating more and more access, more and more momentum. And again, that's why momentum is kind of my word, because there's so many different things happening. That's awesome. And to me that is a great spot. And this and I mean, we could go on for hours and hours. Well, you know, I could. Yes, we all could. But to me, I mean, and just that covers when you start out with the great foundation for stuff like that, all the way to stuff with Main Street, you've got good things. That to me is a good thing. It's the next great. Thing and everything in between. And I love it. Thank you very much for coming on. We both really appreciate it. We may have you back here after, but to just because I'm in fact, will. Yeah, we'll have some time. So thank you, everyone. Make sure you subscribe. Hit the buttons, share it with everyone. Share it, of course, with your Magic City neighbors and we will see you guys soon. Like.