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Show Something that every community com-munity likes to hear, to show a healthy economy is "jobs available" avail-able" and that is the story at FarWest, according to word received re-ceived by the News this week. Seems that they have run out of applications and need to hire quite a few more to fill existing contracts. A community to keep a happy and prospering economy must have enough jobs to feed and clothe its citizens. In order to1 have a prospering economy it ycu need more jobs than there is labor force, so that you have more people moving into the community to fill these jobs. This is Milford's position at this time but we suffer from one bad problem housing. o Housing is critical in Milford at the present time with almost no rentals, and even - though there has been much building during the past several years, building has not kept pace. o While Milford provides a good payroll with Essex, the "Union Pacific and FarWest, much of it goes right out of town because many of these employees live i n neighboring communities. They of course spend most of their paychecks in these communities com-munities and this doesn't help Milford. o If Earth Sciences' alunite project pro-ject goes into full production or any of several other prospects with our growing population. Milford is going to lose much by not being able to house the work force, even though Milford Mil-ford will be the closest and most likely home for the large majority ma-jority of these workers. Right today if every man and woman i.n the labor force, who draws a paycheck out of Milford was living in Milford, our population would increase by several hundred. Yet when adequate housing is not available, avail-able, you cannot ask that employers em-ployers insist that their employees employ-ees live close by. o This also creates labor problems prob-lems for these large employers, who hire many employees, who when they cannot find suitable housing in Milford, move on to another job, forcing expensive hiring and retraining of more employees. There is little question of which community in Beaver County would be the largest, if every employee lived where 'he or she worked. This will be a prime factor in the future development de-velopment of the county. Consolidation Con-solidation of schools, if forced by the State Board, which has inclinations in that direction, will be in the most populated community. Sales taxes are returned re-turned to the community where they are collected, not where the money is earned. o There are many other factors involved but "between you and me" Milford had better begin looking into some low cost housing, and begin to encourage en-courage builders and contractors contract-ors to develop rental units, as well as subdividers to build homes on speculation, or we may find ourselves financing schools and sending our youngsters young-sters across the county or even across county lines. We will be furnishing the payrolls and tax-monies tax-monies for streets, and sewer and water projects in other communities, where our labor force lives and even worse we could find our industry moving mov-ing to communities, where these facilities are available for their employees. |