Editor’s Note: The following article is an essay written by Houlton Middle School student Paige Ford that was submitted to the Maine Municipal Association as part of a contest on how students would make their town a better place to live. Ford’s essay was selected as one of the top three top essays for the state. She won a $250 gift card. She is the daughter of Stephanie and Richard Ford of Hodgdon.
By Paige Ford
Houlton Middle School seventh-grader
If I led my community, I would want to make Houlton be the type of small town in America that people would want to visit and live in. Houlton has a beautiful town center and a lot of nice houses. Many of the big old houses are run down and not taken care of. The houses in the neighborhoods should be fixed up, but that is not where I would start. I think my plan will eventually make that happen because the people who live here will want nice neighborhoods. The first thing I would do is make the town center as beautiful as I could.
I would figure out a way to repair and fix up all the buildings in the town’s center Market Square to make it look as nice as it should be. The town could offer tax breaks to businesses that move into the downtown center area and give the businesses money to repair and fix up the buildings. The tax breaks would let the businesses make more money because they would have to pay the town less. This will get businesses to move back into the town center. That way, all the buildings would be fixed up nice and full of businesses like stores, restaurants and things. This will make people want to go downtown.
The upper part of the buildings could be made into apartments. That would bring more people downtown because they already live there and they would want local stores and restaurants that they could walk to. That would make more businesses want to open up in town and they would have customers from the people who already live there. The landlords of the buildings would be able to collect rent ant the renters would be close to everything.
It would be good to advertise the Internet café so near by towns can know about it and business people can go there during the day. They can even have meetings there. After school, kids can go hang out there with their friends, use the Internet and get a snack. This would be a good thing for younger people in the community.
I would bring these ideas to a town council meeting and see if they can cut taxes for the downtown buildings. Then I would put all these improvements on our town website. I would use the website to get people to want to come to Houlton to visit or to live. Some of the old Victorian houses close to the town center could be made into bed-and-breakfasts. People could come and enjoy small town living.
To conclude, I think the town center is the first place to improve to make a town a better place to live. In Houlton, we are lucky because the town center is already beautiful and all we need to do is bring it back alive.
