News
In the News: City leaders explain local government to students
Posted on October 23, 2015
Originally published by Times Daily.
The mayor and members of the City Council fielded questions this week about the inner workings of city government, but the questions came from a younger demographic than they are used to addressing.
City leaders talked to fifth-graders at Russellville Elementary School about what it takes to provide essential city services and how city governments receive funds in order to operate.
Fifth-grade teacher Carol Fretwell said the students have been learning about the different levels of government, and they thought it would be good for the students to hear about government from their own local officials.
“The students have been really engaged in these lessons and have had lots of good questions about how things work,” Fretwell said. “We thought our actual city officials would be the best ones to answer these questions and demonstrate what they do.”
After hearing the students were wondering how taxes are used, Russellville Mayor David Grissom explained how taxes provide revenue for the city and that 3 percent of the 9-cent sales tax in Russellville goes to fund each of the city’s departments.
“We distribute the revenue we receive between the fire, police, street, parks and recreation and other areas of government,” he said. “That way they can run each of their departments and provide all of the services our residents need.”
Grissom said he was impressed the students had questions about things like taxes.
“It’s great these teachers are incorporating lessons about local government into their lessons because these kids are our future leaders,” he said. “It’s good for them to learn early how things operate and how they can contribute to the community.”
Fifth-grader Kaitlyn Balding, 10, said she enjoyed learning about government because she would like to be a city leader in some way when she gets older.
“Without city government, how would our city run?” Balding asked. “It’s very important to have reliable government because sometimes you just have people who promise to do things but they don’t ever do them. That’s not a good way to run a government, so I would not want to be that way if I’m in a government position like that one day.”
Councilman Gary Cummings told students it’s important to learn now how to work together as a team because it’s something they would have to do throughout their life.
“We all work together at the city because it takes a lot of different hands to run the city government,” Cummings said. “There are lots of departments and boards and all of those people help make decisions and do what’s best for the city as a whole.”
Fifth-grader Casen Heaps, 12, is president of the student council and said it was interesting to see how many different positions there are in city government.
“I might like to be the mayor one day,” Heaps said. “But there’s a lot of other positions, too. I didn’t know there were so many positions in city government.”
Councilman Jamie Harris said he appreciated the school for including the council and department leaders in the week’s lesson on government.
“The things these kids learn now can really stick with them,” he said. “Hopefully we’ve got some good future leaders right here who will be able to pick up where we leave off one day.”