The annual Repair Affair has been so popular in Ashland that organizers are considering making it more than just a one-day, once-a-year event. If so, the city could qualify for more money, but more importantly, the homes of far more low-income, elderly and disabled Ashland residents would receive needed repairs and new coats of paint.
Nearly 200 volunteers painted, hammered and nailed their way through 28 different projects in Ashland on May 16, bringing the total number of projects completed during the last nine years to 505, according to Mike Miller, Ashland’s director of Planning and Community Development.
Because of Repair Affair’s success, Miller said organizers are taking a serious look at forming a nonprofit entity in an effort to expand services. “If we go that route, it opens us up to more funding. We could do a year-round project,” he added.
Repair Affair’s corps of volunteers — mostly representing local churches, civic organizations and businesses and industries — are driving the effort to make it more than a one-day event. Volunteers often contact him about volunteering for the spring event months before a date has even been set and often make suggestions about how to improve the next year’s projects, Miller said.
Volunteer groups also often purchase all the supplies for the particular project they will complete. And local businesses donate or offer deep discounts on materials needed for the repairs. That enables more projects to be completed for the same amount of money.
Ashland’s Repair Affair started with a grant from the Kentucky Housing Corp. in 2000. After three years, the annual project was to be self-sustaining — and that’s exactly what has happened.
And the idea has been contagious. Grayson launched its own successful Repair Affair largely because of the success of Ashland’s event.
The expansion of Repair Affair could come in stages, beginning with a fall Repair Affair that concentrates on winterizing homes, Miller said. That’s an excellent idea.
Many of the Repair Affair volunteers are not skilled craftsmen, but Repair Affair assigns them tasks based on their abilities. And, as with volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, Repair Affair volunteers learn new skills by giving of their time to help others.
We like the idea of expanding Repair Affair. It has worked too well and helped too many people to limit it to just one day a year.
Editorials
Not just one day — 05/24/09
Expanding Repair Affair will help more people in need
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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