Welcome to Halifax County, home to 35,000 people and twice as many cows. While it sounds like a lot of people, our county is 830 square miles, twelve of those alone being water. Forty-four people live in one square mile of land. We are the fourth largest land wise county in the state of Virginia, and quite a lot lower on the population scale.

Welcome to our beautiful attractions such as Staunton River State Park, Hunting Creek Vineyards, Springfield Distillery, and Berry Hill Plantation. Enjoy the rich history and culture our county provides. Enjoy the friendliness and southern hospitality of our residents, welcoming to any new face.

Welcome to a county full of poverty, filth, and outdated policies. Enjoy the scarce business, crumbling schools, and barely livable wages. Enjoy a dying county, still dwelling in its past years of prosperity.

If I were mayor, I would honestly have a hard time trying to correct every struggling thing here. There is too much to do, with not enough time to do it, and with the dwindling resources, I would have.

However, through all difficulties, I would start with our schools. As of 2018, we are already trying to build another, but changes are slow, and votes take a while to come to a consensus. Our schools are filthy and in need of major technology upgrades. Some classrooms still have chalkboards in them, some are old closets, and some have no air conditioning or heating systems. We try our best to make it better, but it is pretty hard to when there are so many problems happening at once and not enough people to fix it.

Later, I would focus on jobs and our economy. The jobs that are available are underpaid or underfunded. For example, Halifax is one of the lowest paying counties for teachers in the state of Virginia. With little to no jobs available, it is hard to get people to live here.

That leads to our next problem: crumbling infrastructure. We have very little affordable housing, no public transportation, beaten roads, and very few stores and restaurants. Missing these essential things is one of the deal breakers for future citizens of our humble county.

It is almost like these problems run in a circle: our schools are bad, there are few jobs, and so our economy and population suffer. Since our schools are bad, parents are weary to move here. Since there are few jobs, they have no further reason to move. These determining factors are some of the things that keep people away from the beauty of Southern Virginia.

William Shakespeare once said, “If money go before, all ways do lie open.” To fix these issues we need the one thing the world runs around: money. With that, we can fix the first two problems.

Money applied to schools will be used to clean, update tech, and grant funds to teachers and allow them to teach more efficiently and productively.

Our high school’s cleanliness is a top priority. It would include renovating and building more bathrooms for students. Also, we would make more handicap accessible bathrooms across campus. Pests such as rodents, cockroaches, and bats would have to be exterminated. Also, the basement would need to be floodproofed for both hurricane season and the heavy rains of spring.

Updating our technology would include purchasing better and more recently updated textbooks. Most of the books we have now are old and falling apart, so the need for new ones is great. Better internet signal would be a privilege for all teachers. Right now the internet goes down at least once a week. Fixing the internet signal would allow teachers and students to work more efficiently.

With more parents moving with their kids for the schools, more jobs will be needed. When the population fluctuates, more businesses will desire to move into the area. Another factor to consider is that when more people live in a town, they need more people to employ to do simple tasks like the garbage disposal, repairman, and police officers or firefighters.

Things like trade jobs not only offer bid-numbered paychecks, but also a service from a specialist. Increase in need for people like dentists and electricians occurs after more people move to an area. At the arrival of more families, more stores, restaurants, and local businesses will open. This allows medium wage and part-time jobs to be found all over the county, which both teenagers and adults can find useful. As a result of more people moving to the county, there will be a need for entertainment, such as parks, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and concerts. With more people arriving, they will want special entertainment every once in a while. This is just another opportunity to create both more jobs and businesses.

Overall, more people equals more jobs, more opportunities, more money, and more people overall.

Obviously, I have very large ambitions for my county. Shiv Khera, a self-help book writer, once said, “Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success.” There are so many things that can be fixed, need to be fixed, and I can only imagine what it would be like to do so.

As I was writing this, I realized it will be hard to do these things, but it is not impossible. It is only hard to do the things I have dreamed, but with persistence, there can only be success.