It was the right thing to do

WITH VALENTINE’S DAY JUST a few weeks away, the Plymouth City Council did the right thing at their last meeting and kept their commitment.

The commitment was to Lakeshore Technical College and the Plymouth School District for their high-speed equipment training program, but instead of a card or a box of chocolates, the city is showing its commitment with $250,000 in tax incremental district 4 funds.

It was a pledge the council originally made last summer, when the two school districts were seeking matching funds for a federal stimulus grant for the program, to train needed workers for high-speed packaging and other equipment used by the local cheese and food industries.

Fortunately, despite the efforts of a couple of aldermen, the council didn’t let January’s chill cool their ardor for this necessary and beneficial program and stuck to their promise to provide the needed funding to bring the federal dollars and stimulus to Plymouth and the surrounding area.

The program will prove highly beneficial not only to the city of Plymouth but Sheboygan County and the area as well. The training is needed for workers local industries — such as Johnsonville Foods and cheese companies like Sargento, Sartori, Great Lakes Cheese and more — have a genuine need for right now. These are companies that have continued to do well during the ongoing recession, resisting the job shrinkage and shutdowns that have plagued other local manufacturers.

The new training program will enable them to expand their employment, with goodpaying jobs for local workers, as the economy works through its recovery.

The TIF 4 funds will help with the purchase of equipment these new workers will train on before joining the local workforce and becoming contributing employees and taxpayers, benefiting us all.

That’s the kind of commitment that we all needed to see kept.

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