This week, we entered our soft-close which is meant to help recharge employees with a virtual work environment for a few weeks. During this time, we did have one in-person meeting. CleanOhio was a meeting between numerous key stakeholders throughout Central Ohio that handle MORPC’s specific sustainability grant efforts. I had the honor of attending one of their meetings which was spent discussing various items such as permits and project status.

As someone who is a future economic development professional, I genuinely appreciated the nitty-gritty components of project permits and understanding the issues that some grantees are facing. Specifically, this was one gentleman who walked us through each property that he had specific questions about. I was fascinated with the different price valuations per acre that he was presenting. In some communities, an acre would be worth a fair amount that would be expected. However, sometimes, there would be large prices for projects which I found to be extremely interesting.

Beyond CleanOhio, I worked on updating our Public Policy Agenda. This is an item that is designed to help our partners and constituents know the priorities that the commission when it comes to legislation. My role in helping out with this initiative is that I was tasked with mapping all of our current language into a spreadsheet that is easily able to be changed when update it. Throughout this process, I learned a lot about the different priorities that the commission has and continues to operate with. I want to pursue a career in policymaking after this fellowship and graduate school, which means that this opportunity was a great chance to learn about legislative advocacy. I greatly appreciate the chance to work on a project like this, especially as I try to gain more experience for myself to shape my understanding of the field.