Meta: Site Updates, a more Focused Mission, and the Road Ahead

Website Improvements

You may have noticed that the website menu has been expanded and there’s more content to explore here on the Reconstructing Dayton website. Not only have we made the existing content more navigable, but we have also consolidated much of the visual data we have used in previous research. From our many public records requests, we’ll quickly expand these sections.

We have also begun the process of creating a digital library of primary sources we rely on that should be useful to scholars, aspiring politicians, and concerned citizens. Now that the organization is complete on the back-end, it will be trivial for us to add more content.

We have also added a list of similar organizations. Currently we are in talks with some local organizations about coordinating a joint effort to pass ranked-choice voting in Dayton. We’ll also be making a similar push in suburbs such as Huber Heights and Kettering, working with a group that has already begun that process. It’s our hope to soon add some official partner organizations to our list.

A More Focused Mission

One of the questions we frequently receive is, “what precisely do you do?” We previously had a long list of initiatives on the front page and they have been consolidated into three core initiatives: Regionalism, Election Reform, and Equitable Taxes. We’ll still push for more transparency in government and we’ll continue to investigate potential corruption in local government, but those three initiatives represent the areas where we push for legislative and organizational change at the local level.

Does that mean we’ve given up on issues such as education reform? Absolutely not. Our policy goals for education always fell under the three categories of regionalism, election reform, and equitable taxes. Regionalism because we need to end this system of disparate school districts that are intentionally designed to segregate wealthy and poor students. Equitable taxes because these districts are unconstitutionally funded in a way to provide wealthy students with better funding. And election reform because our whole system of electing school boards and keeping them as autonomous government entities unrestricted by traditional borders makes no sense and makes it impossible to hold them accountable.

Our mission may be described in a more focused fashion but it remains the same. We have always viewed regionalism, election reform, and tax reform as the three key ways to reconstruct the Dayton region.

A Busy Summer

In the coming months, we intend to begin collecting signatures for our ranked-choice voting initiative. We’ll also be conducting interviews with political candidates for the 2021 local elections. If there are additions you would like to see on the site or any initiatives you think we should pursue, comment below or send us an e-mail. If you like what you’re seeing from Reconstructing Dayton, please consider donating so we can continue to uncover waste and push for innovative solutions to the problems we face here in Dayton.

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