County turns out to bid Jackson farwell

By Tay­lor Kaser -

Olen Jack­son has served Mor­row County in many dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties for many years. Recently, he’s stepped down from his role as one of Mor­row County’s three com­mis­sion­ers, a posi­tion he’s held since 1996.

Born and raised in Adams County, Jack­son attended col­lege in Ken­tucky. After grad­u­a­tion he came to teach in the Mt. Gilead schools. He taught a vari­ety of sub­jects, but most enjoyed teach­ing phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion. In 1992 he retired from teach­ing after 30 years. His wife Ruby is also a retired teacher from Mt. Gilead schools.

But Jack­son remained busy in pub­lic after retire­ment. Even before retire­ment, Jack­son was part of the for­ma­tion of Mor­row County’s EMS.

For 24 years he served as the EMS Coor­di­na­tor. He was involved in the 911 pro­gram and served as the super­vi­sor for seven years.

Back in the EMS’s begin­ning, Jack­son recalled when the ambu­lance ser­vice was pro­vided for by the local funeral homes. The ambu­lances were very dif­fer­ent back then, Jack­son said they were actu­ally mod­i­fied hearses.

When he served for those vol­un­teer pro­grams, Jack­son recalls being called out for quite a few late night runs. He remem­bers his stu­dents ask­ing him in the morn­ing if he had been called out, and they all knew if he had, they knew he wouldn’t be too lenient towards any of their shenani­gans that morning.

All of his work involved with the EMS was solely vol­un­tar­ily. He’s also a mem­ber of the Lions Club and has served on the Mt. Gilead fire department.

Jack­son cred­its his expe­ri­ence serv­ing on the EMS and other orga­ni­za­tions in help­ing him to learn more about the county, and help­ing him in job as com­mis­sioner. Work­ing in and with the com­mu­nity, Jack­son says you really see how car­ing the peo­ple of Mor­row County are.

A high­light of his commissioner’s career, says Jack­son, was rep­re­sent­ing the county on the County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Ohio board, a posi­tion he’s held for years. In 2007, he was elected pres­i­dent of CCAO and was also nom­i­nated to be the Association’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the National Asso­ci­a­tion of County Commissioners.

He explained that CCAO and NACO have a large impact on state laws and fed­eral rules and reg­u­la­tions, and has been a very impor­tant con­nec­tion for a small county like Mor­row. Big coun­ties like Franklin and Cuya­hoga coun­ties are able to pay for lob­by­ists to sup­port their inter­ests, so to have any voice in what is going on in higher lev­els of gov­ern­ment, Mor­row has to be involved with CCAO and NACO. Dur­ing his time on those boards, Jack­son said he met great peo­ple that oth­er­wise he would have never met and with whom he spent nice experiences.

Things have changed a lot in the county since he first took office, noted Jack­son. A major dif­fer­ence is the bud­get that the county oper­ated on. Before, the county had a $9–10 mil­lion bud­get — he amus­edly observed that you can do a lot of things and make a lot of peo­ple happy with that much money. But now the county has a severely reduced bud­get, while at the same time offer­ing more ser­vices than ever before.

The key Jack­son said to keep­ing the county mov­ing for­ward is coop­er­a­tion among elected offi­cials. The com­mis­sion­ers are a board of three, he stressed the impor­tance of “we” when mak­ing deci­sions and con­sid­er­ing issues.

Jack­son stated he’s proud of how well the county has with­stood all of the state man­dates, reduc­tions and bud­get cuts thrown its way.

Other high points Jack­son men­tioned in his career was the expan­sion of I-71 and inter­changes (which he noted has been in the works for very long time), the estab­lish­ment of county zon­ing, the cre­ation of a Com­pre­hen­sive Land Use Plan and the efforts made to pro­tect Mor­row County’s envi­ron­ment to keep the county clean and rural.

In clos­ing, he expressed his deep appre­ci­a­tion for every­one that he has served and worked with through­out the years. And even though he may no longer be serv­ing as com­mis­sioner, there’s no ques­tion that Mr. Jack­son will be just as involved in all things Mor­row County as ever.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.