CRESTLINE ― The Crestline Community Development Team had a big announcement for local residents during the Crestline Community Engagement Night on Wednesday evening at Crestline High School.

Clayton Herold, who has been heading up the group for the past decade, said a video, “The Crestline Comeback Video,” is being created to send to HGTV for the Home Town Takeover contest.

“We have the Crestline High School varsity cheerleaders here tonight to help us with the video,” said Herold to the crowd that formed in the gymnasium for the meeting.

The cheerleaders held up signs that read: HGTV Pick Us while the crowd yelled the letters and words. The footage will be added to the video before it is sent to HGTV by the deadline date of Feb. 7. The portion of the video that is already complete was shown to the audience during the meeting.

“The video was created by 2012 Crestline High School graduate Marc Sleeckx of Ohio Drone Perceptions in Mansfield. Tommy Barnes, radio personality from WVNO 106.1 in Mansfield is the narrator,” said Herold.

Both Barnes and Sleeckx said they are happy to help out with the video that is being sponsored by Avita Health System and First Federal Community Bank.

Herold said he was tagged on Facebook in a link to the information about the contest.

“People also shared it on our Community Development page. We looked at the qualifications and we fit the criteria. The development team came together to discuss it and we started getting all this emotion about it,” said Herold said. “We think we are a good fit for the contest.”

The Home Town Takeover is a spin-off of the hit HGTV series, “Home Town,” with Ben and Erin Napier. The couple is now looking for small towns that meet certain criteria to revitalize.

According to the HGTV website, the couple will be traveling throughout the United States for their upcoming series “Home Town Takeover,” helping residents revitalize their communities. To find the most update-worthy small towns, HGTV is reaching out to viewers. Anyone whose hometown meets the requirements can enter a submission to be considered for the show. In order to be considered for the show, a small town must meet the following requirements:

  • The township must have a population of fewer than 40,000 residents.
  • The town should contain buildings with outstanding architecture that would benefit from revitalization.
  • The location ought to include a Main Street area that is in desperate need of a makeover.

Herold said Sleeckz is donating the video and his time to the project.

“It’s really neat, the video is turning out great and we can use it for other things in the future to highlight Crestline,” said Herold.

Also at the meeting, Crestline’s superintendent Matt Henderson said he wants improve the special education program, the upkeep and maintenance of the campus and better hiring practices in order to attract the best candidates in all areas of district operation. Henderson disagrees with the notion that Crestline is too small and insignificant to become the best, and he quoted the Dalai Lama saying, “If you think you are too insignificant to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

“As a school district and a community, I believe in our capacity to recapture the pride and develop a strong sense of identity of who we want to become, and then become all of those things,” Henderson said.

Linda Horning-Pitt, the village’s newly elected mayor, shared that she is very blessed to lead the village and to work with John Rostash and the council.

“I want to point out that Police Chief Shook and Fire Chief Krock combined their efforts this year and they put on a fabulous toy drive, and they served more than 150 kids and provided Christmas dinner for over 50 families, and that’s much more than what we did last year. Also, Chief Shook reached out to all of the Crestline establishments that were celebrating New Year’s Eve and offered free rides home for those people who celebrated too much,” she said while also joking that she didn’t go out because she was a home watching Hallmark movies.

Horning-Pitt told of how she saw Drake Moyer, a Crestline student who is moving on to the next level in the spelling bee, and congratulated him on his accomplishment, and encouraged others to do so, too. “When you read something in the paper or you hear something good about somebody, we need to stand up, reach out, and tell them congratulations because that is how pride starts in our community.”

John Rostash, the village administrator, updated people on things going on in the community involving the community’s sewer system and the new main water line. “One of the things that we are challenged with is our sewer system, and it is kind of holding back the potential growth of Crestline. So, we’ve tackled that, and we’ve hired an engineering firm that is building a plan for a new waste water treatment plant and updating the collection system and they’re doing a fantastic job. Water quality is another issue—I really got educated on the water quality here, and we get a lot of rusty water.”

Rostash encouraged people to be an ambassador for Crestline and tell people of all of the good things happening when they’re out and about.

Carolyn Helbert and Toni Brooks, members of the Crestline Community Development Team, were the next ones up to address those in attendance.

The Community Development Team has been around for 10 years, is a nonprofit organization, and puts on events such as Scary Business, the Christmas decorating contest, and Light Up Crestline night. Light Up Crestline happens on December 21st, which is the winter solstice and darkest day of the year, and Crestline residents are supposed to be luminaries or other lights in their windows to light up the village.

This year, they put up new ornaments for Christmas and banners along the streets, and eventually they would like to hang American flags along the streets for Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day, and would also like to hang military banners along the streets to honor Crestline military members like Galion does.

The Community Development Team is also looking into different organizations to paint a mural on a wall somewhere in town, similar to what other area cities have.

Nadia Oehler and Amber Wertman from The United Way of Crawford County spoke about their new building and potential uses for it. “We went to harvest festival and sat outside and asked the community what kind of things they wanted to see in the building, and it was everything from tech classes and tech resources educational classes, basic programming, a place to go play euchre or bingo, or to be used as a rental space for things like a family reunion or a birthday party and you need bigger space,” Nadia said.

The last speaker for the evening was Miranda Jones from the Galion-Crestline Chamber of Commerce. “Our mission statement is to promote growth and success within our business community. I would say that Crestline’s hometown pride is in abundance and that’s why I think that the small-town revitalization has such a major push and that momentum in Crestline is just huge right now and I am so happy to be a part of it. I think we need to support our communities by shopping local first, and we have Small Business Saturday where you shop local/shop small and I think it needs to be more than just one Saturday at the end of November, I think it needs to be every day. We need to remember as community members that the most important role in our community is shopping at our local businesses to help them thrive. We have had several ribbon cuttings within the last month of local businesses, including Serendipity Handmade Gifts, JD Used Tire, and Main Street Grill.”