Paulding County, Ohio

6 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 10 PAULDING COUNTY , OHIO to the state right now, so we have jumped on board with all that type of marketing that’s going out from Ohio standards – making sure they know that we’re in Ohio and we’re a viable piece of that action.” Paulding County is blessed to have large employers such as Cooper Farms, Baughman Tile, Spartech, Havelin Plastics, Paragon Tempered Glass and Lippert Components as significant members of the business community. That being said, the Paulding County Economic Development office instigates some pretty remarkable outcomes from its efforts. Most notably, Mercer Landmark is a farmer-owned co-op facility that invested $15 million into the county to bring all of their different fertilizer, spraying, and grain hauling operations into one location in Laddie, Ohio. They bought a grain holding facility from the Mormons, where they host all of the county at that one site. They can now load trains direct into the Norfolk Southern system – something that hadn’t done in the county for 20 years. There is also space available in the county industrial park, in fact, they are currently putting the utilities infrastructure into another 53 acres that are being developed in that park. Of particular note, the Pioneer Railroad line just invested $9 million into the short line track that now connects the Norfolk Southern track with a CSX track. Copsey admits, “Beefing that up into a more usable state after years of deterioration, and being able to play those two Class 1 railroads against each other in pricing, has been a tremendous benefit to county businesses. As gas and diesel prices increase, rail is becoming a much more viable option for transportation of goods. Pioneer Railroad is also looking to invest funds in a drop site here in the county that would allow even some of our industry that isn’t right on the line to use the train car for transportation and have it dropped on a site where it could be picked up by truck. It’s a much shorter span than having to go to Chicago or North Baltimore or some of the bigger drop sites around us.” In an exciting step forward in the goal for broadband for all, the county committed to use some of their ARPA funds for broadband