Kat Virula

News Editor

Dr. Carrie Smith won her seat on Millersville Borough Council on Nov. 5th. Smith explains how she felt once she found out she won,  

“It’s very surreal …It was very surreal because the very next day I went out to get lunch and people stopped me and congratulated me. It’s an interesting shift and people have warned that this will happen, sort of you are now a public figure. But it didn’t really occur to me what that meant. It didn’t really hit me and it still kind of hasn’t. I think it will once I get sworn down to actually doing the work. But it is a little surreal.” 

Her campaign promises to explore ways of establishing new and efficient ways of communication and find the better collaboration between borough residents and students/faculty at Millersville University. 

Smith will not be sworn in until Jan. 6th, after she is officially sworn in, she will work on relieving the inefficient communications borough residents and students at MU alike, 

“After I’m sworn in there will be a reorganization meeting. People will sit on different committees and decide who serves on what committees and elect officers. I’m bouncing around some ideas and I had, I would like to start looking for people to collaborate with and one of the things I believe we can do better is to make use of short videos to connect with people.” 

On the topic of Frederick and Duke Street Smith explains, “A few things that I’m thinking, in particular, is explaining what is going on in a section of Frederick and Duke Street, which a lot of people are very upset about. Nobody seems to have a clear understanding of what’s happening. The Borough I think owns a piece of property, but it’s also complicated by the fact that half of the Borough is also Penn Manor Township. So what are we, right? We don’t promise to fix things but we promise to get accurate information out.”

Smith also stated that she wants to work on making the Millersville Borough website more user-friendly and plans to make an app to give updates on the Borough, 

“Somebody actually suggested to me a possibility of some kind of app where you can tap into and figure out what’s going on with the borough,” Smith adds, “And this is somebody who lives in the borough who proposed this idea. I think that’s something really interesting to look at.”

Along with this, Smith is also willing to look for ways to better communicate with residents and students by the use of short videos that are shareable. Smith especially wants to create some sort of short informal video addressing the 2020 budget:

“The law requires us to advertise the budget, but I think we can be more proactive and say in addition to advertising it, let us explain to you, what’s actually happening here. Because I find that once people get an explanation, they go, ‘Oh, now you can make the decision about do I want my taxes to increase? What what are the outcomes? If we don’t? What do we have to cut back on?’ Those are the kinds of decisions you have to make. The other possibility in terms of communication, and I’m going to, I’m going to officially propose this to you all so you guys can think about it. I think it might be interesting.” 

Smith closes with an idea to make the borough more exciting and beautiful, 

“I would love to see public art, more public art here. Yeah. And we can involve students, we can involve residents, we can involve the elementary school and high school. I just think that will be something that would also help beautify the borough people will be invested,” Smith continues, “…I love going to the George Street cafe, primarily because there’s art by local artists; I find that really welcoming really nice. It’s vibrant, different styles of art. But that might be something to do. I know that many borough residents are invested in beautifying the borough making it look prettier, making it look nicer.”