Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a four-part series about actions needed to address challenges pertaining to the future of the Warren community.

The Warren community today is a product of the past. Good and bad, current trends and conditions are a direct result of all that has transpired. With the understanding that the past has created the present, we hold the key to molding the future. We must use knowledge and consensus to produce positive outcomes for ourselves, all those we care about, and all who are yet to come.

We absolutely control our interactions with one another in our community and can collectively make Warren the truly great place it can be. It is time to aggressively move forward based on the principle that: action is the great imperative; all the merit is in the action; we must act.

As the climate of the American south and southwest changes with extremes of warming and drying out, and rising sea levels along the coasts, the Warren community and northwest Pennsylvania will have an unparalleled opportunity to recapture wealth and productive capacity. This century, in the decades to come, individuals and corporations will want to ‘go home’ back to where they came from. Warren must be preparing now to enable and benefit from that eventuality. We need to assure that our community is where they will want to go.

Another climate related factor is strongly in our favor. The weather here through the spring, summer, and early fall months is consistently as good or better than anywhere in the continental United States. Even our winters are not extreme. The winters are wholly predictable, and we are fully prepared. Warren does not have the harsh, unpredictable, and destructive weather that so many other places experience. We need to promote this as we market ourselves to the world.

Another factor to our advantage is equally significant: that is the availability of a nearly unlimited supply of fresh, clean, usable water for manufacturing, commercial, industrial, and residential purposes.

Finally, the relative geologic stability and natural beauty of our community is underpromoted for economic development and community growth.

The Warren community has all of this and much more through which to attract people and wealth.

We must pledge to end community in-fighting and failing to do the positive things that are right in front of us. The competition for us is not the municipality next-door, or the school that our children and grandchildren play football against on Friday evenings. The competition is other localities throughout the nation that are drawing our young people and our business at the expense of our own vitality and quality of life. This must be reversed through our own serious actions and choices for the community. All of this is within our control and can be chosen. We must make the choices for progress and prosperity for all who will want to call Warren home.

In closing, I return to where I began: The Warren community is a group of interconnected municipalities, consisting of the city of Warren and the boroughs and townships throughout Warren County — 27 in total. The city is the principal municipality driving the success or failure of the entire community. The population losses in Warren, and across the county, coupled with other demographic trends are very disturbing. These trends can only be overcome through intentional actions.

The most pressing need for the Warren community is economic growth and the creation of wealth that will benefit all the citizens. This writing is a call to action for the governments and organizations in partnership with the entire community to address the challenges. A central premise is that vitality is everyone’s responsibility and that the citizens, public officials, and all those with a stake here, will be much better off if they are ‘on the same team’ and view the entirety as one community and act accordingly. Now is the time to act by making the choices that will assure a bright future.

I thank the Warren Times Observer for publishing this series of writings.

Alan Kugler helps citizens, public officials, and civic leaders to improve community vitality and quality of life through collaboration backed by sound information for policy decision-making.