BUTLER, Ohio – The village of Butler is starting 2016 with a new mayor and plans for two new schools.
Newly-elected mayor Ken Kinley stated the Butler school board voted to build two schools over the next year. One is a rebuild of the elementary school in Butler housing grades kindergarten through fifth, and the second is a new school in Bellville.
“We’re happy about that because our school is very important to us here in Butler,” Kinley said. “Our school provides a wonderful library, we have a wonderful relationship with people through the schools, so that’s our main concern right now is to make sure we continue to have our school in Butler.”
Kinley stated he is of the belief that growing up in a smaller school gives students the opportunity to know their community. He also served on the school board for eight years.
“As mayor, I hope we can be a community where people would want to come and bring their children and get their education here and see how important it is to live in a small community,” he said. “It’s very important for elementary school kids to understand that community is important.”
Kinley takes pride in the tight-knit community of Butler, where the population is just around 1,000 people. Though small, Kinley praised the three businesses currently housed in the village.
“Mid-Ohio Tubing is doing very well, we just put in a new dollar store which is doing very well, and we also have Weekley Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram,” Kinley said. “The village of Butler is a small village, and we don’t have a lot of businesses but we have a very good small community.”
When there were no candidates running for mayor in the 2015 election, Kinley thought to himself, why not run for mayor? As a Butler resident for 25 years, a former pastor and a retired Air Force chaplain, Kinley ran and won the mayor’s race as a write-in candidate.
“I love this community, I love the people here, and I thought well I’m healthy and feel good so why not do it?” he said. “I’m really looking forward to it, I think it’s going to be a wonderful experience for me. I hope we can work together and keep our village like it is and encourage more people to come here.”
