Alva Review-Courier -

My name is Trent Goss, and I am running for the treasurer position for the City of Alva. I have served in this capacity for the last eight years. I am originally from Aline, but I have resided in Alva for 35 years. I have been married to my wife, Cindy Goss, for 20 years. We also have three children: Avery (13), Graham (10), and Quinn (8). I attended high school at Aline-Cleo and then obtained my bachelor's degree at NWOSU.

I have been employed at Hopeton State Bank for 30 years, beginning as a teller and advancing to president and CEO since 2009. I am a member of the Moose lodge and co-founder/coach of the Alva Renegade Baseball Organization.

I have been active in various levels of the city government serving on the Cemetery Board, the Tourism Committee, and as a city councilman. While on City Council, I was a member of the Finance and Personnel Committee. During my time as city treasurer, I have attended annual training. I believe in contributing to my community and serving in any way I can.

Alva is a wonderful community to live, work and raise a family. We have an amazing community that is generous, supportive, and dedicated to the success and progress of this city. We have an extraordinary school system, technology center, and college in addition to outstanding medical professionals and services that allows Alva to meet so many needs of our community. We have a variety of arts and music opportunities plus many weekend events that occur here. Alva has people dedicated to serve this community, dedicated to help and serve our youth, dedicated to help and support others when in need, and dedicated to the history and future of this town. We live in a safe community and are so fortunate to have dedicated individuals on our police, fire, and emergency systems. These are examples of just a few of the many reasons why I believe Alva is a wonderful place to live.

I believe finances are our biggest issue in the City of Alva. This impacts basically all other issues like infrastructure, employee retention, and capital improvements. It is exceedingly difficult to run a city with only sales tax revenue and utilities revenue.

For the city, I believe we need continued representation and support from our state legislature in the areas of laws and/or funding that support small, rural locations. We, as a community and council, need to be creative in ways to encourage new businesses to come to Alva. We, as members of this community, can support local events, our schools, our college, our technology center, our arts community, our medical community, our youth programs through monetary and service means.

Shopping and supporting local events and activities helps everyone. When we support all businesses and activities, we support the local, independent owners, the various businesses that operate, and we see an increase in sales tax collections which helps fund our city.

Working together as a whole, as Alva citizens and supporting all services and businesses that are available here will help this town for everyone.