I've climbed this ladder myself. I served twenty-two years in the Army. When I retired, the Career Skills Program at Fort Campbell gave me a real pathway into a second career, and I'm now in my seventh year teaching in a Clarksville middle school classroom. I've spent two terms on the City Council, where I chair the Parks and Recreation Committee, reading budgets line by line and telling the public the whole truth about what our city funds and what it doesn't. This platform isn't a theory to me. It's the path I walked, built at a scale every Clarksvillian can reach.