From very early in life, I have had a passion for service.

As a young boy, I was once tasked by my Sunday-School Teacher to start a "penny drive" for a donation to the WHAS Crusade for Children. That year we collected more than $255 in pennies alone, and ignited an ongoing effort to collect for the Crusade in our congregation for many years to come. It was a great lesson in stewardship, but it was also an eye-opener for a young Matt Owen that even something as small as a penny could make a difference. 

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In my time at Jeffersonville High School, I was again tasked by a teacher to attend and produce public meetings for our local public access channel: WJHS-25. It was in these years that I found myself paying closer attention to what was going on in the broader community around me. Jeffersonville was a much different place in those days, and had a barrage of issues lingering that, in my mind, needed a fresh perspective. 

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As a high school student, it was apparent that many of my friends and collogues​ felt no connection to Jeffersonville. Many of us couldn't wait to skip town for college, and few felt much of a need to ever return. There just wasn't much here to miss for many of us. I felt that needed to change. 

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Couple that feeling with the realization that leaders of the time (pre-2012) had already completed a wildly unpopular annexation, tripled sewer rates across the City, and planned to implement a food and beverage tax on a downtown district that was already on life-support. 

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In retrospect, there were some great leaders for our City, in those days, who had ambitious visions for what Jeffersonville could be. I believe they did want better for Jeffersonville. It was the execution and plan to see those visions through that my conservative small-government conscience could not reconcile. I believed back then there had to be better ways. And I believe, now, that we lived up to the idea that you don't have to tax-and-spend a community into a better, more prosperous place. ​