By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

What better way to stimulate a young person’s mind than asking how they can stimulate their local economy?

That was the question posed by Alpharetta’s City Council to its high schoolers with the Stimulus Idea Scholarship. Awards for the top three students were handed out on Monday.

“This came up a couple of months ago,” explained Councilman John Monson. “[Community Development Director] Diana Wheeler and I were discussing ideas within the budget for what the city can do, with the economic conditions. When we thought of the various resources at our disposal, we tried to come up with some ideas. The youth of Alpharetta came up as a great untapped resource.”

The initiative was to spur creativity in the youth of Alpharetta’s schools as well as get them thinking how to make their community better and economically stronger. A panel of judges decided on the winners based on criteria such as creativity, likelihood of success and feasibility.

In first place was Adria Ribbler, a student at Milton High School, who came up with the idea for an Alpharetta music festival. According to Ribbler, the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater is only booked for 14 events this summer, fewer than three a month. This is, according to the high schooler, a great underutilization of the venue. To help solve this problem, the music festival would be a weekend-long event held once a year to showcase established regional bands and have a talent competition for new, local bands.

 “The Alpharetta music festival and competition can stimulate the economy and make everybody who lives in the city proud,” wrote Ribbler in her submission.

If the event would take hold, people would be attracted from all over the region, in turn staying in local hotels, eating in local restaurants and shopping in local stores. If the city were to host the event, numerous government grants would be available to help defray the not-inconsiderable startup costs.

“The City of Alpharetta is a beautiful city with great food and shopping,” said Ribbler, “but people other than its citizens need to see all that it has to offer.”

Mary Catherine Stark, also of Milton High School, came second with her idea to create a city Facebook page that residents and businesses can link in to to keep updated with current events and community news. The cost to start the page would be very minimal.

“Alpharetta is a youthful city and needs to embrace new technologies that are low cost or free to connect people to ideas and to each other,” said Stark.

In third place came Melissa Kristen Moore. She came up with an idea for an improved city map for visitors and new residents that would highlight local restaurants and shops. Generating an increased awareness of what the city has to offer would stop residents from spending their time (and money) in nearby cities such as Roswell or Buckhead.

Coupons would line the sides of the map, offering incentives for readers to visit.

Moore came up with the idea from viewing a similar map of Panama City Beach, FL.

All three winners received a signed certificate from Congressman Tom Price’s office, a letter of congratulations from Secretary of State Karen Handel and a check from the City of Alpharetta.