New Becomes Old
Weekly Update #213 2/18/2024 to 2/24/2024
New often becomes old as the next round of new comes in. Before I finish this thought though, let me share some of my week serving as the mayor of the best small town in America.
With Presidents’ Day starting off this week, it was a short week, but it didn’t lack in calendar events. Tuesday morning, we kicked off the week with our staff meeting for department heads. I asked them if they were delivering State of the City next week, what is the one item from your department that you are most proud of for 2023? The answer heard over and over again is their people. In areas like completed training and supporting one another, it kept coming back to how hard their team worked to keep our community moving forward in their area of expertise. I have said it before, and I will say it again, that it takes a village, and luckily, my village is full of wonderful people. Thank you to everyone that makes Seymour as amazing as it is. It doesn’t go unnoticed.
Every year, I sit down to work on contract negotiations with the unions from Seymour Police Department and Seymour Fire Department. This year is no different except that we started four to six months earlier than in previous years. This week, those talks started for the 2025 contract, and we all walked away with an item or two to do some research on before we sit back down in a month to see what we have found. Thank you to the officers who are tackling this earlier this year. I hope it makes it at least a little less hectic towards the end of 2024.
This week, my workday was at the airport, and I had a chance to go through a semi-normal Wednesday morning: checking the fuel farm, lights, and learning about some of the new projects they have been working on. We had a good chance to talk about how to plan for long-term projects and even how to practice patience because big projects come with curveballs along the way. Sometimes, you realize you were in the right place at the right time, and that is how I left the airport this week, feeling like I was where I was supposed to be that morning. To all the team at the airport, I encourage you to keep it up. You are making a positive impact not only on your area, but the community as a whole.
The typical mayor in Indiana serves their community for eight to twelve years. There are some that go much longer and a few that only get four years. As those years go by, you learn your role, and the job doesn’t really get any easier, but you are better prepared for the day-to-day of it. As things approach, you have past first-hand knowledge of how the problem was solved before and don’t have to phone a friend as much as when you first started. With that old mayor skillset, you also get asked to serve on more boards and committees. For example, in the last few weeks I have started serving on the Local Technical Assistance Program Advisory Board, elected President of the Administrative Resource Association board, voted in as a Jackson County Industrial Development Executive Board Member, and chosen for another term as the Jackson County Solid Waste Board Chair. In your first term as a mayor, you are drinking from the fire hose and often are busy getting your legs under you before you grow into serving in more ways. At a meeting this week with Accelerate Indiana Municipalities, it hit me again that in just four years I have become the old mayor in the room and new mayors are encouraged, like I was, to reach out with questions because we have often seen what they are facing and are able to help guide them through troubled waters. Today, I will leave you with a simple thank you to those who helped me through the last four years, and I hope I can do the same for the next batch or two of new mayors over the next four to eight years, and as Margaret Fuller said let them light their candles in my knowledge, "If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."