Blueberries
Weekly Update #252 11/17/2024 to 11/23/2024
How did you find the blueberries? This question, or a variation of it, is how we start staff meetings to help us get into a positive mindset before we dive into today’s troubles. Before I share more of this thought though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
A thank you to all the city staff who worked the Oktoberfest this year was the lunch theme one day this week. The Oktoberfest board provided a Mi Casa buffet to say thank you for all their hard work. While they don’t have to, this has become an annual way for the board to remind city staff that they do appreciate all their hard work over the better part of the week of Oktoberfest. The board itself has already had their 2024 wrap-up meeting and will take a few months off meeting wise before they start the full-fledged 2025 planning after the first of the year. Don’t worry though, some of the committees will be doing leg work as they prepare to hit the ground running at that first meeting.
The Riley Dance Marathon here at Seymour High School just happened last night and the kids looked like they were having a blast. Since the first one here in 2014, they have raised over $130,000, not including the 2024. To see a group of kids giving of their time and efforts to fundraise for the children’s hospital is always motivational. Thank you to everyone who helps each year on the dance marathon. It wouldn't be the same without all of your support.
This week, as I looked at the Seymour Police Department numbers from the supervisors meeting, I couldn’t help but realize we live in a wonderful community. Of the 21 types of calls they use for the supervisors meeting each month 17 of them are down for 2024 compared to the same point in 2023. Total of all 21 we are down 374 in the same time period as last year. Councilman Brad Lucas did some research recently and found that data through the end of October which he used to create average daily runs for the last 61 days of 2024 show a downward trend in the number of runs for Seymour Fire, Seymour Police, and Jackson County EMS over the last two years. I will be interested to see how close his prediction is to reality at the end of the year. Thank you, Brad, for taking the time to put actual numbers together, and thank you Seymour Police Department for all you do in our community that is often unnoticed.
So how did you find the blueberries? I hope you will take a second and ask yourself this question and focus on the positives around you instead of the challenges that you face. From the Oktoberfest paragraph above, it would have been easy to name the various types of challenges we faced a few months ago, but instead the board chose to thank the city team who helped make it happen. In 2014, SHS staff could have looked at all the logistical challenges of hosting a dance marathon and walked away. Instead they focused on the positive impact they could have and have since raised over $130,000 for Riley Children’s Hospital. While looking at the numbers from Seymour Police Department, it is easy to focus on the four areas that are up for 2024 and they do. Two of them are agency-assist related, and I don’t really see helping other departments as a negative item which leaves you with the other two and their approach there is increased enforcement efforts to try and reduce accidents in the process. Councilman Brad Lucas took a chance to look at the numbers and found blueberries along the way as well. I will leave you this week with a quote from William Arthur Ward, "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."