Looking Backwards
Weekly Update 2/19/2023 to 2/25/2023 #161
Taking a look in the rearview is always fun, but before I share more, let me tell you about some of my week serving as mayor of the best smalltown in America.
This week, we said goodbye to Paul Nay. I heard it said more than once during the visitation that Paul never met a stranger. That was truly visible as you looked around at everyone who came out to support his family. I believe everyone had a story involving Paul, myself included. When I was growing up, he lived around the corner from us. He had a ping pong table that he probably bought for a nickel at one of his auctions. After a week or two, I asked him if he wanted to get rid of it and we struck up a deal in the price range of a can of pop provided I get it out of there today. I am sure my parents were happy to come home and find a ping pong table turned into a bicycle ramp in the front yard that evening when they came home. Paul, thank you for all the stories you helped create in our area. You will be missed.
Last week saw the first broader review of the Seymour Main Street Streetscape plan via a workshop that was attended by many. While items listed on the plan may be labeled as far out as 2027, some are much closer and will probably be completed within months. I won’t dive deep into this one so as not to steal Bri’s big reveal, but keep an eye out as it should be out for all to see soon.
This week saw a few more meetings with builders and developers. As I chip away at my goal of meeting with 52 this year, it has been interesting to get the different views from their perspectives. I have found that while they have some reservations about what the future economy holds, they still have positive thoughts and believe we as a community will fare well. The purpose of the meetings is to share what we have going on as a community, what we may need, and where they may be able to fill those gaps. Each meeting is different depending on what their focus is as a business. If you are a builder or developer, please don’t hesitate to give us a call to set up your meeting. More conversations mean Seymour and the surrounding areas are at the front of more minds as we move forward.
So this week I spent a considerable amount of time looking in the rearview as I prepared for the State of the City address on Monday. While some may not see it, our departments and all they are working on make it easy to fill up a couple hours worth of presentation. The problem is that no one wants to listen to a couple hours worth of presentation. That is one of the reasons for the weekly updates like the one you are reading now. While I can’t fit everything in here, I can share some, and as often happens, this leads to some good conversations later with the readers. What I can tell you, though, is that we as a city managed to stay in the positive and spend less than we took in. Water Pollution Control did almost four times as much work in 2022 over 2021 to keep the water flowing toward the river. They did this by investing wisely in equipment when the time was right. I say that because it would be great to have all the funds in the world to spend on projects and equipment, but if we want to keep tax rates going down like 2023, we have to be patient and wait for the time to be right. I will stop here and leave you to learn so much more at the State of the City 2023 as we look back at 2022 and forward to 2023 and beyond. Henry Ward Beecher had this to say about looking back and progress, "Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress."