Mainstreet Now 2024
Weekly Update #224 5/5/2024 to 5/11/2024
Since March 25th I have been fighting my conscience. Before I explain further though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
Were you one of the over 900 volunteers to help with around 100 projects this past week? The Day of Caring, brought to you by the Jackson County United Way and the over 900 volunteers, helped area non-profits and senior citizens take care of some much needed improvement projects. While they haven’t reached pre-covid levels of participation they are getting much closer each year. Thank you to everyone who worked for months during the planning process and thank you to everyone who participated the day of to help improve our part of the world.
Seymour Fire Department had all three shifts complete agility testing this week. Setting up at Seymour High School allows them the space to climb, carry, pull, and all around demonstrate that they are physically fit to perform their jobs serving our community as a firefighter. Thank you to all our public safety officials for all their hard work, both physically and mentally, preparing themselves to serve our citizens.
This past week, Water Pollution Control was out and about dealing with many issues old and new along the way. From a force main break to a found manhole, projects happened on main roads and side streets. WPC continues to improve our system with both preventative maintenance and the occasional emergency repair. Thank you to everyone at WPC for all you do for Seymour.
This week, I attended Main Street Now for the second time since starting my role as mayor. My first time was in 2022 with a group from Seymour Main Street. This time, the annual conference was held in Birmingham Alabama and a group from Seymour Main Street attended. It gives us a chance to hear topics from around the nation and ways others have dealt with the various troubles that Main Streets and cities face. About six months ago, I was asked to be a guest speaker on a session related to our Community Centered Economic Inclusion playbook that was released in September 2023. After the meeting on March 25th, I told the other speakers that I probably wasn’t the best choice to come speak on the topic as our work moving forward had stopped. They reassured me that I probably had a better perspective than any others would because of that. I guess being the one out of 15 total playbooks nationwide that got canceled makes us different. Just moments before the 75-minute presentation started, State Representative Jim Lucas came in to film. If the full video has been posted, you will see me introduce myself and thank him for being Facebook live, to which he told me he was just recording. What has been on my conscience since the meeting March 25th is that I didn’t represent Seymour as a whole during that meeting by not standing up for American citizens who don’t look like me. Several weeks ago, I shared about five conversations that left me with concerns for area residents. That weekly update was met with folks defending others' actions. Even then I was struggling to say what my conscience saw. This week though, I had planned to say it here in my weekly update that I see some members of our community who are masking racism with phrases like “illegal,” “it has nothing to do with race and is just about being legal,” or one of my favorites that some seem to say repeatedly “now I am not racist, but.” I was planning on talking about people telling an American business owner of Latino descent that they just needed to move on. How an area resident told me their wife could pick the illegals out while driving down the road. Even after a video release of part of my presentation someone told me “they are all illegal.” The examples go on. I also shared during my presentation that I believe we had several candidates stirring emotions for their political gain. Each having backpedaled in meetings at some point since and acknowledging there are good portions that benefit our community. One even went as far as coming by City Hall and stating, “How do we move forward and save the good parts?” in front of a witness. Then as I left work for the day, I heard a radio ad from the same person saying they had saved our community from a left wing economic inclusion agenda. I expect a council member to ask me soon why I don’t just ignore the council and use executive authority to continue work on city items in the playbook? I don’t because the council canceled it, and until the council says otherwise, I will discourage any department, board, or commision from working on anything related to it. Now that the Primary is past, and political gain is no longer a motivating factor, I'm hopeful that amendments can be rationally discussed and a way forward can be found.
The slide that I closed on during the presentation was a representation that love is greater than hate, which I talked about some in last week’s update; that calm is greater than anger; truth is greater than lies; and courage is greater than fear. I can shoulder being the villain in your story if you need me to be. I am humbled when someone views me as something more. When my time is done as mayor though, I have to live with my actions, and by confronting the racism that some have shown over the last few months I will be able to do that. Now though, I will continue to work for the betterment of our community and try to keep moving our community forward with love, calm, truth, and courage as I do. This week, I remind you of a Chinese proverb that was recently sent to me and that it is especially true if you do it in a public setting and that is why I drafted my part of the presentation the way that I did. “If you don’t want anyone to find out. Don’t do it.”