Paid A Compliment
Weekly Update 3/19/2023 to 3/25/2023 #165
About a year ago I was paid a compliment that has stuck with me. Before I share though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best smalltown in America.
Each week, my time is split up into many different areas. As happens each week many hours are connected to roadways in Seymour. Since the start of 2020, we have worked on over $42 million worth of projects. That is split up into two different types of projects. Federal Aid projects have or will impact roads like O’Brien Street, 2nd Street, and Burkart Boulevard. These projects, though, take five years from approval to completion. Those that have been completed and a couple that are getting close to construction were started while I served on Seymour’s Common Council. Now we are getting closer to the first projects we were awarded after I started to serve as mayor having gone through design and ready for the letting process to see who will construct them. So what are the benefits of taking on a project that will take five years to complete? By using this process we are able to stretch our community's dollars further. Federal Aid projects are an 80/20 match. That means they will match every $1 we put in with $4 more. I am sure you can imagine why so much of my time is spent getting updates and giving input on these projects. The other type of project that we take on is the Crossroads Community Matching Grant. We use CCMG to do local roadways and will often use various methods to extend our funds as far as possible. This grant method has worked on over 23 miles of roadway since the start of 2020. This method matches every community $1 with another matching $1 from the state. Throw in the ranking of each block of roadway every two years, the maintenance via crack sealing and pothole repair, and the meetings related to planning and you have many many hours focused on roads. I am sure someone is thinking, but Mayor, have you driven Hwy 50? Yes, yes, I have, and here is the strange part of all of this. We as a city do not have control of state highways. While we have reported many concerns, while we have sent our intern out with a staff member to submit all the issues they could find, we are still at the mercy of the state on when they get repaired. I hope this helps put some light on a topic that some can get very focused on.
This week’s Board of Public Works and Safety meeting had a packed agenda. They approved food truck renewals, a monthly food truck event at Shields park, the next of many steps were taken to replace Ladder 3 for the Seymour Fire Department, and a possible new mural was allowed to move forward.
So about a year ago, I was in a meeting discussing road projects with an engineer from outside our community. As we discussed various items going on with all the departments and beyond, he stopped me to ask a question. That question was, “Do you realize how much you have already done?” I gave my usual response that I was just doing my job, and he stopped me to share that most first-term mayors get very focused on one maybe two items that are often campaign promises. Maybe it was one big project or roads or maybe even sewers that they took to the stump on and that is where they focus the next four years. While I was running in 2019, I would often share that there was no silver bullet. No one big project that would make everyone happy. We needed to raise each segment and continue to improve our community one small step at a time little by little. With that approach, we have been able to, as he pointed out, work on our parks, our public safety departments, our sewers, our roads, our economy, and so much more. So even when you don’t hear me talking about the one bullet point you are focused on, don’t worry; it may very well take up much more of my time than you think it does because that is how we continue to improve the quality of our community. As Henry Ford said, "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."