Stopping By
Weekly Update #250 11/3/2024 to 11/9/2024
This week, I had a recent Seymour High School graduate drop by for a short visit. Before that, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
The week started off with a meeting between Water Pollution Control and some of our permitted area industry. The meeting was to let industry know that we are preparing for a review from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and that we would be meeting individually with them to review their permits. While we don’t expect major changes, we could possibly see a permit or two be recommended for removal after they expire. Thank you to all those who attend from our industrial users and good work to the Water Pollution Control team on your efforts in this area.
This week also saw the annual meeting of the Greater Seymour Trust Fund. Since its beginning, GSTF has helped over 3600 students to continue their education after high school. They will be able to help more students at the end of the current school year with over $600,000 in scholarships. Thank you to everyone who has contributed over the years, and remember, they currently have 57 funds that you can make a donation to if you would like to increase those numbers for the future.
This week, I hosted a South East Mayors Round Table with Accelerate Indiana Municipalities. We had eleven mayors sit down for conversations about troubles that communities in our region may be having. As always, I am sure some follow-up conversations will happen as we work together to try to solve our problems. Topics range across the board from road funding to staffing, and this event is a good chance for us to get to share success stories that we may have had to help each other improve their city. Thank you to Schneck Medical Center for allowing us to use some meeting space, and thank you to all of our resources from around the state for joining us to help us learn of opportunities they have to offer.
I serve on the Local Technical Assistance Program board, and during our meeting this week, I learned of a Civil Construction Pathway that has grown to include 17 schools around the state over the last few years. The information was interesting enough to me that I wanted to share it with Seymour Community Schools. I know they have a construction trades curriculum that has helped with several projects around the community already and are having success. The Civil Construction Pathway looks to be more heavy equipment based and could be a good addition to our current offerings. I don’t know where it goes from here, but I have connected those who make decisions on the topic so they can see if it could work here in Seymour.
Back to that visitor from this week before I go. While I could write an entire update on our chat, I will leave it with a simple thank you for stopping by. I hope your path eventually leads you back to our community, but if not, I know your talents will be a benefit to wherever you end up calling home after college, and thank you for using one of my favorite quotes from Mahatma Gandhi in our conversation, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”