Category Archives: thoughtful tuesday

city council, mayor, thoughtful tuesday

The End of the Road

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Tonight was my last regularly scheduled city council meeting as mayor. There is a special meeting on Thursday and a work session on next Tuesday and then I am done. The new mayor and council will be sworn in at the meeting on the 24th. Of course I found out tonight that the new council wants me to be there on the 24th – probably to give me my “Thanks for your service” plaque.

It has been and is amusing the way people seek you out just to say “hi, mayor” one last time at this stage of the game. I went to the store at noon today to do some grocery shopping and thought I was never going to get through the store. All the “hi mayor” and the stopping and visiting made the path through the store seem endless. I have been surprised by the number of people that have come up to me and thanked me for doing a great job. Many of them proclaim me to be the best mayor we have ever had. (I wonder if that isn’t the case with any departing official – after all, what are they going to do? Walk up to you and exorcise you from top to bottom and then proclaim you were the worst mayor in history?) It does make me wonder what it will be like when I am well and truly gone from office.

The council meeting tonight was short and sweet. Mostly because of a short agenda with only a brief executive session to slow things down. One of the representatives from the press thanked us loudly for making it a short meeting. (That is because she is a reporter for the weekly paper which is published overnight for Wednesday delivery. Her Tuesday nights run well into Wednesday morning every week.)

One of the traditions we have is to allow outgoing council members five minutes to soliloquize on any topic they wish at their last regular meeting. I kept mine semi-short and to the point:

  • Thank you to the citizens of the city and surrounding area for being so supportive and willing to work to accomplish so much.
  • Thank you to the employees of the city because they embraced our emphasis on customer service and did the real work.
  • Thank you to my fellow city council members. I was fortunate to have essentially the same council for all three terms as mayor. That allowed us to work together to accomplish many things, including long term goals that might not otherwise have beem possible.
  • Thank you to the city manager for being so easy to work with and so capable. And because at every meeting over the years he has turned to me and whispered that he forgot his pen and could he borrow mine, I hereby give him my old pen that I always lent to him. (It is a measure of a good manager that through all three terms as mayor he always gave it back after borrowing it. {*grin*})
  • Thank you to Frank and Gloria Walsh and the Walsh Family for all that they have done and given to the city and the community. Their presence and gifts to the community have made my job that much easier.
  • A very heartfelt thank you to my wife and son for their support. The time when the city council meeting was on my birthday and they brought cake so we could still celebrate was very special.
  • Finally, I want to wish all the best to the new council and mayor. I hope they can accomplish as much in the coming years as we have in the past.

I figure that is a pretty good way to say it all.

Time to get going, the early morning trek down to the radio station has to happen one more time.

council, thoughtful tuesday, water

Tomato Tahmahtoe Schlomo ….

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Into the breach once more dear friends ….

I often think of that line. It’s from an album by The Firesign Theater brilliantly titled “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.” This album may be before your time since it was popular when I was a collegian. But I have to agree with the Rolling Stone review more than a decade after it’s release that called it “the greatest comedy album ever made.”

I like that line more because it is, like most Firesign material, at least a double entendre. In this case, referring to the famous lines in William Shakespeare’s Henry V, III, i, 1 “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…” The play on into versus unto is great.

In case you haven’t guessed, I am a big fan of double and triple entendres and puns. Unfortunately, telling puns is usually grounds for immediate execution by howling hordes of unhappy listeners. So I restrict my pun telling and most of my shaggy dog stories to close relatives and those who are unlikely to catch me as I head for the hills at the end of the experience. 

What brought the phrase to mind tonight was the discussion at a city council work session about setting water rates. If you set the rates and add a step structure to the rates to encourage conservation, people might actually conserve too much and so you would have to raise the rates again to cover the operational costs of the water treatment plant. On the other hand, if you set the base rate to cover the operational overhead and keep the per gallon charges down, you hurt those on low and fixed incomes disproportionately. And no matter what you do, people are going to be unhappy and think it was the wrong decision. I sometimes think that people fail to realize that council members pay the same rates as anyone else, so we understand the fiscal pain involved. 

Anyway, another two and a half hours of my life gone in a futile attempt to come up with some plan that doesn’t gore anyone unfairly. I could have been doing so many other things during that time. Oh well, I only have until mid November and I am term limited out of office. I haven’t decided if I am going to call my successor and critique every action of the new council and mayor yet. It might supply some deep winter amusement. {*grin*}  Maybe warm the cockles of my heart during the nights of frozen tundra?

decisions, thoughtful tuesday

Thoughtful Tuesday

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Last week I had to tell an organization that I could not accept their leadership position. It was not an easy decision, especially because it is an organization I have been involved with for years and believe in. I just didn’t have the resources to commit to the task. And yet it still bothers me that I had to say no. I think it bothers me more than anything that I *know* I could help them meet their needs and goals.

Just so you can understand, the organization is the Boy Scouts. In yet another re-organization of territories, they have created a new district out here that includes much of eastern Colorado and parts of the panhandle of Nebraska. I was asked to become the District Chairman for the new district, a volunteer position comparable to president or director. I admit I thought long and hard about it. I have served for years on a local troop committee. L has driven the canoe trailer to many an event and even spent tropical deluges camping with the troop. I was a Boy Scout in the same local troop (albeit 40+ years ago) whose committee I now serve on. The Son was Boy Scout in the same troop. All these things conspired to made it really hard for me to say no.

In the end I just had to say no because I am unable to commit to the demands of the position at the current time. So my points after all the meandering around are:
     Have you ever had to turn down something similar?
     Did it bother you that you had to say no?

Time to get ready for the city council meeting.