Ideas
Weekly update #300 10/19/2025 to 10/25/2025
Small town or big city is all in the eye of the beholder. Before that though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
Recently, I learned about Jackie Rivera and a program she developed and delivers through Girls Inc called Limitless Leaders. Jackie is the 2025 Miss Indiana and a graduate of Seymour High School. Limitless Leaders aims to build leadership skills and confidence in young girls. Her efforts and program have received attention from Girls Inc nationwide. These are just a few of the reasons that October 25, 2025 was proclaimed Limitless Leaders Day here in Seymour. Congratulations, Jackie, and thank you for all your work as you help develop our future leaders at a young age.
Thank you to the Seymour Young Marines for preparing downtown for Red Ribbon Week next week. Red Ribbon Week began in 1985 after the murder of DEA officer Enrique “Kiki” Camarena and is an annual drug prevention reminder. This year's kick off event had a K-9 demonstration and gave kids a chance to visit with area first responders. If you have kids at home, I encourage you to use this week as a chance to talk about the topic of drug use.
From a meeting with the Indiana Conference of Mayors to a session with Special Olympics of Indiana, the Accelerate Indiana Municipalities Ideas Summit was a good chance to visit with leaders from around the state and exchange stories of past successes and spark ideas for the future. Congratulations to the Seymour Fire Department for a Program Innovation Award for their cancer screenings that were implemented in 2024. In late 2023, the screenings were one of the requests during contract negotiations, and I was more than happy to agree as firefighting has a higher rate of cancer diagnosis than other professions. While we are not the first to implement this, the award is a great way to help spread the word to others and gave Seymour a chance to present a session on public safety. During the presentation Seymour Police Department shared about Project Lifesaver and how it works. The program reduces search time for participants ages four to 88 with cognitive impairments who are known to wander away from home. If Project Lifesaver sounds like something you may be interested in for a family member or something you may wish to support, reach out to SPD for more details. The other half of the presentation was related to the cancer screening program that all our firefighters are enrolled in. While they are only one year into the process, they have already had some items found and further treatment completed. We also learned after the program that another community adopted a similar program shortly after we did, and our adoption was part of the decision process for them to proceed. Thank you to everyone involved with bringing the program to us and to everyone who came down and presented so others may adopt similar programs. I always enjoy the AIM Ideas Summit because it is a chance to hear those successes from others and see where the ideas take us for the future. It is also one of the places where Seymour can be the big city during one session and a small town in the next, and the best part is we all have something to teach one another. From our award winning Curb Appeal program a few years ago that has now been adopted by over three dozen cities nationwide to the smaller daily items, I have heard we helped other communities and know that others have helped us even when they may not realize it. Thank you, AIM, for the annual chance to connect with other elected leaders. I always enjoy the chance to see things from different perspectives. During one session my ears perked up on the thought about looking for solutions instead of just complaining about problems, and it got me thinking about this quote from John Lubbock, "What we see depends mainly on what we look for."