New Boots
Weekly update #322 3/22/2026 to 3/28/2026
A new pair of boots is great, but parting with the old ones is sometimes hard to do. Before that though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
I visited Water Pollution Control this week and tagged along with Steve in the street sweeper. While I have had a short ride or two in the sweeper before, I had never had a chance to get more in-depth like I did this time. The basic view of what a street sweeper does is pretty simple. It cleans the roadways. As you get deeper into it, though, you realize the debris it cleans from the roadway doesn’t just benefit vehicles passing by; it takes debris that could end up in the storm sewer and keeps it out of the drains. The schedule follows your trash day for the most part and also helps to pick up anything that might have blown out or been dropped from your toter as it was collected the day before. From time to time, I get complaints about our rule about putting your toter back up, and the street sweeper is one of the reasons it needs to be put up as soon as possible. When your trash or recycling toter stays out by the curb, it doesn’t allow the sweeper to get everything picked up. Steve, thank you for the conversation and the education on some topics I hadn’t considered before.
Congratulations to Jackson County United Way for another successful Hidden Voice competition. In 2025, they raised $25,000. As they came back for year number two, they set a goal of $40,000. With a great cast of characters, they passed last year's total before the final event even started. From hip hop to country, rock to Broadway, the participants had a wide variety of songs to entertain. When it was all said and done, Bigfoot won, and Jerry Allman was unmasked shortly after they announced raising over $43,000 to support Jackson County United Way and its partnering agencies. Congratulations, Jerry, and well done to everyone involved.
The first sightings of the Easter Bunny were this past week as she visited City Hall to film a short video promoting a few events. The annual Easter Egg Hunt at Gaiser Park will be on April 4th at 10 a.m. sharp, with pictures with the Easter Bunny before the event. Yesterday, though, you could get breakfast with the Easter Bunny at the Community Center. Almost 50 kids joined in on the fun and enjoyed pancakes and sausage, along with other items to take home. For a first-year event, it turned out great, and I heard lots of laughs and saw lots of smiles. Thank you to everyone involved, and I enjoyed my chance to brush up on my cooking skills.
This week, during my WPC visit, I wore my old trusty boots for the last time. They have needed to be replaced for a while, but I just couldn’t convince myself to get rid of them. I wore them in 2019 when I helped with my first Make Seymour Shine. I have campaign material talking about being a normal guy who still gets up each day and puts my boots on one at a time, just like anyone else. I am sure those sentimental pieces are why I struggled to replace them after the soles of both had been worn through. Italian poet Cesare Pavese said, "We do not remember days, we remember moments." The moments those boots help me remember are not always the biggest, but there are plenty of them.