Next Year

Weekly update #307 12/7/2025 to 12/13/2025

Have you shifted gears and mentally moved to 2026 and beyond yet? Before I share more about this though, let me share about my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.

This past week, the first semester YOJACK group graduated from the program. Whenever I am available I like to participate in at least a part of the day and talk to the group. Energy is always one of the key talking points for me, and I share how the energy you bring to your tasks sets the tone for at least the moment at hand. If you walk in with your shoulders slumped speaking like a Debbie Downer, it will probably be a slow tedious project. Yet, if you walk in with a little pep in your step and ready to get things done, it seems to move along much quicker and usually feels easier as you work. From there we talk about the future and how as 8th graders they are not far from being adults and becoming leaders in our community. As often happens when I get a chance to interact with a group of engaged young people, I walk away with a renewed hope for the future. Thank you, Leadership Jackson County, for all your work with the youth of Jackson County via YOJACK.

At the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting this past week, we opened bids for the Shields Park Pool renovation project. This project has been in the works for longer than most realize and on the planning horizon even longer than that. As I have shared before in a weekly update, the current Shields Park Pool was renovated to an olympic-size pool almost a decade before Seymour swimmer Pat Calhoun swam in the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Since then, with hard work and dedication, the pool and equipment have been maintained to outlive their normal lifespan. With three companies bidding to do the work, we will see part of that equipment get replaced before the start of the 2026 season, and then the major, more noticeable portion of the renovation takes place between the 2026 and 2027 seasons. All the timing is to try and avoid missing any part of the already short seasons if possible. While we still have a few steps to complete before we award the contract, it is exciting to see the project get so close. Thank you to everyone who has worked on this in the past and to everyone who will be a part of the process to completion.

During the annual City Hall Christmas party, we enjoyed visiting with team members. We also played our bracket game for some prizes and learned a little about each other along the way. We had the party a little earlier in the month this year to try and avoid vacation days on the schedule the rest of the month. To the team, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas when it gets here in two weeks, and thank you for all you do for our community.

Well, back to the opening thought about shifting mentally to next year. City government often looks at least five years, and sometimes ten years, down the road. Decisions we are making and projects we are looking at may not take place before mid way through the 2030s. Like I mentioned in the pool paragraph above, we have had the project in our master plan since the 20/21 plan. This week, we had an information meeting for O’Brien Street Phase 1, which is from Burkart Boulevard on the south to Village Circle on the north. We had the same meeting for Phase 2 and Phase 3 a few years ago. With the overlap of the two it is easy to get them crossed as you think of what section we are working on. All three of the phases started general concept design before we ever applied for them in 2020. Now we are just a few properties away from having two of the three ready to go out for bids. As we talk about them and where they are at we are also applying for Phase 5 and Phase 6 with the next round. Hopefully, you can see how easy it is for my mind to shift ahead to next year at this point in the year as I am often looking even farther down the road than that. Winston Churchill said, "It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see." It is the “further than you can see” part that is indeed the toughest part.