Small Group
Weekly update #337 7/5/2026 to 7/11/2026
New events, new faces, new equipment, and so much more make up the last week. Enjoy as I share my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
Good work to all who have interviewed, so far, for the 2026/27 Mayor’s Youth Council. We still have several to go but have a good start and will be ready to mail out notifications soon. Several years ago, a former MYC member suggested that we interview applicants. As we discussed it we realized this might be that applicant’s first ever interview and have continued the process each year since. The MYC is a chance for participants to share what they see for the future of our community directly to myself and team members. It is a chance to learn about different departments directly from the department head. Like all things in life, it is very much a group that truly shows that the efforts a member puts into the group impacts what they get from the experience. I look forward to getting to know the new members in the near future.
Congratulations to all the volunteers and The ARC of Jackson County for a good first time event with the Born to Shine Summer Prom. Over the course of the night, roughly 150 people attended this event for our special needs friends and neighbors. After a similar event was taken over by a neighboring county, a group decided to organize a new event. Several hours of dancing, games, refreshments, and prizes left everyone with smiles as they headed home for the night. Thank you to everyone involved; you definitely made for a memorable night for all.
Recently, I had a chance to help Aisin cut the ribbon on a new product line here in Seymour. Over the last four years, they have been working with Toyota to develop a cooling plate for electric vehicles and decided the place to locate the line was here in Seymour. The $22 million dollar investment has been years in the making, and as they ramp up production, it will add to the already extensive list of parts they provide to manufacturers near and far. Thank you to Aisin for your investment and for almost 40 years of investment in our community.
This past week, I had a chance to sit down and meet with several mayors from around the southern part of the state. All in attendance were elected the first time in 2019 and took office starting in 2020, the same as myself. We discussed the impact that legislation over the last few years is having on our communities. Items like property tax changes with SEA-1 in 2025 and how it will continue to change how we budget through 2030. Road funding changes and how they are impacting what we can get paved was a topic of discussion as well. All in all, it was a chance to compare notes in a smaller group setting and to see what is working and what isn’t as we work through our problems, because as I have found before, we all have the same problems just at different scales based on population size. Margaret Mead said, "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world."