Zero Sum
Weekly update #298 10/5/2025 to 10/11/2025
So many things in life are not zero sum moments. Before that though, let me share some of my week serving as mayor of the best small town in America.
This week, I had a chance to share a story from my life that made me realize homelessness was not something that happens to others (I was surprised when it happened to someone I knew) during the Anchor of Hope event on Tuesday night. If I understood correctly, Executive Director Ben Yee shared that since the Anchor House Emergency Shelter opened, it has had 56% of clients leave for permanent housing over their four years of service. Over the last 12 months that number has jumped to 71%. This is the first stop on my thoughts of something that is not zero sum. When someone finds their way from homelessness to steady housing, this doesn’t mean that someone else becomes homeless in the process. We can all rise together as a community as we help one another with the aid of our area non profits like Anchor House. Congratulations to the team at Anchor House on all they do to help members of our community.
Earlier this year, I challenged Seymour Parks and Recreation to up the number of visits to our parks from 535,000 in 2024 to 600,000 in 2025. This week, they learned that they are just shy of 87% of the way to the challenge and just under 15,000 from last year's total. As many of the summer amenities like the splashpad and swimming pool are closed for the season and several of the sports seasons are wrapped up, it won’t be an easy task to get those last 80,000 visits, but looking at the numbers from the last few years, it is doable. With that, I encourage everyone to visit a park if you haven’t in a while. Let the kids go enjoy the playground or maybe take a lawn chair and whatever book you are reading and relax for a chapter or two. Reserve the Community Center for a family get-together by calling the office and help them reach the goal by the end of the year.
This week, we had several sponsors join us as we unveiled the latest mural in downtown Seymour. The mural reminds us of the first peace time train robbery committed by the Reno Gang roughly 159 years ago. I won’t dive into a history lesson here, but you can stop by the Jackson County Visitor Center, along with a few other local spots, or give it a quick google search and learn more. Thank you to everyone who helped make this mural a reality.
Tuesday, I had a chance to meet with members of the Seymour Police Department and Seymour Fire Department that will be presenting at the Accelerate Indiana Municipalities Ideas Summit in a few weeks. One of the two programs being shared is Project Life Saver, which is a tracking bracelet for area residents with special needs or health conditions that may wander away from home. The other is our cancer screening program that was implemented for our fire fighters a few years ago. I enjoy when we get a chance to share programs like this with other communities because if even one adopts something similar, it can help other Hoosiers along the way. This will be the fifth time since I started as mayor that we are able to share a Seymour item with other communities. Thank you to all the presenters working hard to get ready for this presentation, and thank you AIM for the chance to share.
I am starting to believe that many often forget that very few items are zero sum items. If you are not sure what zero sum means it is when a situation means that adding to one means you have to take away from another. As I mentioned with Anchor House earlier, helping them as they work to find permanent housing for others doesn’t mean that you or someone you know will lose housing as you do. Much the same as last week when someone finds a life in recovery it doesn’t mean that someone else will have to battle addiction in their place. I could go on and on with several examples, but instead I will leave you with a quote from John F. Kennedy instead, “The rising tide lifts all the boats.”