Mayor’s Address to Central City Council

I want to take a few minutes because this is the start of the next four years and I want to address the citizens and our council members on some things that the administration would like to move forward on.
But, before that I want to personally thank everyone here tonight for showing up. This is fantastic seeing basically a standing room only crowd. It should be like this every meeting, ok. Whether there is something on the agenda that’s pertaining to you or not, show up, be involved! That’s what we want. You can hear it right here at these meetings for yourself, ok. It’s being videoed by several places in case you can’t come. But this is what we like to see — community involvement — and that’s what we want to see for the next four years.
Briefly I want to say that we have a lot to accomplish council members, over the next four years.
I’m not going to talk about all of this tonight. It would take too long. So I want to, over the next few council meetings, to kind of address our plans. The administrations plans, of what we want to see accomplished over the next 4 years.
We have drainage work. We have traffic. We have planning and zoning, and our development code that we need to look at. We have quality of life issues. We have a lot of different issues going on around the city.
Tonight, I want to take a few minutes and address drainage, that seems to be an important topic, over the next four years. Those of y’all who know me know I don’t like a prepared written speech. When I have to type something and read it I don’t feel like it’s coming from the heart. So, I like speaking from my heart. And I’ve gone through my head about 20 times today what I was going to say and I will probably forget half of it. But, basically I got to thinking, I was like, you know when you teach school, whether it’s algebra, biology, history, you don’t teach the whole curriculum in the first month of school. You have nine months. When somebody is having a baby, it doesn’t take two months, it takes nine months. When you’re building a house, everybody wants their house to be built in a couple of weeks, but sometimes it’s months and months. Same thing with fixing our drainage problems. We’re not going to fix the drainage problems in 6 months, all right. There are on going issues. Some of these projects will take years. The previous administration got us on a start, ok. They got us on a start and now it’s our job to carry through. They’ve got us on a drainage plan that is being worked on. You will hear about that in a few minutes from CSRS. I’m going to allow them a few minutes to give everybody an update.
There are projects going on, with Beaver Bayou and Blackwater Bayou that have already started. The Corps of Engineers wants those projects finished in 4 to 5 years.
The ball is already moving. We’ve got a lot more projects. But, keep in mind some of these projects are gonna take 6 months. Some will take 2 years. Some might be 10 years past, you know, this administration. But they will be worked on. We’re gonna address them. Please be patient, ok.
I know some people are out there saying, “What are y’all doing, what are y’all doing”. Well, you know, we’ve been here a week, ok. Give us a little chance, all right. We’re still getting our feet wet. Haven’t been, had our first meeting. But, I promise you we’re listening. We’re going to be working on those issues.
We’re going to be having community meetings. We’re going to let you know what’s going on, all right?.
So, come to these meetings, hear for yourself, ok. We’re gonna get off to a good start. We have good people up here. Work with us. We all know, any government anywhere local, state, federal, you have some people that don’t want to see you succeed. But we’re gonna succeed, we’re gonna work together, and we want everybody backing us up, ok. And you’re showing up here tonight is a great indication of that. So, I want to thank you.
The next few meetings I’ll be addressing some of the other issues that, you know, we’ll be working on the community. It’s been a great start so far.
I want to thank everybody for the encouragement. People are happy, they’re excited. Going to the stores, talking to people, just walking up to you saying, “I didn’t know you, but you know, we voted for some of y’all, thank you, for serving”. And we hope we can succeed.
Are we perfect? No. Raise your hand in this room if you’re perfect. Ok, just making sure, ok. We will make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. We don’t do it intentionally. But, if we make a mistake, let us know, just call us. If your ditch wasn’t dug right, call us and let us know, ok. If there is something else going wrong, call and let us know. Sometimes we don’t know about things until you tell us know.
Somebody’s gonna get a speeding ticket. That same officer that gives you the speeding ticket is going to be the same one responding when something is going on at your house to save your life. Remember that, ok!
So, work with us. We’re here to serve you. If we’re not doing something right, let us know before you get on Facebook, ok.
So, thank y’all and I’m ready to get this meeting started. How about y’all? All right!.