Something to Be Proud Of.

I was a Commissioner for three years, from the end of 2013 to the end of 2016.

Being a Commissioner is often ponderous work, and it frequently involves some very mundane and not particularly interesting things.  Most of it is usually simply a matter of keeping things going.  The individual issues, which include things like variances, can be interesting, and problematic, but they don't happen often.

I moved here in the middle of 2005, and the Village election at the end of that year included a decision to turn running of the Village over to a professional manager.  So that was a different kind of project for the Commissions, and we generally did well with it, including when there was a reason to have to get a new manager.  The only times we botched it were after 2016, when the Commissions were, and still are, dysfunctional, and could not agree to choose a competent manager.  Their majorities really never wanted anything, and they never made an attempt at adaptive functioning.

Also, the first new Commission I experienced completed a project which had already been begun, which was to erect a Public Works building on 109th St.  So that was an unusual accomplishment.  Some time before 2013, a Commission and manager erected an entry sign at the bottom of the Village, on 6th Avenue.

But the Commission of which I was a part did some very unusual things.  And it could not have done those things without the participation, guidance, and leadership of our then manager, Heidi Siegel.  It should be noted, by the way, that Heidi Siegel was like most of our managers in never before having been a full municipal manager.  So some of what she did was on-the-job learning.

While I was on the Commission, we did a dramatic renovation of the log cabin.  We built an administration building.  We outsourced sanitation.  Roxy Ross continued her annual "Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service" events.  Dan Keys supervised his most dramatic and conspicuous landscaping project, around the lower 6th Avenue entry sign.  We got several other new Village entry signs at the top of Griffing Boulevard, 10th Avenue, and some other spots.

Not every Village resident agreed with each of these initiatives, and the five member Commission was not always unanimous about them.  But this was a noteworthy and unusual collection of improvements made by the Commission of which I was a part, and I'm very proud to have participated.  Frankly, I haven't heard stories of any Commission that accomplished as much as we did.

My motto was always "For the Best We Can Be."  We certainly didn't get all the way there, but we made some noteworthy improvements for the Village.  I hope that even some non-Commission Village residents, as well as some Commissioners who may have resisted these improvements, are proud of the ways the Village has been made better.  I hope they feel that way about our prominent southern entrance sign, our other entrance signs, the log cabin, and the administration building.  We were trying to perfect the functioning of WastePro, when a new Commission came in and ignored the problems and any attempts to solve them.  I don't consider that the fault of the Commission of which I was a part.  We did the best we could.