January20^th, 2008

It has been another busy and important week being mayor of Cary. Not only did I put in the typical 30 to 40 hours of meetings but this week included the council retreat. Although I am once again exhausted (it’s only 7 PM) I believe I am finding my rhythm in this important service.  This week was a great week of accomplishments and knowledge.

My meetings this week included a community meeting at Middle Creek community center on an odor problem with the South Cary Treatment Plant. There were about 30 or so residents in attendance and all were very well prepared and provided important feedback. The town has been working on an odor problem in this area for several months and has made some progress but the problem still persists. One might think this problem is due to an inept staff but that is definitely not the case. The staff, considered experts in their field, has been able to solve many problems in the past but this one seems to have many complexities requiring equipment that we just don’t have. Therefore we let the residents know that we were going to hire expert consultants to resolve the problem once and for all. I was very encouraged by the professionalism of the staff and the residents at this meeting. I believe community interaction with staff and council is key to resolving problems.

One of my meetings this week was with Mr. Woolner of Regency office park. We had a wonderful extended conversation about his adventures and his successes in life. Mr. Woolner seems to have sincere interest in doing what he can do to keep Cary a great place. It was encouraging that Mr. Woolner wanted to meet with me to talk about his interest in keeping Cary aesthetically pleasing with quality planning. I feel it is important to reach out to as many people as possible. I am grateful that he reached out to me first. It sure makes my job easier.

I had an interview this week with Cary Magazine. In their March/April issue they are doing a feature story on men of “importance” (can’t remember the noun they used). The interview went in great detail about personal trials, tribulations and initiatives that I’m interested in for the town. It is a lot of fun doing these kinds of interviews but seems strange to me that someone would want to read about what I have done.

Each week I receive hundreds of emails from residents of Cary on a variety of issues. In recent weeks most of them have been on the subject of school reassignment. The emails about reassignment are heartbreaking and I am working hard make a difference in this process. This week most of the emails have been on the aquatics center. Council decided to spend another 30 days looking at more options. This caused a barrage of emails from the people out in west Cary who expect the aquatics center to be located on the Hawes tract (still under consideration). What is fascinating to me is how some folks are too hurtful in their comments to council members and then expect their support. On this particular topic I believe the council is doing the right thing in considering all options.

On Friday I left for the council retreat in Mid Pines (a little over an hours drive from Cary). This was my first visit to this hotel. Apparently, this hotel was built in the early 1900s and I believe it! The accommodations were adequate and the retreat was a resounding success in my humble opinion. Friday was an exercise in what some people might call touchy-feely. While many people don’t consider this important it will pay HUGE dividends in the future. Why? I believe to be successful a council has to agree, disagree, and agree to disagree. We need to understand that all have great ideas and talents along with widely different personalities. After the exercise Friday I believe this council will be a very strong team. Who knows, we might go down in the books as one of the best working councils ever.

Saturday at the retreat started off with each council member giving their wish list. That is, what we wanted to accomplish this year and in the coming years. We spent most of the day processing, combining, deleting and editing this information. We eventually ended up with a prioritized list of actions we want to try and accomplish. The last time slot on Saturday was the visioning exercise. This was the most disappointing part of the retreat for me because we learned that roughly 90% of Cary is built out or already in the pipeline. In other words we can only have a significant planning impact on 10% of Cary’s future development.

Sunday morning was spent talking about water. We were presented information about our current and future water uses and ask to brainstorm on ideas to conserve. The information made it very clear that we will need to take some near term and long term actions to protect our water supply. I believe council and staff’s combined conservation ideas will create many innovative solutions. Stay tuned on this topic. You will hear about this again in the near future!

A lot of people criticize retreats for the money spent on sending dozens of people away to meet when they can just meet at home. The importance of sending people to a remote location is that they will be forced to spend time together. This is extremely important in developing relationships and will allow staff and council to work together effectively and efficiently. These relationships help staff understand council’s direction clearly and help council understand staff’s difficulties in implementing certain policies. This mutual understanding will pay dividends that I believe will greatly exceed the cost of this retreat.

Well that is about all for now. I hope to post again on Saturday, January 26^th. Until then, have a great week and I’ll talk to you later…