Greetings from City Hall –

Next month begins the tenth year of my time as Mayor. It also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mike Miles working for the City and in April he will finish his twenty-fifth year as Public Works Superintendent. DeOra has been the City Recorder for twenty-five years as of last October 1^st. Compared to a lot of small cities, those numbers for those two positions are unusual. And the rest of the staff members are also comparatively long-time City employees. We have a mix of long and short term councilors, from well over 10 years to just over 2 years, that combines experience with new ideas. I think all of this contributes to the reason that we are doing quite well compared to other cities, large and small, that don’t enjoy having the long-term service of their employees or dedication of their elected officials. I think that having things continually happening in the community that make it better and having as many people as possible participating in those activities results in a vibrancy that answers our vision statement of 2005 that appears on the upper right side of this missive each month.

Community Meetings – the Greenway

Our Community Meeting, held at the American Legion Building, was an introduction of at least three different groups of people to each other and quite clearly showed the value all three put on the Greenway in the middle of the business part of town. The first group, of course, is the owner Nick Kaiser and his family, represented by Nick’s son, Eric. The second group is the people who can greatly help us with the design and funding of improvements to the park and is made up of Dave Talbot, former director of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and his son, Eric. And the third group is the people who will have to get it done and the people who most benefit from the park, the people from Maupin and the surrounding community. The meeting was a success with several people telling the Kaisers what the park has meant to them and how it’s been used over the years and anecdotal stories of its history. When I asked who besides me had ever had their hair cut in the park, three other people remembered that experience and that Ralph Kaiser owned and operated that barbershop and later Don Paulson, who owned and lived in the City Park manager’s house at the time, took over as the lone barber. The intent was to reassure the owners that the park would remain a park in perpetuity and I think the community did that. I was pretty proud of the response from the community’s support for a treasure that a lot of small cities just don’t have.

Wireless Internet

We are still in negotiation for positioning a final antenna in the Maupin area. Connolly Land & Livestock opted not to proceed with the project, which prevents the system from reaching the same receivers that the old Maupin Television translator reached. We are trying to resolve the issues that brought about this rejection and have the attorneys talking to each other. There are several customers in the City that may have their

services interrupted until we can find alternatives to the use of the Bakeoven site as the final transmitter in the system. The City got into the project late and much after the issues stopped the project. Our actions are in the “recovery” category as far as the project is concerned. Stay tuned.

Economic Development Activity

The City Council approved the Economic Development Task Force’s Strategic Action Plan and the “investment” of $6000 from the budget line for Economic and Community Development in the annual City Budget. The funding for this comes from the fee the City charges the company that owns the four-inch dark fiber cable that runs through the City on its way from California to Portland. In the past this money has helped us build the street and other smaller projects, and has also funded part of the Wy’East Micro-enterprise facilitation project in 2007-2009. We are putting that resource back to work to provide technical assistance to new and existing businesses in the Maupin Area. Our funding support will begin early this year and will be re-visited annually with the City managing the funding and the Task Force acting as the board of advisors.

The Road to Honduras

No, not a new Bob Hope movie. Grayson Morelli is taking a contingent of 13 high school students to an orphanage at a ranch in Talanga, Honduras over spring break, where they will spend a week with the kids living the Honduran way. I am acting as Grayson’s mentor for this senior project and this one is easier than building a new track/football field, which was his first idea. The cost per student is $1700, including transportation. Grayson is doing some fund-raising, selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and raffling off a quilt among other things, and invites the community to participate. So if you would like to participate, you can watch for the Krispy Kreme sign-up for $10/dozen (we have one in City Hall), buy a raffle ticket at a ball-game, send a tax-deductable donation to the Maupin Community Church or use PayPal to send one to hopeteams.org. It is a worthwhile project and Grayson and his cohorts are pretty excited as Grayson says, “to have the opportunity to take our small town minds and stretch them beyond their comfort zones.” Go, Grayson!

That’s it. Start thinking about Rivercrest on Memorial Day Weekend. Start unthinking snow. We are already working with the Garden Club on flower baskets for the summer and will start thinking about Christmas decorations and seasonal banners, all of which have spaces on the streetlights where they will hang. The prices of decorations and banners are atrocious – one banner arm, custom made for our street light costs $120+. Wayne and Kirk designed and built ours for about $3.50 and Mike found finials for $2.50 so we will have to rely on our brains again to figure this one out. Of course, that means I am soliciting help with ideas that look good and are affordable that we can hang on these nifty thrifty arms. The streetlight pole manufacturer wants a sample of what we use, but I want to see if there is money following that request. We will probably have a community session to talk all of this over, so when you’re getting ready to think about it, remember we have water and electricity to every streetlight.

Cheers,

Denny