If you are running as an incumbent, the first thing you should do the day after you get elected, is write a thank you notes to everyone who helped you. When you do something (I write this from a Mayors perspective) for the rest of your term, write down what you do for each block and neighborhoods. As an example we have a program of rebuilding about 6 streets a year using federal and state dollars. Guess what every voter on that street needs to be reminded of the fact that you got this done f...

We were doing a walk thorough of a new neighborhood, and we spotted a sidewalk that needed to be turned towards the street to make a crosswalk on a corner lot. So we notified the owner we were going to build this sidewalk, well he went nuts. Apparently he had issues with school kids walking anywhere near his house since the corner was a bus stop. He filled the voicemail up of one of my senior managers with profanity and rage about those kids, to the extent that we saved it and played it back for...

My town is 15,000 people of which 4,000 people are registered to vote. It has roughly 5,000 old timers and 10,000 newcomers. The town is divided into 6 precincts one for each alderman. Understanding the math of election is the first step to understanding how you get elected, in our local elections only 20% of the electorate is going to vote (our last election was less, close to 11%). Mayoral elections have some more turn out so for argument sake say 25%. Use 4,000 registered voters as a base num...

There is an alderman in our town that is an absolute fool. He has been in office for 12 years, and basically has no clue what is going on. He was adamantly opposed to a development for political reasons, reasons known only to him, he made a long rambling discourse against the project when the vote came up. However there are so many details and votes later on the same project, after the important ones concerning the develoment, he randomly votes yes or no becuase of course he never reads the agen...

One of the skills I have learned the hard way is the power to create the meeting agenda. Setting the agenda allows you to control what gets acted upon. For example if you don't have the votes to pass something today, don't put it on the agenda. Not to boast but I have yet to lose a vote, however things I have wanted to do have not made it to a vote. Why lose in public! Understanding the simple fact that you control the agenda, gives you absolute political control over spending powers at a mee...

Well its nearly official, we have finally landed a major commercial business, a national chain pharmacy! I have a feeling we are sitting on an explosion of commercial growth which has long been overdue in the town. Wooing this business has taken almost a year, involved cutting out a neighboring community (subtly) out of the mix. I ran on a platform of economic growth and commercial development and the pressure has been building as we go forward to deliver something, but finally we have a lar...

A lot of new developments in our town are developing yahoo message boards, where rather then gossiping over the back fence and confining inaccurate information to a few homes, the whole development can benefit from the lack of knowledge. It does have merits in that by monitoring the message board I can detect certain problems and step in and fix them. I have one alderman who is in a frenzy to respond to those emails before me, I suspect he will be running against me in a year or so. It's funny w...

Since I have a full time job, as a vice president for mid sized company, the sizzling $10,000 a year does not keep my daughter in clothes let alone anything else. So Saturday is a big mayor day, I was up and working through the 3 newspapers that cover the area. Then it was off to breakfast with a local community activist for breakfast to discuss his needs for money for a low powered bandwidth community radio station. They need between 30 and $80,000 to get it up and running, so of course they wa...

For years I had this lunatic who used to write these nasty letters to the editor with no foundation in fact and or reality. Usually he spewed wild accusations about me being out to get him and how I was ruining the town based on the rumors that he made up. Anyway this guy had a doctorate in Economics so we called him the doctor. I responded via a letter to the editor once basically pointing out that every thing he said was a distortion or wrong. He responded with this very odd letter basically r...

As you can well imagine the moment I am "outed" for blogging in my town this blog will go away. So that's why I am not divulging the who, what, where, when and how of my Mayoring. By and large the numbers and the locations that I mention in my posts are not accurate, they are fudged one way or another. I am trying to make sure that the "fudged" numbers do not impact the blog but you never can tell. As you can well imagine that funny stories about residents and political issues might not go over ...

I have been asked what sort of political affiliations I have. On our political level in this state town elections in municipalities under 50,000 residents are non partisan. So I ran under a made up for the moment party. However I am a democrat. This is a county that goes 55/45 republican and about 20% of the offices are held by democrats in the county. I am the township chair for my area, only because I am the only democrat that's visible in my corner of the county. I don't meddle to much in par...

When I ran for office, I ran on a platform of economic development. When I became mayor I discovered that my predessor had left an administrative mess behind. Simple management things had been ignored or left to languish. We had an employment issue that came to a head 3 days after I became mayor (perhaps a test of me by the staff). My first question was what does the employee manual say? Guess what, did not have one! So my first major goal suddenly became revamping the whole business aspect ...

We were doing a walk thorough of a new neighborhood, and we spotted a sidewalk that needed to be turned towards the street to make a crosswalk on a corner lot. So we notified the owner we were going to build this sidewalk, well he went nuts. Apparently he had issues with school kids walking anywhere near his house since the corner was a bus stop. He filled the voicemail up of one of my senior managers with profanity and rage about those kids, to the extent that we saved it and played it back for...

There are so many important things to grasp when you lead a community. It difficult to pick out the most important because the one that seems the most obvious off the top of my head is "keep your mouth shut." However there are times when people want to hear the mayor speaking out. People want to be led so there are times you need to talk and make the hard decisions. After thinking it over "keeping your mouth shut" is the most important. Most small community's have a pool of people or familie...

Unlike Fiorello Laguardia a former Mayor of New York who read the comics to people over the radio in the 20's and 30's the funnies in my town usually are deposited in front of me by irate residents. Somedays the highlight of my day is that "behind the scenes" thing that always crop up in local politics. I can always tell when I am getting a "mayoral funnie" it's when you hear a story and think, what is this a joke?