Letters to Santa

As a child I remember writing letters to Santa and most of the time the letters were answered in the positive. The tradition is still alive, although I think Santa may be receiving more texts than hand written letters. My reason for mentioning letters to Santa, is not the the days are now getting shorter, but a request Rich Clemens made on June 7th at the conclusion of his remarks to the Chamber of Commerce. He asked everyone present to write a letter to city council. He provided 6x8 lined cards and pens. Thirty six letters were written and Rich made copies of each for all council members.

Yesterday, John Waltz and I were the speakers at Chamber. I took the opportunity the share my analysis of the letters with the Chamber attendees and thought blog readers would be interested in the results as well. Thirteen themes emerged from the letters to council presented as follows in no particular order:

1) Cycling, parks, trails, beautification - 5 comments
2) Youth Activities - 2 comments
3) Working together - 15 comments
4) Parking - 3 comments
5) Police - 6 comments
6) Energy conservation - 1 comment
7) 2015 Plan - 10 comments
8) CVB - 7 comments
9) Streets & Sidewalks - 3 comments
10) Budget - 3 comments
11) More business to town - 3 comments
12) City manager concept - 1 comment
13) Improved schools - 3 comments

The common message after reading all the letters was 'we have a future'. Sprinkled among all the suggestions, gripes, complaints and comments was a generous dose of positive and hopeful anticipation of change. The most common theme was working together. That message was loud and clear. Success will be achieved only by working together. I want to close this blog by printing one of the letters in full. No additional comments will be necessary.

The major critical issue for the city of Buckhannon and the 2015 Plan is the necessity of being "generally" unified with all parties committed to working together for a common goal. I say "generally" as there are some groups and folks who will not participate at all. There seems to be some very good ideas out there in the 2015 Plan and being developed today but key is implementation and key to implementation is acceptance as the thing to do. Over my almost 40 years of working in various groups in Buckhannon, many intelligent, capable, hard working and meaning people have tried several things similar to this (2015 plan). Many of those people and organizations were committed to making a difference, but eventually became just like the other groups and just faded away. I believe a key reason for this was their tiring of "fighting" losing battles with others instead of committing to working with those who agree with them and even more, those who do not agree with them.