A ‘Merry’ note

The last four years of my life have been filled with such civic education, citizen interaction, addressing private and public sector needs, desires and wants, and have been filled with the opportunity to work with and for the people of this great city. I tried my best to be true to myself, to be true to the citizens, to vote and lead in a way that would be proper for the 86,000+ citizens my at large position is responsible for.

I shall miss the debates and the differences of opinion which to this day I believe were a strength for Fort Smith and not a liability. Diversity of thought, differing opinion on ways to solve common problems were evident for much of the four years and I say that is good.

To Steve Tyler, Don Hutchings, I thank you for your early on assistance and for letting me work with you for the first two years of my term.

To Mr. Mayor Sanders, Andre’, Keith, Mike, George, Kevin, and Pam, I thank you for the past two or four years as we teamed to serve the people. Each of us has our own style and our own way but this group took on the issues, head on, and did the people’s work as best we could. For the privilege of working with you and for teaming with you to serve the people, I am honored.

To Ray Gosack and Jeff Dingman and the entire staff of The City of Fort Smith, I have learned so much about what you do for our city, our region and beyond! Please know that I appreciate you, I believe in you, and I support you. I always tried my best to fairly balance the needs of the citizens with the needs of the city staff. I am proud to have served you.

To my clients I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your patience these past four years as I extended my mind and heart to the entire citizenry in an effort to fairly and properly represent the people. You tolerated and were patient and allowed me to help my city that I love so much. For such support I am so thankful and it ranks me, in my view, as one of the very lucky ones in Fort Smith. I got to serve the people and I had your support and trust along the way. I thank you.

To my family, Leigh, Bryan, Justin, Mollie & John, and Abbey: Please know how much I appreciate your patience and tolerance as I delved deeply in to many concerns of the people with my entire heart and soul. Thank you for supporting and believing in me always – especially, when the representation times were tough. I leaned on you for advice, for opinions, for a different point of view and more. I’ll never forget what you did with and for me these last four years.

And to the people of Fort Smith: To serve you has been my pleasure and is an honor that I shall cherish for my remaining days which I hope are plentiful. I enjoyed hearing of your needs, concerns, opinions, and desires. I tried my very best to listen, research, network, lead, and vote honestly and then report back to you. Every day that I was one of your 7 directors, I promise I was very aware that I was serving at your pleasure and that I was working for you and was accountable to you, the citizens of the area. I’ll be staying in touch with the issues and opportunities for Fort Smith, rest assured. I hope that you’ll continue to share with me as I so enjoyed learning from you, listening to your points of view and more.

I remain optimistic for Fort Smith. While we have our challenges so do all of the other cities in America. Your city board is accessible, more accountable, and is truly driven to do good work for you and yours.

I am so proud of the infrastructure in place along the river banks, the water park soon to be here for our youth, the help given to so many nonprofits and the U.S. Marshals Museum endeavor. The spay & neuter ordinance was a good start on a societal issue in our area and I believe that things are improving for the animals and our humane society. 

Sanitation services are first rate. Our police and fire do so much with the staffs and equipment they are allowed. For their bravery and commitment to run toward the problem when we sheer away, I shall forever be grateful. I am so glad that the board was able to give economic assistance to the many new corporations and expanding existing entities in our region so that job opportunities could grow.

I so enjoyed the open citizen forums, the Christmas hot chocolate servings to the people at Creekmore Park, the wonderful invocations at the beginning of each meeting and of course that wonderful and so meaningful Pledge of Allegiance that set us in motion every two weeks!

In summary, it was an honor and a privilege to serve you, Fort Smith. I shall continue to work hard for my clients, for my community while taking and making time for my two precious granddaughters, Leighton & Riley, ages 2 and a half, and 7 months.

My wife and I will continue to watch every news show and political commentary show on TV so that we can continue to debate the issues therewith with a fun cup of coffee in hand in the process.

Take care to all and thumbs up!