This week was a rare change of pace with a few speaking engagements and then a couple of days off. I should note that my time off usually means working more at my better paying job. At least I got to see my family and eat dinner with them this week.

Monday started with a visit to Grace Christian High School. I spoke to two classes about my life story and about all the jobs I have had. Of course, since I was speaking to a Christian school, I was able to include what role my faith played in career and life choices. The main message of my talk was that God has a plan for all of us and that each and every one of us is blessed with gifts and talents.

Monday evening I had a conference call with the developer who plans to redo Waverly Place. He has been eager to start renovating this shopping center but has been held back by the economy. In our talk he expressed interest in changing what was approved to something less intensive. We will meet next week to look at his ideas more in depth. Hopefully, we will see new life in the Waverly Place shopping center soon.

Tuesday morning I visited Kingswood Elementary School and participated in read across America day. I had the pleasure of reading to a 4^th grade class. I read Dr. Seuss’s first book “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” They seemed to enjoy it and we even had time for a little Q&A. This class included some great artists. They showed me a poster with several components of the “Green Eggs and Ham” book. I had a great time during my visit and on my way out saw my friend Bill Leslie going in to read to another class.

At mid-day on Tuesday I spoke to a few dozen adults participating in the Cary Chamber Leadership Cary Program in the council chambers. I talked about the duties of a mayor and went through a typical week of being a mayor. Just in case you are interested, here is a list of my top duties as specified in one of the first documents I received as mayor:

• To preside over public meetings of the council;
• To vote upon all measures before the council;
• To be counted for quorum purposes;
• To rule motions in or out of order;
• To determine when a speaker has gone beyond reasonable standards of courtesy in his or her remarks and to entertain and rule on objections from other members on this ground;
• To answer questions of procedure;
• To preserve order and decorum;
• To call a brief recess at any time;
• To adjourn in an emergency;
• To appoint all special committees, except where the council shall otherwise order;
• To execute documents as approved by council on behalf of the Town.

I also answered questions. One interesting question was why the mayor position isn’t a full time job. This is a good question. Well, to answer that question one needs to understand that Cary has a council-manager form of government. That is, the manager manages the town and does the day to day operations. The mayor, while being the face of the town, performs the mayoral duties and sets policy. To have a full time mayor and a town manager may be confusing to the public. Of the mayors in Wake County, most are retired or hold other jobs. As for me, I work full time at SAS as a testing programmer in the Software Globalization Division. To put it simply, I write C code to test code to make sure it runs on all platforms in all languages we support.

Tuesday evening I participated in a conference call with the town manager and the Mayor Pro-Tem. As usual, we talked about the hot issues, legal issues, and strategies to handle them.

Afterwards I headed over to Cary High School to attend the Cary Democrats Precinct meeting. Each elected official and candidate for office was invited to speak briefly. Other elected officials included Mayor Pro-Tem Robison, council member Adcock, NC House Representatives Weiss and Stein, and Mayor Holcombe. There were probably others but those are the ones I remember. The best talk of the evening was given in the beginning by a high school student named Thomas. Wow! I can’t wait until he is old enough to run for office.

Wednesday there was a light dusting of snow but apparently it was enough to delay Wake County Schools for two hours. The delay postponed my talk to the Cary Chamber Youth Leadership Program for teens. It has been rescheduled to March 19^th.

Emails this week included those for and against the town health care policy covering abortions. We also received emails about the town applying for Google’s fiber offer to towns. BTW, the town will have the RFI done in plenty of time before the deadline. Emails also included complaints about the town disclosing the email list to two people that have requested it. It is important for everyone to understand that public records laws currently require us to provide that list. We are currently working on legislation to present to our delegation that will change this. I also received email complaints about sidewalks, litter, and speeding. In addition, I received invitations this week to an Eagle Scout ceremony and a talk at a Girl Scouts meeting.

Next week’s council meeting and preparation meetings will dominate my calendar.

Well that is all for this week. I plan to next post on Sunday, March 14^th. Please feel free to email me with a comment.