Although this week was supposed to be a holiday week of no work and few mayoral duties, I ended up working in both areas most of the week.

Monday, in addition to working at SAS I met with the town clerk for our semi-annual review. In this meeting we reviewed all things that the town clerk staff does for me and council. We talked about ways to be more efficient. I have to say this meeting took some preparation since the town clerk staff at the Town of Cary is probably the best in the state. Some of the new things we talked about were my new duties as President of the Mayors Association and how the town clerk staff can help.

Monday night I did the taping for the State of the Town Address. The script turned out to be about 2000 words which equates to about 15 minutes (actually just under 14). We broke the taping into three parts. We took at least two takes of each part except for the last part which was me walking. They did several takes of that. I have watched the taping and it came out fairly well. The major critique I have is that, even though the State of the Town has a lot of good information, it is too long. BTW, the Cary News version is 800 words. I would love to know if people think the long version was better or simply too much information. To view the long script click here. The short version should be in Wednesday’s Cary News.

Tuesday, after another day at work, I met with the town manager to catch up on things. We talked about several issues. One of the most important items was finalizing topics for the staff council retreat which is about two weeks away.

Tuesday night I attended the Eagle Scout ceremony for Rex Alexander. This was a very nice ceremony. Rex had received the rank earlier before attending college this fall at Ohio State. I was very glad to read the proclamation and challenged him to be a leader in whatever community he decided to live in.

Wednesday was my last day of work at SAS for the year. I spent the evening creating slides for a live presentation of the State of the Town which I was giving on Saturday.

Thursday morning I traveled out to Cameron Pond along with council member Portman and staff member Barker to look at the current situation. The turnpike construction has started next to the cleared area for the power lines. The Turnpike officials had told me they wouldn’t be in this area until spring. Information provided to me said they decided to start here because the ground was dryer. The residents were concerned about their increased loss of buffer. In addition, they expressed concern about plantings installed by the developer as part of an agreement to replenish some of the buffer lost with the installation of the power lines. Another concern was the planned temporary clearing of plantings at the entrance for drainage needed by those doing the bridge construction. Needless to say, there are a lot of things going on in and around Cameron Pond. The town will continue to work on the residents’ behalf. Our immediate goal is to get the turnpike authority to change design to allow a sound wall. We have a window of less than two months to change that design. We are waiting on the estimate for the design costs before meeting with the turnpike officials again. Hopefully, this will be done in the next few days.

Thursday night my family and I headed to downtown Raleigh for the First Night Celebration. We were fortunate enough to be a part of the people’s procession. Joining us were Secretary of State Marshall, Representatives Ross and Gill, Mayors Williams and Byrne, and Raleigh council member Stevenson. It was a great procession which was followed by a reception in the Bank of America building. From that vantage point we could watch the ice skating rink, the entertainment, and of course the acorn drop at 7 PM. The skies opened up with rain shortly after the acorn drop and my family and I decided to head home to bring in the New Year.

Friday I interviewed with Chris Copperwaith of NBC17 on the state of the town address that was released to the media. The main message was that Cary has weathered the worst of the recession and is in good position to lead the region into recovery.

Saturday morning I gave my first live presentation of the State of the Town address to Glenaire. My presentation was attended by a few dozen folks. After the presentation I answered several questions which included light hearted topics of the Community Tree issue and why I lost a tennis match to a girl earlier this year. I enjoyed the talk and the questions and had a great lunch with my host Walter Newman.

Well that is all for this week. I plan to next post on Sunday, January 10^th. Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.