The first 3 months as your elected mayor have been very productive and challenging.
- We have been working on city hall, cleaning up and doing some much needed maintenance. It will get a new coat of paint in the coming weeks. Our city secretary Wilma Joplin has applied for a grant from TNMP to get our windows replaced. City Hall is a central meeting place for our community and is in need of many repairs and updates, this will be an ongoing process over the next year.
- The city hired contractor Jimmy Duncan to help with maintenance and repairs to city hall. He will assist Arthur with our water system, and city maintenance.
- We have a floating dumpster for residents to use on a month by month basis. If you need a dumpster for a month for projects or cleanup, call or stop by City Hall to reserve it. The dumpster is on a first come first serve basis at no cost. You can request the dumpster once a year.
- We have started our investigation of restoring the old gym to use as a community center. We are only in the investigation phase, engineers and contractors will be giving us their assessments and estimates over the next couple of months and the council will make a determination on how or if we will proceed.
- I have attended classes for emergency management and newly elected officials. Roger Keck, the mayor of Gordon and I went to San Antonio to attend the TML Newly Elected Officials training, which was very beneficial. The former mayor of Fort Worth Betsy Price gave an inspiring speech about being a great mayor and helping the community. I had a chance to shake hands and talk with her for a minute, it was an honor to meet and talk with her.
- I have worked hard to keep CARE in Mingus, they now have a permanent home here in Mingus at the red barn. They are temporarily housed at city hall while they renovate the new building. Representatives from all 3 towns went to the county commissioners meeting to show our support for CARE and asked for funds to be allocated to them in the county budget.
- The City of Mingus received a perfect financial audit for 2022! I would like to thank our city secretary Wilma Joplin for doing such a fantastic job of taking care of city business and finances. Excellent work!
- I have attended city council meetings in Strawn and Gordon, connecting with our neighbors to work with them on issues that effect all 3 of our communities. I would like to see a meeting of all 3 councils sometime in the coming months so that we can discuss opportunities for all of us to work together to solve issues and make our communities better.
- I’ve been to several water meetings with our state rep and other local and state officials over the past year. I recently attended the 2023 Water Summit hosted by our state rep Dr. Glenn Rogers at the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells.