January 14, 2010

Changing of the Guardian

Schmunk ascends to lead Town of Lind

By Jennifer Larsen

News editor

The landscape of the Lind Town Council made a historic change Tuesday night as the six elected officials took their oath of office.

Town Clerk/Treasurer Patty Phillips administrated the oath of office first to the incoming mayor, Jamie Schmunk, followed by new council members James Elkington (Position 5), P.J. Jacobsen (Position 2) and veterans Linda Derrick (Position 1), D.J. Williamson (Position 3) and Paula Bell (Position 4).

Taking a seat on the council dais, Schmunk greeted everyone who filled the chambers and personally thanked the outgoing mayor and council members.

“Thank you, Larry Koch, for all your years, 20 years, working hard for our community. We appreciate what you’ve done. Greg Schmunk, we appreciate your last two years on the council. Thank you very much. John, thank you very much. I know you’re working in other ways to help our community.”

After council members and members of the public settled into their cramped seats, Schmunk spent a few minutes relating her vision as mayor.

“Welcome, this is a very important night for me and I’m very excited I’ve been elected to this position,” Schmunk said. “I look forward to doing good things for our town and working with this council. I think there’s a wide variety of personalities and experiences that I believe will be good for our town.”

As the new mayor continued, she elaborated on her election platform and how it will guide her as the town’s leader.

“I just wanted to go over a little bit the seven ideals I ran on,” she said. “I would like to address with the public and also the council as direction that I think the voters have asked us to go:

• Fairness and respect – “I believe in treating people respectfully. We’re going to deal with issues as an issue, not a person, so you’ll find that I will stop any rude comments about the public. We will just simply deal with the problems.”

• Accountability and transparency – “My ideals for that are going to be, from our point here we’re going to be representing things a little more out front, such as the notes for our meetings. I’m going to ask Patty to be a little more detailed in what she writes down… to actually know what it was that transpired. I have felt that it needs to be a little more documented, the different things we talk about. The council and I will discuss how far we want this to go. There are a lot of councils that actually record their sessions and a lot of them that are on TV. We will continue to pay our debts and look into ways to make more of them go away. We are quite a bit in debt. If any of you have any ideas – the public or council – just talk with me about these ideas because a lot of talking usually comes up with some good ideas.”

• Improved appearance – “I’ve already talked to the staff about cleaning up their areas, like the shop downtown. We’re going to work on getting that cleaned up. And of course the rest of time as we do have time to do it. This office, Larry’s had an idea in the past about making some of the room next door to us as storage for our boxes.”

• Infrastructure – “We’re going to continue with our sewer project. We just received some grant money and they’re in the planning stages.”

•Application of ordinances – “Larry and I have a list of places and ideas of people that we’re going to need to speak with, and possibly go further than that and try to get them to clean up their properties and follow the ordinances.”

• Networking – “We will continue to attend trainings and work with our surrounding cities and towns in Adams County…”

“You are all more than welcome to write me letters or come visit me at any time with any ideas that you may have. I talk quite a bit daily with people and there are some good ideas out there. Please feel free to bring them to me.”

Schmunk and Jacobsen attended training last week sponsored by the Association of Washington Cities, which both agreed it was time well spent.

Each council member will receive a copy of the Council Member’s Handbook, published by AWC. Schmunk has one geared toward mayors.