Assessing our ideas and goals for 2025

Happy New Year, friends! As we see 2024 behind us, my prayer is that 2025 brings everyone happiness, promise and faith to see our way through a new year. It can be difficult to tackle the holidays when there are so many that are hurting, in mourning or in bad health.  Many times, the emotional part of the holidays takes a toll on people.  Personally, the past year turned out to be a pretty good one for me.  Now that I’m into my 70s, I’m just grateful for every day that God allows.   
The council meeting on the 30th was fairly brief and met with positivity concerning our upcoming water rate increase.  Hopefully the discussion gave everyone insight into how much time and research has gone into a fair way to accomplish our goals. Again, if you have any specific questions about all this, feel free to call our city administrator at city hall, your alderman, or myself.  In case you don’t know, the number is 605-574-2300, and we all have city email addresses.
I asked each of the council members and the city administrator to prepare and bring a list of their ideas to make 2025 a productive and effective year. All of them gave me their goal lists and now I am compiling them and putting notes together in order to prioritize our goals and have a short discussion at the next meeting.  
I was pleased to see that there were many of the same goals on each list submitted. Perhaps my goals are less realistic or maybe too lofty, but there is no doubt we will have plenty of issues to discuss and goals to reach.  At the very least, we all just want to make positive changes and to make great progress in Hill City.  
It goes without saying, everyone will not always agree with each other.  If you are interested in what happens in our community, please try to make it to the council meetings. It seems the biggest challenge for this new administration has been the “rumor mill” and having to address issues that seemingly come out of nowhere. Those things happen and are expected, especially living in a small town. But when a few people want to make issues out of non-issues, it just makes me shake my head and wonder why some will go out of their way to cause division and gossip.
Mostly, I’ve been approached about one specific issue. So to address that “rumor,” let me say this as clearly as possible:   Changing the “nightly rental” ordinance has not been a topic of discussion by the current administration, nor is it on anyone’s agenda to do so! Why this topic has some people up in arms is beyond me, so let me say again… not one conversation about this topic since I took office last July! If you are that concerned, attend the meetings and find out for sure!
With this said, I will not address this “non-truth” again. I did not intend to begin the new year scolding anyone, but our jobs are hard enough without having to defend ourselves from things the people trying to stir the pot feel necessary to say. Like I’ve said continually…. A little support goes a long way!