WEEKLY MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor MacLean, Councilors and Department Heads
FROM: Anne Davis, Interim City Manager
DATE: November 6, 2009
RE: Weekly Memo
UPCOMING MEETINGS
Next Week’s City Meetings are available on our Calendar
Interim City Manager’s Report
We have all had a busy week at Gardiner City Hall! Tuesday’s elections kept our staff and our wonderful volunteers busy from 8AM until 10PM. Gardiner, as well as the rest of the state, had huge voter turnout and apparently there are few apathetic voters in Gardiner. When the votes were tallied, voters had elected 3 new Gardiner City Councilors and re-elected one incumbent.
It is unlikely that this current Interim City Manager will be there to welcome them when they take their seats in January so I take this time now to extend my gratitude and best wishes to Chris Leake (District 1), Lisa Liberatore (District2), Gregg Thompson (District 3) and Phil Hart (District 4). Voters elected Marc Cone and Eric Jermyn to the RSU#11 School Board. We also extend a “Thank You” to everyone else who sought a seat on either board and were unsuccessful in their bid. We all appreciate their commitment to our community and I encourage them to continue their involvement with city government. We have many boards and commissions looking for members!
This election went so smoothly because our City Clerk Deidre Berglund has gathered a group of dedicated and professional people to help run it. For over 20 years, the wonderful Cathy Pelletier acts as the Warden and she and Dee have trained over a dozen Election Clerks to help run the polls. We all owe a great debt to these folks who give us time and energy. Our professional staff worked their full day at city hall and then worked the polls until 10PM that evening. Next time you are at city hall, take time to thank Kathy Cutler, Erin Carleton, Becky Sieberg, Kim Dalton, Patrick Chadwick and Tim Brown for putting in such a long day. I was so pleased to see Firefighter Nate Sutherberg and Safety Officer Jamie Dacyczyn pitching in as well. Though clearly not a part of their job description, their enthusiasm and energy helped us all! Finally, this community owes a huge round of applause to City Clerk Deidre Berglund. Because of her expert management and knowledge of the process, Gardiner was one of the first municipalities to report their unofficial results. She was able to get them all up on our city website before 10:30PM…thank you Dee!
After too few hours of sleep many of us were back to work the next day to begin preparation for the Gardiner City Council meeting that would include a plan to find a solution to a recent application for a crematorium. Under the steady guidance of Mayor MacLean, council will be setting up a task force to research all aspects of this application and to make a recommendation of action back to city council by early 2010. Now that we have a plan in place, I look forward to a resolution that will be accepted by our whole Gardiner community.
During this very busy time at Gardiner City Hall, Pat Chadwick completed some necessary improvements to our front office space. As we have been hearing for months, this year’s flu season may turn out to be the worst we have seen for awhile. We will probably have many of our residents falling sick from either H1N1 flu or the seasonal strain. In an effort to keep all our employees healthy, we looked at their exposure to germs and realized we needed better protection. We installed hand-sanitizer dispensers in many of the public spaces so if you plan on visiting us, take a few moments to use them. We also installed a glass barrier that separates our front office staff from, we hope, those aggressive germs. Please know that though the current design may be a little less friendly, we hope that our staff can remain healthy enough to be here to serve the public.
The flu season is upon us and for a few months a local task force has been looking at ways to alleviate the impact. We have all heard about the delay of the vaccine…an issue that continues today. Our Fire Department forged ahead with their mission to keep our greater Gardiner community as healthy as possible despite these obstacles. They helped out with the flu vaccine clinics in both RSU#11 (Gardiner schools) as well as the RSU#2 district (Hall-Dale). Almost 800 students received flu shots during these clinics. As you can imagine, we are all happy to see Friday this week.
Gardiner City Hall – 6 Church Street, Gardiner, ME 04345
Monday – Friday 8:00am – 4:30pm (207) 582-4200
