This Saturday, Dec 10, 3-6 p.m. at the Illinois Valley Visitor Center is The Santa’s Holiday Event. Santa and Mrs. Claus will be there distributing toys to the children of the Illinois Valley. There will be photo opportunities and hot chocolate. Don’t forget to bring your letters to Santa! Many thanks to the supporters and volunteers for helping with this family community Christmas event. I won’t name them because there are so many I will probably forget someone!
This time of the year city projects start to slow down. Most of this year’s major projects are finished. It is a good time to focus on training and most staff have finished a half day of CPR training. Street cleaning and right of way brushing and cleaning is big this time of year and monitoring our TMD (total maximum daily load) for storm water becomes more important. So far, we have been lucky that there have been no major snow events. That really puts a strain on Cave Junction staff and older equipment.
I recently attended the quarterly small cities meeting for southern Oregon in Glendale. It’s a great opportunity to meet other small city personnel and share accomplishments and challenges. I am constantly reminded how lucky we are to have a competent and dedicated staff.
The Oregon Mayors Association’s annual “If I Were Mayor” contest kicked off in August and takes place any time during the upcoming school year. The deadline for entering local city winners for the statewide competition is April 7, 2023. The deadline was moved up so winning students will be recognized during the school year in front of their peers. I would love to see Cave Junction have some entries! I am hoping to get into the schools after the first of the year to promote this contest. In 2013, Tristan Fiske, a local highschooler, wrote an award-winning essay titled “If I were mayor” that went all the way to be a statewide winner. Tristan proposed to rebuild the city skate park.
This is also the time when everything and everybody seems to be rushing to get to the end of another year and stress levels seem to rise. I saw this quote on the internet- “As you feel your internal barometer heading toward stormy chaos, remember you are a tiny speck of energy within a vast universe.” A good reminder when our stress levels go off the chart.