"Four years of tremendous opportunity await Lexington. Business community enthusiasm about our city's potential is at a high not experienced in the recent memories of most. Leadership has arrived at LFUCG.
The election of attorney Jim Newberry as mayor and businessman Jim Gray as vice mayor of Lexington have brought a sense of possibility to a city where uncertainty has been the norm. While untested as leaders of government, the professional resumes of the two Jims, taken in combination with their goals and their approachable personalities, inspire a hope for successful outcomes as the city and region are confronted by formidable challenges.
There is now confidence that open, two-way lines of communication have been restored between city hall and the business community. From their campaign statements, it can be surmised that Newberry and Gray intend to pull in the same direction. But they have also made known their willingness, when in disagreement on a given issue, to present their arguments agreeably and avoid the rancor and dysfunction of recent experience.
As outgoing Vice Mayor Mike Scanlon, whose relationship with former mayor Teresa Isaac was testy and argumentative, stated in a recent Herald Leader interview: "The No. 1 thing that's going to happen is the chaos and the turbulence surrounding the mayor is going to turn into steady, deliberate, well-thought-out behavior."
We are all aware of what the issues are: sprawl versus smart growth, regional cooperation and collaboration, how best to retain or attract talented and devoted individuals to public service and the most effective ways to bring to Lexington and the region industries that provide high-quality jobs. They all beg for a leadership style that is "steady, deliberate and well- thought-out."
We are a city with great ideas, but in recent years we have not had the sense of unified vision required to move them forward. We believe our new leadership can do much to help that. They can give large and small businesses alike a seat at the table as we address our city's opportunities for economic development. They can help us to leverage assets such as the University of Kentucky and our equine industry. They can clear the road, so to speak, of the resistance to change that is present in all bureaucratic organizations. They can stand as admirable ambassadors to the world in 2010.
But it takes more than great leaders to create unity. We must all agree to be led. We must understand that strong leadership means that more will be asked of us as a business community. As a city, we can only gain as much as we give. While we greet the Newberry administration with very high expectations, we have a responsibility as a business community to respect the need for artful compromise and solid consensus to enable this new leadership to bring about desirable outcomes. That means we all have to accept that we are not always going to get our way.
In the four-year period ahead of us, Lexington will meet daunting challenges: an EPA edict to modernize our sewers to the tune of untold millions; an anticipated costly settlement of the Ron Berry lawsuit; the very real necessity of whipping the city into shape for the FEI World Equestrian Games; and perhaps most challenging of all, getting a handle on how this urbanized agrarian culture of ours is supposed to act and look in the 21st century. The new leaders at city hall have brought with them new enthusiasm, but there are still no easy answers. And taking into account the considerable drains expected on the city budget in the coming years, the questions are undoubtedly going to become harder. As citizens, we must appreciate and respect that.
In the December 15 issue of Business Lexington, Sylvia Lovely, Kentucky League of Cities executive director and CEO, pointed out the paradox of the all-too-typical civic engagement, in which citizens "would show up in the afternoon and protest the cuts to the senior citizens center and then show up in the same evening and protest tax increases."
In the same issue, however, is the example set by the Home Builders Association of Lexington, which took the voluntary initiative to renovate the Coleman House in conjunction with city employees, so service agencies could work more efficiently under one roof to treat substance-addicted teens and their families. As LexLinc Executive Director Wanda Bertram pointed out, "The problems don't just belong to the government; they belong to us all. They get that."
As a city, we will not be able to move forward until we all "get it." For those who have been dissatisfied with what they have gotten out of Lexington's government the past four years, we suggest you consider for a moment what you put into it. In the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
Our fervent hope is that in Jim Newberry, Jim Gray and an Urban County Council filled with fresh new faces as well as skilled veterans, we now have a leadership team that can be counted on to - with our help - do the right thing in the interest of Lexington's future.
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