Lansdale Borough Hall.
Last night, I had the honor of being sworn in for a second term as Mayor of Lansdale Borough. As noted in my post-election musing, I am honored and humbled by the support and passion the community has shared with me over my first four years in office and the vision we continue to share and work toward for our community.
Throughout the campaign for re-election, I have continually used the phrase “Forward. Together.” To me, these words represent the essence of our path as a community and will help frame the actions, initiatives, and adjustments we can take to help build Lansdale long into the future and be our guideposts as we do so over the next several years.
The first critical step is ensuring we continue to help build a community that is constantly and consistently orienting itself toward the future. This, critically, includes the core of our infrastructure and planning how we can maximize the impact we make by futureproofing as we upgrade each individual piece. There is no shortage of infrastructure that requires improvement in our community.
Over the last four years, we have made massive improvements in our approach to these repairs and have become more coordinated and more precise in how we will re-build Lansdale’s core infrastructure. This has resulted in more roads, more sewer, and more electric infrastructure being upgraded for each consecutive year improving life in our community for decades to come.
Going forward, we need to expand that approach to include long term goals that go beyond just getting things “up to snuff” and focus moving us closer to reaching critical goals like local energy generation, smart technology management, WiFi expansions, improved traffic management, and expanded emergency management. Each time we approach a repair and an upgrade we should be asking how that repair can help us achieve — or build toward — a long-term goal that will fundamentally secure the borough as we look toward the future and the challenges it may present.
The second step is taking this action and engaging in this growth together.
It is no small task to bring people together under the current political and social environment. However, that challenge does not absolve us from continuing to unify our community under key virtues and values that we all share regardless of political party and personal persuasion. Undoubtedly, we are all interested in building a community that delivers on the promise of leaving a better world for our children — one that is financially secure, economically vibrant, inclusive, and structurally sound.
Together we can all agree that improvements, or maintained development, in these areas is crucial to our mutual success and we must continue to come together to ensure we leave the world we envision for our children by acting and not languishing in the same old partisan arguments that have held communities back for decades. This is not to shortchange the process of actively discussing important issues as they come up. Active discussion that dissects issues and helps reveal the best path forward is crucial to success. However, we cannot discuss our long-term goals to death either.
Let’s build a plan, challenge that plan, improve it, and act. We cannot be afraid to make mistakes as we work toward our goals because inaction is a mistake in and of itself and will likely never lead to our shared vision of our community.
As we take this journey together over the next four years, I look forward to engaging with you throughout the process. As your Mayor, I will continue to openly share my thoughts, concerns, and opinions on how we can build a better Lansdale and how we can keep moving ourselves forward together.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert.)
See also:
Mayoral Musings: Stay Safe This Christmas Week
Mayoral Musings: Traffic Flow Near Susquehanna
Mayoral Musings: The Budget and Borough Investment
Mayoral Musings: Lansdale Road Projects for 2022
Mayoral Musings: Showing Gratitude for Volunteers This Thanksgiving
