New mayor moves ahead with goals
In one of her first public addresses since taking office Jan. 1, Greencastle Mayor Sue Murray told members of the Kiwanis Club Thursday that she has spent much of her first 23 days getting acquainted with her surroundings and making plans for the future of the city.
She said she is continuing to meet with city employees in an effort to become familiar with how things are run and to aid as she formulates the goals of her administration.
"It's been time consuming, but I think it's important," she said.
As she continues with those meetings, Murray says she will ask her employees to set goals for the year ahead -- something she believes is important to running the city efficiently.
In matters of efficiency, Murray announced that she is making an effort to make city hall, and the city at large, more energy efficient by replacing traditional lightbulbs with more environmentally-friendly ones. She said she recently inquired with Duke Energy about making the street lights in the city more energy efficient, but the technology is not yet available.
Also Murray said she would like to see the city's fleet of vehicles become more fuel-efficient in the future.
Efficiency was also the reason Murray approached the Board of Works last week with her idea to combine the jobs of the water superintendent and the sewage superintendent. The board voted to make current sewer Supt. George Russell the new "utility supervisor."
Other matters the mayor touched on during her speech included:
* Revamping the city website. Mayor Murray said she wanted to complete the effort that was begun a couple of years ago by making the website more interactive and attractive to users. She did not say how she plans to do that.
* Meeting with INDOT concerning the South Street extension. The mayor said there are grants available that would help the city pay to extend South Street to the west to connect with U.S. 231. The extension is meant to relieve some of he congestion on the existing east-west corridors in the city.
* Continuing plans for a Downtown Development District. Murray hopes to initiate a committee of downtown business owners and city officials to look at making improvement to the downtown business district, including increasing funding for the area.
* Continuing to encourage the construction of Ivy Tech's new Greencastle campus. She met with Ivy Tech Region 7 Chancellor Jeff Pittman Thursday afternoon concerning the project.