Greencastle Mayor Sue Mayor says it's bittersweet to wrap up her second term as mayor after thirty years of being involved with city government, but feels the city is in a good place.
"I can leave knowing that there was no more for me to be able to have taken out of myself and put into the job," Murray says.
On this week's installment of Ask The Mayor, Mayor Sue Murray talks about completing her second and final term as mayor. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: I feel the top three items on the table we need to talk about is the wrap up of the Stellar Grant, the city water situation and the potential for a new community center. Where do you leave these issues?
Murray: Let's start with Stellar, which I think has been a transformative opportunity for our community as well as our relationship with the university. We are wrapping things up, we've been able to take care of infrastructure issues in our downtown, we've been able to do work on 24 different facades on downtown buildings, we have downtown parking space now, we have a new entrance to the university which has been critical to them - so the Stellar project have done what we had hoped to do.
The water issue is still there. We have until December 31st to completely wrap it up. On November 1st we officially became a WT5 plant so IDEM has been out and has checked off their requirements in terms of our ability to operate as a groundwater under the influence of surface water and the $2 million to get that done has been done effectively. Our staffing issue is the thing we're still having difficulty with. We've had people who have not been successful in passing the WT5 certification and we're now having discussions about having someone come in to provide professional services.
Regarding the community center, we had a meeting yesterday with the director of the Wabash Valley YMCA. There have been site and membership evaluations, they feel they need somewhere between 900 and 1,000 memberships in order to make this a self sustaining YMCA facility. According to their statistics, we have a ways to go. So we're going to be fine tuning some of those things and presenting them to the council, talking with financial advisers, so we have a lot of moving pieces, we are moving closer. But people always say what we don't have, what we really need is a community center - a YMCA type facility, the retort has been we can probably build it, we can't afford to run it.
Hren: Earlier in the interview you said you were going to ride off into the sunset. Literally? What's next for you?
Murray: What I promised myself and my family is not say yes to anything. I've got to think about it. I need some time away. So the plan is right now we are going to go to the last Colts home football game on January 3rd and then the next day we're going to head down to the beach. And my husband because we have a family business is going to head home and I don't have a ticket home. So I'm going to walk the beach every day, I'm going to spend time with my 91 year old mother. I've got a daughter and her husband and three young children down in Florida so I'm going to get to know them a little better.
Hren: What do you hope your legacy to be?
Murray: I hope my legacy is going to talk about working and fighting your way through hard times and not only surviving but coming away from the positive side of it. I think we have proven with a little help from the outside, extraordinary things can happen and I think we realize that it's only through partnerships, we can make things happen.
Hren: The last word comes from you.
Murray: My last words would be to have faith and that things do work out and find your partners along the way and celebrate as much as you can.
