Welcoming Fall

October 30, 2018

We just finished a wonderful fall festival this weekend where visitors and residents were able to come and enjoy all the wonderful pumpkin decorating and corn stocks. I saw many people relaxing on hay rides , enjoying local treats, listing to some local ghost stories or possibly seeing a musical at the Mantorville Theater Company. Thank you to all those folks that helped out this year to make this event another success. One of the things I really enjoy about the campaign season  is that it offers me an opportunity to go door to door and talk to all of our neighbors in town one on one and really get to know each other. Even those connection that I have already made often share new information and observations. Many times these ideas have a common theme and I like to collect these themes and present them back to council for action. I really enjoy seeing these conversations turn into action from the City Council.  I have had so many conversations with many of you via email, Facebook, phone calls and posts on my blog. I always find the face to face conversations the most rewarding because it helps build actual relationships as well as share information. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and  ideas with me. This collaboration has made our community stronger.

A Call for Volunteer Committee Members:
The City Council is forming a Citizens Committee on Safety for the 9th Street changes. We are still looking for a couple of citizens that would be interested in serving on our streets safety commission. Those people interested in serving our community can submit their contact information with the City Clerk at City Hall.

City Candidates Debate:
That you again to the Mantorville Senior Center for providing a venue for the recent debate. Thank you also to the Chamber for arranging this forum. Larry Dobson and other volunteers did a great job emceeing and moderating the form. There were some great questions for all of the candidates to reflect on and I think this was a great opportunity to get to meet all the candidates. I really appreciated the great discussions I had after the forum with many folks. I will get some of the questions from the debate and my answers to them on my blog within the next few days. My blog is located at mayorbradford.blogspot.com. After the debate I meet a young person that said he wanted to be involved, we will work with him and defiantly utilize his energy and passion to help strengthen our community.

Recent Council Successes:
The last few years have been so busy and it easy to loose track of some of the great work the City Council has been able to accomplish. In January, I always publish a State of the City article, but I wanted to highlight a few of our successes early.

Froze or reduced the tax rate for each of the last six years
Secured $1.8M in grant funds for our sewer project
Implemented a new “City Brand”
The Secretary of State visited Mantorville to discuss our new Branding Efforts
Continued lower tax rates
Attracted two new sub divisions
Added non-tax based revenue from AT&T lease agreement
Implemented a lifetime pet license
Offered a City Revolving loan fund
Completed new Waste Water Treatment plant connection
Hosted the Southeastern Minnesota League of Municipalities quarterly meeting
Leveraged the Joint venture to facilitate cost sharing across the School Board, City of Kasson and City of Mantorville
There are so many more successes it would be easy to fill a page, but I just wanted to share a few of the milestones we have seen in that last years. I am so proud of our Citizens, Volunteers, property owners and everyone together that all call ourselves “Mantorville”.

Yours in service,

Chuck Bradford
Mayor - City of Mantorville
MantorvilleMayor@Gmail.Com
MayorBradford.BlogSpot.com