The Mayor's Corner 12/04/2019

Mayor Diana Thomas

SNOW is the main activity in all departments this week. Hopefully the next storm misses us. Crews gathered at noon on Sunday and began getting organized to hit the priority areas throughout the afternoon. They worked till 10 pm and then came back in the morning to remove and continue to plow streets again according to the priority map. The map is available for viewing on the City’s website. Hopefully, the break in the snow will allow us to get to more or the side streets. The City does work with our disabled and senior residents who need special assistance for medical reasons.

Our Street Department has four employees so our crews are made up of employees from all the departments. They balance the regular responsibilities with helping on snow removal. We appreciate the community’s patience and understanding as we do our snow plowing and removal. Because we are in the city, we can’t just plow we also have to remove the snow from the streets and many driveways.

A reminder to businesses and residents who use private companies to plow their parking lots and driveways to place the snow on their property not in the City street. Private companies are paid to remove or place snow off the streets. When snow is plowed into the streets it creates berms and ridges in the streets which become frozen and can be a hazard to drive on.

This is a great time to be checking on neighbors to make sure they are okay. If you have senior or disabled neighbors, shoveling walks and driveways is always appreciated.

My husband, Mike and I had the privilege of helping serve at the Community dinner this year. What a great event and service to our community. When we arrived at 9 am, there had already been crews working to cook the turkeys, peel all the potatoes, prepare the yams and begin getting boxes ready for take-outs. The number of volunteers helping the Clary/Slyter team is amazing. It is great to see families helping together, parents and kids giving their time to our community. Wonderful lessons of giving for the kids. Thanks Parents.

I’m not sure of the final numbers served because many who ate in also took dinners home to friends or family that could not attend. Volunteers also came to deliver meals to those who called in for dinner. They were able to get those dinners out before 11:30 to most who called for them. I would guess that over all more than 300 meals were shared with our community. Thank you one and all who came out to help in any way or provided items for the dinner. What a wonderful community we live in.

This week is the official beginning of the Christmas season in Weiser. The Vendome is busy with preparations for the Weiser Memorial Hospital Foundation’s Festival of Trees. Trees are decorated on Monday and Tuesday. The Gala is Wednesday, Sip-N-Paint Thursday, Christmas Parade and Tree viewing and entertainment Friday night topped off with fireworks at the tree lighting at the depot and more viewing of trees and local entertainment.

The Weiser Youth Symphony will perform their Christmas Concert on Friday, December 13 at the Snake River Heritage Center beginning at 7:30. This will definitely get you in the Christmas mood and the Duck Soup Radio Brigade will be presenting “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a holiday favorite live radio play on December 6 and 7 at the Heritage Center beginning at 7 pm.

Don’t forget Santa’s arrival, the parade and fireworks this Friday night. Parade will begin at 6 pm and fireworks will follow the parade at the depot.