This Week in Addison: A Message from Mayor Todd Meier

Dear Neighbor,

What do you get when The Original Pancake House whips ups some tasty hotcakes in Addison Circle on a chilly Saturday? Well, you get nearly 2,300 really hungry runners! Last Saturday’s sold-out Hotcake Hustle 5K & 10K race and 1K Fun Run was a tremendous success by any measure. Presented by the Addison Midday Rotary, the annual Hotcake Hustle benefitted the Teen Contact Crisis program—over $37,000 was raised! We had lots of great volunteers, including our Council members, the great folks from the Midday Rotary, sponsors, and other community folks wanting to have fun and make a difference at the same time. Nutrition specialists take note: this year’s runners regiment included hotcakes and beer…seems like with that kind of training table, Run On! and the Midday Rotary team better plan for another record breaking Hotcake Hustle in 2013!

Ready, Set, Go! 2012 Hotcake Hustle! Photo by Ron Whitead

Addison Construction Updates

As you hopefully have noticed, our new Water Tower is looking more and more like the planned iconic merger of art and technology as the high tech wind turbines are atop their perch. This project continues to be on schedule. The wind turbines are scheduled to be operational by the end of February and the entire project complete and operational by the end of August.

Water Tower wind turbines are up and in place!

Belt Line Road is a very important component of our Addison Brand, and as such, warrants our close and constant attention and investment. I’m often asked when Belt Line Road will be finished: The project is moving in phases, with the current median irrigation, landscape, curb repair and lighting project will likely be completed by mid-March.

Economic Development

In the last several months, we have successfully brought ten new businesses and over 1,000 new jobs to our Town, partly as a result of our intensive economic development efforts. Never to be forgotten in our success is the long standing excellent reputation we have as a business friendly community that welcomes and nurtures entrepreneurship. Whether it be the 33 years of success that the Remington’s have had with their restaurant on Belt Line Road, or the expansion of newly arrived Contemporary Research with their high-tech audio visual business on Excel Parkway, or Edward Bauman Clothiers in their historic building on the corner of Addison Road and Arapaho owned by Bob Bauman and his wife Laura—they all chose Addison as the place to make their dreams happen. We have been and will continue to be a magnet for entrepreneurs that want the right environment to launch their business and to build their futures where they can tap the intellect of our community as a resource. Our recent successes are not an overnight phenomenon, rather a manifestation of years of excellent team work with our City Council developing sound policy, and our outstanding city manager and staff building a superior service organization. That combination is our foundation that will continue to bring us even more success. We have elevated the dialogue about our Town and we are spreading the word; Addison is the place to be!

Council News

On Monday, our Council held an important work session with three significant agenda items. Our first agenda item was an update and discussion regarding 2011 Year in Review. This report touches on SOME of the highlights of an excellent year for our Town, and on the accomplishments of our leadership team and staff. This was a very important moment for celebrating our successes of 2011, with each senior staff member commenting on their most important accomplishment and why it was meaningful to them. This does not overlook the challenges we still face. In fact it energizes all of us to aggressively take on those challenges using our experiences, abilities and talents that we used to achieve good things in 2011–now onward to even more to celebrate in 2012!!!

Agenda Item #2 on at work session included a status report from Ron and our staff on the progress we are making on the 17 initiatives of our Strategic Plan. We reviewed all 17 prioritized initiatives and listened to the tactics being used to accomplish and build on each of the Council goals and objectives. We have made outstanding progress on several, just getting started on a few, and a few we have yet to focus on—and that is all OK—we’re not even at the mid-point of our “Year,” which ends September 30. This is an excellent process and forms the basis of so much of what we do and how we do it…I’ll keep you informed.

Item #3 was a discussion regarding future Council initiatives. This was an opportunity for Council to review the recent list of new ideas brought forward by each Council member and determine if we should proceed with the idea, if so, how and when. This was an excellent discussion that helped guide staff in allocating time and resources to these initiatives, and will help build our portfolio of ideas and thoughts for our Strategic Planning sessions later this summer.

On Friday, Council Members Bruce Arfsten, Chris DeFrancisco and I were guests of the good folks at DART for a tour of their light rail lines and operations in downtown Dallas. We spent all morning riding and learning more about their system, and of course, at every opportunity, reminded all of them the need for the Cotton Belt to get started and come to Addison! As you all know, this is an important priority for the Town and we are all pushing to make this happen.

Other Addison News

Special thanks to Bill Wallace and his team at Success North Dallas for their Wednesday breakfast. Their event featured Fred Richards, a world renowned speaker who gave us his rather sobering view of the world economy. He focused on the sovereign debt issues around the world, the loss of purchasing power in developed countries, and the relative impact on those countries GDP.

Thursday evening we had our third Thursday of the month Mayor’s coffee at Astoria at 6: 00 p.m. Thanks to those of you who joined us for a very informal chat and Q&A. I really enjoy this time to connect with residents and make sure I’m picking-up what’s important to you—our next Mayor’s Coffee will be Wednesday, Feb. 1 at Dunn Bros Coffee—hope to see you there.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, January 24, 6:30 p.m.: City Council work session followed by our Regular Council meeting at 7:30 p.m., both at Town Hall.

Wednesday January 25, 11:30am -1:00 p.m.: Metrocrest Chamber of Commerce luncheon at our Addison Conference and Theatre Centre.

Please visit www.addison2012.com for a complete calendar of all of Addison’s upcoming events.

I hope you all have a great week…see you soon.

Todd