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About the City By Councilman Kingery Let me start by thanking all of you that voted to give me another four years to serve you on the Douglas City Council. I really appreciate the confidence you have and I will continue to do the very best I can to help the council make the best decisions we can. Next I want to thank all people that voted for Bruce Jones for Mayor, those voting for Bob Chiapusio, those that voted for John Bartling, those that voted for Steve Sorell and those that voted for John Crockett. I want to thank John Bartling, Steve Sorell, John Crockett, Bruce Jones and Bob Chiapuzio for running; without you we would not have had an election with a choice as we did. It takes courage to put your name and reputation out there and let people vote as they see fit. And a second thank you for everyone that went out to vote, without you we cannot have elections and you don't get the representation you want. Over the last, almost, four years we have tried our best to make wise decisions that would benefit the people and the City of Douglas. We may not have always been successful, but we always did what we believed was best at the time. I have every reason to believe that with John Bartling as our new Council member we will continue to work as a team and to do what we believe is best for the citizens of Douglas. We will miss you Dave! Welcome to the Douglas City Council John Bartling and I look forward to working with you for the next four years. I had an interesting election eve conversation with a lady that I assume called me to learn more about me. She started by asking me which political party I lined up with. Even though the City Council position is non-partisan and has nothing to do with the Republican or Democratic, or any other political party, I explained that I have always been registered as a Republican, however I have never voted a straight ticket, but for the person who I thought would be the better person for the position. I explained that at this time I have very little confidence in either the Democrats or Republicans and don't feel either party is serving our country very well. Her next question really caught me off guard because it has absolutely nothing to do with the City or the City Council; nothing we have dealt with or that I would expect to deal with on the City Council. She wanted to know how I felt about "same sex" marriage. Now maybe if I were running for a State office or National office I would expect to get asked about that, but certainly not for City Council. And by the way, I think our State and National leaders have a lot more important issues that they should be dealing ---PAGE BREAK--- with than this. Anyway I told her that this issue was nothing to do with City Council and had no bearing on my performance on the council. She felt things could change very quickly and it might be important soon. I'm sure I wasn't too nice about explaining that if my last fours years on City Council hadn't shown who I am and how I function then this issue was not going to help with that. In fact I remember telling her that if this was an important issue to know about me then she should vote for someone else! In her defense, it is in the news now! If I heard her name correctly I had recently visited with her husband and he had told me they were now living out in the country, so she couldn't vote for me anyway, unless of course she didn't tell them at the voting place that she had moved out of town! And even on City Council we do have to take an oath to uphold the laws of the land! The city council and the county commissioners met at our breakfast this week and discussed the new joint dispatch, sheriff's office and police department being planed as the first phase of a new Justice Center for the near future. We are moving ahead with architectural plans and design work to come up with more accurate cost figures. The City of Douglas, the County and the City of Glenrock are working together to come up with what we hope will soon be a reality for our communities. The planned second phase of the project will add a new jail and court system to the complex. At present we are looking at the far east end of the old airport property as a proposed location. Plans are still in progress for the proposed new Recreation Center for Douglas and an addition on the Glenrock Recreation Center. This proposal will be brought to a vote for the community members probably in the spring to find out whether the citizens want these projects. Until the vote is passed or rejected we will not know whether this is going be a reality or just a dream for the future.