What Do I Think?

Sylacauga is a business, and we’re all stockholders. We’ve been blessed and are very fortunate, yet we need continued planning and informed execution to build on our city’s strengths, maximize our unique potential, and provide the best opportunities for the future.

Division concerns and confuses me, especially when we’re actually saying the same things. We must decisively seize every realistic opportunity, from working to recruit new businesses and industry to ensuring that current contributors to our economy remain strong and viable. We must work together to clearly articulate and promote our advantages. We must give businesses and people very good reasons to be here, to invest here, to move here, and to stay here and raise families. We must create a bigger and better labor pool, which will require better housing options and infrastructure improvements. There are many building blocks, all related, most dependent on others. And none of this is as difficult as it may seem if we’re all on the same page.

I'm not finished. There's more good work to be done.

I’m a numbers guy, and we sometimes think too small – or simply have a marketing problem. Although the population of Sylacauga is only around 12,500, thousands more live in Sylacauga ZIP codes and are part of our extended community. In fact, more than 200,000 people live within a 30-mile radius of Sylacauga, and that defines our core market. We’re close enough but not too close to Birmingham, Auburn, Montgomery, and I-20, and we are the intersection connecting those important areas.

I share pride in a city whose people work together, with a sense of urgency, to maximize the advantages of an already-perfect location as well as a collective enthusiasm for our unique raw materials, industries, businesses, education system, library, heath care providers, community organizations, recreational resources, and the many other attributes that are surely the envy of other cities.

I believe in Sylacauga -- and properly executing on a shared vision will guarantee prosperity and continued opportunity.