The Blue Light Podcast, hosted by Tyler Ramsbey, has been a way to help promote Garretson, its people, and its businesses since its inception. It has been popular enough that he has now expanded it to Dell Rapids and Pipestone. The podcast is streamed live each week on Facebook, with Tyler interviewing his featured guest for approximately 15-20 minutes.
Mayor Greg Beaner was a guest on the Blue Light Podcast last Wednesday, February 19. It was his fourth visit to the podcast, and similar to the Fireside Chats done by President Franklin Roosevelt, it has been a good way for the mayor to explain City happenings and respond publicly to questions members of the community may have.
This interview transcript has been modified for length and clarity. The interviews in full may always be found by searching for the Blue Light Podcast on Facebook, and the video can be viewed above.
Tyler: You’re currently in your first term as mayor, do I have that correct?
Greg: Yep.
Tyler: And how long have you been mayor now? Are you coming to the end of that term?
Greg: Yes. This is the end of that two years. I just turned in my petition at the end of last week to run again.
Tyler: Cool. I’m gonna run against you- I’m just kidding. I’m not really going to.
Greg: Go ahead! I think the more people that run, the better, because that gives people the choice. They can pick the best candidates, and that’s just the way it is.
Tyler: So you’re coming to the end of your two-year term, and this was your first term as mayor, but you were on the City Council for a pretty significant amount of time. How long were you on council before you became the mayor?
Greg: About sixteen years.
Tyler: Sixteen years. So you’ve had a lot of experience in that leadership role over our community; I’m sure being a mayor is a little bit different.
Greg: Oh, it was way different.
Tyler: So, what are some of the challenges as the mayor for the past two years that you’ve had to overcome; and then on the positive side, what are some of the joys?
Greg: Honestly, the biggest challenge was the street project.
Tyler: That wasn’t your favorite?
Greg: No, there were so many meetings with lawyers. Yeah, you laugh about it, but it’s not funny. Because, it was so frustrating, like, ‘if you had just done your job, we wouldn’t be at this point.’ And I felt really bad for all the people on Main Street, and all the insecurity, and thinking, ‘this guy is going to tear up our Main street and really hurt our businesses.’ I want what’s best for our community, and like I told [City Finance Supervisor] Anna [Uhl], it’s so frustrating to have to deal with this, but this is an absolute necessary, and we have good lawyers, and we’re going to use them.
Tyler: Love it, and we’ll dig a little more into that whole conversation. Before we get into that, what have been some of your favorite things in the past two years of being the Mayor of Garretson?
Greg: You know, my favorite thing- have you seen the development down on the south end of town? Signing that TIF, knowing that by doing this, you’re going to be expanding our community, you’re going to be bringing more people here. Frontline Ag Solutions, seeing that giant building go in; the new house right on the west end of Split Rock Creek. Seeing stuff grow and expand- that was my goal and that’s what I like to see.
Tyler: And as we talk about that new development, is there any type of timeline where we’re going to have new houses for people to move into?
Greg: Well, I think the weather- the plan was that stuff was going to be ready last fall. But there was so much rain-
Tyler: It was a crazy season for construction in general.
Greg: So, the plan is going to be this spring. They should be ready to go. They’ve got everything laid out, they’ll be surfacing everything, setting up the infrastructure, and that’s it.
Tyler: What does Garretson have in place- not to offend my friends in Brandon, but one of the problems with Brandon is that they grew so rapidly that they’re having infrastructure problems, they’re having water issues-
Greg: Sewer issues-
Tyler: Yeah, so what does Garretson have in place so that doesn’t happen in our community?
Greg: You know, I think that could happen to anybody really easily, if you’re not looking towards the future. Funny story, Bruce Brown and I were in the election. He gave me a book after I won the election, and it was, I believe, “Ten Ways to Ruin Your Community.” And at first I thought, this is kind of a weird book, but then I read it, and everything in there was absolutely incredibly true. If you’re not going to plan for future water usage, future sewer, and future natural gas, you’re just going to stop the growth in your community.
I actually emailed the author after I read the book, because he talked about how competition is good in a city, you should never not block people from coming to your community, because everybody coming makes it a better community. It was a good book.
Tyler: If anyone is interested in city leadership, or just how to make our community better, even if you’re not the mayor of Garretson, I think that would probably be an excellent book for all of us to read who have an interest in making Garretson a better place.
Greg: The author’s from Canada, and everything he was talking about, I’ve seen it here, I’ve seen it in my hometown of Miller- it was good.
Tyler: A question was submitted by a community member about the City Park. Were there any plans to increase the size of the park, add anything new, add any new parking; is that in the conversation at all right now?
Greg: Not right now. So, Garretson’s the City of Parks. Obviously we take our parks very seriously. We created a Park Board, and they’ll make a recommendation to the City what they want, and then we go from there. I made a list, and there’s a lot of stuff going on at the parks. We’re putting in security cameras, we just had a meeting with RoverPass and Bruce Rekstad, who’s the [campground] manager of the park right now. But we’re going to have on-line reservations, make it easier for people to use. That way, we can track numbers of how many people are actually camping at the campground, we can try to improve that. They’re working on a plan to do a picnic shelter, another picnic shelter in the park. Tom Godbey, one of the council members, would like to donate the money to build that as a memorial to his father, which is really cool. Benches are going in this spring; we’re doing new camping markers. I think the really long-term project is to get the bathhouse. We need to put a roof on it. The flat roof, it’s just not lasting; we need an overhang on it. It needs to be re-tuckpointed, and we just need to make that nicer.
Tyler: Cool, and one of the coolest things about the park are the Movies in the Park this summer. Real quick advertisement; throughout the summer the Parks Board shows 3 or 4 movies at the City Park called “Movies in the Park.” They’re doing it again this year, I’m pretty sure, because they sent me a text asking if they could use our equipment again and if I could help set it up again. So be on the lookout for Movies in the Park this summer, which is always a fun event as long as we’re not carried away by mosquitos.
Greg: And like, the Christmas Lights in the park, that was all the Parks Board. They’ve done an awesome job. They have so many great ideas. If you could give them an unlimited budget and just say, “Here you go,” we’d have the best park in the state.
Part Two of this interview will be published in next week’s Gazette.
