The City of Margaret currently has a vacancy in the position of City Clerk.

Before anything else is said about what comes next, I want to say thank you to Tabitha for the time she spent serving our city and helping keep City Hall moving forward. She stepped into an important role during a period of change and carried a tremendous amount of responsibility. I appreciate the work she did for Margaret and I wish her nothing but the best moving forward.

I also want to say something that I believe needs to be said about our employees.

Public service is not easy.

The people working at City Hall, in Public Works, Police, Fire, Court and throughout this city deal with problems most people never see. They answer the phones when someone is angry. They deal with emergencies, water leaks, paperwork, payroll, permits, court cases and a hundred other things that simply have to get done. They do it while being questioned, criticized and sometimes treated as though they are pieces on a political chessboard.

That is not how I believe we should treat people.

There is a difference between holding employees accountable and making employees collateral damage in political fights. Accountability is necessary. Disagreement is part of government. But the people who come to work every day to serve Margaret deserve basic respect and the opportunity to do their jobs without wondering which political battle they are going to be dragged into next.

That responsibility applies to all of us who hold elected office. The Mayor and City Council will not always agree. We are not supposed to. Debate, questions and disagreement are part of representative government.

But there is something else that matters just as much: respecting the roles the people elected each of us to fill.

There are people who may imagine themselves sitting in the Mayor’s chair. They may want the authority that comes with this office or believe they would exercise it differently. They are certainly entitled to believe that.

But imagining you are the Mayor does not make you the Mayor.

The people of Margaret decide who occupies that office. They made that decision at the ballot box, just as they decided who would represent them on the City Council. Each of us was entrusted with a role to perform. Good government requires us to respect those roles, even when we disagree with the person occupying them.

And our employees should never be caught in the middle of elected officials trying to exercise authority that the people did not give them.

No employee should be intimidated, personally attacked, pressured or put in the middle of a political dispute simply because someone is unhappy with a decision, an elected official or the direction of the city. If there is a disagreement about policy, authority or the operation of the city, elected officials should have that disagreement with each other and leave employees out of it.

Our employees are not political pawns. They are people with jobs to do, families to go home to and a community they are trying to serve. They deserve to be treated that way.

Meanwhile, our employees are the ones actually doing the work.

They are keeping the water running. They are answering calls. They are responding to emergencies. They are processing paperwork. They are maintaining our roads and facilities. They are helping residents at the counter. They are keeping Margaret moving while the politics swirls around them.

I see that work and I appreciate it.

That is also one of the reasons we started our Employee of the Month program at City Hall five months ago. It is a small way to recognize the people who work hard every day, serve our residents and often do a lot of that work without anyone ever seeing it.

A certificate or a little recognition cannot fully express what our employees give to this city, but I believe it matters for people to know that their work is seen, their effort is appreciated and what they do for Margaret matters.

To every City of Margaret employee: thank you.

Working in public service is a sacrifice. You could take your talents somewhere quieter. Instead, you come to work for your neighbors and your community. I will continue doing everything within my authority as Mayor to build a workplace where good employees are supported, expectations are clear and people are treated with dignity.

We will fill the City Clerk vacancy. City Hall will continue operating. The work will continue.

Because of this transition, I am postponing our next City Council meeting to give us time to fill the Clerk position and make sure City Hall has the time needed to properly prepare for the meeting. I hope we will not have to cancel the meeting altogether, but I also have to deal with the situation in front of us and play the hand I was dealt.

I am not going to put additional pressure on our employees just to keep a date on the calendar. We will take the time we need, get our house in order and move forward.

Margaret is our home. Every day, there are good people quietly working to make it better.

That is where my attention will remain.