CITY CORNER by Mayor Brent Hinckley

     This past weekend was another marvelous Round-up time for Mason and seemed to be enjoyed throughout the day by everyone who was present.  Starting with the youngsters and the Stick Horse race, the fabulous Parade and farm animal race, the whole day of craft and food booths on the lawn, as well as music and Queen’s Court presentation, and ending with the Rodeo and Dance till late in the night.  Anyone who tried to participate in most all of the events ended up tired, overheated and happy!!  After nearly thirty years of living and working on the Square and seeing every Round-up, this was one of the best and certainly was a very well attended weekend.  All of the activities were successful mostly because of the many, many volunteers that spent time, effort and a good bit of sweat to make everything happen smoothly and deal with all of the details.  If you see any of those volunteers, please take a minute to say “THANK YOU” for all of their commitment, whether they are part of the Chamber, the Rodeo Association, a parade float sponsor, a vendor on the lawn, or a City employee taking care of one of the many other tasks.  It takes an army of volunteers to make a successful event like our Round-up run smoothly, and this year was one of the best!!

     It has been hot every day, but the rains have been most welcome, and the weather has had a way of making me feel somewhat foolish most weeks this summer.  It seems that every time I write a few sentences about needing to be aware of water conservation we have another rain shower pop up and water the grass and trees.  So I will try to help with another rain and remind all of our residents that as the heat dries out the landscape we need to be careful with how much water we use to keep it green.  We are not in the middle of a drought as we were a few years ago, but it is still a concern every summer that we conserve our water so that we can continue to meet the many important needs of our community.  During the coming year we will be working on planning and constructing a water treatment facility to remove most of the radionuclides from our water supply, and we are all concerned that while we will likely spend more than a million dollars to install and treat our water, we will continue to see over half of the water used each summer poured out on the ground to keep everything green.  Next year we will be seeing “expensive” water sprinkling Mason yards and I hope that we can each practice better water conservation now so that we will have better and less costly habits a year from now.

     Another issue that is keeping us busy at the City office at this time of year is working out the annual budget for the coming year.  Every governmental unit has to complete the budget process by the end of September, and estimating and refiguring the many portions of the City budget is a full time job for several weeks every summer.  The Mayor is the Budget Officer and the City Administrator is the operations supervisor, and we have certainly begun the process and will present our first worksheet to the City Commission this week.  However, there will be several more changes and adjustments made before we are satisfied that we are presenting the right projections for approval.  We will file a copy with the City Secretary in August that will be available to any citizen who wishes to review it, but before then we are very interested in hearing from you if there is a suggestion of idea that would positively impact our expenditures and revenues next year.   If you have some thoughts on how we look at spending your public funds, I would be pleased to hear from you at brent.hinckley@cityofmason.us and I can promise every idea will be given consideration.  There may very well be some good suggestion that we have not seen before and often those are the best ways to improve our hometown and make it better for all of us.  I hope to hear from you, and I have always known that local government works best when everyone has an opportunity to contribute to the wellbeing of the entire community.  This past Round-up weekend is a great example of why Mason is the best hometown in Texas, and working together we will continue to improve it for our visitors and for all of us who live and work here.