{"id":61965,"date":"2014-04-01T22:24:58","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T04:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longstanding-board-member-bids-adieu\/"},"modified":"2014-04-02T04:24:58","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T04:24:58","slug":"longstanding-board-member-bids-adieu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longstanding-board-member-bids-adieu\/","title":{"rendered":"Longstanding board member bids adieu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The town board recognizes Mayor Pro Tem Perry Lewis for 10 years of service as a board member at his last meeting on March 26. Trustee Todd Kearns presents Lewis with a certificate of appreciation. Lewis said serving had been an honor.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After 10 years as a board member, Mayor Pro Tem Perry Lewis was recognized for his work at his last meeting.<\/p>\n

Trustee Todd Kearns presented a certificate of appreciation on behalf of the board at the March 26 meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to dig back into what projects Perry\u2019s been involved with, and we kind of decided every project,\u201d Kearns said.<\/p>\n

Looking back on his time in office, Lewis later told The Mancos Times that he was proud to be apart of bringing high-speed fiber-optic lines to Mancos and stabilizing the Town Marshal\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Lewis gave a presentation to the board about the need for high-speed lines, and a member questioned the need for it.<\/p>\n

Now, new fiber lines are nearly complete, and Lewis is pleased to leave the town knowing it will soon have competitive Internet service to offer businesses.<\/p>\n

After seeing at least five town marshals come and go, he was also happy the office is no longer a stepping stone for officers fresh out of the academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pleased to say our law enforcement is stellar,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Learning about the finer points of infrastructure and making longterm decisions for the town was rewarding for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it. I really did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the responsibility passed to newly elected trustees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got the political bug out of my system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the future, he hopes the town will take action to foster greater economic diversity and develop downtown in partnership with private landowners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be aggressive, and we need to step up and say what are the steps the town can do to partner, to encourage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With greater economic diversity the town could collect more sales taxes and be able to invest in needed infrastructure improvements, he said.<\/p>\n

Lewis is hopeful that the new board members and a town administrator will be able to take the right steps to help the community encourage smart growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow is the time for Mancos to prosper,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

accomplishments, with hope for future<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[640,13,896],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-award-and-prize","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61965"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}