Election Night: November 4th, 2014
11:00pm

First of all I would like to thank all of the residents of Grand Marais for the votes that I received to officially elect me as the mayor of our town.  I am greatly humbled by the opportunity and honor to fill this position for the city.  Throughout the campaign season I have enjoyed speaking with many of the residents of Grand Marais and seek to continue doing so over the term of my service.  I have a great deal to learn about our community and can only learn that information from you all.  In order to gather this information, I would like to open up my personal email to comments as well as a blog that I am creating to publicly communicate what is going on in the City Council to whomever would like to hear it.  I will attempt to update this blog after every Council meeting so that information about each meeting is readily available to all.  The address for both of these will be listed at the end of this post.  I will also be continuing the tradition of speaking on WTIP after each meeting and will explore possibilities of having updates on Council activities posted to the boreal.org website and the newspaper through a revolving column.  If these are not possible, we will explore other ways to get this information out to the public.

Secondly, I would like to thank the sitting City Council for their service to our community over the past years.  We will be losing Bill Lenz and Bob Spry as well as Jan Sivertson this coming January.  The time and energy that they committed to our city is not only honorable, but deserves our thanks.

Thirdly, but very importantly, I would like to thank Larry "Bear" Carlson for his representation of Grand Marais.  Mr. Carlson has been a public servant for most of his life, whether it be serving the youth of the community as a teacher, or serving the wider community as the Mayor.  Larry has earned our respect and deserves the retirement he now has.  I look forward to turning to Bear for perspective in challenging moments and know that he will share his thoughts.  Thank you very much Bear.

Finally, I thank all of the four candidates for City Council.  It has been a remarkable development to see four motivated, dedicated community members step up to the plate and offer to take a leadership role.  To all four of you I say, "Keep up the good work and maintain that civic attitude!"  To Mr. Benedix and Mr. Dusheck, please remain involved;  I would love to meet with you and discuss your thoughts about our city so that your points of view can still be represented.  To Mr. Mills and Mr. Moody, I am excited to work with you for the next two years to puzzle out the next steps for our city, ways that we can respect who we are and protect what we have while making more opportunity exist in our community.

*The next step for all of the elected members is training.  We will all be attending a training session for civil servants as well as meeting to discuss what has been happening on the city stage so that we can be prepared for our time to serve come January.  Thank you all again and I look forward to serving you all in the upcoming years.

All of the best to you,
Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux

jay.a.decoux@gmail.com
grandmaraismayor.blogspot.com