Students in Rachel Lubker’s class at Seymour Middle School were lined up at the classroom door to leave when they caught sight of Seymour Mayor Matt Nicholson in the hallway.
A boy asked Nicholson, “Hey, are you the mayor?” to which Nicholson replied, “Yes, are you going to be the mayor?”
Student Brysen Shuffitt, standing behind the boy, spoke up and said he wanted to be the mayor someday, but he also wanted to go on to be the president of the United States. He also told the mayor to remember his name.
After chatting with the boys, Nicholson went next door to Josie Johnson’s seventh grade English language arts class to talk to students and answer some of their questions.
Johnson said for their last unit, her class learned about argumentative writing and read different kinds of argument writing and found the claim and evidence to support it.
“To demonstrate their learning, students wrote argument letters to someone who held a position of power, asking that person to change or consider something,” she said. “Some students in each class chose to write to the mayor with their different ideas. They all sent their letters, and the mayor’s office reached out asking if he could come in and speak to the students who wrote to him.”
Jakaih Young asked the first question, “Are we going to have a Chick-fil-A in Seymour?”
“I received several questions from you guys related to businesses, such as are we going to have a trampoline park, Chick-fil-A, a flea market and other businesses,” Nicholson said. “Remember when thinking about that, the city of Seymour doesn’t necessarily start a business, but what we do is we encourage businesses to come here.”
He gave Young and the class some suggestions as to what they can do at their young age to encourage Chick-fil-A to come to Seymour.
“You guys are a little young for Facebook, so go home and talk to mom or dad and tell them there’s a Facebook group called ‘Bring Chick-fil-A to Seymour,’ and right now, it has 457 followers,” Nicholson said. “That group was started by a local pastor, Tyler Tolbert of Central Christian Church, who came to me about six months ago and said he helped land the Chick-fil-A in Columbus and would like to do that for Seymour.”
Tolbert started a Columbus Facebook group to help bring the franchise there, and there were about 1,500 followers right out of the gate, Nicholson said.
“They had enough followers that Chick-fil-A noticed, so we’ve got to get enough followers on our page so Chick-fil-A will realize, ‘Wait a minute, maybe we can have a restaurant in Seymour,’” he said. “Even though we may not fit the demographic, tell your mom, dad, everybody and their brother to follow that Facebook page.”
Students Jennifer Lorenzo, Vilma Polanco and Kyle Acton had written to the mayor about road conditions.
“What roads are you going to fix next?” Acton asked. “The road where my bus stop is has a lot of potholes.”
Nicholson said right now, U.S. 50 is horrible and State Road 11 is a little better than U.S. 50, but the city of Seymour does not control those roads.
“As much as I would love to go pave Highway 50 right now, we can’t do it because we’re only allowed to pave our city streets,” he said. “Even though it falls within our boundaries, it’s the state of Indiana that’s in charge of those state roads.”
Every two years — and 2022 was one of those years — the city has a PASER (Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating system) rating, and every block in the city is inspected and rated from 1 to 10 — 10 being the best and one being the worst.
“Once we get done with that PASER rating, we go back through the list and see what roads are bad from our travels around town,” Nicholson said. “Every block of Seymour turns out to be about 800 blocks worth of roads, and it’s a bit of a task, but we take it very seriously.”
Using the PASER rating, the city submits an application two times a year for the state’s Community Crossings Matching Grant Program.
Since the start of 2020, the city has received 98% or $2.86 million in what has been sought, Nicholson said. The city has to provide a 50% match.
“With federal aid and CCMG, since the start of 2020, we’ve been involved in $42.3 million of roadwork,” Nicholson said. “We’re always looking at road problems and trying to solve them.”
The city currently has seven open federal aid projects, but those projects take five years to complete, he said.
“So whatever federal aid projects we’re working on right now were started when you were in the second grade,” Nicholson told the students. “Anything we start today, you’ll be graduating high school when we finish.”
Students Nicolas Matom and Gudeymer Miguel had written to ask the mayor about fixing the the soccer fields near Margaret R. Brown Elementary School.
“As much as I’d love to fix the soccer fields by Brown, I can’t because the school system owns the soccer fields,” Nicholson said. “But how do you get those fixed? You guys could talk to the superintendent or assistant superintendent.”
He said after identifying an issue, the next step is asking the right person the right questions.
Student Jamie Farmer had written to the mayor asking about school food, and he told the class, same as with the soccer fields, they would need to speak with someone at the school where they were seeking a change.
“Does a project get done if it doesn’t have somebody to champion it?” Nicholson asked the class. “That means there needs to be someone to fight for it and the one to say there’s a problem and we need to get it fixed.”
He told the class if they can identify the problem, they need to talk to somebody about it, then start that conversation to figure out who to talk to if they don’t talk to the right person the first time.
Saviere Guffey asked the mayor about the farmers market canopy, which is in need of repair.
Nicholson said when Saviere’s email came in, the city was already getting quotes to get the canopy fixed.
“Any time the city or government has to do a project, we have to get multiple quotes,” he said. “Since then, we’ve accepted a quote and we’ve got it (the canopy) taken down and it’s off being repaired, and hopefully, it will be back up before the market season starts up, but if not, we know it’s coming soon.”
Nicholson answered several other questions before leaving the class with some closing thoughts.
“When you go into freshman year, keep an eye out because every April, we have the signups for the Mayor’s Youth Council,” he said. “That’s a great chance to be get involved and share your ideas with myself and my staff and to really get involved with the community from the government side, so I encourage you to fill out that application.”
Nicholson said somebody has to be the champion of a project and keep saying, “Hey, this needs to happen.”
“We need to build a dog park there, we need to fix the roads or whatever it is, somebody has got to be willing to be that voice and willing to fight for whatever it is,” he said. “Last but not least, be positive because you get a lot more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”
Nicholson said when looking at a project or idea with a positive attitude, you’re going to be in a better mood, you’re going to get there a lot quicker and you’re going to encourage people to come along for the ride.
“Being positive will make your day easier, and it will make your days working with other people easier, and it’ll make others want to get involved in what you’re working on,” he said.