Excerpt from My State of the Cities Address

Excerpt from my Comments 

Tom Buck, Mayor, City of Farmington

For the State of the Cities Event February, 2013

Thank you to the Greater Farmington Area Chamber of Commerce for creating this event, and congratulations to Ken Paulson, the new Chamber President for 2013. Also, thanks to all the sponsors led by Bosch and Botsford.

Many years ago Peter F. Drucker wrote

 “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

I am excited because we are seeing our hopes and dreams for development and new growth happen in Farmington.  Today I get to talk about progress and success!  These past few years, our emotions probably included fearful, frustrated, aggravated, and discouraged.  Now for it is excited and hopeful.

This is always my opportunity to talk about our little and proud city of Farmington.  A city and a community I am so pleased to live in and to have friends and family living and working here because I know it is safe, I know it is full of healthy and fun activities and I know it has good roads and water and services.  Farmington is full of life!

We have a pretty dramatic evolution over the last dozen years in how we do business. We have worked hard on building a YES orientation.  My perception is that our DDA and council have evolved to find ways to say YES to developers, to businesses.  We do this through new ordinances, through new programs, through funding and infrastructure development, by accelerating our review processes, by enhancing the communication process and by inviting developers and development at every opportunity.

Of course, somehow though we still do say no to things like chickens and foxes, and maybe that is appropriate, even though we are FARMington.  Today we are an urban environment and we grow things beyond gardens; like restaurants, families, experiences, gatherings, festivals, fun, involvement and more.

More tomorrow . . . . .