Village President Bill Fleming Brings Insight to New Village Board

By Doris Elmore
Staff Writer

A special meeting of the Atwood Village Board was held on Monday, May 24, for the purpose of hearing recommendations and swearing in of trustees to fill the vacancies on the board. The trustees offered the names of Christine Stoltz, Diane Eagan and David Ard.

Atwood Village Clerk Nancy Wierman swore in Stoltz and Eagan. Ard was unable to be present and will be sworn in at the next meeting. A picture of the entire board will be published when they have sworn in Ard.

Village President Bill Fleming read from a letter he had given to each trustee. “Thank you for your willingness to serve on the village board. As the saying goes, ‘It’s a thankless job’, but we all want to see our community grow and do its best to serve our residents and provide the best services we can. I’m grateful that we will be serving and working together to make that happen.”

“I would like to share a vision and some goals that I hope we can agree on and work towards as a team. I do have some ideas and thoughts that I hope we can discuss and (collectively as a team) make decisions, set priorities and work together to accomplish many great things for Atwood and our residents.”

“As I’ve been studying and working on the next fiscal budget, it appears the past fiscal year will come in under budget and we will end up with reserves in nearly every fund of the village. I’m convinced the current board has done a very good job with the village financial resources.”

Fleming continued, “My vision for our team is that there are no village secrets among us, politics and no power struggles among us. While we all have different personalities and ways to express ourselves – we also have various backgrounds, ideas and talents to bring to the team. My desire is that we work within our team to:

•Gather & discuss information and ideas.

•Seek the opinions and advice from fellow team members and be open-minded enough that our minds can be changed.

•Seek consensus and when a decision is made, support the outcome without grudges or hurt feelings – and,

•Realize that we all make mistakes and we don’t have all the answers. When mistakes are made that we will work to correct them, not place blame – and then move on to the next opportunity.

As far as some specific goals, I’d like every village committee to develop a 3-year plan of the areas each committee oversees – with Year 1 being this coming fiscal year. After each committee submits their 3-year plan, the board will take each committee’s plan and incorporate the items that the board agrees with and develop a village board 3-year plan. We will use this plan to track our progress and to develop future FY budgets to accomplish the items in our plan.”

This is just a portion of Fleming’s letter, but the trustees should be proud to work with a VP with such a positive attitude.

One of the highlights of the meeting occurred when Fleming announced to the board that Steve Tenhouse, CEO of Kirby Medical Center, recently announced that the Kirby board met and agreed to donate the present Kirby Medical Center in Atwood to the Village of Atwood when they vacate the building and move into their new facility with Sav-Mor Pharmacy on Rt. 36 in August. Tenhouse met with the Atwood Economic Develop Committee and President Fleming to let them know of this decision. Atwood Village Attorney Kenny Crossman will work to prepare legal transfer documents.

Fleming distributed a list of village employees and committees. This will appear in next week’s edition.

Fleming stated that he did not have a “warm and fuzzy” feeling about the Central Square accounting software that was purchased a few years ago. It is not user friendly, no IT support, no training included and is expensive.

The board decided to discontinue association with Central Square and move to the firm that provides support with the Village Auditor Kevin Buckley. This will be Quick Books which is user friendly and more economical.

The next meeting of the board will be held on Monday, June 14, at 7 p.m. All residents are invited to attend the open meetings and learn more about the workings of the village board.