Houston smiles at the suggestion that city hall is an aircraft carrier. “It’s pretty hard, if you think about putting an aircraft carrier in Lake Springfield and turning it around – that’s a pretty apt description,” the mayor says. “That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
Changes at city hall
Nine people are sitting in a city hall conference room, waiting to see Houston, who has opened his office once a month so that anyone can talk to the mayor, first come, first served. They started showing up nearly an hour before the scheduled 5:30 p.m. start time.
They are here for all sorts of reasons.
John Crisp, president of the Harriet Tubman/Susan B. Anthony Women’s Self Help Center, wants help finding space for his group that helps kids and women, which is being forced out of a building on South Grand Avenue. Mark Kessler, owner of Recycled Records, thinks that downtown merchants should have a greater say in organizing the annual Route 66 Mother Road Festival. Margaret Collins wants the city to restore branch libraries and expand library hours at the main branch.
This is the second time that Crisp has come to meet-the-mayor night at city hall. He came away empty-handed during the last meeting in July.
“He was talking about how the city’s in trouble,” Crisp said. “He wanted to get on his feet – maybe a little later on or something.”
For Crisp, tonight is a little later on. As he waits for a 10-minute audience, he says the mayor appears to be doing a good job, although it is early.
“I admire him for being brave enough to try running Springfield at all,” Crisp says.
Crisp came out of the meeting with no assurances.
“He listened,” Crisp says. “He didn’t say yay or nay either way.”
Collins says that she didn’t vote for Houston, but she praises the mayor for hiring a consultant to evaluate personnel – Springfield is so rife with politics that a third party is needed, she says, and she fears lawsuits if the process isn’t done properly. The city needed stability after former Mayor Tim Davlin committed suicide last December, she adds.
“I think he’s doing a good job,” Collins said. “I think we were at a period of unstableness – we were at a period of distress. For some reason, we trust him and we expect him to do the right thing. I think he has brought about a certain amount of healing in this community.”
