A Mayor’s Farewell

A let­ter to the com­mu­ni­ty from Fri­day Har­bor May­or Farhad Ghatan…

Farhad Ghatan

As I reflect on my past eight years work­ing for this coun­cil and the Town I so dear­ly love, I am filled with grat­i­tude for those who have seen fit to allow me to rep­re­sent their inter­ests as well as those who have made this jour­ney such a plea­sure. My thanks go out to our loy­al and devot­ed employ­ees who see our ideas, plans and poli­cies to fruition.

Our pub­lic works depart­ment is always will­ing to make improve­ments that affect our dai­ly lives. From cre­at­ing one of the State’s top water sys­tems to award win­ning improve­ments to streets, side­walks and parks, as well as man­ag­ing a com­plex sew­er, stormwa­ter and refuse sys­tem, the crew nev­er gets enough appre­ci­a­tion for their efforts.

Town admin­is­tra­tion has always been such a plea­sure to work with. Our finance depart­ment has kept us in com­pli­ance with state and fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors and more impor­tant­ly, in the black through down­turns and oth­er fis­cal chal­lenges. Our com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment and plan­ning depart­ment has risen to new chal­lenges and are work­ing to bring in an era of moder­ni­ty to all aspects of their realm. We have been so for­tu­nate to have a sys­tems admin­is­tra­tor who con­tin­u­al­ly brings us ideas on improv­ing our data secu­ri­ty, elec­tron­ics and a host of sys­tems upgrades that will keep us ahead in this ever chang­ing world, and then builds, installs and pro­grams them himself.

Spe­cial thanks goes to the Town clerk Amy Tay­lor who makes sure the May­or is well pre­pared for meet­ings but also makes sure the May­or is doing his job cor­rect­ly. Her grasp of gov­ern­ment func­tion is com­pre­hen­sive and impressive.

And then there’s the 10 mil­lion dol­lar man, Dun­can Wilson… 

…our ded­i­cat­ed admin­is­tra­tor, who has made so much of this mag­ic hap­pen for the Town. His cre­ativ­i­ty, com­mit­ment and per­sua­sive nature have been a boon to us all and I am so grate­ful to have been able to work with him and this Dream Coun­cil, with cred­it for that title going to Howie Rosen­feld. His assis­tant, Julie Greene, has been crit­i­cal to coor­di­na­tion, research and many behind the scenes efforts.

Our coun­cil’s thought­ful­ness, care­ful delib­er­a­tions and strong com­mit­ment to doing what is right for the com­mu­ni­ty have made my job easy. I still remem­ber past coun­cils with their indi­vid­ual spe­cial inter­ests and the dys­func­tion that accom­pa­nied each meet­ing. You have risen above that and I am con­tent in know­ing this lega­cy will con­tin­ue to flour­ish under my suc­ces­sor. There is still a lot of unfin­ished busi­ness that we have been work­ing on togeth­er and I hope you will find the sup­port and enthu­si­asm you had from Dun­can and myself in your new May­or and administrator.

I began work­ing with the Town in the mid 90’s as a vol­un­teer, appoint­ed to the plan­ning com­mis­sion. It was at this lev­el that I grew to appre­ci­ate serv­ing my com­mu­ni­ty. To all of the vol­un­teers that make up our var­i­ous com­mis­sions, Plan­ning, His­toric Preser­va­tion and Arts, a sin­cere thank you for your hours of com­mit­ted work to fur­ther improve the qual­i­ty of life for our res­i­dents. With­out pub­lic involve­ment gov­ern­ment tends to drift. I believe much of the suc­cess of our com­mu­ni­ty is due to the fact that the real peo­ple of con­se­quence have become involved. To you, my deep­est appreciation.

Thank you
Farhad Ghatan

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