On Tuesday, the Oakley City Council voted to appoint Aaron Meadows as Mayor and Anissa Williams as vice mayor.
The move to appoint Meadows was made by Councilmember George Fuller, it was then approved unanimously. Newly elected councilmember Shannon Shaw nominated Anissa Williams which was approved in a 4-0-1 vote with Councilmember George Fuller abstaining.
At the meeting, newly elected councilmembers Hugh Henderson and Shannon Shaw took the Oath of Office after earning council seats after the Nov. 8 election was certified.
Mayor Meadows offered the following remarks after being appointed mayor:
I am honored to be on the council and as mayor. I’ve lived here my whole life, my family has been here since 1899. So, I am honored to sit in this position. I’d like to thank staff for all your hard work over the years and guide the city to what we have today. I’d like to thank my family who is here in the audience, I appreciate what they have done to help me get here.
I think we live in a great city, we are small. Sometimes forgotten but if you look at the cities that surround us, this is a great place to be.
I’d like to recognize the recreation team for all the events, massive amount of events that they put on every year that are high quality, great job. Thank you Lindsey, I look forward to seeing what you do in 2023.
Two years ago when I ran, I had two main reasons. Public safety and economic development. Those two items go hand-in-hand, if we don’t have economic development, we don’t have public safety. So my priorities for this year is I’d like the city in our budgeting process this year to increase the number of officers that we have allocated. We have a plan in place to add officers, I’d like to see that accelerated. And I’ve asked our city manager to work on that.
Second priority I’ve mentioned is economic development. A few months ago we hired a consultant to work on an economic development plan that should be presented in Spring of 2023, once presented working on what is included in that plan. We have a great logistics center that has been built thanks to a previous city council in your efforts to get that placed. It’s huge for Oakley, I want to built on that, we have land around it we can take advantage of and we need to. That center obviously being built out now, but we can take advantage of some of the surrounding areas.
There is also axillary bossiness we can bring in. As an example, if you noticed the social media update, you will notice projects submitted, we have 117 room hotel that has been submitted to be built, if approved, behind Dutch Brothers. Those are the types of businesses that the logistics center and the expansion of the logistics center will bring in which helps with our tax base.
In this next year, I want to see us updating our downtown specific plan and updating our zoning ordinances we have talked about for two-years.
This year, the city council has taken major steps to improve our infrastructure in the eastern end of the city, we have approved contracts for E. Cypress Road. The extension to Dutch Slough to Delta, I want to see us continuing to work on that. Also, we approved a design contract for the Laurel extension bridge going over the BNSF tracks.
A few other projects that I believe will be a priority this year, implementation of a new ERP software with our ARPA funding. The master plan for a park at the end of Sellers and working towards a library.
I look forward to working with staff and my fellow councilmembers in 2023.
Thank you,
You may watch the meeting, by clicking here.
