Put your ego aside and work together

A new year means new beginnings. 2023 was a rough year for me personally so I look forward to this new beginning.

Like many of you, I lost a loved one as my father passed away in June.

It’s not easy having lost both of your parents, but life must go on and you must mentally tough enough to wade your way through it.

Enough with the sad stuff, let’s talk about the positive.

2023 was a banner year for our county in many ways.

This week’s commentary looked back at what we, The Enterprise, asked at the beginning of 2023 in a form of resolutions for our entire county.

We didn’t meet all of them, but we sure did hit the mark on some that counts the most.

The biggest, in my opinion, was the cooperation of all government entities to work together for the betterment of our town and county.

Not everything was peachy, but as time progressed, I saw more togetherness than I ever have before from our leaders.

Is everyone on the same page to move us forward? No, I won’t pretend they are. We still have some with their own agenda’s working behind the scenes to disrupt progress. That will never change when you have so many selfish, ego driven people either wanting credit or a “cut” of progress.

Don’t ask me to elaborate too much further on this, but those that are doing these things—we all see who you are and what you’re doing.

Nothing is a secret in our county. When you think you’re working secretly behind the scenes to cause an issue, you really aren’t. Those you attempt to work with always comes back and talks.

My advice, get on board with progress and quit trying to be a disrupter before you get outed, and your political career comes to an end.

Aside from those select few, many are working together, and that progress can be seen with the naked eye.

Just look around, you see a lot going on in our county and those projects are coming from different sources such as the county, city, board of education, state and Senator Robert Stivers.

I love the fact that I’m seeing cooperation. I’ve never seen it before on such a large scale.

I’ve seen political differences put aside to do what’s best for our county. I’ve seen what some people said were “enemies” working together to get things accomplished.

In your lifetime this has never happened to this extent. It’s been attempted, but it never came to fruition.

Right now, Manchester and Clay County is one of the most, if not the most, progressive places in southeastern Kentucky not named London.

What more could you ask for? We didn’t go backwards overnight, and we aren’t going to overcome our short falls quickly. This is a work in progress and if you’re an elected official, at any level, you need to stop being petty and do what’s best for our citizens.

My challenge for 2024, is for more cooperation to become evident. Agree to disagree. Put aside your ego and do what’s best for future generations.

Progress is being made, it’s time to jump on board this train or you may find it’s going to run you over.