There’s no time like the present to look to the future. That’s the way I see the City of Mauldin’s attitude.
Eight months removed from finishing my rookie year on Mauldin City Council, I can look back and reflect on some incredible things we accomplished and continue working on.
When I began my service on council, I was assigned to chair City Council’s Recreation Committee. For me, that made sense. I’m a dad of a son who has been heavily involved in Mauldin Rec since he was old enough to play. In fact, I’m a product of Mauldin Rec myself, having played baseball, football, and soccer.
As a dad at our city’s parks, I heard parents talk. I talked, too. We have strong parental support and involvement of our recreation programs, but there’s always room for improvement, and improvement was what I wanted to see happen. It had to be a team effort, though.
Since I took office in January 2014, the first sports season I would face as Rec chairman was baseball/softball.
Our baseball and softball participation was still stronger than a lot of area leagues, but the numbers of participants had fallen sharply, and as a parent at the ballfields, I saw it happen first hand and wanted to work to reverse the trend.
If the city is a like a business, then the taxpayers and the people it serves are the customers, and I’ve been of the school of thought that when you can, you give your customers what they want. What’s the best way to find out what Mauldin Rec’s customers want? It’s simple. Ask them, and that’s what we did.
The launching point was inviting parents and coaches to participate in a giant focus group. Postponed a week by ice, when we held the meeting, we still had nearly 100 people come to the Ray Hopkins Senior Center.
I opened the meeting with a simple introduction. “This isn’t a meeting where the city is going to tell you what we’re going to do to make the program better. This is a meeting where YOU tell US what you see. What are we doing well? Where do we have to improve? This is YOUR meeting.”
The flood gates opened, and for two-and-a-half hours, we heard it all – the good and the not so good.
We took parents’ comments to heart, and while we couldn’t implement all of the changes that season, there were a lot of things we could do, and we did.
From player sign-ups to tryouts to scheduling, we worked to make immediate improvements, and a lot of them were successful. Others weren’t as successful. For instance, we couldn’t generate enough registrations to restart our softball program then, but we did this year. I’m not saying it was a perfect season, but it let Mauldin Rec hit the “reset” button and show parents and players that we as a city are committed to providing the best recreation options for our families and that there’s no need to go outside of their own city to play.
We’re still improving our Rec program and what we offer, but it’s going to continue getting better.
We’re about to implement a plan to improve facilities at Springfield Park, and you may have already noticed some of the cosmetic changes.
We have the largest rec basketball program of any municipality in Greenville County. Our youth football program is so successful, teams from outside our city are coming to us to join our league. We became the first city in the area to launch youth lacrosse as a rec sport. We became home to the South Greenville Rugby Club in their inaugural season — when they won the high school state championship. We are even home to the Kem Chho Parivar cricket club and worked with them to establish a partnership that will allow for a regulation pitch for cricket tournaments at Sunset Park.
Someone recently criticized me for focusing so heavily on recreation during my first year on council. I guess that means I did my job as Recreation Committee chairman. It was one of the issues I campaigned on, it was my duty to place a focus there.
Now, in my second year, I’m still serving on the Recreation Committee, but I was recently assigned to chair council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee. It was a bittersweet move, but thankfully we have a council dedicated to moving Mauldin forward.
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
— Taft
P.S. Want to share your thoughts? I want to know them. Feel free to either share a reply below or drop me a note from the Contact page.
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