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By NATHAN MARCHAND
Mayor Ted Ellis is a record holder. He has the longest tenure as mayor in Bluffton’s history after being elected to his fourth consecutive term in November 2007, for a total of 12 years of service (so far).
He’s seen a lot of changes since taking office in 1996, but as the old saying goes, some things never change.
The biggest change Ellis has seen was in the area of communications.
“When I sat at my desk January 1, 1996, there was no computer on the desk,” said Ellis. “I had just begun using e-mail. My calendar was on a little pocket calendar.”
He added that the previous mayor, Everett “Tuck” Faulkner, had given him a mobile phone that had to be kept in a bag the size of a purse. “It looked like one of those old Army telephones, but it was high-tech stuff because it was in a bag and you could carry it around.”
He still has that phone.
“And from that, imagine life without Google or e-mail,” he added. “It’s tremendously sped up the pace of everything.”
He said previous mayors kept their calendars on a desk blotter and the secretary would just look at it to see what was on the schedule. Now everything is networked.
“I look back and wonder how they functioned,” said Ellis, “but they didn’t have to move that quickly. The system is your limitation.”
During the interview, Ellis produced his smartphone and looked up his schedule from his first week in office. He had five appointments that whole week. On May 12 (the day of the interview), he had six appointments that day alone.
As for physical changes to the city, Ellis said when he became mayor, everything “between Madison Street and Monroe Street was being farmed, so the retail has exploded on that side of town. A lot of that has to do with Wal-Mart coming in.”
He added, “There’s also been a lot of residential growth out in the Woodlands and (the area) off of Monroe Street.”
He also said downtown has seen some changes.
“When I was here, we had 60 decorative lights. There are 160 of them now. When you’re around here all the time, you get used to those changes, but every once in a while I’ll have someone who hasn’t been in town for ten years or who grew up here and they’ll remark how many changes there are.”
Another physical change was the addition of more “green space,” said Ellis.
“The Rivergreenway used to terminate at Liberty Street,” he said. “And we extended it to where the trail head is now.”
He also mentioned the wetlands project, where the city is planting trees in 160 acres of land on the north bank of the Wabash River.
He also said the demolition of the Washington Main Commons changed the street-scape of the city dramatically.
When asked how the people had changed, Ellis chuckled and replied, “They’re getting younger than I am.”
He added, “That’s the one thing that doesn’t change much. Faces change, but I think the values in the community remain reasonably stable.”
One of the changes Ellis is “least happy with” is the “migration of the retail out north at the expense of the south side and downtown area. Mayors just detest empty storefront.
“The challenge is ‘what can government do about it? ‘What does the market do with those circumstances?’”
A change that Ellis calls “inconvenient” is traffic patterns.
“Compared to Fort Wayne or Chicago or a lot of cities,” said Ellis, “Bluffton’s traffic moves very well through town. But when you move your population center and the infrastructure has to play catch-up all the time, it creates some problems.”
He continued by saying, “One of the biggest miscalculations I made since being mayor was not recognizing how big an effect Wal-Mart would have when they located where they did. We knew there’d be some growth out there, but we didn’t realize how much growth would occur.
“Now, whether we could have talked the Indiana Department of Transportation into doing anything or Wal-Mart into paying for any more road improvements is another story.”
The best changes, said Ellis, was that “we’ve developed a parks and recreation department that is award-winning, [with] emphasis on the ‘recreation’ part of it.”
He also said, “Another change consumers like is the retail has expanded over the last ten years. You can choose to shop at Wal-Mart or not shop at Wal-Mart, but it’s undeniable that the selection of goods they brought to town wasn’t here 12 years ago.”
He added, “I used to tell people that back in the 1960s, you used to be able to make the case that you don’t need to leave Bluffton for anything you need, and we went through a time period where that wasn’t the case. The downtown stores had started to close, [and] we didn’t have the big box stores open yet. You had to go to Fort Wayne just to shop because there was a lull in retail activity.
“But now, I think we’re back to the point where most of your needs can be met by shopping within the city limits.”
Ellis said people’s expectations have changed. “A lot of that comes from increased communications. We do mailings from our office, I do radio, I do TV. We try to communicate a lot and people have come to expect that kind of communication, where we’re constantly letting everyone know what’s going on.”
He added that people also expect to do a lot online now, which was only a dream ten years ago.
As for the city’s needs, Ellis said that remains “pretty basic” with shelter and food. However, he did say, “We have more people living at or below the poverty level. But you can make the argument that we’re better off than most.”
He went on to say, “As the number of single parents increase, as we live longer and want to stay in our homes, there will be households that need more service, that need more assistance, or need more encouragement.”
What has stayed the same?
“There always seems to be people in leadership positions here who always want to step up and keep the ball in the air,” said Ellis. “It’s different leadership than it was 12 years ago, but we seem to have a deep well when the needs are expressed.”
What changes does he hope to see in the future?
In addition to several infrastructure projects in works, like the Adams St. corridor, the mayor also hopes to establish a destination business like a movie theater on the south side of the city that will make people drive out there.
“I’d really like to see the community become more aware of the culture of poverty,” he said. He mentioned how authors Ruby Payne and Phil DeVol had said the generationally impoverished and the generationally wealthy “speak a different language” than the middle class, and the middle class needed to expand their horizons and include both sides in their world so they can understand each other.
How has he changed since taking office?
“I have a little more gray hair,” Ellis said, laughing. “Actually, I’m lighter than I was when I took office, so technically I’m probably as healthy, if not healthier, than I was. I got married after taking office. I became a grandfather.”
But most importantly, he said, “I love the job more than I did the day I was sworn in because I had the opportunity to learn so much and visit so many places and so many people. And with each new place and each new person comes a new idea to take back home.”
With a laugh, he added, “it’s the best job in the world, but I wouldn’t recommend to anyone else for a while.”
That said, Ellis stated he will be “unequivocal” about running again for mayor in 2011.