By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Mayor Don Lyons, seeking a third term Tuesday against Howard Hall and Bill Harrington, leads an administration which has brought Dowagiac $7 million in grant money spent locally and international acclaim while reducing the city tax rate from 17.07 mills in 1997 to 16.042 mills today.
The 1964 Union High School graduate also offered his personal background of education, experience and accomplishment because “the best predictor of a person's future performance is their past performance.”
As a high-honor DUHS graduate, Lyons was awarded the John Clupper Memorial Scholarship, given annually to the best all-around scholar, athlete and leader in his senior class.
He attended Michigan State University, graduating in 1968 with a major in business and a minor in mathematics. He met and married Joan at MSU. In December the new grandparents will be celebrating their 37th wedding anniversary.
They have two children, Lance and Shannon, both of whom have college degrees and are professionally employed. Lance is president of Lyons Industries. Shannon is business manager of a medical research company in Seattle, Wash.
The mayor founded Lyons Industries in 1974 and is today chairman of the board. It began as a small, two-person business in the building that houses Beeson Street Grill, growing considerably to almost 200 people and occupying buildings with a total floor space under roof of more than three acres.
Lyons served on the Industrial Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation from 1980 through 1986. In 1983, he was honored with the Spes Homenum award, which recognizes persons who are dedicated to environmental quality and solving environmental problems scientifically.
He is an executive member of the Society of Plastics Engineers and served eight years on the Dowagiac Board of Education, three years as school board president. While on the local school board, Lyons also served on the Michigan Association of School Boards Legislative Committee.
He served eight years on the Cass County Economic Development Commission and was a founding member of the Lee Memorial Hospital Foundation board of directors, as well as serving on the Cass County Mental Health Board prior to it becoming Woodlands Behavioral Healthcare Network.
Lyons served five years on the Design Review Committee for the Downtown Development Authority and five years on the city Zoning Board of Appeals. He served eight years on the Cass County Transportation Authority. He won election as mayor in 1997 and was re-elected in 2001. He and his wife also own and operate the Heddon National Museum, which attracts visitors from all over the world while preserving an important part of Dowagiac's heritage.
The International City/County Managers Association (ICMA) this year selected Dowagiac to receive its annual award for the best city in the world with a population under 10,000 for its intergovernmental cooperation record.
Intergovernmental cooperation “is one very real way that cities can further stretch their tight budgets and achieve more results at a lesser cost,” Lyons added.
Harrington agreed with Hall. “This town will be dead in 10 years if you're not going to include the people” in decision-making. “If you have an opportunity to voice your opinion, that's where change comes. If you close everybody out entirely, you've got a problem. You're not going to like yourself after a while.”
Whether it's the Cass County drug task force with the Sheriff's Office, Dowagiac District Library with surrounding townships, several sewage treatment partnerships or Lincoln Community Center with the school district, “None of these projects would have occurred were it not for the cooperative efforts of ourselves and our various partnering agencies,” Lyons said.
At the mayoral candidates' meeting sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Berrien and Cass Counties Tuesday night before a standing-room-only crowd in the council chamber at City Hall, Hall reiterated populist themes he has developed at council meetings and on his Web site for four months that city officials are out of touch and unresponsive to their constituents and selectively enforce policies.
Hall owns Candy Corner, a penny-candy business. He's lived in Dowagiac two years. His son and daughter have attended school here for eight years. The former camp director said as mayor he would create an eight-member youth advisor board.
Hall said in the city's own survey asking residents what they wanted in the community, “The number-one answer was activities for Dowagiac youth. DId my opponent listen to what residents told them? Absolutely not. The only response residents got back from the sitting mayor was a long story in the newspaper about how when he was a child and got bored, his father gave him chores to do. I agree with the resident's comment in the Dowagiac Daily News that we either pay now or we pay later. We need to start paying attention to the youth in Dowagiac now or we're going to pay later with a higher crime rate.”
Hall said the current administration “doesn't understand” that youths seeking guidance and something constructive to do “are going to be this town's future leaders. We need to start paying attention to them now.”
Hall dismisses the central business district as a “service industry Mecca. My opponent once said that residents can purchase anything they need in Dowagiac. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost the entire downtown is made up of restaurants, bars, insurance agencies, beauty salons and, especially now, banks. Although these are all important businesses to have in town, we also need businesses that residents can shop at. Downtown Dowagiac needs to start a slow, but steady, change into a town geared toward locals, not service industries and summer vacationers. The current administration has had eight years to improve Dowagiac.”