My Beliefs #7 Respect for the individual

We’re hardworking, ordinary people who live in our community. While our backgrounds and personal beliefs are very different, we never take each other for granted. We encourage each citizen to express their thoughts and ideas. We treat each other with dignity. We always respect life.

My Beliefs #6 Striving for Excellence

Look to continually improve our core competencies. Strive for continual improvement.

My Beliefs #5 Leverage our Resources

Build on our strengths and resources. We have capitalized on Amelia Earhart, historic homes, and more. Think of the possibilities like agriculture tourism, use our mall, recreation on the river and more. This all will come down to vision.

My Beliefs: # 4 Elevate Strong Leaders

Utilize all resources:

In Atchison leaders come from all sectors-business, government, education etc. We need to encourage leaders to recognize the opportunity and responsibility to share their expertise. Dr King said “True leadership is about serving. A leader serves the town by sacrificing what’s good for one person or group to attain the best for the entire community.”

My Beliefs #3 Form Your Vision

" I have a dream" Martin Luther King

Vision is the way to get where we are your going! This is important to Atchison's furture success. How do we realize our dreams? First we build community consensus and form our vision. With vision we can take into consideration the landscape, roadblocks and dangers along the way. This helps us work towards our goals, evaluate the progress and make corrections along the way.

My Beliefs #2 Adopt A Can Do Attitude

Robert Kennedy “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why….I dream of things that never were and ask why not?”

My Beliefs: #1 Encourage Entrepreneurial Spirit

Atchison can prosper if we find and foster entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneur’s have the ability to see opportunities that other don’t and take calculated risks to achieve their goals. When the venture is successful the community enjoys new jobs and investment.

We must leave our comfort zone to promote the environment for entrepreneurs. We face two enemies’ status quo and fear of failure. We can accomplish our goals by using professional community planning, incubators, mentoring and service organizations that assist business start up.

Proactive is about attitude and outlook. We have to have foresight, wisdom and courage to succeed.