A few months after I moved here, I saw in the paper, you know, an a little ad for, you know, commission openings and whatever uh for parks and wreck. And so, you know, I live very close to Valley Place Park. Beautiful park. At the time, it was recently redone. And um I'm like, man, and also at the time, we had just had our first kid. And so, okay, parks and recck seems like a very natural place for me to get involved and kind of learn about how this all works at the city at the city level. Not only do you get to see behind the scenes a little bit, you get to interact with staff, you get to see some of the finances of how much this stuff costs, you get to see how the city plans years in advance for these projects. Um, you see all the small decisions of, okay, what color is the play set going to be? and the commission usually makes those decisions and what are the specific parts we want to have uh or elements of the park we want to have. And so you get to see some of those details and just kind of how city government uh runs which was really intriguing to me and I think you realize how much the community voice matters. You know, I mean at the end of the day and I can say this now being on the council, you know, the city is really run by the community. I mean, we're we're here to kind of do what what folks want us to do. Um, and so the more input and feedback we get from a staff level, council level, commission level, that really informs what what the community becomes. I think the city is in a very interesting place right now where we're kind of setting the vision for what we want Crystal to be. We're putting stuff um out there. We have a strategic plan. We're trying to build a 25-year plan. And so we are hungry for feedback, for engagement, um for diverse perspectives. Uh and so we need anyone and everyone to not only be in our commissions, but show up to uh council meetings, show up to commission meetings. You don't have to be on a commission to actually go to a commission meeting. You could just go learn, see what it's like. Um and then you could see if you wanted to be a part of it. So you're learning from the people that you're on the commission with. uh you're learning from city staff and ultimately you're just bringing your own experience and perspective which is incredibly valuable. So from my perspective there are no prerequisites outside of living here and wanting to make this community better. For more city stories check out ccdia.org or find us on social media.