Former Hobart Mayor Brian Snedecor has gotten emotional a lot this last year, but there was a moment during the Dec. 27th inauguration of Hobart’s new administration where he really thought he was going to lose it.
When former Hobart City Judge William Longer was set to swear in his wife, longtime Hobart Clerk-Treasurer Deb Longer, she asked Snedecor to hold the Bible on which she would take her oath. Having been through as much as the two have over Snedecor’s 16 years in the top spot, it may have been for him the best moment in a long line of what he feels has been a successful tenure.
“We’re like brother and sister at this point,” Snedecor said, tearing up at the memory. “I can’t think of a bigger or better honor.”
Snedecor spent the majority of Thursday afternoon cleaning out his City Hall office. His assistant, Emily DeSoris, was training her replacement, Emma Johnson, and the three joked about how confusing it’d been when Snedecor would call out, “Hey, Em!” but that at least new Mayor Josh Huddlestun wouldn’t have as much confusion.
He remembered the day he walked in the office his first day and took great pains to make sure Huddlestun knows where everything is, even if Huddlestun’s last eight years as a councilman have given him a good idea of the job. In 2008, Snedecor said he was basically flying blind.
But if that seemed like a disadvantage, he didn’t necessarily view it that way, even when his first big challenge came within seven months of taking office — the 2008 flood. He repeated a story that he told the Post-Tribune during the city’s dedication of what he feels is his crowning achievement, the Third Avenue Bridge.
“I was standing on a part of the bridge, and my wife called up to me and said, ‘Get off there! You’re going to drown!’ and I just stared at all the damage and thought to myself, ‘I don’t care!’ he said. “All of Dekalb and ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ — gone. It basically shut down the city from east to west. It was crazy.”
Snedecor said it was a Sunday night, and he called in Clerk-Treasurer Longer and the council to tell them to expect major flooding. They spent many hours strategizing with the various city departments, and soon, everything fell into place, he said.
“We came out of that really showing how to get back to normal quickly even with having a major lake (that flooded), he said. “Now, we have this bridge with improved accessibility for pontoons and kayaks, and I’m proud to have assisted in that.”
There were other shining moments, like St. Mary Medical Center building a $40 million wing and a new Hobart High School — where his daughter was among its first graduating class — that make him proud. Moving the Police Department, City Court, the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and the Maria Reiner Senior Center over to a repurposed Hobart Middle School, 705 E. 4th St., in 2011, which cost $8.5 million when all was said and done was exciting, too, though Destination Park, the new $876,000 playground at 8th and Wisconsin, might be his favorite of all.
“The other night, I was coming home, and even though it was cold (and) dark, there were still kids playing out there,” he said. “This was a big moment in our city.”
For all the good things that made the job great, there were many sleepless nights for Snedecor and the administration, he said, the biggest being the Southlake Mall property tax reassessment. The state came through and helped make the repayment manageable for the city, but even if the state doesn’t fix the loophole that allowed the situation in the first place, Snedecor believes retail is still a good option for Hobart.
“There’s a role for retail here,” he said. “Retail giants are still competitive; you can go to Kohl’s now and return Amazon purchases. Who would’ve thought of that? Then you see other big-box stores, like Macy’s, coming back with smaller stores. And I know (Southlake) has its challenges, but they’ve repurposed some of their square footage. They’ve put in a huge barber shop, so men can go get their hair cut while their wives shop. Also, look at Albanese (Candy) — in my 16 years, I can’t think of a year that they haven’t done some sort of expansion, so that’s almost a city in itself.
“I think retail can withstand change with new strategies.”
Where retail slows, warehouses could fill in the gaps, but the notorious Becknell project of six warehouses at 61st and Colorado won’t be one of them. The LaGrange, Illinois developer pulled their option on the 156 acres last month, Snedecor said, though the land still holds the rezoning for someone else to propose a similar development.
Going through the process, however, was another example of how people can unite with a common voice and affect change, he said.
Snedecor said he believes the way people want to hang their hats is coming full circle; where they once wanted to move away from a downtown area, they now want to come back, and Hobart, with its Riverfront designation, has revamped its downtown into a bustling place to be in the summer, he said. He acknowledged it took some pain to get there.
“To some degree, a lot of our downtown projects were done out of necessity to fix longtime problems, like 50- to 100-year-old pipes and sewer lines that were wooden, all the stuff that was out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” he said. “I know the businesses were frustrated, but if you look at the overall accomplishments, you see a healthy downtown and a healthy community.”
Of the many lessons Snedecor learned in his 16 years, he said realizing that “Silence is golden” was the hardest one to internalize, yet the most useful. He took a lot of criticism for switching to the Republican Party midterm — a move he said had everything to do with national politics, not local — and there were other times where it just felt like too much, but he feels like he got it right.
“I found out, and my wife would remind me all the time, that if people weren’t complaining, they were happy with the direction we were going. She called it the ‘Silent Majority,’” he said. “I used to let the keyboard warriors on social media really get to me, but there were always the same people, and they were the loudest. As long as I stayed the course, we focused on the right things and didn’t get derailed.”
Having a great council helped in that regard.
“They were always so easy to work with. It was amazing,” he said proudly. “The Council might vote for something I didn’t agree with, but I always knew it was well-thought-out, and we always listened to each other. My motto was, ‘You can walk through my door and cuss me out if you had to, but when you leave my office, we have to agree, and there were many times where I changed my position.”
As for his post-politics life, Snedecor is considering several consulting opportunities.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
