Imagine your third-grade teacher becoming the mayor of the city you live in. The current mayor of New Ulm, Robert J. Beussman, was a teacher before he became the mayor. “I had retired from teaching, and I was working for a computer company, and I was appointed to the planning commissions- which I was on for six years,” the mayor said. “When the next election came along, the mayor at the time wanted me to run and I also had other people telling me that I should, so I decided to try!” With Mayor Beussman being a teacher in the past, it gave him good experience with working with people; if you can’t communicate with people and you are the mayor, you are in trouble.

Having a former educator as mayor is an advantage to the students – they will want the best for the students. When it comes to the new High School, Mayor Beussman was hands down for it: ” I’ve been in that area quite a bit before the school was built and of course after. There look to be some traffic issues, and it can be very windy, but other than that it looks to be a state of the art facility. The building makes me think that I’m in college.” On the other hand, the school does help out the city “right now,” said Mayor Beussman. “Our council chambers are being renovated, so for the meetings, we are using the board room at the middle school. There is also a plan for half of the sales tax to be shared with the High School.” There have also have been some efforts to have high school students involved in some commissions; the problem with this is they mainly meet in the afternoon or evening when many of the students are in after-school activities or work.

Every year when school starts, the seniors and juniors can tell you that they’ve been told to respect the open lunch because there are a number of complaints from the city about it, even to the point of wanting to see it go away. This is what mayor Beussman had to say: “I personally have no problem with it. The people who are complaining are probably seeing one, two, three students doing something that they don’t think a student should be doing. I think you guys have time for open lunch, and hopefully you’re picking up a better lunch than a candy bar!” Regarding school, Mayor Beussman doesn’t believe college is for everyone. “Right now everyone is pushing college, the students are working a lot. There are many good paying jobs that are going unfilled because people don’t want to do them, so people are going to college to become something better.”

Some advice from Mayor Beussman. “The future is what you make of it. You can be a negative person, but it will show up. There are some people that can’t be positive, for whatever reason. Some of us have skills that others don’t. Some will polish their skills and become very successful in what they do, I see a lot of entrepreneurship available out there. Things that we – my generation- haven’t thought of and you’re probably thinking of. Saying that, you have all the control.”