By: Stephen McCollum

If a city, regardless of size, can be compared to a mash up of department and convenience stores, then Dan Eckstein is the kind of person you’d like to have at the helm. The voters of Hartford City thought so and he assumed the title of Mayor on New Year’s Day.

Cities have to offer a wide variety of services while also making it seem easy, if not effortless, for its customers, the citizens, to access them. 

Eckstein, a native of Gas City, started working at Sears as a teenager, rose to a management position over 20 years in Marion and later Muncie, then became a small business owner when he purchased the Food and Fuel Marathon station on North Walnut St.

“I learned to manage several different departments—the finance, inventory and merchandising, margin and profit, taxes—and the human resources and customer relations dimensions,” he says. “Then, after almost a decade of owning and running my own business, that really gave me a leg up when it came to thinking about this job.”

But like any new job, there inevitably is a learning curve and Eckstein had barely launched into his immersion to learn the city infrastructure, budgetary process, and all the personnel who make it all work, and had just given his first State of the City Address when the COVID-19 crisis hit.

“The County Health Department and Dr. Skidmore are leading the charge on this,” says Eckstein, “but we are working as a team to stay abreast of developments and to communicate with the public.” 

In conjunction with Gov. Holcomb’s stay-in-place order to facilitate social distancing, Eckstein, Mayor Bantz in Montpelier and other county officials are urging Blackford County citizens to comply. The county confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in late March.

Nonetheless, Mayor Eckstein has drafted an aggressive and expansive vision for the city. Some of the major elements include: downtown revitalization; youth engagement; a welcome committee to engage new residents and businesses; and close collaboration with Warren Brown, the new Director of the Blackford County Economic Development Corporation, to achieve the tandem goals of business and population growth.

“We do need to improve our tax base and increase population,” he says. “We can’t just hope new business will find us. We need to continue to do the work here that will demonstrate we are the kind of community they want and need. We are going to bolster our collaboration with Blackford County Schools. Our children are our future and we need to acknowledge them more and show them how important they are to the future success of the city and the county by showing them we value their ideas and opinions.”

Eckstein is working with City Educator Cheri Brown to develop a Life Skills Training course that will offer young adults information about how to build credit, manage a personal or family budget, details about mortgages, loans, taxes and more. 

“We also need to focus on enhancing the quality of life for families,” continues Eckstein in his State of the City Address. “We want to improve upon and increase the events and programs that will both fulfill current residents’ needs and expectations but also appeal to potential newcomers. The annual Civil War Days event is a good example of what we have to offer and a platform from which to build this effort.”

Last but hardly least in terms of the big picture vision, Eckstein is beginning to think about State Road 3 North as a mini-economic development corridor that links to State Road 18 and on to I-69 to promote commercial development that, logically, links to population growth.

“The potential is there to bring more traffic, and with it more commerce, to our city,” he says. 

Clearly Mayor Eckstein will be leading the community through its current stay-in-place order, but it is equally clear that for the long haul he aims to break out of the box and work with his fellow citizens to “Build a Better Blackford” for everyone.