Losing A Real Asset

Over the next several days, Harold Farrar will attend his last city meetings in an official capacity.

After serving Kimball as Clerk-Treasurer and as City Administrator, his commitment to family forced him to relinquish—very reluctantly—his commitment to this town’s people and government.

Indeed, he was so hesitant to leave Kimball without all loose ends tied, he gave notice well in advance of his departure and took as active a part in the search for his replacement as the law and propriety allow.

In that one act, as with his day to day work, he provided us with a model of what a civil servant should be: someone directed by concern, professionalism and class

But his true imprint on the life of this town is tangible, yet difficult to describe. You see, Farrar is a true “numbers guy,” one of the best a city could hope to employ. What others might find mundane or even sleep-inducing, he recognizes as something absolutely necessary for a community’s fiscal survival.

Elected officials and residents always present wish lists. Running a city—handling the day to day operations of many departments from the perspective of cost and budget—demands a firm grasp of reality. If circumstances dictated that a percentage must be sliced from the city’s budget, he stated so in the most direct, precise and matter-of-fact terms.

Maybe that’s Farrar’s greatest contribution to Kimball: fiscal clarity.

During his time in Kimball, Harold Farrar served as the frame around which the city functioned. It’s difficult sometimes to appreciate the value of a numbers guy. They are, after all, continually throwing facts and figures at ideas. But we think of it this way: how many times did his calm introduction of fiscal reality save Kimball from missteps?

We urge everyone to thank Farrar for his service to the town and to all of us.