Here’s a tip for you …

New York City is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Granted, my recent experience there was mostly limited to taxi rides from LaGuardia to a Manhattan hotel, the blocks between Grand Central Station and the Imperial Theater on West 45th Street and a different route from the hotel back to LaGuardia, including crossing the Robert F. Kennedy bridge. Still, I experienced enough to learn that it’s easy to take the girl out of the South, and much harder to take the South out of the girl.

I was raised to help myself and to help my neighbor.

In the Big Town, it seems people want to help themselves to your wallet.

Before you get the impression that I’m a cheapskate, know that I am more than happy to shell out extra money to thank the pizza driver, the wait staff or the hair stylist for good service.

I was more than glad to do this in New York as well — when the service was worthwhile.

Here, you can sometimes show gratitude by offering a heartfelt “thank you sweetie” and maybe some homemade chocolate chip cookies.

In the Big Apple, gratitude means opening the “I love Country Music” souvenir coin purse you bought at the Nashville airport and draining the contents.

For example, the afternoon my friend and I were to depart for home, I went to the hotel’s bag check area to get our luggage. We’d paid the check charge and tipped the clerk less than three hours earlier.

I handed the clerk a $10 bill.

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

He continued to stare at me.

I stood there, silent. A line of people, impatient for their personal possessions, formed behind.

The clerk raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure if he was amused or annoyed. “Did you want change from this?”

Obviously, he’d pegged me as a novice traveler. Must have been my southern belle accent.

I shook my head. “Oh, no.”

I wasted so much time prior to my trip, imagining the worst case scenario — me, lost within the bowels of the city, forced to relinquish my cold hard cash to a mugger with a knife.

All it took to part me from Alexander Hamilton was a bellhop with a razor-sharp eyebrow.

A short time later, my friend and I boarded a taxi after we tipped the hotel doorman for flagging one down for us. Apparently, there’s something in the New York smog that makes people invisible to taxi drivers until a doorman waves and you slip an Abe Lincoln into his hand. As the cab pulls up to the curb, a miracle occurs. The taxi driver can see you. If it’s a clear day, he may even see that 49.99 pounds of luggage you’re toting.

The driver turned to us after we buckled in. “You want to pay the flat rate $35, or you want to use the meter?”

I was more experienced by this time. I let my friend do the talking.

“We want to use the meter,” she said.

“I have to take a longer route,” he said, and mumbled something about lots of traffic.

“We want to use the meter,” she replied.

We made it to the airport in less time than the driver expected.

The charge on the meter? Under $30.

We gave the driver a tip. When added to the charge, we still paid less than his “flat rate.”

Priceless.

The best leaders are often unrecognized

The first panel of a recent Beetle Bailey comic strip shows Miss Buxley asking Private Blip, “Is our leader in yet?”

One can sense the sarcasm in Private Blip’s reply: “Our leader?”

In the second panel, Gen. Halftrack is seated behind an ornate desk, paperwork in hand, appearing detached as usual.

Private Blip says, “Sitting at that desk doesn’t make him a leader any more than standing in a kitchen makes you an apple pie.”

Comic strips are meant to amuse us, but occasionally, a message gets tucked in, along with the art and dialogue. In this case, the message is true. There’s more to being a leader than getting your name engraved on a deskplate.

There are countless books, seminars and videos out there that, for a few bucks, promise to help you win friends, influence people, and become a highly effective person in seven habits or less — like Tony Robbins, who made millions selling sets of self-improvement CDs.

This writer has had no formal leadership training, just several years of volunteer experience, a few years in the workplace and more than two decades of parenthood. Hence, what follows is my humble, free, no-strings-attached list of qualities that make a good leader. There are many more characteristics than can be posted here.

A leader is courteous. He doesn’t belittle or talk down to those who serve under him.

A leader is organized — maybe not to the point that he alphabetizes the snacks in his desk drawer, but he keeps up with what’s important, and disseminates that information quickly to those who need it.

A leader sees beyond the to-do list and believes there is a greater purpose to his work. He wants to light that spark in others, rather than be the only one who holds the candle.

A leader seeks opinions. He’s smart enough to know he doesn’t have all the answers, and doesn’t pretend to be an expert on everything.

A leader won’t assign subordinates any task he’s not willing to do himself.

A leader accepts responsibility when things go wrong and doesn’t jump when he learns the ship is sinking. He works alongside the crew to help them bail out of the mess.

A leader gives credit where credit is due. If a project is a success, he’ll step out of the spotlight to make room for others. If it sours, he acknowledges the problem, and not only questions how the workers failed the project, but what he did to contribute to the failure.

Finally, a good leader teaches other how to lead. He delegates responsibilities and follows up to insure people understand and fulfill their assignments.

In a few weeks, the 25th class of Leadership Hopkins County will convene. A group of local citizens, including this writer, will learn more about the inner workings of the county, from the operations of city governments and the fiscal court to local industries and nonprofit organizations. It’s possible we may discuss some of the points I’ve listed above. It’s likely we’ll learn more.

Most important, we’ll discover that there’s more to leadership than putting your name on a ballot, getting the most votes or seeing your name engraved on a deskplate — or even across the front of a building.

Because there have been, are, and will be in the future, many people in Hopkins County who have great leadership abilities, who use their skills in capacities that get little recognition, but change the lives of others for the better — engaged citizens such as Boy and Girl Scout leaders, P.T.A. officers, 4-H workers, Sunday School teachers … and parents.

And I’ll bet none of these people own a single Tony Robbins CDs.

Thoughts on July’s Earlington City Council Meeting

An interesting thing happened at Tuesday’s Earlington City Council meeting.

Members of the council informed Mayor Mike Seiber that they are adults, and expect to be addressed as equals.

They told Seiber that angry outbursts, question-dodging and vitriolic, condescending remarks to the council are inappropriate behaviors for city government meetings.

Perhaps it was the presence of city attorney Keith Cartwright that kept Seiber’s temper in check as council members voiced their opinions. The Mayor was uncharacteristically quiet through most of the two-hour meeting, his voice only turning sharp on a few occasions — mostly toward Councilman Tim Brister and his repeated comments about the city’s budget, and lack of a new one.

Brister and the council should be concerned about this. Is Seiber’s five-week vacation — or his full-time employment — a legitimate excuse for any elected official to put off creating a new budget? Especially in a city that’s in such a dire financial situation, as Seiber insists?

A June “Soundoff” post submitted by Seiber to The Messenger’s web site within the past five weeks let readers know he was vacationing in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to pity an elected official who bemoans the financial state of his city, yet leaves town during the final 35 days of the fiscal year to have some fun in the sun while other city’s mayors are meeting with their legislative branches to approve their new budgets.

And what about Seiber’s promise earlier in the year that the council would be involved in the preparation of the 2009-10 budget? There wasn’t any mention of that Tuesday — only that he would have a budget prepared for the August meeting.

Which, of course, is two months late.

Remember the June meeting, when Seiber told the council he’d awarded a mowing contract to Police Chief Chris Proctor and Sewer Department head Brian Ruffin to mow the city’s cemetery? Seiber told the council Tuesday that the money to pay Proctor and Ruffin was coming from street department funds.

Seiber didn’t tell the council this at the June meeting, when members said money had not been allocated in the budget for cemetery maintenance. He was too busy insisting that awarding the bid to Proctor and Ruffin was the right thing to do for the city — implying by his tone and labeling of member’s objections as “asinine” that only he, not the council, is capable of making decisions best for the town.

Contrast this with Dawson Springs City Council’s June meeting. Police Chief Bill Crider informed the members that he and other officers had accumulated several vacation days they wouldn’t be able to take before the end of the fiscal year. The council discussed the issue with Mayor Ross Workman, and moved to allow city employees to cash in some of those days.

Someone at the meeting told Workman he could have taken the action on his own rather than bring it up at the council meeting.

Workman said he realized he could have, but he didn’t want to do it without bringing it before the council for discussion. He wanted the council to be involved in the decision.

There were questions. There were disagreements. There was debate.

Finally, there was consensus.

You tell me which leader commands more respect — the one who seeks and accepts counsel before making a major decision, or the one who belittles, bullies and badgers others until they back off, just so they can get some relief?

It is obvious, after Tuesday’s meeting, Earlington City Council has decided they’re not going to take that anymore.

From Councilwoman Wanda Wilson: “We’re adults, we want to ask questions, we want to discuss things. … There’s nothing wrong with discussing and asking questions and I don’t like to be appeared as being trivial all the time. This is serious business, and I don’t appreciate that.”

From Councilman Philip Hunt: “The Kentucky League of Cities Official Handbook states that city council members and the mayor are co-equal, I”m sure you’ve read that. We’re co-equal, that means that we need to interact with each other, we need to know what’s going on … like when you tore down the Price Building.”

For what it’s worth, Seiber said in his “Soundoff” post that he intends to run for reelection.

Seiber wrote: “I can only hope that the citizens who voted for me the first time (aprox 300) will show up again in 2011.”

“I will be elected again,” he said.

What do you think?